Sega's SG-1000

[IntvGene]

The Sega SG-1000, Mark I and II.

What happened? This has to be Sega's least known, and especially least cared for system. I know it only saw limited release outside of Japan, but it really isn't that bad of a system. For 1983, it's graphics were quite good. The system had nice controllers, offered both card and cartridge formats, and had a good selection of titles, mostly produced by Sega.

It had some great games, Choplifter was a great port. Pitfall II (the arcade version), H.E.R.O, Elevator Action, Zaxxon, Zippy Race, were great too.

So, any other fans of the system out there? Any favorite games? I love all of the above mentioned titles.

[Dire 51]

It's always been a system I wished I could play, but never could.

[Raccoon Lad]

Interesting system, about as powerfull as a Colecovision. The port of Wonderboy's pretty clunky, but it has the best (of the very few) home version of Chack'n Pop on it.

[ArnoldRimmer83]

I played some of the games for it on Meka. I do have a foundness for it. I would love to own one, but they don't seem easy to come by. Well anyway some games I like that I've played for it:

Hero: excellent conversion of the 2600 game.

Pitfall 2: This is a home port of Sega's Pitfall arcade game. It's like a strange hybrid of Pitfall 1 and 2. It's fairly decent, though I usually don't get very far.

Chack n Pop: As Raccoon Lad said, this conversion is very nicely done. Far superior to the really bad Famicom conversion. (Remember this is coming from an Nes fan, so that should tell you a lot.) The game is addictive, though later on, once you have to blast walls with your bombs, it can get a bit annoying.

Girl's Garden: Heh, this game is really odd. You play as a girl who has to gather flowers to give to her boyfriend to win him over from another girl. Seriously, you play as a girl giving the boyfriend flowers instead of the other way around. Along the way you have to avoid bears who you can only stop with honey. The game isn't terrific, and the bears can get very frustrating to avoid, but there some kind of charm to it, that makes me keep playing it from time to time.

Champion Billards: This is the strangest Pool game I've ever played. You don't even have to hit the balls into the holes all the time to win. Sometimes if you charge your shot high enough, you can knock balls over the sides and it will count as you knocking the ball in a hole. The game is pretty fun though. And it has catchy music, which I've found myself humming from time to time. Flicky makes a cameo in this game as well. Occasionally when you hit a ball in a level it will start to crack and when it's hit enough times it breaks. Sometimes Flicky appears and walks off the screen when this happens, but not always.

Choplifter: A good conversion, considering the hardware, but I've been spoiled by the SMS version.

Penguin Land: Again I've been spoiled by the SMS version. The SMS version of Penguin Land is really nicely done. The SG version though seems a lot more difficult. I can't even get past level 1, and I've tried plenty of times to. I guess I just suck.

Bomb Jack: Good conversion of the arcade game. Only problem I have is sometimes the enemies can be very difficult to see against the backgrounds.

[Yukio]

What happened? This has to be Sega's least known, and especially least cared for system. I know it only saw limited release outside of Japan, but it really isn't that bad of a system. For 1983, it's graphics were quite good. The system had nice controllers, offered both card and cartridge formats, and had a good selection of titles, mostly produced by Sega.

"Almost" nothing ... this system evolved into the SEGA Mark III and SEGA Master System, a great success into a lot of countries and second best series consoles from SEGA. The newer VDP with more resources could handle even better ports of arcade games. The graphics on the old SG-1000 were nice, but their used stock video chips that the concurrent systems used (aka: ColecoVision and Microsoft MSX). SEGA even had MSX versions of some games. The MSX home computers sold a little more than SG-1000 but less than SEGA Master System ...It is weird how a lot of older systems had the word "COMPUTER" stamped into the main system! MSX2 also had a upgraded MSX-Video chip (this time from Yamaha themselves).

Probably the people do not talk much about the SG-1000 and Mark II games because their are not compatible with SEGA 16-bit generation ... Even when someone use a Power Base Converter, the games are 'rumoured' to be playable into other SEGA 8-bit machines, but there are not any "adapter" available to play those games. Except if someone take a machine with a compatible connector ...

Interesting system, about as powerful as a Colecovision. The port of Wonderboy's pretty clunky, but it has the best (of the very few) home version of Chack'n Pop on it.

I wanted to get the Chack'n Pop MSX cartridge. The MSX standard also used the same compatible VDP that was used on ColecoVision and SG-1000.

Chack n Pop: As Raccoon Lad said, this conversion is very nicely done. Far superior to the really bad Famicom conversion. (Remember this is coming from an Nes fan, so that should tell you a lot.) The game is addictive, though later on, once you have to blast walls with your bombs, it can get a bit annoying.

The MSX home computer version seems to be a common game, since it popped almost all the time in the past months on auctions sites !!!