DIY Sega Genesis and Master System AV Cables: Redo!
A few years back I made a vain attempt at making Sega Genesis and SMS AV cables. Although they did work, they didn’t last long because the connectors I used were harvested from MIDI cables and never properly adhered back to the plug. A few good uses later and both sets of cables were rendered dysfunctional or completely useless.
As I hinted at, in the original article, 5 pin DIN connectors are often sold online, and after a short search on Amazon I found a pack of 6 for less than $4 shipped. It took a while to arrive but finally it’s time to make yet another attempt at creating these AV cables.
First thing to note is you get what you pay for. These connectors aren’t of the greatest quality; the part holding the 5 pins melts slightly under even normal soldering conditions and the pins can move forward or backwards slightly. The metal parts and connector seems sturdy enough but the plastic shroud is soft plastic with absolutely no grip whatsoever, which is why I will strongly advise using the strain relief provided on the metal part.
These connectors easily disassemble into four parts, allowing for quick and easy soldering while also making the finished product far more secure than the harvested connectors I haphazardly used originally. At first I wasn’t entirely sure how well these would go together, but after the first one they started going together quite well. Something else to note is that I’m just now making them, so I can’t speak on terms of how long these things will last, but assuming you’ve properly soldered all the joints, used good quality AV cables and only hook your console up and leave it in place, these should last for a long time.
Genesis AV Cable Pinout
With the color coded pinout above you should be able to make your own Sega Master System or Genesis model 1 AV cables. Even with my soldering skills being average I managed to put together two sets fairly quickly. I would highly suggest using AV cables with a shielded video cable though. Only one of my sets of AV donor cables had the shielded video side and it makes a big difference.
You can make them as long or as short as you need. Sadly, to my knowledge, there is no way to get stereo sound from the back output of the Genesis model 1, but if you want to make video only cables and use a 3.5mm to stereo cable in the headphone port on the front of the Genesis model 1, that is differently possible with these plugs as well.
And here is the finished product
DIY Sega AV Cable
When it comes to hooking my consoles to my TV, I’ve always preferred the simplicity of a good, old RF adapter. Sure they’re not the best, but they get the job done; audio and video sent from the console to your TV, that’s all I really need! But as consoles started removing the RF option in favor of the proprietary AV cables, I was forced to hunt down AV cables through my many trips to thrift stores.
Nintendo RF adapters are usually found in bounties, and the Nintendo AV cables, used for the SNES, N64 and Gamecube, aren’t too far behind, as they’re used across more than one console. But when it comes to cables that are almost impossible to find, Sega reigns supreme! I do own a few various RF adapter for my Sega consoles but I could never track down a single set of AV cables that work for the Master System or Genesis model 1.
I could easily buy a set online for $5 or so, but I’m a person who prefers to go the cheap route, because that saves me cash that could go toward buying move video games. So instead I decided to pickup a few things from the local thrift stores and attempt to make my own Sega AV cables. The ingredients are simple, and any thrift store should have these supplies fairly cheap, although there may be an easier way than I’m doing this.
To start you will need a male DIN 5 end, either from an old computer cable or a ready to solder kit readily available online from various stores. Secondly you’ll need a working set of mono AV cables, it doesn’t matter what color the ends are, but make sure you understand which is audio and which is video. You will also need a soldering iron, solder, hot glue (optional), and a little bit of skill and patients.
If you’ve bought a ready to solder kit you can skip this part. I prefer to do things the hard way, so I had to take the rubber shroud off the DIN 5 and hollow it out to allow access to all the places I would need to solder. Also to allow me to slip it onto the AV cables before I soldered everything together.
Once the rubber shroud was hollowed out, I slipped it over the AV cables so I could easily slip it back over the end, after everything was soldered together. Now you will see the end of each plug sticking out of the back of the DIN 5 connection. Here is the correct pinout for the Sega AV cables:
Once you’re confident you know what goes where, strip down both of the AV cable wires and tin them with solder, to make things much easier. Make sure to wrap and tin the spare copper wire together, this will be the ground wire. After that add a little solder to each of the three pin ends you’re going to need to solder everything to.
Wires stripped, tinned and ready to be soldered to the pins!
If you’re not sure which wire is which, and you have a multimeter, I suggest you check which wire is which before you solder them down, to avoid mixing them up. If you do manage to mix them up its not the end of the world, you can either resolder them or you can just paint the cables or ends to note which one is which.
After you’ve soldered everything together you should see something that looks like this.
I personally like to use a dose of hot glue after I’ve soldered everything and let it set, I believe this helps avoid connections shorting out on each other. Also I use a good bit of hot glue to stick the rubber shroud back in place.
The end result is a working, albeit mono, set of AV cables that work with both the Sega Master System and the Genesis model 1. Again, this isn’t the cheapest method, but I simply couldn’t find any AV cables at my local thrift stores. Being a DIY person I figured I would rather setup a project and get the gratification of building something myself, rather than the stress of waiting a month for AV cables to arrive from China.
Vintage Gaming Cleaning Kits
In the days when cartridges ruled the world it seemed as if anyone and everyone put out a cleaning kit to keep your systems in working order. Which was a big selling point made all too easy by the NES and its, more often than not, ability to put on a light show rather than play a game. If there is one thing I believe about retro gaming, it has to be the fact that if you keep your systems and games clean they will last longer and give you much better functional results.
Although I now know the true cause of these glitches, I was still taken in by the cleaning kits propaganda when I was younger. They made promises to keep the blinking NES, or just a black screen on other systems, away forever! Almost every cartridge based video game system had some form of cleaning kit, and although most of the time it worked for just a short while, the fact that it worked at all made them feel like essential hardware.
My first cleaning kit was a Doc’s Fix-a-system, which had what I still feel is a genius idea in the clip on NES cleaner. You simply took any NES game cartridge, clipped the contraption to the front of it and you proceeded to stab the living daylights out of your NES. Doing so cleared unwanted dirt and gave way to a few more minutes of uninterrupted gameplay.
I still love this idea, it still works great!
After that cleaning kit was lost or broken, I’m sure, I purchased a Player’s Edge NES cleaning kit. This one was a stand alone unit with a handle, and everything you needed fit conveniently inside the unit itself. Again you just took the unit and stabbed the living daylights out of your NES and you were good to play for a little while longer.
Years of use on this thing, does it show?
That would be the last cleaning kit I bought for nearly 14 years, until one day at a Salvation Army store I found a Player’s Edge cleaning kit for the SNES. Later, at another Salvation Army, I found an incomplete Doc’s 2000 kit, which brought back a flood of memories of the good old days. Sadly the NES clip was broken, but I decided to take what was left of it and turn it into a cleaning kit inside of an old Gyromite cartridge I had laying around. (Original article: Here)
Same system, only one fits perfectly into the NES so I can shut the lid.
It seems nowadays I go through thrift stores and find cleaning kits for almost every system, and if they’re at a reasonable price I’ll pick them up. Just this year I’ve accrued quite a few system cleaning kits, and although I may not use them I still pick them up when I can.
My current collection of boxed cleaning kits.
As an adult, I know the best way to keep my systems running is to clean both the games and the systems. But it seems a good Q-tip with rubbing alcohol thoroughly rubbed through a game keeps all my systems running well. Admittedly I have had some hiccups with my Sega Genesis, N64 and SNES, but nothing a good game cleaning hasn’t remedied, so far!
Back in the day cleaning kits were pushed in our faces, and as time went on they faded away. I still get nostalgic for cleaning kits and make room for them in my collection. Though they serve no practical purpose to me, as I’ve learned far better ways to keep my systems running, they still connect me to a time when video games were problematic, but so much fun.
Great Baseball
One of the very first articles I wrote here on TVG was Baseball and NES, because I love many baseball games for the NES. I haven’t played them all but one of my absolute favorites is MLB (yes it is made by LJN), but an extremely close second would be Jaleco’s Bases Loaded. I still remember the commercials for Bases Loaded, even as a kid who had yet to own an NES, and when I finally got my hands on both an NES and a copy of that game I could hardly part with it.
What Bases Loaded did differently from any other NES baseball game I had seen at the time was give you lanky players, as opposed to short, chubby, Babe Ruth inspired sprites. Another thing that it did differently that I hadn’t seen anywhere else was setting the view point from behind the pitching mound, as where most of the others were set from behind home plate. Needless to say, I loved Bases Loaded for the NES.
Fast forward many, many years to 2012 when I acquired my Sega Master System, accompanied with a game by the name of Great Baseball. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from Great Baseball, but I knew it had to be baseball and it had to be better than Nintendo’s game, simply titled, Baseball. Great Baseball’s title screen says it all, starting with it’s use of more eye catching colors than the NES could ever hope, and finishing up with a pseudo-action sequence of a player sliding into home.
After you slowly come back down to Earth from that intro, and you manage to hit the start button, you’re greeted with six game options.. six! In reality there are only 3 modes; single player, two player and home run contest, yet there are two difficulty levels for each. After you’ve chosen which mode you wish to play you are then presented with a good variety of teams, with a map that will show exactly where each selection hails from.
After you and player two, or the CPU, have your teams chosen, you have to choose your pitcher, their special pitch and how much stamina they will have for the game. After that you’ll be shown the lineup screen, which shows the batting order for the team up to bat. Once the game starts the first thing you will notice is how bright and vibrant the game’s colors are, as well as how the player sprites don’t look as sickly as it’s NES counterparts.
Most of the time you will start off pitching, though sometimes I have found myself at bat, pitching is fairly straight forward as you can control the ball’s speed and direction with the D-pad. If the batter happens to hit the ball the game will switch to the diamond screen which shows the whole field of play, where you will then see players scramble to their positions and you now control an outfielder, which gives you a chance to make a play. If you’ve played an NES baseball game, this is pretty standard.
Overall there isn’t much difference in the way the game handles in comparison to it’s NES counterpart, so there isn’t any long awkward learning curve with Great Baseball. The replay value on this game is phenomenal, even for an old cartridge based baseball game. Due to it’s brilliant color palette and the smooth game play Great Baseball has become one of my favorite baseball video games, as well as one of my favorite Master System games.
(not so) Great Basketball
While the Sega Master System’s library was rife with worthwhile titles, it was also plagued by a whole bunch of stinkers! Sega developed and published a series of sports titles for the Master System, all with the prefix Great boldly starting off the titles, followed by the actual sport that was supposedly so, well.. great! I happen to own two of these games and I can say without a doubt I enjoy Great Baseball quite a bit, dare I even say more so than any of my NES baseball titles.
But Such is the story of Great Basketball, perhaps more of a wishful title than a literal one. As you can tell by the title this is a basketball game, naturally. But sadly the only thing great about this game seems to be it’s atrocious, and often times mind-numbing flaws!
From the title screen you’re greeted with a pretty standard screen which allows you to choose one or two players. This screen is pretty opaque and doesn’t show the horrors that await you next, which is the team select screen. You are then presented with 8 choices of countries, rather than actual teams.
The game can’t even get choosing a team done right as the controls are sluggish. Even once you’ve made your choice, you’re forced to sit through a short rendition of that country’s national anthem, which I’ve only managed to skip, on accident, once! Then you have to finish up by picking the CPU’s team, or allowing player 2 to choose their team.
Now the action starts and the graphics look pretty good for an 8-bit basketball game; the court looks nicely decorated, the cheerleaders are standard yet interesting sprites, the referee is the tallest sprite on the screen and perhaps should be the one playing basketball, and the teams are comprised of Amish style, faceless sprites. The goals look like goals and the basketball looks like a basketball. Graphically this game could have delivered a little more in some areas, but truthfully not by much!
So here is where the true horror begins, by now you’ve forgiven the sluggish selection screen and being forced to learn a new national anthem and you’re ready to play ball, but again the game can’t even get that done right! You can pass the ball around quite swiftly but to shoot a basket you must first jump, wait for the peak of the jump, then hit the jump button yet again to throw the ball. From there fate and chance take over as to whether or not you’ll drain that bank shot, more often than not you’ll end up missing.
So lets say you, or the other team most likely, were fortunate enough to sink that basket, now you have to wait as the game makes a sound to let you know that someone scored, the ball drops to the floor and the crowd starts to cheer. This event will burn up an additional couple of seconds off your playing enjoyment. Why can’t I just pick up the ball and inbound it right away, instead of waiting for it to tell me someone scored and hearing the crowd cheer!?
So the ball is now inbounded to a teammate, or perhaps you chose to become a ball hog and rush over to the shadow and inbound to yourself, now you have to go by what I call the “2 pixel foul rule”. The 2 pixel foul rule is just that, if you or the other team possess the ball and YOU walk within 2 pixels of the other team, you foul them by default. This merely changes possession as I’ve never seen any free throws being offered, and although it is harder to do, you can get them to foul you as well.
I will give the game credit for having fairly clear voice samples, the referee will call “Jump Ball”, “Jump Shot” and “Three point shot”, regardless if it were you or the CPU who made the shot. Again the graphics are pretty good, although the crowd looks like Bob Ross’s palette after a long day of painting happy trees. Perhaps there is too much orange off the court and anywhere else there isn’t substance, but that is my favorite color so I may be bias there.
Countless times I’ve tried to give this game a shot, but game up short. Great Basketball never made it to the draft, and there are quite a few reasons why. Had Sega given this game a little more time, and just a few tweaks here and there, this game could have been good, but even so this game simply couldn’t live up to it’s prefix of great.
NES vs Sega Master System: My Personal Opinion
No matter where you may stand on the whole Nintendo vs Sega debate, there are two indisputable facts when it comes to their 8-bit systems: Nintendo’s NES was far more successful, but Sega’s Master System was more powerful. With Nintendo’s NES coming out approximately 9 months before Sega’s Master System, Nintendo was headlong into building up popularity for their NES, but in that time Sega made the Master System more powerful. Even so, with Nintendo’s tight grasp on licensing games for the NES, marketing manners and many other factors, the Master System, sadly, never stood a chance.
I must admit that the Master System wasn’t as high on my list of wanted consoles as say.. the NES top loader, but it was always there. As research for the system, I spent countless hours studying video game comparison for the few games that were released for both the NES and the Master System, with the Master System version almost always looking the best. I had always hoped to acquire a Sega Master System (or Power Base converter for my Genesis 1) on a vintage gaming hunt, but sadly I had only found one at Disc Replay and one at an indoor flea market, both of which were priced too high for the thrift hunter within.
Being fed up with waiting I decided to just go ahead and pay a little more than I normally would, just to own the system and see what it was all about. After spending some time with both the actual system and some emulation, just to get a feel for what the games I don’t own felt like, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the Master System. Although I now love the Sega Master System, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s faults, chief among which is the pause button being built into the console, instead of conveniently on the controller.
Another issue is the standard look that almost all of the game boxes and cartridge labels have, instead of flashy artwork it all seems pretty stock and boring. Finally, and it may seem trivial, but the cartridges are pretty hard to get out of the system. There is very little sticking out to grasp on to, which seems to result in transferring sweat and grease to the cartridge’s label, which seemingly helps it deteriorate.
I do, however, quite enjoy the D-pad on the Master System’s controller, a full 8 directional, concave pad that I find to be very comfortable. The 1 and 2 buttons on the controller are large, comfortable and number 1 doubles as the Start button, again perhaps there should have been a single start/pause button (like the Genesis!), but that is well past debate. The Sega Light Phaser feels much better than the NES Zapper, and for some unexplainable reason, makes shooting games more fun!
Now lets talk about games. The Master System’s library is nearly half that of the NES, which some may think that would cut down on the junk, and you’d be wrong. The Master System does have it’s share of pure gems such as; Golden Axe Warrior, Ys, Out Run, Hang On and quite a few more, but it also had it’s share of complete trash. And when I say a game is trash, it was completely unplayable. Albeit, I was using the emulation to test most games, and I did test a few games I now own and hated them on emulation, yet love them once the controller is in my hands. Let that last sentence stand for itself.
Overall I find it sad that the Sega Master System seems to be a massively overlooked system. The games that are good, are great, but sadly the games that are bad are terrible! My only true gripe goes back to the Pause button being mounted within the console itself and not on the controller. The thrift hunter within me is mostly upset that I’ve never seen a single Sega Master System game anywhere other than Disc Replay, so snagging them at a good price is going to be impossible, but at least finding them isn’t.