MASTER SYSTEM ROMs
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As a kid, the Master System was my main console. I later ended up with pretty much all the major systems, but this was my first. After sifting through roms of games I used to play all the time, I realized that many of them suck. But here are the few that still stand out.
For an emulator, I recommend MEKA (534K). It's one of the nicest emulators I've ever seen.
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| Alex Kidd in Miracle World | |
| This was Sega's answer to Mario, and it's got some problems. Some pretty big problems. But I used to love the hell out of this game when I was a kid. It was one of the few Master System games I didn't own, but I rented it many a time. |
| Download Alex Kidd in Miracle World (156K) | |
| Fantasy Zone | |
| Basically, this game is a side scrolling shooter, but it's the most fucked up shooter ever made. There's no point even trying to explain it, just jump in and see if you can figure out what the hell's going on. Once you do, it's actually pretty fun. There was a sequel that was basically the same but didn't really grab me, and a third game that was Pac-Man style, which was weird... not really good, but I played it a lot anyway. |
| Download Fantasy Zone (77K) | |
| Phantasy Star | |
 
| Phantasy Star, along with Wonder Boy 3, is one of the crowning jewels of the Master System. As modern rpgs go it's fairly primitive, but at the time it kicked the ass off of everything else. It was brutally hard and had very little story, but I loved this game. People will try to tell you that the first Final Fantasy was a good game, but you should kick them in the nuts. They obviously didn't own a Sega. I didn't own this game either, but rented it all the time. I was a dumb kid, so I'd just play off whatever save games were left on the cartridge, never knowing exactly what I was doing, but it was great. The first time we got to the dream sequence at the Mayor's house everybody present almost had a heart attack. What a great game. I never beat it, but my friend Terry did, and by the end it was brutal. You need lots of graph paper. |
| Download Phantasy Star (312K) | |
| Rampage | |
| The King of mindless games. All you do is beat the shit out of buildings for hours. I used to love this in the arcade, so when it came out on the Master System I asked for it for my birthday. In one player mode you actually have a preset number of lives, but in two player you can continue as many times as you want. No skill required, just a lot of destruction. Naturally this eventually got boring, so we made games out of beating each other up, or having each person stake out one building and try to protect it from the other guy. Classic. |
| Download Rampage (116K) | |
| Rastan | |
| This is a game that wouldn't have made it on to my NES list, but the number of games for the Master System was far less than the Nintendo, leading to fewer quality games overall. And Rastan, despite its problems, gave me many hours of hacking enjoyment. It took a while for me to figure out how to jump off walls, however, which got me stuck partway through the game. When you jump against a wall, press up and away from the wall and jump again. It seems so simple, but the exact same thing had me stuck in Metroid III for 2 hours. Time well spent, I say. |
| Download Rastan (127K) | |
| Spellcaster | |
| Spellcaster was pretty damn weird; a side-view game with a bunch of rpg-type elements, and some magic worked in for good measure. Beating the game was really rough, and I could actually never do it until I got a walkthrough off the net all these years later. I made it to the pyramid and the maze fucked my ass up. But overall, a very cool game. |
| Download Spellcaster (293K) | |
| Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Curse | |
| Here it is, folks – the best Master System game. There's a version for the TurboGrafx too, but this one's better. I can't recommend it enough. Grab this motherfucker. It's the coolest game ever. Come to think of it, I didn't own this either... I had like 40 games, but none of the best ones. Anyway, my friend Jay owned it, and I played it until my fingers bled. Awesome. I used to really like Wonder Boy II as well, but upon replaying it I found that it's actually a piece of shit. |
| Download Wonder Boy 3 (136K) | |