The Video Game Critic

Here are two Sega Master System games you may have never heard of.
Let me know what you think of the reviews.

F-16 Fighting Falcon is notable for being the one game specifically mentioned in the manual of the Power Base Converter as not being compatible with it. It is also a predecessor to the popular Falcon 3.0/4.0 series of games on the PC, having originally been released for the MSX before being ported to the SMS.

Just an FYI... F-16 Fighting Falcon for the SMS was made in 1985, not 1995.

Outside a few dozen Korean games of various origins (mostly unauthorized MSX ports), F-16 Fighting Falcon is the only SMS game that uses the legacy SG-1000 video mode. In other words, it's basically a ColecoVision game, graphically speaking!

It's also the only official US SMS game that won't run on the Genesis using a Power Base Converter, since the Genesis doesn't implement the TMS9918 video mode. (Well, more correctly, it'll run but no picture will display...) Same problem with SG-1000 games, obviously.

As noted, F-16 is a SG-1000 game and will actually run on the real hardware. Why it was ever released for the Master System is a mystery but probably had something to do with being a cost-effective means of filling a genre.

djc wrote:As noted, F-16 is a SG-1000 game and will actually run on the real hardware. Why it was ever released for the Master System is a mystery but probably had something to do with being a cost-effective means of filling a genre.

In 1986, the movie Top Gun was an unexpected smash hit. If I had the game F-16 sitting on the shelf for the SG 1000, I would have felt the need for speed to get that out on the master system. The F-16 is the wrong jet, but no one cared. We just want that highway to the danger zone, although this particular game may have left us having lost that loving feeling.

scotland wrote:

djc wrote:In 1986, the movie Top Gun was an unexpected smash hit. If I had the game F-16 sitting on the shelf for the SG 1000, I would have felt the need for speed to get that out on the master system. The F-16 is the wrong jet, but no one cared. We just want that highway to the danger zone, although this particular game may have left us having lost that loving feeling.

Well done, sir. Well done.

Good point Scotland.
Sometimes you need to look back in time to understand a game's appeal.