I've barely played any Master System, with the exception of a couple times at a friend's house growing up, and playing through Phantasy Star on an emulator in University. But now that I have a Mega Everdrive, I can play SMS easy through my Genesis!
This afternoon I tried out a few games, and decided to play through one that's always intrigued me: Master of Darkness.
It's a pretty competent Castlevania clone, with some great graphics and music. The stages get pretty repetitive though, with wild difficulty fluctuations between way too easy and relatively hard. It never reaches the level of difficulty of the original Castlevania games, however.
There are some great sequences though, such as the haunted rooms in the wax museum, which reminded me of the boss from Splatterhouse with tables, chairs and paintings attacking. The final stage is interesting too, being a maze that requires you to find a hidden exit: this was one of three times I died, as I found the pathway just as the timer ran out. My other two deaths were being pushed backwards into pits.
The bosses were disappointing, I beat every one on my first attempt. The main character is vastly overpowered if you have grabbed a new weapon during the stage, which means you can pretty much "brute force" your way through the bosses without having to learn patterns.
All in all, it was a great way to kill an hour, and I'm looking forward to checking out some more of the SMS library soon. I'm familiar with a few titles, like he Sonic games, from my Game Gear.
