Sega Master System

Type: Console
Publisher: Sega
Firstly released in: Japan
First release: 1985
Release and compatibility details: In 1984 was released similar Japanese console "Sega Mark III". Although Sega Master System was sold under this name only outside Japan, I exceptionally left this name (not original name), because Sega Mark-III is rather uncommon. Compatible types are also Master System II (released in US 1990), Master System III and Compact (both released in Brasil)

Success and unsuccess:

Most popular years: 1987-1988
Most popular countries: Japan, Europe, UK, Brazil
Amount of games in database: 546 (list)
Amount of music records in database: 15 (list)
Amount of downloadable MOD tunes: 3 (list)
Amount of downloadable MIDI tunes: 9 (list)
Importance on the market in the most popular years: Medium

Characteristics:

Sega Master System was Sega's response to NES from Nintendo. Sega wanted to take part from the US market that time, but it wasn't very successful attempt (90% of the market was taken by NES and the rest 10% was divided between SMS and Atari Lynx). A bit bigger success it had in Europe, especially in UK, because it had still a bit better hardware than NES.

Colors: 64 from 256 color palette
CPU: Z80 on 3.6 MHz
RAM: 64kB
ROM: 1MB (!)
VideoRAM: 128 kB
Resolution: Support for 256x192 (SC-3000) and 240x226 (native) graphics display modes, 32x28 character text display mode
Audio: Mono

Games came mostly on cartridges (up to 4MBit) or cards.

Games and music info:

Most common media for storing games: Cartridge
Average packed game size: 110 kB
Music formats: VGM

Emulation info:

Emulators are in good state, though some of the games still don't work. Emulators mostly emulate not only SMS, but also Game Gear (sega's handheld with very similar hardware as SMS) and SG-1000/SC-3000/SC-3000H (these are computers and are predecessors of SMS distributed in Japan)

MEKA - Seems to be the best - supports multiple platforms, almost all games, has nice GUI and is updated often.

This emulation info was written on 20.December 2002. (This time is very important, because emulation info very depends on the time it was written - emulators can improve a lot after this time..).