SMS Disc-Unit ????

[rupert]

Just received the new issue of Retro Gamer. Quite a few nice articales for Sega fans (Including a 2 page Zillion reveiw). Anyway there is part 1 of 2 of a very interesting artical titled 'Gaming Illuminati', basically discussing the collecting of prototype consoles and games. Noted a very interesting photo (unfortunetly not much info on it )



The only referance to this in the artical is.. Sega's disk-unit for the Master System also reached functionality, but is kept strictly under lock and key somewhere.

[playgeneration]

Thats an old photo, not one taken recently with a mobile phone, ive seen it before.
Pity theres not a proper picture, it would be cool to know what the label on the disk says

[Bock]

Here.
www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6174

[rupert]

I knew there would be a thread on sms power, i did a search but couldnt find it.. anyway, anagrama mentioned 'Assembler' in that thread, thats who appeares to have contributed to most of the artical in Retro Gamer.
There are quite alot of cool pics in the artical but it's writen in abit of a James Bond style.. makes out like these people with prototype stuff live in some Kinda of underworld were the FBI might be round any corner... Why would any company be bothered that you had a prototype of essentialy very outdated technology from 10 - 20 years ago? It's all cool stuff but i think they get abit over excited.

[krooper13]

Thats very nice, could there still be a proto somewhere?

[playgeneration]

maybe, but its quite possible they showed that display unit before actually finishing the design. So that prototype might not actually have anything inside it, after all its in a glass display case in that photo, and not actually running.

They must have had some game in mind to play on it, who knows it might be a game that got released on cartridge. Perhaps Penguin Land? - its got battery back up to save level designs you can make, but on floppy it could have stored lots more levels.

[rupert]

the artical does say it reached funtionality but then without proof who knows...

Id scan the whole artical but as its a new mag then i't might be abit unfair to the magazine?

Any Sega fans should buy it though as its got:
2 page review on zillion for the sms.
10 page 'retroinspection' of the Saturn
4 page focus on GDG (who made Sega CD/ Mega CD games).
4 page review of Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Saturn

plus (not to do with Sega but) theres a 4 page The Making of Monkey Island which is a good read.

[Stan]

I would say it's doubtful another prototype exists. The reason is that if Sega was indeed trying to compete with the Famicom Disk System, they figured they'd hop out quickly because piracy went nuts for that and Nintendo had to put it under. Didn't do much, I think there are still sickos out there making hacks for it in China. Considering this, and the already unstable popularity of the Mark III, I would doubt they made more than one. Looks like we'll need to do a spy team effort on this one to steal it.

[onyx]

My opinion is that the writer of this had no idea if the disk system was functional or not! How would they know that when they cant even work out that the picture is at least 13 years old! And we all had cameras on our phones back then didnt we

It makes me laugh that the guy got paid for writing about something he didnt have a clue about, but then again id have read the full article to prove my opinion wrong

[krooper13]

I can see why they abandoned it, everything that had floppy disks was pirated, my girlfriend has a small crate of pirated Amiga games in her loft.

[Kenneth]

I would say 18 years old pic onyx ^^

[onyx]

kenneth said:

I would say 18 years old pic onyx ^^

I did say "at least 13 years" not 13 to be exact

But yeah it probably was about 18 years ago, which i guess is worse for that writer

[onyx]

You could put a car window through that

[eday2010]

At least I now know what that expansion slot on the bottom of the SMS was for

[Stan]

By the way guys, I found out about this thing from my buddy at Sega.