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Originally released in 1986, the love for the\h
Sega Master System wasn’t very strong in America,

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but it ran deep in Europe, leading to\h
the more compact Master System II console

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released in 1990… and that’s pretty much where\h
it ended, being superseded by the Mega Drive,

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apart from Brazil, where apparently, the love\h
ran even deeper, leading to a succession of

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Master System consoles, including that.\h
Right there. The Master System Evolution,

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complete with a squishy Sonic the\h
Hedgehog sticker on top. Beautiful.

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Tec Toy was founded in September 1987 as a joint\h
venture between a former Vice President of Sharp

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Corporation, and two German brothers who\h
owned the Brazilian consumer electronics

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manufacturing company Evadin Indústrias\h
Amazônia S.A (thank you for the Portuguese,

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Marta)… They quickly began importing and\h
distributing Mitsubishi TV sets and VCRs

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into Brazil before signing a deal with Sega\h
in 1988 to be their exclusive distributor

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and rights holder in the region. This was\h
5 years before Nintendo would even attempt

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to enter the market, which proved to be a\h
great success for both Tec Toy and Sega.

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In 1989 Tec Toy launched the\h
Master System with great success.

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In 1991 they launched the Master System II,

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with great success. Although, rather\h
than a revamp like we received,

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Tec Toy simply bunded Alex Kidd in Miracle World\h
into the machine and pushed out the same design.

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In 1992, they launched the Master System\h
III, with great success. Also known as

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the Master System Compact. This was our\h
Master System II, just repurposed for the

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Brazilian and Argentinian markets. Following\h
up with Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile by 1995.

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They did all this with great success, and they\h
did it at the same time as also pushing out the

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Mega Drive. If TecToy knew something, it\h
was how to market their range of gaming

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machines to the right audiences, and boy did\h
they milk it. Because they also launched the

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Master System Super Compact, Master System Girl\h
(as demonstrated here by the awesome Quang),

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Master System Handy along with a spate of Master\h
System 3’s with built in games to name a few,

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and they kept that 8 bit train\h
going right up until TODAY.

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Yep, you can purchase a brand new Master\h
System Evolution console, right now,

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for R$360. About $64 or £49. Almost 40 years\h
of the Master System. Now that’s how you do it.

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The first Evolution console came out\h
in 2009, packed with a load of games,

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and the blue version I have, released in 2011, is\h
largely the same as the version you can buy today.

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So what keeps these South American\h
markets coming back for more. What

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delights are held within? Well, let’s take a look?

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Of course, the problem we have is\h
that this is a Brazilian machine,

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which is fine for power, I can just put\h
it through this step down converter,

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but signal wise, it’s a little more tricky as\h
it outputs video using Brazil’s PAL-M standard.

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[Hero Wars Song Segment]

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There aren’t many options for us here,\h
we’ve got composite and mono audio out,

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a built in power cable, and two\h
standard 9 pin controller ports.

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Which is not the same as the PAL system we\h
use here. PAL-M actually outputs 525 lines,

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at 30 frames per second, kinda like NTSC,\h
but using the PAL colour encoding system,

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on a subcarrier frequency that’s very close\h
to NTSC. So it’s an absolute mish-mash. That

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means that most screens you plug it into\h
over here, will either display nothing,

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glitch or give you black and white. Leaving a\h
hunt to find an elusive screen that accepts,

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pretty much any signal you can throw at it.

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Thankfully, this DUAL branded screen, which I\h
think I picked up at Tesco about 15 years ago

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has never failed me, and it doesn’t today.\h
Although for the purposes of this video,

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I’ll be showing some black and white\h
CRT action too, because frankly,

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it looks crisper than a southern fried nugget.

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Upon boot, we get our ‘lil Sega logo, before a\h
menu is bestowed upon it. It’s nothing exciting,

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you know, it stirs feelings of absolute\h
indifference. But it gets the job done,

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giving us access to the promised.. what was it?\h
132 games? That’s certainly what the box says,

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offering tiny thumb sized screen shots\h
featuring 104 of them on the back,

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along with our favourite protagonists, wrong era\h
Sonic, aggressive Alex Kidd and an Ax Battler that

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looks like he’s fighting his way to the last\h
Gregg’s Sausage roll more than anything else.

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By the way, if you recognise that music. It’s\h
a PSG rendition of the 2 player results screen

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on Sonic 2 on the Mega Drive. Catchy…\h
but it does wear thin after a while.

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So what do we get? Well we actually get a fairly\h
decent selection of Master System games, along

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with some other, dubious titles, thrown in for\h
good, or bad measure. I’m really not sure which.

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The Alex Kidd’s are present. High Tech World.\h
Miracle World. Shinobi World. The Lost Stars.

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We’ve got Bonanza Bros. Chase H.Q. Golden Axe.\h
Sonic. Bubble Bobble. The New Zealand Story.

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Penguin Land. World Soccer. We’ve even got\h
some Sega MK III games such as Satellite 7,

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and we’ve got some Tec Toy exclusives, such as 20\h
em 1; one of a few multiple game in one offerings,

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which actually make up the full 132 game count.\h
Without those, the actual number of games we have

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is 104. Basically, all the screen shots featured\h
on the box. Those sneaky little tricksters.

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I mean some of these games are quite\h
bad. What even is going on here.

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Also, Pense Bem 10 Jogos is just a\h
collection of different trivia questions.

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Depois de 2 semanas, os…. dos cachorrinhos se\h
abrem, mas eles ainda não enxergam direito.

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Sadly we don’t have the more interesting\h
TecToy exclusives like Street Fighter 2

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or Fifa. But it’s a good mix, and visually,\h
it looks decent, although the video signal is

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slightly more washed out than your typical\h
NTSC Master System. It also sounds decent,

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although it’s reported that the sound\h
pitch is a little higher than normal.

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Still, it runs at the correct 60Hz output,

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compared to the 50Hz versions\h
we often got in the UK.

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Comparing the Evolution to a composite modded\h
Master System II, you’ll notice that the image

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is a little cropped on the Evolution, cutting\h
out the borders we’d normally see. The Evolution

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also runs a tiny bit fast, which corroborates\h
the slightly higher sound pitch some people

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report. Colour wise, you can see it is a little\h
bit washed out, but overall it’s not terrible.

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The Chase HQ on the evolution is actually the Game\h
Gear version, you can tell by the HUD differences,

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the map inclusion and some other minor\h
changes... and that's true for a few games

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on this console; Game Gear games are used\h
as substitutions for Master System titles.

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To navigate all this joy, we weirdly\h
get 2 matching six button controllers.

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Clearly TecToy are just using their\h
Mega Drive moulds at this point. The

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plastic and build quality is incredibly\h
cheap, but it gets the job done. It also

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allows Game Gear ports to be used on\h
this console such as Sonic Drift 2,

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which requires the Game Gear’s Start button to\h
play, which we of course get on these pads. For

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other games it acts as the pause button. A and B\h
function as button 1 and C as button 2. While X,

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Y and Z do nothing, other than reset the\h
console if you hold them all down at once.

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By the way, don’t use one of these\h
pads in your standard Master System,

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or even in your Mega Drive in fact, as it’s\h
not a genuine 6 button pad and pressing these

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buttons together could short your console out.\h
If you look at the guts, you’ll see that the top

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3 buttons don’t even send a signal unless\h
all three are pressed, and A and B on the

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bottom there are connected in parallel. So they\h
are the -same- button to all intents and purposes.

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But, just with the Master System games\h
alone, you can have some Nostalgic fun

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here. Which to be fair to TecToy, is\h
exactly what they’re posing this machine

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as now. Their website pushes Nostalgia\h
harder than, well, harder than I do.

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But, we also have a load of other\h
weird titles here, which definitely

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weren’t released for the Master System,\h
not even by TecToy. So what are they?

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[Hero Wars Segment]

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Let’s take one of the\h
interesting ones; Dr. Limpeza.

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It’s a fairly fun little game, where we\h
have to clean the corridors by moving

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over the blobs until they’re gone,\h
whilst avoiding these nasty little

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enemies. But games like this are still\h
stumping the community, to this day.

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No one seems to know exactly where some of these\h
came from. But it seems like TecToy made some of

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these, whilst others were just snatched from\h
the community and bunged onto the console.

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We also have a wide range of normal Master\h
System ROMs. Some are Japanese versions. Some

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American. Some seem to have been translated\h
into Portuguese, by again, what appears

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to be the local community, specifically\h
translator groups operating within Brazil.

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DMN_Sonic on the smspower forums notes\h
that Renegade has a year mismatching

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to the original and the first stage has\h
the letters “CBT” strewn across a wall,

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standing for Companhia Brasileira\h
de Tradução – an extinct group

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that translated English games into\h
Portuguese just for the fun of it.

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This also seems to be the case for Enduro Racer,

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and Hang-On which have revised 1998\h
year stamps on the title screen.

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But to really understand what’s going on,\h
and perhaps take a peek at the game data,

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we need to open it up and see what’s what.

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The console isn’t a chore to open up, a few screws\h
hold it together, along with a little cap designed

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to invalidate the warranty if tampered with. So,\h
consider the warranty well and truly invalidated.

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As you can see, there’s not a lot\h
going on in here. We’ve got a power

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board over here. Composite connector board there,

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and then the main bulk of the hardware down\h
the front, soldered onto the controller pins.

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Here is the Noza 1.0B1, couple of references\h
there. One is to the enemies of the anime and

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Sega Mark III game Zillion, who had enemies with\h
a similar name. The other is to this guy, clearly.

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Now this is actually a System on a Chip\h
manufactured by ATGames which can emulate

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Master System and Game Gear titles, and it’s\h
actually been Tec Toy’s staple since the Master

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System 3 Collection released in 2007, which\h
offered 131 built in titles AND the ability

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to play cartridge games. Before then,\h
TecToy used their own custom 580 chip,

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which was actually a Mega Drive ASIC. The\h
only extra game we get over the Master

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System 3 Collection is Altered Beast. Clearly\h
the connectors for the cartridge slot are non

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existent in the Evolution, and all the software\h
we can access is stored on this MX chip over

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here. The contents of which were mapped out\h
and extracted by Revo just over a year ago.

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If you fancy popping these games\h
through an emulator or finding

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out more, you can find some helpful links below.

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So these games aren’t quite running\h
on OG hardware, unfortunately,

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but pretty close. They’re not weird\h
little mobile titles or anything like

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that. They’re programmed for the original\h
8 bit hardware, and some of the titles have

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been translated into English, again by\h
Revo, in case you want to dig deeper.

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So there we have it, the Master System Evolution.\h
A console which refuses to die. A console, which,

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well it outlived the Mega Drive really didn’t it.\h
Tec Toy have offered Mega Drive systems over the

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years. One only a few years back; They didn’t\h
even shy away from Sonic 3 like we did… but

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they never really sold as well\h
as the Master System variants,

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and that’s probably because almost half of\h
all Master Systems ever sold were in Brazil,

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meaning that the South American population has a\h
lot of Nostalgia for their beloved 8 bit console.

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Until next time, I’ve been\h
Nostalgia Nerd. Toodleoo.