The Sega Master System's History
Wanna know how it all started and ended? It's simple...Read on...

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(This info was found from all around, don't email me about copyright crap cause there is no copyright on history ;/)

In 1986, Sega released a 8-bit fourth-generation home console named The Sega Master System. Its release was a few months after the Nintendo Entertainment System came out.Its primary goal was to offer competition to the NES but little did they know that "a little competition" would turn into a Corporate sleeze war and what would later become their biggest financial loss (after the Saturn of course). It did offer competition but not much of it ; especially in the US. For some reason it did much better in foreign countries such as Europe, New Zealand, Australia and Brazil. But like I said in the US it was a different story...They had it all...no apparent reason pointed to why the wouldn't succeed. They clearly had good things to offer such as better technology, built-in games and the famous 3-D glasses,SegaScope. Nintendo was aware of all that so it had to take action if they wanted to keep their place as leaders in the videogame buisness. And that is what they have done.So it made a deal with 3rd party developers that stated that they were only to develop NES games and they could not be affilliated in any way with other companies . The only thing that was left for the SMS were Parker bros and Activision. This was a very smart move that resulted in Nintendo getting 90% of the 8-bit market sales while Sega got a little puny 10%. heh...no one said life was fair...

Sega became desperate and decided to sell the SMS rights to Tonka in 1987.Needless to say that it wasn't for the best since it didn't work out (although Tonka did come out with some great titles, their maketing was kinda off ). Sega then decided to reclaim their rights in 1990. Not long after that , Sega came out with the SMS-II. The system had a new look ! More compact, lighter, cheaper to make and more futuristic looking. The only down side is that the card slot was gone so that meant the card games were no longer playable and that the 3-D glasses were no longer of any use since it required the slot to work.

Sega now had a second chance and then something happenned. A government investigation led to the fall of Nintendo's 3rd-party agreement. It seemed that Sega was finally gonna have their brake. NOT!!! Since Nintendo came out with another sleezy strategy. A new agreement came along. Now developers had to wait 4 years before they could make non-NES games! So the SMS as the US knew it was officially dead in 1992.    :(   life sucks! But wait , there's more! Even if it failed in the US it was out making a bundle in Europe and in the land of the Aussie. Why was that you might ask? 3rd-party support, of course! Nintendo was more vicious in the US than in other countries. Since it was only Nintendo of America who made it's developers bow to the all mighty agreement , they won their battle over the NES in those countries scoring a grand total of over 300 games compared to 120 released in the US! It suprisingly lived until 1996. What some people might not even know is that the SMS was most succesfull in brazil, where words is that it is still in production known as the SMS-3 with cool games like SF2. Why is it still working over there when it did so miserably here? It's probably cause of the low price compared to the PSX and N64...

All in all , the SMS was a great system that dissapered in the sands of time. But for all of us SMS freaks, it'll live forever in our hearts! Awwww....embrace the nostalgia...all these mornings waking up early to play...