Sega Master System

[Stan]

It is inferior, but only to inferior programmers!  If you play a game like The Flash you'll see what good sound can be on the SMS.  As for the d-pad, if you're NES addicted, Sega released a superior pad with an identical d-pad to the NES called the SG Commander.  It has a really nice fit to the hands as well as two, adjustable turbo switches for each button.  If you're so upset about pause, which was quite a dumb move, you can actually modify your controllers to do it, it just takes some fairly basic rewiring.  Most systems back then did not have reset on the controller.  What systems did anyway other than the Jaguar?

[133MHz]

I don't think that the SMS sound is inferior, it's just that it sounds 'too common', unlike the NES sound which has some kind of special feel to it.

Sega used an off the shelf standard sound chip for the Master System (the Texas Instruments SN76489), being so common it was also used on most arcade games and home computers of the time, so its sound is very recognizable and common.

OTOH the NES Audio Processing Unit (APU for short) is a custom made part integrated directly on the 6502 CPU made by Ricoh (our beloved RP2A03). Being custom made and under a different process, it produces different and unique sounds, and at least to me, it has a charm that no other 8 bit sound generator could ever match.

There's awesome music on the SMS (Sonic the Hedgehog Bridge Zone comes to mind!), but NES music is special, it's got a great feel to it, I can't really describe it with words... it's got warmth, charisma... OMG I'm getting sentimental for an 8-bit sound generator, better stop now xD

But, you get the idea right?

[Stan]

Yeah, I know what you mean, there are definitely a lot more memorable tracks in the NES library, but I stick to my argument that some programmers just didn't know how to milk it right.  It was limited with its noise gates, but you can get by that by using bass sounds for effect to equal out the lack of a good rhythm section.