The Sega Master System Game That Takes The Longest To Beat

The longest game ever made for the Sega Master System was "Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar." The Master System, (AKA the Sega Mark 3,) was the first console that Sega released in the US. It was far from the most powerful console on the market for most of its life cycle, however, and many of the games that were created for it had to be shaped to accommodate its limited hardware. Even the company's most popular franchise, "Sonic the Hedgehog," had to sacrifice certain visual aspects that were present on the Genesis versions in order for the games to be able to adequately run on the Master System.

The console used a Sega-Yamaha VDP graphics system, had 8kb of RAM, and utilized ROM cartridges that had very little space available on them for its games. As a consequence of this, most of the games that were made for the Sega Master System would certainly be considered on the shorter side by today's standards. In fact, most of them only took a few hours for a skilled gamer to clear. That's why it's so interesting that Origin Systems managed to develop a game for the Master System that takes most players over 20 hours to beat.

"Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar" is an RPG that's set in the world of Sosaria. All three members of the series' antagonists, the Triad of Evil, had been defeated in the first three games, leaving the player without an enemy to fight. Instead, the main focus of the game is to explore the realm of Britannia on a quest to become a beacon of hope for those who survived the cataclysms following the previous "Ultima" titles.

Game times can vary wildly depending on the person playing them — especially when it comes to RPGs like "Ultima 4." A title that takes one player days to beat might take another only a few hours. One of the most reliable methods of judging game-length is by looking at HowLongToBeat, a website that allows players to share their scores and then aggregates the information in order to generate averages.

30 players have reported gameplay times for "Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar." According to HowLongToBeat, these times averaged out to be 21.5 hours to complete the main story, 33.5 to do the main story and some of the extra content, and 52 hours for completionists. This is considerably longer than most of the other games on the Master System. There were only five other games on the console with campaigns that were even reported to break 10 hours — certainly an impressive feat given the limitations that Origin Systems had to work with.