Originally released in 1986, the love for the\h Sega Master System wasn’t very strong in America,
but it ran deep in Europe, leading to\h the more compact Master System II console
released in 1990… and that’s pretty much where\h it ended, being superseded by the Mega Drive,
apart from Brazil, where apparently, the love\h ran even deeper, leading to a succession of
Master System consoles, including that.\h Right there. The Master System Evolution,
complete with a squishy Sonic the\h Hedgehog sticker on top. Beautiful.
Tec Toy was founded in September 1987 as a joint\h venture between a former Vice President of Sharp
Corporation, and two German brothers who\h owned the Brazilian consumer electronics
manufacturing company Evadin Indústrias\h Amazônia S.A (thank you for the Portuguese,
Marta)… They quickly began importing and\h distributing Mitsubishi TV sets and VCRs
into Brazil before signing a deal with Sega\h in 1988 to be their exclusive distributor
and rights holder in the region. This was\h 5 years before Nintendo would even attempt
to enter the market, which proved to be a\h great success for both Tec Toy and Sega.
In 1989 Tec Toy launched the\h Master System with great success.
In 1991 they launched the Master System II,
with great success. Although, rather\h than a revamp like we received,
Tec Toy simply bunded Alex Kidd in Miracle World\h into the machine and pushed out the same design.
In 1992, they launched the Master System\h III, with great success. Also known as
the Master System Compact. This was our\h Master System II, just repurposed for the
Brazilian and Argentinian markets. Following\h up with Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile by 1995.
They did all this with great success, and they\h did it at the same time as also pushing out the
Mega Drive. If TecToy knew something, it\h was how to market their range of gaming
machines to the right audiences, and boy did\h they milk it. Because they also launched the
Master System Super Compact, Master System Girl\h (as demonstrated here by the awesome Quang),
Master System Handy along with a spate of Master\h System 3’s with built in games to name a few,
and they kept that 8 bit train\h going right up until TODAY.
Yep, you can purchase a brand new Master\h System Evolution console, right now,
for R$360. About $64 or £49. Almost 40 years\h of the Master System. Now that’s how you do it.
The first Evolution console came out\h in 2009, packed with a load of games,
and the blue version I have, released in 2011, is\h largely the same as the version you can buy today.
So what keeps these South American\h markets coming back for more. What
delights are held within? Well, let’s take a look?
Of course, the problem we have is\h that this is a Brazilian machine,
which is fine for power, I can just put\h it through this step down converter,
but signal wise, it’s a little more tricky as\h it outputs video using Brazil’s PAL-M standard.
[Hero Wars Song Segment]
There aren’t many options for us here,\h we’ve got composite and mono audio out,
a built in power cable, and two\h standard 9 pin controller ports.
Which is not the same as the PAL system we\h use here. PAL-M actually outputs 525 lines,
at 30 frames per second, kinda like NTSC,\h but using the PAL colour encoding system,
on a subcarrier frequency that’s very close\h to NTSC. So it’s an absolute mish-mash. That
means that most screens you plug it into\h over here, will either display nothing,
glitch or give you black and white. Leaving a\h hunt to find an elusive screen that accepts,
pretty much any signal you can throw at it.
Thankfully, this DUAL branded screen, which I\h think I picked up at Tesco about 15 years ago
has never failed me, and it doesn’t today.\h Although for the purposes of this video,
I’ll be showing some black and white\h CRT action too, because frankly,
it looks crisper than a southern fried nugget.
Upon boot, we get our ‘lil Sega logo, before a\h menu is bestowed upon it. It’s nothing exciting,
you know, it stirs feelings of absolute\h indifference. But it gets the job done,
giving us access to the promised.. what was it?\h 132 games? That’s certainly what the box says,
offering tiny thumb sized screen shots\h featuring 104 of them on the back,
along with our favourite protagonists, wrong era\h Sonic, aggressive Alex Kidd and an Ax Battler that
looks like he’s fighting his way to the last\h Gregg’s Sausage roll more than anything else.
By the way, if you recognise that music. It’s\h a PSG rendition of the 2 player results screen
on Sonic 2 on the Mega Drive. Catchy…\h but it does wear thin after a while.
So what do we get? Well we actually get a fairly\h decent selection of Master System games, along
with some other, dubious titles, thrown in for\h good, or bad measure. I’m really not sure which.
The Alex Kidd’s are present. High Tech World.\h Miracle World. Shinobi World. The Lost Stars.
We’ve got Bonanza Bros. Chase H.Q. Golden Axe.\h Sonic. Bubble Bobble. The New Zealand Story.
Penguin Land. World Soccer. We’ve even got\h some Sega MK III games such as Satellite 7,
and we’ve got some Tec Toy exclusives, such as 20\h em 1; one of a few multiple game in one offerings,
which actually make up the full 132 game count.\h Without those, the actual number of games we have
is 104. Basically, all the screen shots featured\h on the box. Those sneaky little tricksters.
I mean some of these games are quite\h bad. What even is going on here.
Also, Pense Bem 10 Jogos is just a\h collection of different trivia questions.
Depois de 2 semanas, os…. dos cachorrinhos se\h abrem, mas eles ainda não enxergam direito.
Sadly we don’t have the more interesting\h TecToy exclusives like Street Fighter 2
or Fifa. But it’s a good mix, and visually,\h it looks decent, although the video signal is
slightly more washed out than your typical\h NTSC Master System. It also sounds decent,
although it’s reported that the sound\h pitch is a little higher than normal.
Still, it runs at the correct 60Hz output,
compared to the 50Hz versions\h we often got in the UK.
Comparing the Evolution to a composite modded\h Master System II, you’ll notice that the image
is a little cropped on the Evolution, cutting\h out the borders we’d normally see. The Evolution
also runs a tiny bit fast, which corroborates\h the slightly higher sound pitch some people
report. Colour wise, you can see it is a little\h bit washed out, but overall it’s not terrible.
The Chase HQ on the evolution is actually the Game\h Gear version, you can tell by the HUD differences,
the map inclusion and some other minor\h changes... and that's true for a few games
on this console; Game Gear games are used\h as substitutions for Master System titles.
To navigate all this joy, we weirdly\h get 2 matching six button controllers.
Clearly TecToy are just using their\h Mega Drive moulds at this point. The
plastic and build quality is incredibly\h cheap, but it gets the job done. It also
allows Game Gear ports to be used on\h this console such as Sonic Drift 2,
which requires the Game Gear’s Start button to\h play, which we of course get on these pads. For
other games it acts as the pause button. A and B\h function as button 1 and C as button 2. While X,
Y and Z do nothing, other than reset the\h console if you hold them all down at once.
By the way, don’t use one of these\h pads in your standard Master System,
or even in your Mega Drive in fact, as it’s\h not a genuine 6 button pad and pressing these
buttons together could short your console out.\h If you look at the guts, you’ll see that the top
3 buttons don’t even send a signal unless\h all three are pressed, and A and B on the
bottom there are connected in parallel. So they\h are the -same- button to all intents and purposes.
But, just with the Master System games\h alone, you can have some Nostalgic fun
here. Which to be fair to TecToy, is\h exactly what they’re posing this machine
as now. Their website pushes Nostalgia\h harder than, well, harder than I do.
But, we also have a load of other\h weird titles here, which definitely
weren’t released for the Master System,\h not even by TecToy. So what are they?
[Hero Wars Segment]
Let’s take one of the\h interesting ones; Dr. Limpeza.
It’s a fairly fun little game, where we\h have to clean the corridors by moving
over the blobs until they’re gone,\h whilst avoiding these nasty little
enemies. But games like this are still\h stumping the community, to this day.
No one seems to know exactly where some of these\h came from. But it seems like TecToy made some of
these, whilst others were just snatched from\h the community and bunged onto the console.
We also have a wide range of normal Master\h System ROMs. Some are Japanese versions. Some
American. Some seem to have been translated\h into Portuguese, by again, what appears
to be the local community, specifically\h translator groups operating within Brazil.
DMN_Sonic on the smspower forums notes\h that Renegade has a year mismatching
to the original and the first stage has\h the letters “CBT” strewn across a wall,
standing for Companhia Brasileira\h de Tradução – an extinct group
that translated English games into\h Portuguese just for the fun of it.
This also seems to be the case for Enduro Racer,
and Hang-On which have revised 1998\h year stamps on the title screen.
But to really understand what’s going on,\h and perhaps take a peek at the game data,
we need to open it up and see what’s what.
The console isn’t a chore to open up, a few screws\h hold it together, along with a little cap designed
to invalidate the warranty if tampered with. So,\h consider the warranty well and truly invalidated.
As you can see, there’s not a lot\h going on in here. We’ve got a power
board over here. Composite connector board there,
and then the main bulk of the hardware down\h the front, soldered onto the controller pins.
Here is the Noza 1.0B1, couple of references\h there. One is to the enemies of the anime and
Sega Mark III game Zillion, who had enemies with\h a similar name. The other is to this guy, clearly.
Now this is actually a System on a Chip\h manufactured by ATGames which can emulate
Master System and Game Gear titles, and it’s\h actually been Tec Toy’s staple since the Master
System 3 Collection released in 2007, which\h offered 131 built in titles AND the ability
to play cartridge games. Before then,\h TecToy used their own custom 580 chip,
which was actually a Mega Drive ASIC. The\h only extra game we get over the Master
System 3 Collection is Altered Beast. Clearly\h the connectors for the cartridge slot are non
existent in the Evolution, and all the software\h we can access is stored on this MX chip over
here. The contents of which were mapped out\h and extracted by Revo just over a year ago.
If you fancy popping these games\h through an emulator or finding
out more, you can find some helpful links below.
So these games aren’t quite running\h on OG hardware, unfortunately,
but pretty close. They’re not weird\h little mobile titles or anything like
that. They’re programmed for the original\h 8 bit hardware, and some of the titles have
been translated into English, again by\h Revo, in case you want to dig deeper.
So there we have it, the Master System Evolution.\h A console which refuses to die. A console, which,
well it outlived the Mega Drive really didn’t it.\h Tec Toy have offered Mega Drive systems over the
years. One only a few years back; They didn’t\h even shy away from Sonic 3 like we did… but
they never really sold as well\h as the Master System variants,
and that’s probably because almost half of\h all Master Systems ever sold were in Brazil,
meaning that the South American population has a\h lot of Nostalgia for their beloved 8 bit console.
Until next time, I’ve been\h Nostalgia Nerd. Toodleoo.