20 em 1

Multicarts like 20 em 1 sit on the edge of official console history. The Portuguese title points to Brazil, where the Master System had a much longer commercial life than in Europe or Japan thanks to local distribution, and where compilation cartridges bundling dozens of small titles onto one board were common.

The exact contents of any given cartridge under this name vary. Compilations of this kind were assembled from whatever material was available, so two copies with identical labels can hold different line-ups. What you can reliably expect is short arcade material from the first half of the 1980s: single-screen jumping games, basic shooters, maze chases and derivatives of coin-op classics. A numbered menu appears at boot and lets you pick an entry.

The hardware underneath dates from 1985. A Z80 processor, a video chip with a restricted palette, and the SN76489 sound generator with three tone channels plus noise. Games squeezed onto a multicart are usually trimmed versions, which keeps them well below what a full-size Master System cartridge could show off.

As a catalogue entry this is worth attention mainly if you are curious about how console software circulated outside the licensed pipeline, or if you want something that can be started and abandoned in five minutes. The 1995 date on the record matches the peak period for these bundles.

OldGame.cz runs the cartridge straight in the browser, so you can page through the menu without an emulator or a download. With compilations it pays to sample several entries rather than judging from the first one, since quality swings sharply between items.