Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Watch the card at the end of this one, because that slogan hits a lot heavier now than Sega meant it to back in 1987. The Challenge Will Always Be There. They were talking about the games. History decided they were talking about Nintendo.
Here is the thing that still stings. The Master System was the better machine. Faster processor, more colors on screen, more memory than the NES. It had two media slots, one for cartridges and one for credit card sized Sega Cards, and the 3-D glasses plugged into that card slot too. There was even a secret maze game buried inside the console itself that you could pull up at boot if you knew the button trick. Most owners never found it.
None of that saved it in America, because Nintendo had the third party developers locked down. Their contracts said if you made a game for the NES, you were not allowed to put it on a rival console. So Sega had to build nearly everything in house. Across the entire American life of the Master System, only two outside publishers ever supported it, Activision and Parker Brothers, and both were gone by 1989. Nintendo was eventually found to have broken US antitrust law over that exact policy. By then it did not matter.
The numbers are rough. Sega moved around 125,000 units in the first four months while Nintendo sold two million. By 1988 Nintendo held 83 percent of the American market. Sega then handed US distribution to Tonka, a toy company that had never sold an electronic anything, and it went about how you would expect. But leave America and the story completely flips. The Master System became the best selling console in Europe, and in Brazil it turned into a national institution where Tectoy kept building new hardware and new games for it for decades. Around 13 million sold worldwide.
Small detail worth catching in the footage. That Gangster Town clip shows the name MARK on screen. That is not a game character. In Gangster Town you shoot the letters to spell out your own name before you start, so that is just whoever was holding the Light Phaser when they filmed this ad. Did you have a Master System growing up, or were you strictly an NES kid? Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#segamastersystem #sega #mastersystem #gangstertown #lightphaser #alexkidd #segavsnintendo #consolewars #retrocommercial #vintagead #80sgaming #8bit #1987 #retrogaming #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
Watch the card at the end of this one, because that slogan hits a lot heavier now than Sega meant it to back in 1987. The Challenge Will Always Be There. They were talking about the games. History decided they were talking about Nintendo.
Here is the thing that still stings. The Master System was the better machine. Faster processor, more colors on screen, more memory than the NES. It had two media slots, one for cartridges and one for credit card sized Sega Cards, and the 3-D glasses plugged into that card slot too. There was even a secret maze game buried inside the console itself that you could pull up at boot if you knew the button trick. Most owners never found it.
None of that saved it in America, because Nintendo had the third party developers locked down. Their contracts said if you made a game for the NES, you were not allowed to put it on a rival console. So Sega had to build nearly everything in house. Across the entire American life of the Master System, only two outside publishers ever supported it, Activision and Parker Brothers, and both were gone by 1989. Nintendo was eventually found to have broken US antitrust law over that exact policy. By then it did not matter.
The numbers are rough. Sega moved around 125,000 units in the first four months while Nintendo sold two million. By 1988 Nintendo held 83 percent of the American market. Sega then handed US distribution to Tonka, a toy company that had never sold an electronic anything, and it went about how you would expect. But leave America and the story completely flips. The Master System became the best selling console in Europe, and in Brazil it turned into a national institution where Tectoy kept building new hardware and new games for it for decades. Around 13 million sold worldwide.
Small detail worth catching in the footage. That Gangster Town clip shows the name MARK on screen. That is not a game character. In Gangster Town you shoot the letters to spell out your own name before you start, so that is just whoever was holding the Light Phaser when they filmed this ad. Did you have a Master System growing up, or were you strictly an NES kid? Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#segamastersystem #sega #mastersystem #gangstertown #lightphaser #alexkidd #segavsnintendo #consolewars #retrocommercial #vintagead #80sgaming #8bit #1987 #retrogaming #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
