Hello Sega!
I’ve wanted to flesh out my collection of game consoles for a while, but I’m trying to be more responsible in spending so I’ve become (again) quite cheap. I’m almost to the end of the “more common” machines, but I still needed a Master System (and an NES, but no luck there yet). For the Master System, I wanted specifically a MS1 - the MS2 is RF only except for a few French machines, and I just plain don’t like how it looks. This sucks, because the MS2 is significantly cheaper - it can be had for around $30 AUD! For comparison - at the time of writing - the going rate for a Master System 1 complete, by itself is around $100AUD, or maybe a bit cheaper if you’re patient.
I found one a couple of weeks back that looked pretty good: a small pile of games, a couple of controllers (one busted) and a couple of Mega Drive controllers. Sweet! MD controllers are something I need a couple more of, because I only have a shitty aftermarket one that came with mine, so two-player games are out. Unfortunately it went up over my pain threshold, but for some reason I didn’t remove it from my watchlist, so I was notified that it was relisted again and noticed it a couple of days before the ending that it was significantly below that price. I waited for the tail end and put a snipe bid in, and it finished up about $20 less than I’d have wanted to pay.
10 days later and it finally shipped (pretty unhappy with the seller there) and it arrived this morning. Opened it up and I immediately realized I’d cocked up in a small but not insignificant way: the megadrive controllers are not originals (in retrospect, clearly visible in the photos), but the slightly smaller dogshit similar to those that came with the (I think) AT Games MegaDrive clone. They’re Sega branded, but I’m honestly not sure if they’re legitimate or not. They’re definitely better feeling than the aftermarket controller that I had, but their small sizes makes them incredibly uncomfortable for me to use for any length of time. That knocks it down from “absolute sweetheart of a deal” to “meh, if I sold all the games off the console was free”, but did leave me kinda bummed… but my own fault for not checking more closely.
The good news is that, as mentioned above, I can sell most of the games (I think I really only want R-type) and the console would probably be free (assuming I got anywhere close to FMV for the games I don’t want). Naturally, I am probably far too lazy to ever actually get around to that (I’ve got a pile of PlayStation extras I’m still yet to liquidate), but you never know. It also works flawlessly (other than having to clean the contacts of two of the carts), including using my RGB cable into my OSSC.
Finally, it also came with a rather rare “Australian made” (though I have my doubts) joystick that’s supposed to be an arcade-style stick, the Star Blazer Super Pro 401, complete with Microswitches for everything but the thumb-fire button (including the directional stick, making it quite lovely to use when it works). The switches are a tiny bit dicky, and I had to re-solder one of the wires to make the thumb-fire button work, but it’s otherwise a pretty nice stick… I may look at ordering switches to repair it and bring it up to snuff, if I can’t cycle them enough to get them to work reliably.
Since the Master System is not region-locked, I don’t really have to do anything to mod it but I may buy an FM board for it if I can be bothered.
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Horsham, VIC, AustraliaNavigation: Older Entry Newer Entry