http://segaoa.online/sega.jp/community/creators/ I merged about six different sources to get it as complete as possible, still missing quite a few images, and might need refreshing a few times to get the ones that are there to display (crap free web host). I also had to convert the text encoding from Shift_JIS to UTF-8 to get it to display properly on the aforementioned web host.
Oh that's the Frankensteinian abomination called the Wideboy. Basically... yeah they jammed a GBA into a Nintendo 64. For the low low price of "if you were a gaming journalist", you could buy a similar setup without the kiosk. You could use your TV to take pictures of games. Was allegedly terrible as hell to actually play with, though.
When I discussed the Sonic Spinball prototype's origins, there's only one event (that we know of) where it could have been displayed. Other prototypes from this era can be traced back to CESes or E3s or very public, obvious expositions that have been widely discussed online. But for the period between 2001-2005, that's starting to look exceedingly difficult. When I say Sega turned up to a lot of events... well in 2002 they were showcasing unreleased games in five new locations every week. Even the Japanese seem confused about this one: Sega Game Party, a series of events where Sega showcased games in retail outlets. Pop along and you can play Crazy Taxi 3 before launch, or whatever. The following week, they'd move the booths to somewhere else. Every month or so the lineup would be changed - Sega didn't keep a good record of this (luckily the Wayback machine did), and the press didn't always report it. This was still a time when Sega's development studios were split up, and apparently Sonic Team had their own ideas: Waku Waku Game Party. Kind-of the same thing, but slightly bigger and only occurred in a couple of mall chains. And there were at least three of these spaced out across 2002 and 2003, as opposed to a continous tour. The other reason to care? it's where some of these "character chao" came from. You can't get these chao during normal Sonic Adventure (2) gameplay - they were distributed at events. Like Mew in Pokémon. Sonic Retro is currently very vague about this: "Special Sega event". But there were so many thoughhhhh. I also don't know if these were GameCube only or if the Dreamcast games got in on the action. Or indeed the Tiny Chao Gardens in the Game Boy Advance games - were they really all planning for this?
I would constantly see ads for these in magazines, which I thought was weird. You know those weird ads where stores could buy a page in EGM and just proclaim they had every import even before their release dates? lol
Moving this stuff out of the Sega World/any old venue thread as it's veering off topic One batch of Sega Game Cards that I don't see reflected anywhere on the English internet: See the odd ones out in all of these? They're for Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling people, specifically Cutie Suzuki, i.e. the one that got a Mega Drive game. She also got at least three of these cards, presumably as part of the same promotional deal? And apparently Sonic 2 had a card as well. Didn't think they were still making them this late. bonus stage: As per this post by Hiro, the technology was also used in Sega's company canteen for a bit. Game Card? Not anymore - "Gourmet Card" (グルメカード). Taste the feeling of company-designated food credit or something.
A bit of digging got me to five, but I'm no closer to finding out why they exist. While we're here, I found something else the other day: A "tosho card" (図書カード) which is apparently for buying books. I think this particular one might be from Sega Fes 2019, but of course there are others.
Posting this here to remind of what I said last year: https://segaretro.org/Talk:Phantasy_Star_Defender's_Pack!
Nothing ever just "ends" - there's always more. So these events that let you put Rare Chao on a GBA using the console's multi-boot gubbins. Turns out it's not the only case of Sega using this technology: At that first Waku Waku Game Party, Sega brought along this: "Game Boy Advance o Tanoshimi Download" (ゲームボーイアドバンス おたのしみダウンロード), where you could not only get a Rare Chao, but two stripped down GBA games: Minna de Puyo Puyo Toko Puyo Genteiban (みんなでぷよぷよ とこぷよ限定版), which is a boring, single player, score attack version of the game. ChuChu Rocket! Puzzle (チューチューロケット パズル), which is basically just the puzzle mode... but also with simpler GBC-style audio for some reason. Not to be confused with "ChuChu Rocket! Challenge" which also exists. These might need pages on Sega Retro.... but would it be for the GBA data, or the GameCube program that sends the data across? Or both??
Impenetrable. Remember Communication Carnival Yume Koujou '87?? Of course, how could you forget. (it's the event that caused the US Super Mario Bros. 2 to exist) This was organised by Fuji TV, and it was a reasonably big deal for them. So much so that they ran similar events over the coming years, again to showcase Japanese... "stuff". Trying to get information is like drawing blood from a stone. In 2003, for their 45th anniversary, Fuji TV would embark on a set of annual events, "Odaiba Bouken Ou" (お台場冒険王). They stopped after the 2008 one, but annoyingly decided to bring it back for 2023, which means all the search results are contaminated. Sega turned up with a booth called "Sega Game Island", and there's barely any evidence of their existence. They only brought three games along so it wasn't very special, but with the power of "spending too much time on this", I can pinpoint exactly where they were: https://web.archive.org/web/20030811072647/http://www.sega.co.jp/event/ https://web.archive.org/web/20030812151810fw_/http://www.fujitv.co.jp/bouken/boukenland2.html http://www.com01.co.jp/event/フジテレビ開局45周年-お台場冒険王/ Here (ish). Now imagine this information was useful.
M2 have quietly given that bespoke port they made of Darius for the MD Mini an expanded standalone release now. Do we care?
I've always imagined that when these pages (since they do need pages) were made that they would be GBA pages since you are playing them there. Also this bears the question, all these come from actual GC discs that could be dumped, yes? I equate to those DS PokeMon event cartridges that are actual cartridges that do nothing but generate said event PokeMon. Could probably just mention it on the Darius page.
I would imagine so. God knows what the discs are called though (except for the one above). That's the biggest blocker on making pages for them. Another issue is while there are dumps of these multi-boot games... I don't know where they're from. Supposedly PSO Episode I&II had some, and Billy Hatcher had others - the assumption is these dumps are byte-for-byte identical to what was given away at the events, but it's not absolutely 100% guaranteed. The GameCube software varies, after all. Clearly some work was done on these projects because there are English translations. Where's our GameCube experts.
I don't know too much about what PSO has, but the GBA download games are spread across. Billy Hatcher has five games, some of which I believe were shared with PSO. SA:DX has one to itself (The Cheese mini-game), and PSO plus the Adventures will put out a Tiny Chao Garden for you if no game is inserted.
Also another question for these people when they arrive: Is "multi-boot" an official term? I get the feeling it isn't (unless it comes from a technical document somewhere). My understanding is the concept of downloading games into the GBA's RAM in Japan is known as "Joy Carry" (ジョイキャリー) - US/EU manuals don't seem to give it a name (though I've only checked a couple).
I just checked my SA2B/SA:DX/Billy Hatcher/PSO1&2/Plus and they don't have a name for it explicitly, just refer to downloading mini-games to your Gamecube from your GBA using the link cable. I don't suppose the Nintendo GameCube Preview Disc offers a name?
Filling in some blanks, came across this: Touch Striker, an unreleased stylus-controlled arcade football game from 2008. You don't get many of those. The only surviving documentation is watermarked. Thanks lads. I assume the footage is from Amusement Machine Show 2008 - that seems to be the only event it was taken to. One thing did come of this project - Sega sued Level-5 (of Professor Layton fame) in 2012 for infringing one of their Touch Striker patents with the "Inazuma Eleven" series. It only took them 8 games to notice, and I don't think it worked.
There is an shot of the cab in this slide for a recent college lecture by Keiichi Matsunami... although I now notice the screenshot beside it has the same watermark as that flyer, which might not inspire confidence for how this is archived internally at Sega: I hadn't realised it didn't see any release at all, not even a limited one - in a way that makes it soul brothers with Psy-Phi.
Here's a neat little video on the ALLS I tried to do something similar ages ago, turning the Lindbergh into a gaming/emulation PC, but I didn't get past the BIOS issue. I don't think I tried a pre-installed SSD though, or tried legacy vs UEFI bott. That probably would have worked.
