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Sega Master System

Overview

The Sega Master System application is an emulator for the Sega Master System game console.

Silver Valley by Enrique Ruiz

Controls

The emulator supports up to two controllers. The keyboard and gamepad mappings are listed in the tables below.

Keyboard

Keyboard support is only available for controller one.

Name
Keys
 Comments
Move
1/Start
2
Pause
Show Pause Screen

Gamepad

Gamepad support is available for both controllers.

Name
Gamepad
 Comments
Move  or 
1/Start
2
Pause Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate)

Press the Menu (Start) Button.
Pause
(Alternate)		  and  Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the Left Trigger and press the Menu (Start) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate)		  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the Left Trigger and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 2)		  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the X Button and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 3)		  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 4)		  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.

Battery-backed SRAM

Some Master System cartridges include battery-backed SRAM as a means of preserving state between sessions. The Master System application supports persisting this SRAM state into the browser's local storage or optionally to cloud-based storage. The SRAM contents will be persisted to storage whenever the pause screen is displayed (or the game is exited). Therefore, the menu should be displayed periodically for games that support battery-backed SRAM to ensure the state is properly persisted.

Feed

This section details how Master System application instances can be added to feeds.

Type

The type name for the Master System application is genplusgx-sms.

Note

The alias sms also currently maps to this application. In the future, the sms alias may be mapped to another Sega Master System application (different emulator implementation) if it is determined to be a more appropriate default.

Properties

The table below contains the properties that are specific to the Master System application. These properties are specified in the props object of a feed item.

Property Type Required Details
pal Boolean No Whether to force PAL video mode for the specified ROM.
rom URL Yes URL to a Master System ROM file or a zip file containing a ROM file.
hwType Numeric No The type of hardware to emulate.
(defaults to Master System II)
  • 0 : Master System II
  • 1 : Master System
  • 2 : SG-1000
ym2413 Boolean No Whether to emulator the YM2413 FM sound generator produced by Yamaha. The YM2413 was an add-on for the Sega Mark III and is built into the Japanese Sega Master System.
zoomLevel Numeric No A numeric value indicating how much the display image should be zoomed in (0-40).

This property is typically used to hide the black borders that are present on some games.

Example

The following is an example of a complete feed that consists of a single Master System application instance (type value of sms). The rom property value is a URL that points to a Dropbox location that contains the excellent homebrew game DARC by Richard Cornelisse and John Hassink (Music). It is also important to note that the ym2413 value has also been set to true to enable Yamaha-based FM music support (this particular game requires YM2413 support for its music).

{
  "title": "Master System Feed",
  "longTitle": "Sega Master System Example Feed",
  "categories": [
    {
      "title": "Master System Games",
      "longTitle": "Sega Master System Games",
      "items": [
        {
          "title": "DARC",
          "type": "sms",
          "props": {
            "ym2413": true,
            "rom": "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/mjp3odan08deqp2/DARC.sms"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

This example can be tested by adding a feed with the following URL within the webЯcade player:

https://tinyurl.com/sample-sms-feed

References

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