The Sega Master System was the console of my childhood, and occupies for me the same place that the NES does for a lot of tyrants my age. I made a thread on the previous version of TT with a similar title to this one, and now it's back. Here's some of what I had to say last time:
The game that's spurred me to make the thread today is:
Captain Silver, a 1987 Data East arcade platformer converted to SMS by Sega in 1988. Data East is a company I never really took any notice of, but they made some interesting games. Check out Edward Randy or Boogie Wings sometime. Anyways, this one is a pirate adventure. You play as Jim:
Who is looking for Captain Silver's treasure hoard. It's on what you might call a Treasure Island somewhere. I think. I've barely made it out of the opening village level.
Here's said level, and Jim's jumping attack. At the top are the letters Captain Silver - each defeated enemy drops a card, most of which have a letter on them. Picking up a card adds to your G, which can be used in shops, and getting a full set of letters scores you an extra life.
Besides jumping and walking, Jim can crouch and crawl. The enemy here is a werewolf. Kind of odd for a pirate game?
Moving forwards, there's a Cheshire Cat up on the wall. The key in the second shot will let me into a shop later in the level if I make it that far (spoiler: nope).
Here's the cat's attack, and what I think is an example of the Deco Jump, where the character rises and falls linearly rather than in a parabola.
Someone has hung this tree with Jack-o-lanterns. I don't think I've mentioned that Jim will die in one hit from anything yet, have I? I've had many deaths at this very point.
The boots at the top of the ladder double my jumping height for a short while, allowing me to backtrack and get the Herbs I was forced to walk beneath helplessly before. These double my HP, allowing Jim to survive one hit.
While the Herbs are active, Jim's shirt flashes. Picking up the fairy in this GIF upgrades Jim's firepower - I now have a projectile. This will last until I die.
So, uh, not very long. So far as I can tell, the Pied Piper of Hamelin (enemy names taken from the manual, by the way) cannot be killed. I was taking a shot at it anyway, because there are Witch enemies later in the level which I at first thought were invincible but eventually managed to beat. The piper here I think is better bypassed - if you stand at the right distance you can pass under the top music note and above the other two. After attacking a few times the piper will jump offscreen. In this case, although I had an extra hit because of the herbs, I lost that to one music note and my life to the next.
And that's as far as I recorded. The emulator was skipping a bit, which is partly why I was doing badly. I've made it to the second stage on real hardware so far. It's a difficult game, with death around every corner. Once you get past the piper there's a fountain, probably the most deadly foe in scene 1 - it's got three spouts coming from it moving up and down, and if you don't time your jump from the first to the second perfectly, Jim will land in the fountain and immediately drown in the knee high water. Get past that and there's a shop, where you can buy another fairy upgrade (or waste your money on a different item if you want), which gets you three stars in your projectile. This makes the Witches that appear later in the level somewhat doable. At the end of the stage you face the Sorceress - a tougher witch who moves back and forwards across the screen, shoots projectiles, and summons minor enemies. I've beaten her once, reaching scene two, which takes place on a ship. Once I got there I swiftly lost all my lives to an enemy at the top of a ladder who seemed to always hit me before I was able to attack it.
It feels kind of like a shooter to me, at least once you get access to projectiles. Just like Sagaia for SMS, it seems to be the kind of game where if you lose your powerups you might as well start over. You get three lives, but lose your upgrades on dying. You can continue by holding up on the game over screen and pressing button one, but there's a limit of three continues so it's essentially just extra lives which are likely to fall away just as quickly. Still, the first level seemed impossible at first and I've beaten it now. A bit more practice and maybe I can get through the second.
Oddly, Cap'n Silver had pretty distinct releases between the PAL and NTSC territories. The PAL version, which is what I have, comes on a 2 mega cartridge and has more levels and a boss at the end of each stage. The US version is one mega, has fewer levels, and apparently only one boss at the end of the game. When I got my cart I was concerned to get the full version, but having played it I wonder if I'd have a better chance of beating the short version.
The game that's spurred me to make the thread today is:
Captain Silver, a 1987 Data East arcade platformer converted to SMS by Sega in 1988. Data East is a company I never really took any notice of, but they made some interesting games. Check out Edward Randy or Boogie Wings sometime. Anyways, this one is a pirate adventure. You play as Jim:
Who is looking for Captain Silver's treasure hoard. It's on what you might call a Treasure Island somewhere. I think. I've barely made it out of the opening village level.
Here's said level, and Jim's jumping attack. At the top are the letters Captain Silver - each defeated enemy drops a card, most of which have a letter on them. Picking up a card adds to your G, which can be used in shops, and getting a full set of letters scores you an extra life.
Besides jumping and walking, Jim can crouch and crawl. The enemy here is a werewolf. Kind of odd for a pirate game?
Moving forwards, there's a Cheshire Cat up on the wall. The key in the second shot will let me into a shop later in the level if I make it that far (spoiler: nope).
Here's the cat's attack, and what I think is an example of the Deco Jump, where the character rises and falls linearly rather than in a parabola.
Someone has hung this tree with Jack-o-lanterns. I don't think I've mentioned that Jim will die in one hit from anything yet, have I? I've had many deaths at this very point.
The boots at the top of the ladder double my jumping height for a short while, allowing me to backtrack and get the Herbs I was forced to walk beneath helplessly before. These double my HP, allowing Jim to survive one hit.
While the Herbs are active, Jim's shirt flashes. Picking up the fairy in this GIF upgrades Jim's firepower - I now have a projectile. This will last until I die.
So, uh, not very long. So far as I can tell, the Pied Piper of Hamelin (enemy names taken from the manual, by the way) cannot be killed. I was taking a shot at it anyway, because there are Witch enemies later in the level which I at first thought were invincible but eventually managed to beat. The piper here I think is better bypassed - if you stand at the right distance you can pass under the top music note and above the other two. After attacking a few times the piper will jump offscreen. In this case, although I had an extra hit because of the herbs, I lost that to one music note and my life to the next.
And that's as far as I recorded. The emulator was skipping a bit, which is partly why I was doing badly. I've made it to the second stage on real hardware so far. It's a difficult game, with death around every corner. Once you get past the piper there's a fountain, probably the most deadly foe in scene 1 - it's got three spouts coming from it moving up and down, and if you don't time your jump from the first to the second perfectly, Jim will land in the fountain and immediately drown in the knee high water. Get past that and there's a shop, where you can buy another fairy upgrade (or waste your money on a different item if you want), which gets you three stars in your projectile. This makes the Witches that appear later in the level somewhat doable. At the end of the stage you face the Sorceress - a tougher witch who moves back and forwards across the screen, shoots projectiles, and summons minor enemies. I've beaten her once, reaching scene two, which takes place on a ship. Once I got there I swiftly lost all my lives to an enemy at the top of a ladder who seemed to always hit me before I was able to attack it.
It feels kind of like a shooter to me, at least once you get access to projectiles. Just like Sagaia for SMS, it seems to be the kind of game where if you lose your powerups you might as well start over. You get three lives, but lose your upgrades on dying. You can continue by holding up on the game over screen and pressing button one, but there's a limit of three continues so it's essentially just extra lives which are likely to fall away just as quickly. Still, the first level seemed impossible at first and I've beaten it now. A bit more practice and maybe I can get through the second.
Oddly, Cap'n Silver had pretty distinct releases between the PAL and NTSC territories. The PAL version, which is what I have, comes on a 2 mega cartridge and has more levels and a boss at the end of each stage. The US version is one mega, has fewer levels, and apparently only one boss at the end of the game. When I got my cart I was concerned to get the full version, but having played it I wonder if I'd have a better chance of beating the short version.
Golden Axe Warrior is another I'd like to spend some good time with.
