No - but it is the game based on the anime that inspired the phaser design! Er, more directly both the phaser and the Zillion game were based on an anime named Zillion.

The Master System phaser was such a slick design. Perhaps not as iconic as Nintendo’s blaster, but I think it’s much cooler looking.

Self-replying to add a couple other classics that aren’t already in the thread:

• Penguin Land: A Mr-Driller-like puzzler where you are trying to carefully bring an egg safely to the end of the level - but it can only fall one block distance without breaking. Also, there are polar bears you can crush with boulders.

• Zillion: This game has no business being as good as it is. Side scrolling adventure game where you are tasked with rescuing your captured spy-buddies. You have to loot secret codes from the bodies of fallen enemies, use them to unlock laser doors and progress further into the enemy base. It uses exceptionally large and detailed sprites for the time and is a surprisingly “mature” game for the Era. (Not meaning nudity, just that it is more interesting to someone auth the patience to map out a base and write down secret codes)

Skip the sequel, however. Zillion 2 sucked. a lot.

True, true… yet still more reliable than LoZ’s “hold the reset button and hope” method of saving the game…

GOLVELLIUS

This game is a blatant… homage to OG Legend of Zelda. But IMHO it does almost everything better.

The game begins with Link Kelesis entering a cavern where an old woman tells him to take a sword - and some boots because our boy can’t even dress himself.

After that, you know the drill. Top-down action rpg mode, slaying monsters, leveling up, finding secrets and better equipment.

Where it improves on the original LoZ is that the Master System was more powerful than the original NES, so the graphics here are brighter and more detailed and the audio is crisper.

The structure of the world is more linear than LoZ - but that means it’s a lot harder to get lost. Also, as you unlock gear and powers you can backtrack to discover new secrets in old locations.

The game’s characters vary wildly in tone from angry old ladies berating you for lacking the funds to shop to meandering fairies commenting on snow cones.

I replay Golvellius every few years on whatever the handheld platform dujour is. …I think it’s about time to give out a spin on the steam deck again.

Anyway. If you like that classic Zelda vibe, give Golvellius a spin. It’s seriously one of the best games I played on the old Master System.

Though they are often synonyms, simple != easy.

Simple is uncomplicated.

Easy is unchallenging.

Super Mario Bros. is a simple game, but not necessarily an easy one.

… Befriending his opponent and trying to convince them not to kill him in a tense series of cat and mouse conversations?

Check out Golvellius: Valley of Doom. It was a Zelda clone, but I think it’s more fun than the original.

Very cool! Thank you for the link, I’ll check it out!

Zelda 2s sister hack actually makes the game playable finally.

I am legit curious what you mean by this. I’ve played LoZ2 in emulation a few times, but never to completion.

What does the ROM hack do? I always found the game physically (electronically?) playable, just boring.

Torn between going straight up Von-Neumann-brain, or functional immortality (e.g. Bullets are still a problem, but aging won’t be.)

Pain… Pain keeps you alive.

People who lack pain receptors don’t last very long in this world.

If something is broken and giving chronic pain, yeah, fix that with the creator. But honest, healthy pain is vital.

Journey

Ico / Shadow of the Colossus / The Last Guardian

No Man’s Sky

I hope there are enough independent people saving at least some of our gaming history, because it’s a shame to see it evaporate like this.

I have a buddy who had fond memories of an old Apple ][ game, but he couldn’t find it anywhere. No copy of the software existed anywhere he could find, for sale or otherwise.

After a literal decade of searching, he finally found a copy of the game disk on eBay! He picked up a 5.25" floppy USB drive, hooked up an Apple ][ emulator… And nothing. The disk was encrypted in some way that made it unreadable.

Not one to give up easily, he then found and purchased an Apple ][ with a working drive.

The disk worked!

He started researching old copy protection schemes and it turned out that the disk had information written between the standard tracks to make it unreadable by standard hardware, but accessible to the software on the disk when it manually tweaked the drive head’s position.

One USB driver patch (and a couple months) later, he was able to extract the original software from the disk for archival. It works in emulators and is finally archived.

That’s been my approach too, but I’ve reached ten plus years of God knows what in my dotfiles. It’s time for a clean reinstall. 😁