Europe
In sharp contrast to its performance in Japan and North America, the Master System was very successful in Europe. Sega marketed this console in many European countries, including several in which Nintendo did not sell its consoles. It enjoyed strong third party support in the continent, including from American video game publishers that had not released titles for the platform in North America. It had some success in Germany, where it was distributed by Ariolasoft beginning in winter 1987. In France, the console was distributed in 1987 by Mastertronic France, from September 1988 until September 1991 by Virgin Loisirs, and then from September 1991 onwards by Sega France.
In the United Kingdom, it was distributed by Mastertronic (which later merged with the Virgin Group), and in Italy it was distributed by Giochi Preziosi. In its first years it overshadowed the Nintendo Entertainment System but wasn't as successful as the Atari ST and Amiga 500 Personal Computers, which were mostly used as gaming machines. The NES only gained a good market share in these territories later in its lifespan, after the release of the Sega Mega Drive. The console was produced far longer in Europe than in Japan and North America. It was eventually a major success in Europe, where it outsold the NES by a considerable margin. Because of the success in Europe, Sega decided to open its Sega Europe division.
As in North America, Sega launched the redesigned Master System II in 1990. This system included Alex Kidd in Miracle World, and later Sonic the Hedgehog, as a built-in game.
As late as 1993, the Master System's active installed user base in Western Europe was 6.25 million units, larger than that of the Sega Mega Drive's 5.73 million base that year. The Master System thus accounted for nearly half of the active installed base for consoles in Western Europe in 1993 (13.51 million), and combined with the Mega Drive, Sega represented the majority of the console user base in Western Europe that year. The Master System's largest markets in the region were France and the United Kingdom, which had active user bases of 1.6 million and 1.35 million, respectively, in 1993. The combined total for the peak active user bases in all Western European markets (600,000 for Belgium in 1991, 400,000 for Italy in 1992, and 5.8 million combined for the other markets in 1993) add up to 6.8 million units in Western Europe between 1991 and 1993.
The last licensed release in Europe was The Smurfs: Travel the World, released by Infogrames in 1996. Its successor, the Mega Drive, which was also successful in Europe, was supported up until this time as well. However, both were discontinued so that Sega could concentrate on the Sega Saturn.
Read more about this topic: Master System, History
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