Secrets of the Video Works Vol. 1: Rescue Mission (Patreon)

You know, I've had this Patreon for like a decade, and it's only now occurred to me that I can use it like a blogging platform. So I should do that, as a bonus for you cool supporter types.

To kick things off, I'd like to talk about the sheer bewilderment involved in my recent Master System Light Phaser travails.

I mentioned in last week's video post that I've made some major changes for the new "season" of Segaiden, the most notable being (1) the fact that I've upgraded to 4K capture and (2) I shifted my workhorse Sega hardware from a Japanese Mark III with audio and video mods to a Japanese Master System. This, it turned out, was a terrible idea, because the Master System includes built-in FM audio support (awesome) and a hardware-based 3D Glasses driver (neat)... but while I had read that the Master System (JP model) also supports the Light Phaser, unlike the Mark III, it actually doesn't! This was bad, because my very first game for this run requires the Light Phaser.

So here I was, annoyed at Sega Retro for misleading me into changing my recording setup, cursing their name in the dark of the night. How dare they!

So, I reached out to MiSTer Add-Ons and sourced a Genesis SNAC connector for my MiSTER, which allows the Light Phaser to connect with the Master System-compatible Genesis core via USB. The shop's owner sent along an adapter and an explainer video showing the Light Phaser in action on MiSTer with Shooting Gallery. Exciting!

But then something strange happened: Even with the SNAC, I couldn't get Rescue Mission to play correctly on MiSTer, either. The game gets as far as the character select screen, since getting to that point just requires the program to read trigger pulls, but once you need to take aim at objects on screen it fails the same as on the Japanese Master System. MiSTer Add-Ons' proprietor tested it on his system and encountered the same issue—and, it turns out, this has been a problem for a lot of people. Rescue Mission is just kinda messed up. Adjusting brightness and contrast on my TV did nothing, either. It just won't read.

Eventually, he found the solution: Instead of playing through the newest MiSTer Mega Drive core, booting up the deprecated Master System core will somehow cause Rescue Mission to work. This makes very little sense, but it allowed me to capture some footage. Not a ton... like several Light Phaser games via SNAC and the old SMS core, Rescue Mission reads to the left of where you're targeting. This makes it impossible to hit targets on the right side of the screen, and the targeting drifts slowly leftward the longer you play. If you're wondering why I only captured footage from the first two stages of Rescue Mission, that's why. The game is tough, but it's kind of impossible when the aiming is so imprecise and steadily grows worse over time.

On the plus side, I have a feeling that this weirdness coming to light through an active contributor to the MiSTer community means a fix will make its way into the Mega Drive core before too long. So hopefully my suffering won't be for naught.  

Coda: Interestingly, Safari Hunt works just fine on the old SMS core and new Mega Drive core alike. Looking around, that game has a reputation among Sega fans for being the most generous and responsive Light Phaser title; it reads shots accurately even with TV conditions that cause failure for other games.

The fact Safari Hunt was working fine on MiSTer when Rescue Mission failed at the same point that it choked on JP Master System sparked a little SaGa-style lightbulb over my head. I could use the Light Phaser to click through to the character select screen on the Japan-region console, which meant that the console was actually reading inputs... just not all of them. So maybe it does support Light Phaser after all, despite the discussion I dug up indicating otherwise?

So I booted up Safari Hunt, and: It works! So the Japanese Master System really does do it all; I owe Sega Retro an apology for throwing it under the bus. The system supports 3D Glasses, FM audio, cards, carts, and Light Phaser. Just not for Rescue Mission, or at least not on my TV, which of course was the game that kicked off the new Segaiden season. This kind of thing happens more often than I would like with these videos. Even with my carefully managed setup, there are all kinds of weird edge cases to old analog tech that give it fits and can make "authentic" HD capture a real process.

This has been a look behind the scenes of why it took two people, multiple pieces of expensive hardware and adapters, and more than a week and a half to capture four minutes of Rescue Mission footage. I'll post more material like this (or maybe less technically focused??) on a regular basis moving forward. Maybe weekly? I dunno.