Sonic Blast (Sega Master System)

Released exclusively for the Brazilian market, the Master System Sonic Blast is an outstandingly lazy port of what's already a widely-disliked Sonic game. Featuring less than the bare minimum of changes needed for the larger screen size, poor accounting for the Master System's smaller color palette, and visual glitches absolutely everywhere, the result is quite possibly the most miserable 2D home console Sonic experience out there.

Perhaps Sonic Triple Trouble not getting an official Master System port was a blessing in disguise...

Sub-Pages#

Bugs

Level Select#

Set address D140 to FF at the title screen, then start the game. The Game Gear version's button code is unusable here due to 1 serving the same function as Start (starting the game and pausing).

G Sonic Leftovers#

Sonic Blast	G Sonic (Unused)

By setting address $D13F to 01, you can find the remains of the Game Gear version's Japanese titling. Since the Master System version was never released outside of Brazil, the international name is used, even if you play the game on a Japanese Master System.

The title screen looks rather bugged here. This is because the game resorts to the "change palette at certain V-blank" trick to display more colors onscreen, which worked fine on the Game Gear but was never properly optimized for the Master System's higher resolution. This bug affects the Sonic Blast title as well (note the top of the B), but is less noticeable due to the color choice.

Partially-Unused Music#

The music used for the opening cutscene lasts 31 seconds, but only the first 6 seconds are heard in-game. Use PAR code 00D131:01 when booting to freeze the game so as to let the song play out in its entirety.

Error Handler#

Unsurprisingly, the Master System version contains the same generic error handler as its Game Gear counterpart. The code is identical and just as unlikely to ever actually run.

Unused Text#

The build date text from the Game Gear version is still present here, and still at 0xC0.