Sinbad Mystery

Rolling stones will break your bones

Nick talks about the game that makes him want to own a SG-1000

» SG-1000 » 1983 » Sega

I’m the sort of person that’s occasionally grabbed by strong completionist urges – seemingly at random, and often to my own detriment. I don’t have all the Sonic games, but I had to get all the endings in Shadow The Hedgehog. I own all the Fear Factory albums, including the rubbish ones, such as Transgression. So for a little while now, it’s been bugging me that I don’t own an SG-1000.

“But why, Nick? What do you even want to play?” Well, there’s a good version of Zaxxon, I’m really partial to Rock N’ Bolt, and Sindbad Mystery is a really cool maze game. You walk around picking up fragments of a map, which reveal the location of the stage’s final treasure. But there’s more to it than that – there are crisscrossing paths across multiple levels, you can run over the baddies with a giant boulder, and you can even trap them by digging holes. There are a few different stages too, so it doesn’t become quite as repetitive as other games in the genre. It’s a game I would like to own.

Unfortunately, the SG-1000 is a somewhat expensive bit of hardware, and I’d need to seek out a PAL model or mod a Japanese one for RGB video, so my best option is to get a Japanese Master System, which is backwards compatible. But if I buy any more Master Systems, I will look like a mad person [As if having five is perfectly sane? – Ed.] Maybe I’ll just have to get the Saturn version on Sega Ages Memorial Selection Vol 2 instead…