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Demo discs

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Black Squirrel, Aug 31, 2021.

  1. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    (I don't imagine there'll be many takers, but I didn't want to derail the SNES discussion in the general topic)

    Sega Retro has pretty much every Sega-related game documented (bar some really obscure arcade machines I can barely prove exist(ed)), but we're not very good at game demos. We've had a work-in-progress list for years, and I've started tackling a few properly in recent days.

    Demos accounted for:
    List of Mega-CD demo discs
    List of Saturn demo discs
    List of Dreamcast demo discs

    Demos not done (yet):
    Sega Retro:Todo/Demos
    (only tackling Mega-CD, Saturn and Dreamcast today but obviously they all need doing)


    I'm running into problems with the discs that are left:

    a) Many haven't been dumped, or are hiding on the internet
    b) Nobody seems to know what the contents are. Most of the Saturn's library never left Japan, so knowledge is generally thin on the ground
    c) I don't know what to name half of these - those Mega Power and Sega Pro CD discs in particular need their own pages, but I don't know if "Mickey Mania (Mega-CD demo)" is sufficient (or maybe it is?).

    I also don't know where some of these discs came from, and while I'm pretty sure I've verified all of these exist in the past, we haven't got scans and many photos are crap. And for the most part, the pages that do exist are little more than "this demo is a thing".

    Also note that some of the discs on that page... aren't demos at all. Other sites grouped them as such, but I don't know what a "Seaman Esa Disc" or a "Sabai Net" is. Do you?
     
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  2. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    A treasure hunt:

    - Dragon Ball Z Idainaru Dragon Ball Densetsu Taikenban (ドラゴンボールZ 偉大なるドラゴンボール伝説 体験版)
    - Harukaze Sentai V-Force Demo Ban (はるかぜ戦隊 Vフォース デモ版) 610-6564
    - Lunar 2 Eternal Blue Hibaihin Auto Demo (ルナ2 エターナルブルー 非売品 オートデモ)
    - Moon Cradle Taikenban (ムーンクレイドル 体験版)
    - Pocket Fighter Taikenban (ポケットファイター 体験版)
    - Real Bout Garou Densetsu Special Sample (リアルバウト餓狼伝説スペシャル サンプル)
    - Samurai Spirits Zankurou Musouken Sample (サムライスピリッツ 斬紅郎無双剣 SAMPLE)
    - Tekkyuu True Pinball Demo (鉄球 トゥルー・ピンボール デモ) 610-6222
    - Virtuacall S Taikenban (バーチャコールS 体験版) 610-7020
    - Yanoman Jigsaw Puzzle Catalog Vol. 1 (YANOMAN ジグソーパズルカタログ Vol.1)

    These are Japanese Sega Saturn demo discs that Satakore says exists. I've never been able to find evidence - no photographs, no ROM dumps, no official records. Given some were listed with product codes, I'd imagine they weren't made up, but I can't prove it either way.
     
  3. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    What is this thing categorized as?

     
  4. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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  5. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Sega had a few lines of "official" demo discs for the Saturn. In Japan it was Flash Sega Saturn, and in Europe it was Sega Flash. North America wasn't organised enough to have regular demos but there's still a handful out there.

    And they all (eventually) used the same front ends:







    (there's an earlier one too but getting matching footage from YouTube is trickier)


    This wasn't the case with the Dreamcast, nor most other platforms. Not that it's particularly surprising, but I don't think many people will be downloading gigabytes of demo discs to see this for themselves.

    It would be nice to at least know who made the music, since as these discs were often bundled with consoles, it'll resonate quite a bit with Saturn owners.
     
  6. Pirate Dragon

    Pirate Dragon

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    I really need to work out the codes Sega used on the discs. For example this one has three different codes. I think "610" is the product code for demos etc, seems to have come into use with Saturn, continued on Dreamcast.
     
  7. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I was hesitant to use the 610 codes because I don't know if it signifies the game itself, or the CD (label).

    [​IMG]
    They're used on some Mega-Tech and ST-V carts and this GD-ROM unit. Sense makes no
     
  8. Pirate Dragon

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    That complicates things .... more research required.
     
  9. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    https://www.satakore.com/sega-saturn-demo,,ST-14302G,,Saturn-Bomberman-Sample-Disc-Hibaihin-JPN.html
    http://redump.org/disc/62458/
    Saturn Bomberman Sample Disc

    So, a "demo" or a "Sample Disc"? My assumption, because I speak English, is that these terms were interchangable - that it's "here's a bit of a game to sample, now buy the full thing". Except running what I think is the dump... well, this is the full thing, or the biggest demo disc ever made.

    I think I've been misled. And not just with this game, but others too - I suppose the clue was similar file sizes and nothing in-game explicitly saying "this is a demo version". My gut feeling is that people have come into possession of weird looking discs and they've all been treated the same, be they demos, prototypes or final versions in different clothes, and because the accessiblity of dumps makes Saturn emulation a faff, initial judgements have sat unchallenged for 15 years.


    There have been issues with people mistaking "sample" for "prototype" in the past, but then you get dumps like this:
    [​IMG]
    Street Fighter Zero 2 Taikenban (essentially "trial version") calls itself a "sample" but it has modes turned off. And yet it also has more in it than what I'd expect from a demo - every character is playable, and it doesn't kick you off after a couple of fights. But then the character selection screen is just a text-based menu, so it's clearly based on non-final code. So the disc says it's a "trial", the game says it's a "sample", but it might be a prototype? It would be handy if we knew where this actually came from - if it was only for internal use, that might explain something.

    Is the Simon Wai Sonic 2 prototype a "demo"? I mean it only has four working levels and it was "demonstrated" but it never claims to be anything other than a build of Sonic 2.

    tl;dr confused because the internet lies, and I don't know what I'm doing
     
  10. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    When I was doing templates for Saturn games years ago I just put "Sampler Discs" on everything.
     
  11. MathUser

    MathUser

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    I remember them being called sampler discs too.
     
  12. Pirate Dragon

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    Also this late Asian MD cart label. I wonder if "610" is actually for the software on the media. I take it that GD-ROM is for Naomi, does it have a bios?
     
  13. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    It was originally for the NAOMI but from what I understand, the same (or similar?) units were used for any system with a GD-ROM drive, so Chihiro and Triforce as well.

    Honestly the extent of my knowledge are photos from Google image search - I've never seen any Sega arcade boards in person.
     
  14. Glaber

    Glaber

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    How is the Sonic Adventure 2 Demo disk not on the dreamcast demo disk list?
     
  15. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Because I forgot this was a thing. Sega Retro's still playing catch-up to Sonic Retro when it comes to pre-releases.
     
  16. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Evening

    I overhauled Sega Retro's handling of demo discs - now they appear automatically in Omni templates.

    Category:All demo discs

    There's quite a few. I had to comb over the full list this morning to implement the new scheme, and I filled in some blanks along the way.


    Today's specimin:

    [​IMG]
    SoulCalibur Tokubetsu Taikenban

    Since September 2021 little has changed - we still don't know where the vast majority of demo discs came from, but I had a lead with this one - there's a credit for Famitsu Wave.

    Famitsu Wave was one of the many Weekly Famtisu (Shuukan Famitsu) offshoots. The big difference was that Famitsu Wave was a monthly publication that shipped with a disc. What sort of disc? A... round disc - it was published for 13 years between 1998 and 2011 - the vast majority were DVDs (the whole magazine was renamed "Famitsu Wave DVD" in 2000), but older issues had CD-ROMs.

    [​IMG]

    PlayStation CD-ROMs. So was it originally a PlayStation magazine? I... don't know. My impression is it became a "general gaming + film/television" publication within a couple of years, but there aren't scans and I'm not Japanese.

    (you cannot comprehend how many games-related Japanese magazines have been published in the last 40 years, and how few of them are understood)



    [​IMG]
    But this exists, and is where the SoulCalibur demo comes from - "SoulCalibur Starting Guide". It credits Famitsu Wave in their pre-DVD years, and originates from around September 1999. I am guessing it's a stand-alone publication, which means...

    the off-shoot of Weekly Famitsu (that shipped with PlayStation discs) had a one-off off-shoot (that shipped with a Dreamcast disc).


    It's frustrating how little documentation there is out there. Look up any of the things mentioned in this post, and you'll just get listings on auction sites.

    "want to buy this thing??"
    "what... is it?"
    "1,000 yen"
     
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  17. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Okay slight amendment/tangent/whatever:

    There are about 20 PlayStation demos released with issues of Famitsu Wave between its beginnings in 1998 and early 2000. I'm not sure all of them have been dumped, though most have, so I checked a couple at random on the off-chance that there might be Sega coverage on a PlayStation disc.

    Sadly, the content on these PlayStation discs seems to be geared solely around PlayStation games, which is fair, if a bit boring. But for what it's worth, the content would have been great for the time - it's a mixture of game demos, memory card saves, and videos, the first issue having a demo of that new-fangled "Metal Gear Solid" game, complete with interviews with this lad called Hideo Kojima - it's bound to be interesting to someone.


    I'm not an expert in this field, but from what I recall the movies on "Western" demo discs would just be trailers, rather than behind the scenes videos with the developers. They can't show hoards - it's a CD-ROM after all, but you rarely (if ever) saw how video games were produced in the 1990s, so well done Famitsu Wave. I imagine the later DVD releases have a lot more of this kind of thing, though the closer we get to the present day, the less I'm interested.
     
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  18. Ted909

    Ted909

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    I did come across one of these just recently whilst looking for any shred of information on the Sonic Team Fan Thanksgiving event in December 2000, and there's some footage of it in there at the start:
     
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  19. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    The Japanese Wikipedia misleads - it's only had 12 years to update itself.


    Presenting the life and times of Famitsu Wave:

    [​IMG]

    Gekkan Famitsu Wave (月刊ファミ通Wave) or "Monthly Famitsu Wave" or "Famitsu Wave" launched in 1998. I'm led to believe it was very much a PlayStation magazine, and shipped with PlayStation discs... which is confusing because there was already a monthly "Famitsu PS" publication - you'd think they'd just put the discs there, but whatever.


    [​IMG]
    Almost certainly because the PlayStation 2 was now a thing, the magazine was relaunched in mid-2000 as "F.Wave" (or again, "Famitsu Wave" (ファミツウウェーブ) but now we're using katakana), swapping out the PlayStation CD-ROMs for DVDs.

    This publication apparently didn't perform very well. While still partly game-focused, F.Wave appears to have dipped its toes in technology as a whole, and it was all a bit confused, so...

    [​IMG]
    ...three months later, a new relaunch. Now it's "Game Wave DVD" or "GameWaveDVD", and we're all about the games. I'm not sure whether F.Wave is in the scope of Sega Retro, but Game Wave DVD definitely is.

    [​IMG]
    After about 25 issues, Game Wave DVD changes its name to (Monthly) "Famitsu Wave DVD" (ファミ通WaveDVD) in 2002, but crucially continues the numbering scheme, i.e. it's not a full relaunch.

    [​IMG]
    In 2010 the name changes again, just becoming "Famtisu Wave" (it still comes with a physical DVD though). After about a year under this name, the magazine is cancelled. These latter two years aren't covered on the Japanese Wikipedia.


    So that's:

    Gekkan Famitsu Wave (1998-2000) (publication #1)
    F.Wave (2000) (publication #2)
    Game Wave DVD (2000-2002) (publication #3)
    Famitsu Wave DVD (2002-2010)
    Famitsu Wave (2010-2011)


    It is probably fair to say that by 2011, it was no longer novel to have your video game news presented on a DVD - you could find better, and more up-to-date coverage on the internet, and with publishers Enterbrain still running Weekly Famitsu, it's just pointless duplication. But it does mean there are 11 years of DVDs whose contents may fall into the scope of Sonic/Sega Retro (in addition to actual scans!), so that's fun.


    If you're wondering what happened to the other publications:

    - Famtisu PS was replaced with "Famitsu PS2"... and then Entebrain found themselves publishing "Famitsu PSP", "Famitsu PSP + PS3", "Famtisu PS3" and "Famitsu PlayStation+" at various points over the following decade. It all died in 2010.
    - Weekly (Shuukan) Famitsu continues. Its 1778th issue will be published this Thursday.
    - There were other branches of Famitsu, though none quite as awkward as this one.
     
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  20. Ted909

    Ted909

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    Unless they just couldn't be bothered to come up with another name around that point, GameWave in particular seems to be connected with the Famitsu television series' third incarnation (which began as Famitsu Game Catalog)
     
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