Haha true… the cover on the NA box is an SR-71 Blackbird, one of the most badass jets ever created, then the game tosses you into a dual prop single seater!
Funnily enough, the intro has you in a single prop, so the intro doesn’t match the game either.
Cool. I never knew Bubble Bobble got a Japanese release. I always thought that was a Euro only release.
Having a weird issue.
My Mark III won’t read Everdrives anymore. I have two Master Everdrives which run via a converter, both don’t work (and both work on other hardware). Every now and then it boots it up, like maybe 1/100 tries. They once worked 100%, this has slowly dropped over time to now.
Real games work almost perfectly, as well as any 30+ year old console (ie sometimes the cart needs a clean but then it runs). So there are no major connection or cart slot issues, which was my original thought.
My guess is the Everdrive uses more power than a regular cart, and some capacitor(s) have dropped off spec, so while real games are fine, it can no longer kickstart the Everdrive.
This is similar to an issue I had years ago with the 3D glasses. I thought the glasses/adapter didn’t work, and went through two sets. Turns out they only didn’t work when using an Everdrive for the game. The 3D glasses, plus FM attachment, plus Everdrive drew too much power for them all to work. Using real games they worked perfectly.
Only real way to test is to get another Mark III and/or swap out all the caps, which is a pain.
Swapped out the voltage regulator as I read that could be an issue.
No change. Still works fine with regular games, but not with Everdrives.
I also got most of the caps for the board, none look bad (it’s a 1985 made in Japan console so didn’t get those bad Chinese caps that killed all the Game Gears etc) but who knows. Big job though so will leave it for another day.
Kind of wild to be able to buy so many parts of these really old devices so easily still.
Have you tested the output of the power supply?
As in internally? No.
I have however tried five different power supplies (various official Sega ones, plus a modern one) thinking power draw may be an issue, no change.
Not sure if I have posted this before, but a while back I got the final missing Wonder Boy game for my collection - Game Gear Monster World II Dragon no Wana.
The game was obviously originally intended for the Mark III (it has the Japan only FM soundtrack and the title Monster World II in the ROM if played on a Japanese system), but was cancelled, and only made it out in Japan on Game Gear.
It was a nice touch that the alternate cover art for the Dragon’s Trap remake in Japan is the GG art with the original Japanese title!
Now I have the whole original Japanese Westone set!
Plus their weirdo PC Engine/Famicom cousin versions too.
Edit: Ah crap I forgot to include my copy of Wonder Boy SG1000 in the photo. Oh well, I found I posted that four years ago here
Had a silly scare tonight/
I decided to mod my Mark III consoles to work with the later Everdrive OS versions. The everdrive works on a Mark III, but only older versions of the OS. So I used the info here to change one capacitor which gets it working:
https://www.smspower.org/forums/16516-GettingMasterEverdriveOSV8WorkingOnSEGAMARKIII
Unfortunately, when desoldering the old cap(I add some extra fresh solder, then use a solder sucker), the solder pad came off! I guess messing with 38 year old pads can have issues…
I tried to trace it on the board and connected it up, it booted but acted weird, it would keep resetting.
I had to pull up the schematics:
And found killing the pad had essentially killed two traces, and I had to wire the positive leg of the cap between a resister and a leg on an IC.
Now it’s up and running, phew!
More Mark III shenanigans.
The 8bitdo Mega Drive Retro Receiver doesn’t work with the Mark III or SG1000. It connects but the buttons don’t all work due to extra signals in Mega Drive pads to support the extra two buttons (start and A) with the same pinout.
I’d given up ever having wireless on Mark III, but looked further into it, and it’s because the SG1000 and Mark III are mapped to the SG1000 keyboard interface.
https://www.smspower.org/Development/Keyboard
So long story short, essentially the Retro Receiver is obviously acting like a Mega Drive six button controller, and Mark III buttons are all active low inputs pulled high by the console and all the controller does is ground them.
So by killing the selector pin 7, it may work…
Snip a pin
And Robert’s your mother’s brother. Wireless dogbone (8bitdo mod kit) on the Mark III.
Maybe I should re-use my white Saturn pads (with mod kit) for Mark III to keep it all Sega? Feels weird with so many unused buttons.
Excellent mod. I may do something like that myself but first I think the caps need replacing in my Japanese Master System. The image is looking a little dark these days.
https://www.smspower.org/SegaAI/Index
Around late 1986, Sega released the “Sega AI Computer”. This is one of Sega’s least well known and rarest systems. Not much is known about this system apart from a small amount of information in Japanese and American flyers and press articles. The information we have is still piecemeal and may be partly inaccurate.
Today we are making public, for the first time: all system roms extracted from the Sega AI Computer, data dumps from 26 my-cards and 14 tapes, many scans and photographs, and in collaboration with MAME developers, an early working MAME driver allowing this computer to be emulated.
The majority of these software titles had zero information about them on the internet prior to us publishing them: no screenshots, no photos or scans of actual software. Considering the elusive nature of this machine, it is possible that some games have never been seen or completed by anyone outside of their original development teams.
We hope that this release will be interesting to obscure game and computer historians and hobbyists alike. We will further amend it over time by releasing extra scans, hopefully improving emulation and publishing/discovering new information.
Awesome stuff.
Sega did so much random shit in the 80s.
Fantastic. I know what I’m doing this weekend 
The march toward a complete CIB Mark III set continues. 13 left to go.
Grabbed Family Games, Masters Golf and Seishun Scandal.
They just don’t make box art like this anymore.
Also managed to get a good price a nice copy of on SG1000 Chack n Pop
Now I have Chack n Pop and Bubble Bobble on both Nintendo (Famicom and FDS) and Sega (SG1000 and Mark III).
And I’ve become re-obsessed with Australian soft-box Master System games with a pickup of a near mint Casino Games.
For background - the Australian distributor got the inserts and carts and manuals for Japan for many releases, but sourced cases locally, and you end up with these soft box variants.
They’re really hard to find in good condition because they crush easily, so I grab nice ones when I see them cheap.
Wow, they’re some cheap cases. They remind me of the old VHS rental cases from the 80s.
oh man, over the years i’ve imported a number of UK & AU SMS games with that horizontal manual - they’ve all worked great, mind, and been in excellent shape. but the minor regional differences have been really cool to see…like, nobody warned me about the blue stripe i got one one game, i almost lost my shit!
i adore the SMS grid i grew up with (still print out yakuza covers in that style to this day) but there’s an obvious magic o the gold boxes, just timeless beauty
A few more My Card Mark III games added to the set, F16, Teddy Boy Blues, Spy vs Spy and Satellite 7, most bought ‘untested’ for cheap and they worked fine.
I have Great Tennis coming, which will mean just two more to get for a full set: Comical Machine Gun Joe and Ghost House.
