NES or Master system?

[Weasel Fierce]

IF you had one of these two systems, which did you have?

Did you eventually end up with both?

Did you buy one after the fact? (after they were long gone?)

If you do retro consoles do you have an original or an aftermarket reproduction system?


Please note this is not a thread about how cool you were for not buying a console or for how Commodore should have done x or how Boris Johnson didn't give back the controller when he was done playing Mario Kart.
Its about which of these two consoles you owned then or now

[trixster]

I had a Master System back in the 80s before getting an Amiga 500.

I was envious of a couple of classmates who had a NES. Of all the retro computers and consoles i now own, I still dont have either a Master System or NES!

[Predseda]

Master System has way better Bubble Bobble, so Sega wins for me.

I have NES mini and Master System mk1 (The Coffin).

[TCD]

We had a Master System before the MegaDrive. I didn't even know about the NES until after we already had a SNES, so there wasn't much incentive to get a NES. Years later I would play games via emulation and I can easily see why the NES was so popular.

[Retro-Nerd]

NES wasn't really a thing here in Germany. The official Nintendo distribution & support started in 1990 (before it was just unoffical), way too late. C64, Amiga, a few Master Systems, then the Game Boy and MD/SNES.

[fitzsteve]

I got a master system 2 around 1990 I guess, it was my first own console bought with my Christmas money. Did have a Nes later but that was probably a used one after the megadrive/snes were out. I was still using my Spectrum +2 when I got the Master System. I had Alex Kidd built in and Sonic.

[Coagulus]

I loved my Master System but much prefer playing the games under emulation. The sprite flickering absolutely ruined many games on the real hardware for me. So glad it's usually turned off in the emulators!

[ImmortalA1000]

I had no interest in them back then, 8 bit conversions of my fav' 16bit arcade games like Salamander etc meant after VCS in 1980 the only console I considered next was PC Engine.

To compare the two machines Ninja Gaiden is a good game to compare them I think.

Don't have anything against them now but I would never have paid £30 for ANY 8bit game back in 1988 etc.

I own a 3 NES consoles, possibly 4, and one is in nice condition. Also have the NES advantage joypad.

I own a single SMS2 but the joypads are way past their sell by date, I also have the converter to use on the Mega Drive MK1 which I presume lets you use Megadrive pads with it (there's no pads in this boxed bit of kit from Sega).

[Anubis]

Friend owned SMS with 3 games - Sonic, Shinobi and Alex Kid in Miracle Word and we did play hack out of it. In first half of 90s I was living in Germany and we had hacked NES with tons of games purchased from some Turkish store.
I don't own either NES or SMS, I do have 2 Game Gears (one broken), which was essentially mobile SMS.

[Coagulus]

Originally Posted by Anubis

Friend owned SMS with 3 games - Sonic, Shinobi and Alex Kid in Miracle Word and we did play hack out of it. In first half of 90s I was living in Germany and we had hacked NES with tons of games purchased from some Turkish store.
I don't own either NES or SMS, I do have 2 Game Gears (one broken), which was essentially mobile SMS.

I had the Game Gear with the TV tuner in my first flat as I had no TV.. had a bare wire stuck in my Amiga and wrapped around the aerial on the game gear (tuned to channel 36) so I could play some amiga games!

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by Coagulus

I loved my Master System but much prefer playing the games under emulation. The sprite flickering absolutely ruined many games on the real hardware for me. So glad it's usually turned off in the emulators!

A MiSTer can do that too, including CPU turbo and for some cores even save states. I hate this sprite flickering and slow downs on real machines too.

[RetroPassionUK]

Master System with Alex Kidd built in :-)

[Avanze]

Master System. I was really unimpressed with the dull looking NES color palette and even the system itself this rather uninviting. These days I think it is a very capable system with an abundance of excellent games, but back in the day, all I was aware of were Mario and Punch Out.

[idrougge]

Everyone in Sweden had a NES (me too) — we made fun of the unlucky few who had a Sega.

Since I was a big nerd, I bought a second-hand Master System in fifth grade just to find out what a non-NES console was like. I wasn't exactly impressed, and subsequently sold it to finance my purchase of my first Amiga.

Years later, I regained interest in the MS and found that its colourful graphics speak to you as an Amiga owner, as opposed to the drab NES graphics.

The NES still has a better selection of games, but the MS still has a lot of impressive technically over-stretching games, much like the Amiga.

[Megalomaniac]

I didn't have either back then, was always more drawn to computers than consoles, but have both now. For some reason the Master System was always more charming to me. The NES felt very 'other' here in the UK, it launched ridiculously late - we got NES Mario 3 after most of the world had the SNES. Back then, Europe really was a dozen different markets rather than one unified one. I didn't get much time with it, for whatever reason, so it never ceased to feel like something that was beyond my reach, loud and brash but unfriendly and unwelcoming. Nintendo US' horrid "make games for us and you can't make games for our rivals" makes the console seem like a playground bully in my mind.

It helps that the European PAL SMS catalogue of games was so much better than the NTSC one. Sprite flicker is an issue on both systems, but definitely more prominent on the SMS.

I prefer the idea of collecting for the SMS too, because NES boxes were so easily damaged and got dumped so often - complete boxed NES games go for a lot more on eBay, despite them having sold more (even here in the UK). Same goes for Megadrive / Genesis versus SNES too.

In truth I need to spend more time with the many NES classics, especially as so many got sequels on the SNES and beyond - Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden etc. In truth, the NES probably had more great console-only games than the Master System, even if SMS Lemmings, Populous, Sensi, Robocod etc are great achievements that the NES probably couldn't match.

[Cobe]

I have 1 friend who had(has) sms and 0 friends who had nes. Never heard of nes until some 10 years ago when I went retro. Famiclones were a thing at one point here but noone knew back than what they actually are and were considered poor mans sega cause mega drive was already big here at that point. And famiclones at that time usually cloned megadrive exterior look.

So I have fond memories of Alex kid, Wonderboy, Shinobi, Golden Axe...
In past 10 years I owned both systems and sms always felt like more sophisticated and complete.

[Pyromania]

I had no interest in them back then but wouldn’t mind a NES Mini or SNES Mini now if prices weren’t so insane for them.

[Legerdemain]

I owned a NES, some friends owned Master Systems and when I felt like it I borrowed it or rented it.

The Master System introduced me to JRPGs and action adventures with Miracle Warriors, Ys, Phantasy Star, Lord of the Sword, Ultima 4... an area where the NES was severly lacking in Scandinavia (Sweden in paticular due to Bergsala being extremely strict with what kind of games they imported). The Master System got pretty much every game released for the system over here.

I loved the early box art, because it was so ugly but still intriguing... with the squared white background and a really childish, simple (sometimes completely crazy) artwork on top. This changed, after a while, into ordinary artwork on top of the white squared background.

The Master System felt so much more competent than the NES but due to Nintendos not really nice way of keeping the third parties to themselves the amount of games released aswell as what kind of games and the quality of the games released took a quite huge hit. Some genres were more or less absent from the console (puzzlers where few and far between, shmups aswell even though the few released actually held a really high quality in many cases, and Capcom and Konami would really have made a big difference if they could have bothered) where other thrived (arcade conversions, many by Sega themselves).

The potential were so much bigger than the actual outcome when talking of the game library.

I love the console, in whatever case... and it holds many classics, and if really digging deep into its library of games there is actually quite much to be found. After having collected games, played them and reviewed them in the last 15 years or so... over 100 games reviewed... I do still find some games which, I even though I knew them by name, delivered in ways I did not think they would.

Interesting piece of hardware.

I can not choose between the NES or the Master System... though... they both matter to me. Much.

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by Legerdemain

I can not choose between the NES or the Master System... though... they both matter to me. Much.

Second this...

[jPV]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

I had no interest in them back then but wouldn’t mind a NES Mini or SNES Mini now if prices weren’t so insane for them.

Yeah, I never had a console back then and didn't know anyone who had them, all my friends had C64/C128/Amiga and then later PCs. My first experience with consoles was when my wife got a PS3 Well.. I had few rounds on Duck Hunt on NES when visiting some science centre, but can't count that as getting any familiar with the console.

I have now bought a SNES Mini (and couple other mini remakes) from discount offers to check out what I have missed. I've installed games seen on top lists etc, but somehow I just can't get impressed by them. I probably would need to a joystick on them and see if it'd work better than those damn pads... got stuck at those Marios quite soon, even though Giana Sisters is a no brainer to complete for me with a proper stick