Too-pointless conversion: Great Football / Sports Pad Football / Rocky | Segaiden #044

This week we have what may be the single most inexplicable set of releases for Master System: Great Football and Sports Pad Football. I mean, football games make sense for the U.S. market. Americans love football! (Not the soccer kind.) And it makes sense for a console to have more than one football game over its lifetime. But when they're only a month apart? From the same publisher? And are actually just the same game released under two unique titles with distinct box art and no real indication that they're almost entirely identical? Incredibly weird! Almost disastrously so! I mean, the core football sim underneath it all is decent. But still. It's just so baffling. Also up: Rocky, the first Two-Mega (256K) cart for Master System. Sega clearly poured that extra memory into visuals, because damn does this game look good. As for how it plays, well... it probably could have used another couple of megabits of data to shore up that aspect of the game, if we're being honest. Production notes: Why watch when you can read? Check out the massive hardcover print editions of NES Works, Super NES Works, and Virtual Boy works, available now at Limited Run Games (https://limitedrungames.com/collections/books)! Look forward to SG-1000 Works: Segaiden Vol. I, due July 2023. Video Works is funded via Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! Plus, exclusive podcasts, eBooks, and more! Most Master System footage captured from U.S. carts running through an adapter on Sega Mark III hardware with FM Sound Unit and RGB bypass modification by iFixRetro. Most arcade and Master System Light Phaser footage captured from MiSTer, with thanks to MiSTerAddOns. Video upscaled to 720 with xRGB Mini Framemeister.