Sega Master System

The Mark III was the successor to the SG-1000, the first console created by Sega. It was launched in Japan on October 20, 1985. The following year the game was sold Alex Kidd in Miracle World, and Alex Kidd, its protagonist, would become the unofficial mascot of Sega until the early nineties.

under the name Sega Master sell in th us system in June 1986, one year after the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment system. It went on sale at a price of $200. It was subsequently released worldwide in 1987 with the new name. That same year a version of the Master System appears in Japan, whose only differences with the Mark III are the casing, which is now similar to that used in the rest of the world, and which includes in series, integrated within the same machine, the FM unit , an optional accessory from the Mark III with a Yamaha FM sound chip. This accessory never came out of Japan, neither integrated nor as a separate addition.

Although more technically advanced than the Nintendo Entertainment System, it does not reach in the U.S. The same level of popularity. This has been attributed to several causes, including delay in launching and a number of cartridges from other companies other than Sega much less. This last due to the draconian contract that Nintendo forced to subscribe to those who wanted to license games for the NES, with clauses of exclusivity or delays of several years between the appearance of a game in NES and other platforms (this earned him several reprimands of the Japanese government, but it continued in its thirteen until its legal defeat by Codemasters). The Master System sold 125k consoles in the first 4 months.