[Pirate Dragon]

Black Squirrel, on 08 April 2015 - 04:34 AM, said:

What do you think?

Asian Game Gear?

I'm thinking Asian Game Gear. Exceedingly rare variant if it is.

I've searched a lot for Asian Game Gear games on Singaporean and Hong Kong sites, never found one. Game Gear was highly pirated in the Far East, so I suspect that is what this is. The box design looks like nothing I've seen before in Asian or other region Sega designs, and the "Game Gear" font is one that I don't recognise either. The only official Game Gear games I find in Asia are imports, so I suspect that as GG was region free Sega never felt the need to make Asian specific games. Bear in mind that whilst PAL Asian MD software was compatible with EU MDs at the software level, they were incompatible at the hardware level (JP cart shape). So effectively Sega created a special 4th region for MD in Asia, therefore specific Asian software was required. As GG was region free then that made Asian specific software redundant. Still, I did come across an Asian specific GG hardware box before, so I still keep an open mind to the possibility of Asian region GG software, but I don't think this is it.

[Black Squirrel]

I've never seen any Asian Game Gear stuff either - that shot turned up on the US eBay (link)

This design was used for Asian 32X games:
http://segaretro.org...2X_AS_box_scans
and it's not too dissimilar to this very late Mega Drive box (the style is also seen with Mega Bomberman - I'm thinking mid-to-late 90s)

I'm thinking this is more... "West Asia" - more Middle Easty, Gulf states sort of thing. I keep a fairly close eye on Ruten for Taiwanese crap and I've never seen anything like this.


The thing about crappy bootlegs and multi-carts is that I've never seen one with an instruction manual. And there are thousands - many probably didn't even come with boxes. This looks too up-market.

Although actually, to be fair, I've not see many bog standard Game Gear pirates. They're almost always multi-carts or Master System conversions... unless I'm looking in the wrong places. This is the sort of caliber I'm used to - "1945", a year famous for laser shooting helicopters, apparently. Your guess is as good as mine.

[Pirate Dragon]

There's a thread about them on SMS Power. Looking through it I noticed another one;



The "M" is quite different to the Asian 32X and Mega Games "M", but the letter font changes depending on the letter's position (notice the two different "A"s in "GAME GEAR"), so maybe that could explain the difference. Maybe this really is an official Asian game, is it currently for sale?

[Pirate Dragon]

And another Ecco Tides of Time from a Thai forum;



The Asian WyWy Game Gear I came across before was for sale on a Thai forum too.

[Black Squirrel]

Yes that Ecco I posted is buy it now $24 USD.

There's not much of a pattern to things I upload onto Sega Retro, and that's because I often use picclick.com (which is like a handy dandy image-centric eBay search) to do a generic search for "Sega", and see what's been put on sale since I last checked (which is often quite a bit - eBay is popular). It turns up all sorts of wonders.


I have seen that Sonic & Tails 2 box before but didn't give it much thought. I can't tell if that box is the correct size - "resized" boxes turn up quite a bit. I don't actively look for Sonic stuff because I like to think others might do it for me, what with it being Sonic Retro filled with Sonic fans. One to explore, perhaps.

[Pirate Dragon]

I've bought it, so will open up the cart and see if it's legit or not.

[Truner]

Has anyone ever attempted hacking Saturn games, I know there's a hack that replaces Sonic 3D's Saturn music with the Mega Drive one, but that's because the game uses regular audio for the music. I'm thinking about replacing the music of Shin Shinobi Den with the music from Shinobi X, they both use the same type of files for sound, but besides trial and error, is there any other way to see how they would work?

[Pirate Dragon]

The Asian Ecco II (Game Gear) was legit. Same three language (English, Chinese, Malay) box and manual as late 1994/early 1995 Mega Drive and 32X Asian releases. Great find Black Squirrel! Everything scanned here;

http://segaretro.org...me_Gear_Version

[Black Squirrel]

You're a star

[MartiusR]

muteKi, on 30 March 2015 - 01:18 AM, said:

1. The 32X doesn't have a strict region lock, but it does have a frequency lock. A 32x that's been modded to switch between 50 and 60 Hz will run on any console -- otherwise you're stuck using it with a console with the same frequency. Any region lock baked into the cartridges is checked at the console level.
2. It's not as cheap as I seem to recall it being when I bought mine (which was around 7 years ago), though you can find American units still going in the $30-50 range which isn't too ridiculous. Boxed models are higher price but you shouldn't care about that.

3. No, unfortunately most 32X games are region locked (Chaotix is, oddly enough, a bit like the 32X itself, as the Japanese and US versions are the same cartridge, just with a check on the region of the console itself, while the European version is distinct), and there isn't a passthrough adapter that retains 32X compatibility. As much as I dislike advising the piracy route, you'd probably be a bit better served by getting some sort of flash cartridge. They're all more expensive than a copy of Chaotix (even complete copies) but aren't that much more, and are far more versatile.

It's been a while, but thanks for answer! I've made research for a some time and came into conclusion... That buying NTSC 32X (with cable and AC adapter) AND Knuckles Chaotix cartridge (NTSC too) will be cheaper than buying only PAL Knuckles Chaotix. It's... well, it's showing excactly, that it's only option to go. I'm wondering about buying these + the "main unit" of Sega Genesis... Because it'll be probably still cheaper than buying ONLY the PAL cartridge with Knuckles Chaotix. Yeah, it's THAT expensive.

On the other hand - I'm wondering if I'm not passing some boarder with spending so much money on one cartridge and one add-on. Not to mention that my family would kill me with a laugh (not that I'm too concerned with it) or worse, if they only knew, that I'm even considering such thing :P Oh, I hate dilemmas

Anyway, muteKi, in case of Everdrives (because you've mentioned about it), I'm quite curious about differences between them. They're generally quite expensive, but I've noticed, that there are really big differences in case of prices. For example, Everdrive on Stone Age Gamer (compatible with 32X too) is costing about 92$. While the everdrives on AliExpress have prices from 49.99$. Yeah, I know that the sources are completely different and not too comparable - but generally, what are the differences (despite cart shell of course :P) between them?

[doc eggfan]

Anyone noticed this before?





Same Character? Everyday trademen style Mario Parody? Or just same box artist being lazy.

[Black Squirrel]

Same artist being lazy is my guess.

[Xilla]

You wait 20-odd years for some new Streets of Rage stuff, then you get bombarded!

The planning documents for Streets of Rage 2 recently made their way online. In Japanese of course but you'll see quite a few things (and some nice art) which didn't make their way into the final game. Such as:

Spoiler

A sequence in Round 1 where the player was required to dodge a crashing car, - this would be right before the fight with Jack, a cutscene on Round 2 where your character boards the truck, a reveal in Round 3 where Vehelits (with 2 heads) is revealed to be an animatronic, a version of Round 6 where you have to fight army dudes with bazookas, tanks and survive what appears to be a helicopter bombing - followed by a fight against a guy with a lion's head.

And incase you ever wondered, the "R" in R.Bear indeed stands for "Rocky". That was his prototype name anyway!

[Black Squirrel]

Fantastic stuff, and they even put together a nice zip folder.

On to Retro this will go. Though I'll be leaving someone else to put it into context because I can't read Japanese.

Interesting also the use of "MK5". There was some debate about whether "Mark V" was a real codename or just something invented by Wikipedia (or whoever) - this confirms it was a real thing (I know the PCBs have "M5" but you can't always trust these things).

[Scarred Sun]

Black Squirrel, on 19 May 2015 - 09:50 AM, said:

Fantastic stuff, and they even put together a nice zip folder.

On to Retro this will go. Though I'll be leaving someone else to put it into context because I can't read Japanese.

Interesting also the use of "MK5". There was some debate about whether "Mark V" was a real codename or just something invented by Wikipedia (or whoever) - this confirms it was a real thing (I know the PCBs have "M5" but you can't always trust these things).

Dude, Mark V was very much a real thing.