r/MasterSystem • u/Max_Doe11 • 4d ago

Is the Master System homebrew scene actually weak, or am I completely wrong?

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I've been thinking about this lately, and I'm curious whether I'm about to get completely destroyed by the Master System community.

I have the impression that the Master System homebrew scene is surprisingly small or weak compared with the NES, and possibly compared with other 8-bit consoles as well.

But I'm wondering if this is actually true, or if it's just because I haven't looked in the right places.

A few years ago I spent quite a lot of time with RetroPie and RetroArch, and I went looking specifically for Master System homebrew games: I remember finding very little.

There was one game in particular that caught my attention because the screenshots looked really good: Silver Valley. It was some kind of fantasy adventure/action game in which you controlled a character with a sword, fought enemies in a fairly cartoonish-looking world, and progressed mostly from left to right.

Other than that experience I didn't found any homebrew able to get my interest and probably this contributed to a completely unfair conclusion in my head that maybe the Master System was just not a very good platform for homebrew.

But is that actually true?

I know the Master System has some interesting hardware characteristics, and technically it shouldn't be that different from developing for other Z80-based 8-bit systems. So I'm wondering whether the relatively small homebrew scene is more a matter of community size, development tools, documentation, interest, or simply the NES having a much larger developer/retro-gaming community.

Is the hardware particularly awkward to develop for?

Maybe I'm also making the mistake of comparing the Master System with the NES at the wrong level. The NES homebrew scene is enormous, so almost anything is going to look small next to it.

So I'd like to challenge my own prejudice: what are the BEST Master System homebrew games?

Not just technically impressive demos, but games that are actually fun to play.

54 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

29

u/wonderingmarkus 4d ago edited 4d ago

Just the reality of being so much less popular than the NES.

There is certainly stuff out there, like Frontier Force and Silver Valley.

SMSPower has new homebrews all the time and they host coding competitions.

4

u/SillyQuokka85 2d ago

So much less popular than the NES....in AMERICA. Europe, Australasia and Brazil. Don't tell only part of the story.

3

u/poucaprosa 2d ago

Brazilian here, Tectoy was huge in MASTER SYSTEM era

1

u/SillyQuokka85 2d ago

I was going to buy a TecToy MS but you need some weird code if you love outside of Brazil. SO disappointed. 😔

9

u/mittenkrusty 4d ago

Hmm, for a MS forum that feels a very US centric response, it was very popular in many European countries I will say the usual NES wasn't popular in the UK.

So do we go by countries or numbers?

I loved both btw, but my all time faves of 8 bit consoles are on MS (I mean that should be obvious) even though I play more NES games overall due to how big the library was.

2

u/MrShoes1981 3d ago

The NES wasn't popular in the UK? I was born in 1981 and I remember all my friends had a NES, while only a handful had SMS. I didn't realise that wasn't normal.

4

u/mittenkrusty 3d ago

It wasn't normal, I only played one at our after school club I knew no one with one though you could get them in catalogues, I only bought one of my own around 1998 at a car boot sale.

Most kids I knew went straight from ZX Spectrum/Commodore 64 to Mega Drive, some got a Master System instead as they were cheaper.

Snes I only knew middle class kids with them.

I remember getting Sonic 2 around 1994/95 for a Christmas present so games were still being sold for it then (though as a budget title) there was a £4.99 (though I think it was originally £9.99) line one of which was The Ninja.

Nes on the other hand I don't remember seeing mainstream shops selling the games just catalog shops, even the video rental places independent or Ritz (later Blockbuster) sold MS games but not NES, I even remember chip shops renting out MS games.

Sega had a head start in the UK hence why we were more loyal to Sega until the Saturn came out, I remember kids in my class saying the Playstation would fail as Sega was the best.

1

u/Western-Bowl2011 1d ago

Omar cornut is from france. The SMS was *more* popular than the NES, but way, waaaaay less popular than the ZX Spectrum, which was the king of that era in the UK.

9

u/bushnrvn 4d ago

I'd offer that while you may be correct, there's a silver lining for most folks. The SMS was not as popular as the NES, but it wasn't for lack of trying. There's a ton of great titles on the system waiting to be discovered as new, and with the announced Cuphead game, there may be an opportunity for the system to see a revival.

8

u/Goodwill_Gamer 4d ago

Well from my experience the Nintendo based homebrew scenes are just way bigger than any non-Nintendo scenes just because of overall console popularity.
People can make a homebrew and sell it and actually make money on a NES/SNES game, where as it's a lot harder on Master System because the number of people interested is just way lower. Genesis does pretty well and there have been some very large successful homebrew releases. I expect with the Cuphead SMS announcement that will create more interest in SMS overall.

7

u/Lsassip 4d ago

Check out SMSPower

4

u/Dreamcasted60 4d ago

Yeah I remember a time before, there were some projects in the work especially on the game gear kind of side... but I've been out of that for a long time.

4

u/CLONE0AZUL69 4d ago

Same reason why there's no scene for the pc engine or Atari jaguar. There's just other more popular options. At least they had GG Aleste 3 and other good GG games running in SMS. I liked the Megaman 2/SMB/Castlevania ports but they are more like an proof of concept.

3

u/RichardNixon345 3d ago

There's a fairly big scene for the Jaguar actually - a lot of ports from the Atari ST, but also original efforts and improving existing games like Doom.

2

u/CLONE0AZUL69 3d ago

Yeah also some things here and there for the sms, but not at same level of the nes or pretty much any nintendo platform.

4

u/No-Professional-9618 4d ago

Well, there is a Super Mario Bros. homebrew demo that was released for the PC Engine/Turbografix 16 sometime ago.

1

u/Western-Bowl2011 1d ago

The atari jaguar homebrew scene is enormous and has been since 1997 when Hasbro declared it an open system free from licensing fees.

3

u/Forsaken-Abrocoma647 4d ago

Definitely not many physical releases. I don't think I have any modern SMS physical copies. And I have modern physical games for NES, SNES, N64, Atari Lynx, Jaguar, 2600, 5200, 7800, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Vectrex, GB, GBC, GBA, 3DO, CD-i, Neo-Geo, Bally Astrocade, freakin Watara Supervision - and I'm sure I'm leaving out some - but never saw one for the SMS or I would have snatched it up. I'm sure something is out there, but never one that showed up for me to buy!

Closest I have are some SG-1000 games that were ported to ColecoVision due to the similar hardware (and the modern Super Game Module for it adding RAM that makes conversions from SG-1000 and MSX easier).

I'd love to see more. Pretty much can release the same thing on Game Gear with little work as well.

I'll also add that SMS is also lacking in soundtracks on vinyl, which I collect as well. I have Phantasy Star and Fantasy Zone. Coulda sworn a 3rd one but I can't remember what if so! Would like to see more.

3

u/helpcomputer0 3d ago edited 3d ago

I make homebrew games for the SMS, some free and some commercial games (https://www.smspower.org/Homebrew/Index?action=search&q=badcomputer).

The SMS scene is smaller than other communities (MD/Genesis) but certainly bigger and/or more active than others (PCE, Jaguar, SNES is also relatively small still).

The reasons are sometimes hardware related (SNES, Saturn) and sometimes market related. In terms of the SMS there are no significant hardware barriers to homebrew, certainly compared to the NES. It has C compilers, a devkit and many recent tools and utilities. The SMS was also popular in Europe and Brazil and has a large (but not as big as NES) audience, but because the audience is fragmented by many different languages and (internet) cultures, it was harder for a strong unified homebrew scene to form, compared to the NES which was largely from the US.

I will be releasing a new shoot 'em up in a few weeks called Razing Core on my itch page (https://badcomputer0.itch.io/), there will be a demo if you would like to try it.

2

u/retromods_a2z 2d ago

Your works are amazing and I'm glad you keep making new cool things And sverx work on the SDK is great too

1

u/helpcomputer0 1d ago

Thanks! Yes, sverx and many others at SMS Power have given us some great tools and libraries for homebrew dev.

2

u/Xexyzx 4d ago

Look for the channel Yesterzine on YouTube. Their normal content is looking at retro magazines and the games contained in them, but they also do a lot of stuff about the Master System and the annual SMS Power competitions.

2

u/Fangle_Spangle 3d ago

Lord no. I mean... compared to the NES, sure, but compared to most other consoles, lord no. It's really started exploding in recent years.

Smspower is the best place for homebrew. Several games made in the last few years have had physical releases, there's an annual homebrew competition that just keeps pushing the bar. This year had a 4 player snake game that natively uses the mega drive pads. It's awesome.

2

u/daddyd 3d ago

the megadrive has a really great homebrew scene, you are right that the sms doesn't appear to enjoy the same. although i find that the homebrew releases that do come out for the sms, are almost always of great quality.

2

u/seriousbangs 2d ago

I'm honestly surprised there's so few master system style games.

There's tons of them with an NES look and heck even a few with a TurboGrafx CD look but the only retro style game I can think of I can't even find right now (it was a weird platformer with a kick boxer or something, I know I bought it years and years ago but I can't find it in my steam library).

2

u/kclongest 4d ago

I think it may be hitting a stride. How about Castlevania

1

u/No-Professional-9618 4d ago edited 4d ago

Well, there is a Super Mario Bros. homebrew demo that was just released for the Sega Master System this year.

2

u/Centipony 2d ago

Yokai Ninja, Mai Nurse, and Lunar Skirmish aren’t weak at all!

1

u/No-Professional-9618 2d ago

Yes, that is true. Yes!