Super Boy I (Master System) Playthrough
225A playthrough of Zemina's 1989 platformer for the Sega Master System, Super Boy I.
Super Boy I was the first in a line-up of four games created by Zemina, a South Korean company, to be based on Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. series. It was originally released for the Daewoo Zemmix, a consolized MSX-1 system, and was later ported over to the Master System. Both versions were South Korea-exclusive releases.
At first glance, Super Boy I looks like a total train wreck: the screen scrolling is jerky, the sprites are limited to two colors each, and the "physics" are comically awkward. Anyone who is familiar with the Master System knows that the system is capable of far, far better than what's on display here.
There is a reason for this, however. The Master System was backwards compatible with SG-1000 software, and later SG-1000 games were sometimes packaged and officially sold as Master System titles. Sega's F-16 Fighting Falcon and Sherlock Holmes: Loretta no Shouzou are two famous examples of this. Super Boy I is also technically a piece of SG-1000 software, and as such, it is unable to leverage any of the improvements the Master System hardware introduced over its predecessor.
Taking these limitations into consideration, Super Boy I is a fairly impressive piece of work - it manages to run more smoothly than even Sega's own 1986 SG-1000 Wonder Boy port (https://youtu.be/M0Otbmq6nIg).
This 32K cartridge packs sixteen stages, and most of the enemies from Super Mario have made the transition. The mushroom and fire flowers are here too, though the contents of ? blocks are randomized and the fireball behaves differently.
(And get a load of Lakitu's new look! Why is it so creepy?)
The gameplay is pretty decent once you get a feel for how jumping works. If you hold the jump button as you land on an enemy, Mario will bounce high in the air, and you can chain these bounces together to soar over areas with lots of enemies. Some of the stages can pose a pretty stiff challenge (the flying fish in 2-2 and 2-3, especially), but once you master the controls, it's smooth sailing.
My favorite part of the game is how, when you beat Bowser, there's no Toad waiting to tell you that the princess is in another castle. All you get is a black screen with the message, "SORRY NOTHING." I laughed so hard the first time I saw that.
Super Boy I obviously can't compete with Super Mario Bros., but I had a lot more fun with it than I expected to.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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