Wonderboy in Monster World was way better. But Time Soldiers was king of he Master System.

I share your pain.

Nintendo had one of the greatest games of all time as their launch title. We had...Hang On/Safari hunt.

Followed closely by this.

Although we made do, dammit. What's that, Sega? You want me to play rock, paper, scissors to beat every boss in the game? Holy fuck that's retarded, but I'll eat your shit and call it ice cream anyway. I have no choice :_-(

What knd of person would pumch a fish in the face.

And so began Sega's tradition of making appealing and mediocre platformers.

As a child, Alex Kidd was something I was vaguely aware of as Sega's answer to Mario, but I had never actually played it or seen it being played. I always thought that Alex Kidd was just a regular kid (hence the name), and now I found it he some sort of big-eared ape child. Who punches innocent animals for no apparent reason.

The Master System was awesome. There was this one game about aliens, where the aliens looked like the aliens from Aliens.

Somehow jumping on heads makes perfect sense and collecting coins is rewarding, but punching things looks ridiculous and collecting entire money bags just looks tedious.

I inherited a master system with a pile of games from a family friend as a kid. Even though I had a SNES I still loved playing some of the wierder games.

I had the SMS and the NES. Actually, I had the NES while my brother had the SMS. The only thing we ever really played on the SMS was Phantasy Star. How bad were the card games?

I've never seen this. It's just sideways Mario Bros for pedophiles.

Before this sinks into the archives I want to address a couple points here for posterity.

Alex Kidd was actually pretty challenging and innovative for it's time, although it's better points aren't shown here. I have a lot of good memories playing it.

Punching feels less natural here than Marios jumping, since Mario Bros is a game about jumping, but I'd still point out that Mario 64 was full of punching.

I think the games main failings were that it competed with Mario, and that it was a little too...Japanese.

Oh, and that fish was a bastard, and I'm glad he got punched.

I feel you bro. Grew up with a Master System while my friends had the NES. Which worked out because we could always play each other games. But it kind of turned me into a Sega elitist for a while there. These days I've had a lot of fun rediscovering the old NES games but I still have a special place in my heart for the Master System.

Also, it seems that the NES was shunned in favor of the Master System in Europe.

My friend used to sing "ALEX THE KIDD, ALEX THE KIDD, ALEX THE KIDD KIDD KIDD KIDD KIDD" whenever we'd play this. Forever.