As I mentioned on Twitter mine was found in the attic when I recently helped with HVAC stuff. I thought I had thrown it away when I was 14 because it was broken. Bought a new AC adapter and AV cable for it, fired it up, and the built in games (Hang on and Safari Hunt) menu booted right up. Later I go out and buy Space Harrier in the box for 18$ from a local store and discover it's the cartridge slot that's broken. Reflowed all the solder from the slot to the main PCB and it's fixed :)

A few days later I got a Chinese rip off of the "Everdrive" cart and have really enjoyed having this system back. I did finally break down and get a real controller for 20$ so I can play the games that don't work with a Genesis controller such as Alien Syndrome. Now I just need to get my light phaser working..

I must learn more

Cool! Probably Alex Kidd and the Lost Stars at that time.

The dpad is definitely the worst! Even Famicom controllers were not as crappy. I ended up using my Genesis controller more.

While I had seen a store Demo in maybe 1987 or 88, I didn’t really want one until AFTER I got a Genesis. After beating Phantasy Star II I really wanted to play the first one and couldn’t seem to buy a power base converter.

Eventually I traded my Gameboy for one with a couple games and ordered Phantasy Star via a Sears catalog at a huge discount.

I played one regularly that was set up in a big mall store. It had an Alex Kidd cartridge on it. I remember the dpad on the controller was weird and never liked it.

The system was already outdated though, and was sitting next to a Sega Mega Drive ("Sega Genesis" over there in Murrica.) Guess which one I played most :P

How many of you actually played a Master System when they were around? Did you see a store demo displays or know anyone that had one?