There's a joyous option here - can you see it? "Display type". Left CRT, right projection Fighting Vipers has an optimised screen mode for projection screens (aka the Super Megalo 2). Most arcade games from this era let you adjust the in-game colours to suit dodgy monitors, but this is a bit more radical, reducing the contrast and changing... things across the board. I'm sure there's science behind it, but it probably means screenshots are inconsistent across the internet. It might also mean ports of the game are "wrong" - I would guess the artwork was designed with CRTs in mind but who knows. Perhaps projection mode is better suited to modern flat panels! Good job Fighting Vipers wasn't used as a base for any other games oh wait (and this is assuming emulation is correct) There's a lot of this in the arcade game scene. You don't just plug a cabinet in and turn it on.
I have done more research. The FBI launched its anti-drugs campaign in 1988, and in January/February-ish 1989 the AAMA announced that games would have "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screens. All the big players signed up, and in Sega's case I think the first game to include a screen might have been Golden Axe: (don't quote me on this - I've yet to check every game from 1989 and we don't know precisely when machines were released) Bill Clinton got rid of William S. Sessions in July 1993, so games released after that date usually drop his name. It's almost as if there are elections in America or something. In 1992 the US Environmental Protection Agency decided to copy the idea with their own screen: Game companies weren't expected to use both, and in fact half the industry doesn't seem to have bothered with this one. Usage had dried up by 1995. However it does feature in Daytona USA, so it's fully possible to see eight screens telling you to recycle at the same time. The first three games to use this screen are likey: - Relief Pitcher by Atari Games. A baseball game - Legionnaire by Fabtek. Final Fight clone set in the pleasantly named "Blood City" - B Rap Boys! by Kaneko. Also known as "1992 the video game".
Dangerous Sega in Copyright Infringement™ Older Super Monaco GP cabinets and ROM sets are full of "parody advertising" for Malboro cigarettes. It was a common thing in games - in my travels I found this image on DeviantArt. Philip Morris, the owners of Marlboro, were not pleased, and told Sega to remove things. They did. And then they sent out letters to operators asking them to buy conversion kits. and then they started giving money away this was a big problem, and it got bigger for Sega when it emerged that many of its operators didn't listen. They were sued by Philip Morris in early 1991 and it took more than a year to resolve. At one point the US Federal Trade Commission turned up because tobacco + children playing arcade games = bad. But the weird thing? Look online for Super Monaco GP cabinets and they are almost always old revisions. You can tell because Sega went overboard, replacing (most) of the other brands they plagerised and attempting to cover up the fact everything was clearly modeled on Ayrton Senna's McLaren MP4/4 (sponsored by Marlboro). You are probably more likely to encounter a version of the game that Sega, Philip Morris and the FTC wanted to remove. So yes, good old Marlboro holding good advertising practise to account. Or something. Not like this noise from 2010. Or the many other attempts they've made (and keep making) to circumvent cigarette advertising rules in Europe. Oh and yes they did remove the "Ma" from Marlboro but not hte "r's" from Fosters. This wasn't a problem in Japan at the time and Sega were really inconsistent.
Oh dear. https://picclick.com.au/Columns-game-for-Sega-Mega-Drive-Cartridge-Only-202867443619.html https://picclick.com.au/Columns-game-for-Sega-Mega-Drive-Cartridge-Only-202867443295.html Ozisoft became Sega Ozisoft mid-way through print runs. Here's the most minor of minor variants of Columns, perhaps only identifiable by the back of the cartridge.
And that right there is why I think that documenting games should always include the cartridges themselves (and external cases, which also had some variations).
Funnily enough, F1 Heavenly Symphony (Western title: F1 Beyond the Limit) had advertisements for Players Cigarettes present in the Canada circuit, as the track had in real life. Presumably no-one had told them it was a tobacco brand! They did go to the lengths of avoiding the Marlboro branding for the FMVs in the game though, either blurring it or using shots where it was only partially visible. It was one of the reasons why F1 games released later in the 90s only used footage from the French and British rounds in their FMVs - the cars ran without the branding and so little editing was needed. There was one other instance of an altered Marlboro logo sneaking into a game years later: The original Formula One on the PS1 had a hard-to-see billboard in Monaco, with a misspelling. The brand is barcoded everywhere else in the game. But hey.....that's a Sony game and not Sega so....
Sega's entire business used to be around marketing slot machines. Whatever happened to that? ... other than the Service Games empire splintering, gambling regulations and the Japanese arm's interest in jukebox distribution. And all the other things. And for this post to work you have to forget JPM International (although that's not exactly a hard task) Well it still kinda sorta exists in a roundabout way: one of the weird arms of Sega Sammy Holdings, "Sega Sammy Creation Inc.", produces slot machines for overseas markets, and last year they got their hands on a couple of Sega IPs. These are what modern slot machines look like, i.e. nothing like slot machines, but they still have virtual reels and gambling mechanics. It's a similar situation to modern pachinko machines - it's all about flashy lights and distractions to make lots of money. Sega can't sell these in Japan. Gambling with real money isn't allowed (except for when it is), so "Virtua Fighter Battle Genesis" is only being sold in three markets: - Macau - The Philippines - Vietnam that is to say, you're extremely unlikely to ever see one. In fact, I'm amazed they even bother making these things. It is probably the rarest Virtua Fighter game.
Hardware that is odd, forgotten or obsolete. "Nordic Quest" just connect your "NordicTrack Ski Exerciser" and game system. https://segaretro.org/File:NordicQuest_MD_US_Box_Front.jpg https://segaretro.org/File:NordicQuest_MD_US_Box_Back.jpg Wacky. I don't really understand how it interfaces with software - track and field games would be a safe bet but this is the wrong sort of equipment for that, surely? And anyway, what are the chances someone has this specific exercise machine from 1992? https://www.nordictrack.com/classic-pro-skier Oh, quite high. They still make them. Fair enough.
RE: changing logs mid-production. Except because Seirra likely packaged these games by hand, they used whatever was in stock at the time, meaning boxes and disks aren't guaranteed to match. Sierra were also selling this game between 1982 and 1986 for 3248092348 different platforms.
Idk where to post this but I just looked at Yakuza Kiwami 2. It has Virtua Fighter 2 and VirtualON emulated in the game. The games are located in the "m2ftg" folder, and the DLL files are the emulators somehow. Inside the "rom" subfolder are PARC archives, and similar to how the XBL/PSN Model2 games are distributed, there is a "rom_data.bin", "rom_pol.bin", and "rom_tex.bin". Looking at the VF2 archive specifically, it also has "ic12_13.bin" and an incorrectly labeled "ic12_15.bin", which are the program ROMs. Using a similar format to the IDOLM@STER games, the audio are HCA files within an ACB archive. There's also a FARC archive, which if extracted reveals a bunch of .fp and .vp files, but I am unsure what their purposes are. tl;dr I don't think ROMs will ever be hot-swappable in the Yakuza games
Today on "things misrepresented by the internet": the Teradrive. I mean don't get me wrong, "Tera Summit" could easily be about masked men with guns shooting at civiilans, or a place for vampires and werewolves to hang out, but if Sega were willing to host some sort of community event for the Teradrive, I think that might elevate it a bit higher than "niche machine nobody bought". It's a niche machine several people bought.
To add to the earlier discussion regarding the different shades of SEGA logos... Localized SEGA of Japan games on Mobile keep the SEGA of Japan light blue logo (and they are released through the Japanese "SEGA Corporation" publisher account). In contrast... the Localized version of PSO2 was available not from SEGA's Western publisher accounts but "SEGA Games Co., Ltd" (SEGA of Japan's publisher account) and even has its Terms of Service be based on SEGA of Japan's. Despite this though as you saw on the SEGA Retro page for PSO2, the game uses the dark blue SEGA logo on startup as well as on the game's website. This is particularly interesting as, while SEGA of America and SEGA Europe do have credits, they are not too involved in the release... Localization and Community Management had been outsourced. I suppose at this point, the dark blue SEGA logo is a form of consistency but why SOJ's mobile titles keep the light blue logo is beyond me at the moment.
More official logo guidelines for size, issued in June 1997: https://segaretro.org/File:DreamcastPressDisc4_Logos_SEGA_GUIDELINES.pdf >= 7mm < 7mm Fun fact: both of these (officially distributed) vectors have dodgy joins between the G and A, so they won't hold up well at higher resolutions anyway. They still mess that up today.
https://segaretro.org/File:DreamcastPressDisc4_Logos_STYLEGUIDE.pdf The official EU Sega Dreamcast style guide (which I thought we already had uploaded but I can't find it anymore) dictates that Dreamcast blue is Metallic Pantone 8183 and the official font is Frutiger. (and if metallic 8183 isn't available, you need to use Pantone 659 (69% cyan, 38% magenta)) Frutiger is also the font used by the UK's National Health Service. So it's quite literally a clinical font.
This video is from the same guy that found out who the Super Monkey Ball announcer. This video is about the decline of Monkey Ball, but I'm only posting this here because he goes to Sega HQ and therefore there us some footage of that.
https://segaretro.org/File:Monopoly_md_us_cover.jpg https://segaretro.org/File:Monopoly_MD_US_Box_AssembledinMexico.jpg https://segaretro.org/File:Monopoly_MD_US_Box_Back_Cardboard.jpg Sega of America started outsourcing video game assembly to Mexico, probably around 1994/1995-ish. Human rights groups raised concerns about the working conditions. Your game cartridges were probably put together by Mexican men and women working for less than $3 a day. The company involved took 95% of its revenue from manufacturing keyboards for Bloomberg Terminals. Which means it was apparently Michael Bloomberg's fault and he shouldn't be mayor of New York, or something.
