The Ninja Gaiden series was one of the best action series' on the NES, and the SMS game (which is a completely original exclusive produced by Sega themselves) does the series justice admirably. The graphics are fantastic, and the sense of speed as you make your way through the stages wall jumping and climbing is unparalleled. The gameplay just flows very well, and with Sega's take on the series containing a slightly more Shinobi-esque slant, feels like a very different (but equally good) breed of Ninja Gaiden.

Power strike II is an excellent shoot-em-up from genre favourite Compile, and is probably the most sought after of the rare Master System games out there. All the hallmarks of Compile's other shooters are very much evident here, the plethora of weapons, the speed, the manic action, the clever attack waves, the excellent music, and its all tied together with some really great graphics and tons of polish. Truly one of their lost and rare unknown classics.

Yet again Sega manage to use a beloved licence to create another classic, and polished platformer. Asterix is a fun, lengthy, and very well designed game from start to finish. On top of the more traditional elements you'd expect from games of the genre, there's also some minor brain work required in the form of the different potion effects which help to keep you thinking throughout. It conveys the style of the comic books really well, and definitely shouldn't be missed by platformer fans, its just unfortunate that the sequels never managed to live up to the original in neither polish nor playability.

Seminal god sim where you're in charge of raising and nurturing your own people with the ultimate aim of defeating your rivals. It's compulsive stuff and the Master System version plays extremely well.

After the huge popularity of the original Super Mario Bros pushed NES sales into the stratosphere Kotaro Hayashida (who would later go on to work on the Phantasy Star series) was charged with creating Sega's response, and what a phenomenal job he did too. Miracle World is an ambitious title for its time (arriving around the time of Lost Levels), there's currency, and shops, item management, and vertical scrolling levels, a plethora of different vehicles, excellent graphics, and many varied environments. All of these elements helped to add real scope to the game, and as such it felt more like a journey, an adventure, than many of the platformers which came before it. If Miracle World has a downfall, its in the game's inaccessibility, unlike Mario's games it requires a lot of patience, and practice to enjoy, but like many of Sega's games, taking the time to master it leads to one of the most rewarding experiences of that gaming era.

Here is one of the all time classic shooters of the 80s, a game full to the brim with great new ideas, ranging from the force pod, and the bits (the things that float above your ship that you can ram into enemies) to the unique boss weaknesses. There was the iconic art design inspired by H.R.Giger, and some classic music. R-Type was translated pretty well to the Master System, apart from the flickering it was translated pretty much intact, retaining the playability of the classic arcade original.

I hate to place a Sonic game higher than Alex Kidd on Alex's home turf but this game's accessible pick up and play nature just about edged Miracle World out! The first of the Sonic games specially designed for SMS (the games on SMS are original designs, not ports of their 16-bit namesakes), is I feel, also the best. The game loses a lot of the speed and freedom of the 16-bit originals, but this is replaced with more emphasis on the platform jumping fundamentals, and when taking into account the weaker 8-bit hardware this change to the gameplay creates a well judged, fairer game free from unwanted frustrations, which shines on its own merits.

After their brilliant Castle of Illusion Sega managed to come back with something even better for the sequel. They built and improved on pretty much all aspects of the earlier classic, with graphics, music, and especially gameplay all having very commendable levels of work and attention lavished upon them, even adding many more adventure style elements to the mix. Its the new adventure style abilities which really set the game apart from many other platformers of the time, with Mickey gaining abilities such as climbing and shrinking, as the game progressed, opening up new areas in some of the earlier stages to explore and adding to replayability. Overall Land of Illusion is simply a great example of 8-bit platforming, its full to the brim with ideas, is very playable, and has some really excellent art design.

In my opinion this is surely the best JRPG of the entire 8-bit generation, and one of the truly genre defining titles of the early console RPG's. Phantasy Star was really ahead of it's time when it was released, everything from the graphics, to the fairly detailed storyline and 1st person dungeon sections were extremely impressive. Its whole world, characters, and storyline just succeeded at being much more fully formed and fleshed out in comparison to its main competitors, many of whom were still filled with drab, repetitive, uninteresting environments, and characters who could barely speak a coherent sentence even years later. Apart from some minor initial grinding, and the later dungeons probably requiring manual mapping, the game has actually dated surprisingly well, and is still very playable for an RPG even now.

After a lot of thought I'm going with Dragon's Trap as the greatest Master System game ever made, simply because it's just so perfectly realised, and all the different elements work so well together. The graphics are great, with an endearing design throughout, and colourful, varied environments to traverse, and the gameplay is always very well judged, with carefully designed platforming sections, and lots to see and do, and due to its unique gameplay mechanic (which has you being transformed into a variety of different monsters with different abilities as the game progresses) the gameplay never becomes stale of formulaic, it just carries on surprising you throughout from start to finish and you always want to see what's going to be around the next corner.