Anyone know how many Sega games are on the Epic Store and Google Stadia? We're gonna need to make these pages soon.
Since I found that Fujitsu patent, I've been trawling through related Japanese patents by the same inventors. I came across this patent, which appears to be a ghost racing patent, and then this patent which appears to use Virtua Fighter characters for its example drawings. Sega was denied this patient, which was for apparently a very early way to save arcade data on an id card which talks to a server which saves your info. A friend found the US (English) patent equivalent here.
The ghost racing patent is clearly depicting the ghost cars seen in Time Trial Mode of OutRun 2. I'm guessing Sega would've been denied the card saving patent as the Neo Geo memory card, which could be used in MVS units would've been prior art.... maybe? Although that card clearly saves to the actual card rather than a server. What with Sega's own AiME, Bandai's BanaPassport, Konami's e-amusement, and Taito's NESiCA cards being regularly being used in Japanese arcades now (I believe AiME, Bana, and e-cards are even cross compatible now, or something), I get the feeling that'd been a pretty valuable patent to have.
They had also done a similar thing some years before, in F-Zero AX. The main thing they might have wanted to patent was probably the "talking to a server" part.
Initial D Arcade Stage and Derby Owners Club predate that when it comes to using cards by a year or so, not sure if any of them used server based storage, though. Depends what it means by "server" though, of course. If we're talking about something connected over the internet, or just part of the cabinet's local network, possibly data stored in the master cabinet with any others set to slave.
In a followup from a post from June, where a person at a fabrication company said these prototypes could not be released or destroyed because of something they contractually agreed with at Sega.... they have sold the prototypes to a collector... I'm pretty fucking angry with the dude who said "there's no way to preserve these and they will rot in our warehouse forever just because" and it turns out some guy can just obtain them through channels? I would have fought harder to have these preserved in that case, but it looks like they're being preserved anyway. It's just a shitshow to see people litterally sign up for a form and tell people he has to destroy things (seriously, he signed up to the forum just to say he was coincidentally destroying the Virtua Fighter cabinet fabrication documents) and reveal other information and be difficult to contact and have this happen. Overall, I'm glad it's in the hands of a collector now and we will get some good documentation from it, but fuck, why make it seem hopeless if it's not?
Money - it's what makes things happen. I wouldn't be surprised if that person posted the original images/info just to gauge interest from collectors (and put pressure on them by saying they could be scrapped at any moment). A collector then PM'd him with an offer and the cabinets disappeared from the warehouse. It's a more discrete way to offload old warehouse stock for a buck than to make a public announcement that it's for sale.
So Company of Heroes 2 is currently free on Steam to keep if you download before November 17th, 2019. "Why?", you may ask? Because of the "Company of Heroes 2 – World Championship 2019". Fucking Christ. With Sega Japan doing Puyo and Virtua Fighter tournaments all the time, when the hell are we gonna cover this stuff when we barely know that they exist? I think there have been Total War tournaments as well, by the way. Anyway, Steam Forums link for the CoH stuff: https://steamcommunity.com/app/231430/discussions/0/3356799628306334553/ EDIT: Just want to remind that CoH has a board game that was funded through Kickstarter.
So hey, I never got around to checking out Company of Heroes as I assumed it was another generic WWII brown-and-bloom shooter. I might have to check this out to add a free game to my library.
3, 2, 1 Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind/Comparisons "what could possibly go wrong" Other than Higan, SNES9x and ZSNES all producing slightly different colours. It's almost as if I don't totally think things through. How are we going to cope with 25 different versions of Lemmings? I dunno. These wikis are all about throwing things at walls and seeing what sticks.
So I did a thing. Donald in Maui Mallard by adding | otherformats={{NonSega|SNES|PC|GB}} to the bottom of the bob template, we can populate a database table for "non-Sega" versions of games. This means we can list all the ports. But it also means with a bit of wiki magic, we can generate lists of comparisons, just by typing {{NonSegaComparisons|Donald in Maui Mallard}} Which means we can compare every game on the wiki with their non-Sega counterparts without having to think. I suspect Retro CDN will become the screenshot repository for all non-Sega versions of games. I don't know if it's the best of plans to load up Sega Retro with SNES screenshots. Or maybe it is?
Wait, Maui Mallard wasn't released in America? NOA's exclusivity deal must not have extended to Sega Channel, then. I distinctly remember playing it that way as a kid.
As Hivebrain pointed out, separate pages is probably a dumb idea - better to have everything on one page so we can compare everything at once. That was the "look at all the versions of Lemmings" originally speaking. But anyway upload and make pages an' ting. And correct the many mistakes that will emerge from copying already existing databases because spoilers: the internet's not great at this.
Imagine if Sonic 1 actually did get those various PC conversions. Just imagine. English Wikipedia does note a Sega Channel release and cites this now-deceased article about it: https://web.archive.org/web/2014120...thecontrolpad.com/segachannel/segachannel.htm
you know when you middle click so much that it starts to hurt Here is the list of non-Sega versions of games. https://segaretro.org/Sega_Retro:Todo/Non-Sega_versions And this should be every other game for a Sega system: https://segaretro.org/Sega_Retro:Todo/Non-Sega_versions/test you'll noticed I've missed many hundreds. This could take several days. To join in the fun, here's Prince of Persia: Code (Text): | otherformats={{NonSega|Amiga|CPC|APPLE2|ST|IBMPC|FMTOWNS|GB|GBC|Mac|NES|PC98|SAM|X68|SNES|SCDROM2}} (format codes should line up with Template:Code2Format) I've been using MobyGames to build up this list. It is not ideal - their information is wrong and often incomplete, but it's probably(?) the best we have. If things need correcting or sub-dividing or whatever, do let us know. Japanese computers in particular will be under-represented. Also this is insane what am I doing with my life.
Brain hurts now. Comparison high scores as they stand right now: 240: Arcade 243: Windows 295: IBM PC compatibles 310: SNES 413: PlayStation Which I guess means statstically the closest you can get to having a Sega console without buying a Sega console is to buy a PlayStation. Ignoring emulation and unlicensed systems. Note: Many games still haven't been documented properly so the real numbers are higher. We have all the Sega games documented, but others have yet to step up to the mark when it comes to other platforms.
I'm still living out old console wars. https://segaretro.org/Doom_(32X)/Comparisons You've no idea how good you have it with Mega Drive emulation. Try emulating the Atari Jaguar sometime.
