The Master System was the North American Version of the Sega Mark III. It became Sega's first big hit and would eventually sell over 12 million units worldwide.

Sega released their first home console, the SG-1000 on the same day that Nintendo released the Famicom. From the beginning, Saga struggled to compete. A series of revisions led to the Sega Mark III, released in 1985, which would be re-branded as the Master System for a 1986 North American release.

Arguably, the SMS had better graphics and sound than the NES and was probably its most successful competitor. However, Sega struggled to compete with Nintendo’s exclusive licensing policies and larger game library. It remain a distant runner-up in North America and Japan. It had greater success other markets, especially Brazil, where it controlled 80% of the video game market for a time.

The SMS held it’s own at the start of the console wars, and paved the way for the well known Genesis.