General Questions and Information Thread

This is an aside, but, "PS VR2 “advanced features” make PS VR games incompatible, says Sony".

Is there any way we can bug the shit out of Sega to make their TWO games (Hatsune Miku: VR Future Live and Space Channel 5 VR Kinda Funky News Flash!) compatible through a patch?

 

Well for Space Channel we need to ask Grounding, not Sega.

 

This did remind me to put up a general interest page for VR on Retro that had I dashed off but never published ages ago - though god knows if Sega will ever meaningfully bother with the technology again, after all of their previous efforts with it didn't exactly set the world alight/went unreleased/were forgotten

 

GameCentral/Archive/2003
And then we became the best GameCentral resource on the internet.

 

So you know how we apparently can't have games in boxes anymore because it costs too much or something?



Medieval II: Total War, from 2006.



And its five UK re-releases from 2007-2010, which saw the game go two budget levels deep before... coming back up one (???). And there's more minor differences than just PEGI ratings. Also bear in mind they were selling this game bundled with the expansions too.

Does this happen with other parts of the world? Yes - some of these games were very popular, and there might be more variants we haven't seen, and it's particularly common around this period when PEGI swapped out its icons twice in the span of two years. It's more proof that just because something looks like it's documented, doesn't mean it is.


As for if the software changes - it can... sort of. Often you find the game itself is untouched, so you get the same installers and whatever, but extra things on the disc, such as digital manuals or promotional catalogues can be updated. I wouldn't put any faith in having a full collection of properly dumped disc images online.

 

(I set out to fix some of the missing dates, which is why I'm jumping around)

An old mystery of ours:



The Athletic Scale, a device released at some point for some reason. It has the weird Sega logo - the one nobody understands.

I was trying to at least narrow this down to the nearest decade, and a brief check on Google images landed me a rather revealing photograph:



"Sega Inc".


What's an "Athletic Scale"? Well it's like a strengthometer, except rather than hit something with a hammer, you pull and grip and twist some sticky-out metal bits. It's an American invention credited to the Mercury Steel Corporation, based in Detroit, Michigan, with the first models being sold around 1947/1948. Apparently they had seven different models including simplfiied tabletop versions, and the company later produced a thing called the "Quizette"

https://i.imgur.com/ZgDXtbj.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Q8okDTt.jpg

(Owls again? Yeah I think there were former Mills employees in the business)

Mercury Steel was still trading in 1952, but after then... who knows. It might have changed its name to something more... amusement-esque, but I don't think it matters too much to us.


Anyway I think, much like the Sega Bell, the design of Mercury Steel's Athletic Scale was copied and produced on the cheap in Japan after the original manufacturers had stopped caring. "Sega Inc." was the trading name of Nihon Kikai Seizou, which might suggest the Sega Athletic Scale was an invention of the early 1960s - prior to the creation of Sega Enterprises Ltd. in 1965. It's probably a product of their "theiving period", so is something the modern company isn't likely to dwell on - as to why there's a different Sega logo... I can't say, although the above example was found in the UK - maybe a distributor got involved.


Incidentally that machines accepts 10p coins. I don't know what that means - "10p" coins didn't exist in the early 1960s, you had florins (two shillings) because it's pre-decimalisation. The 10p coin was brought in to replace the florin in 1968 (with the same size and weight, so no modifications needed), but it was made smaller in 1992... which either means the machine was modified since then, or can't be used unless you have old currency.

 

Google is shutting down Stadia. Go! Go! Wiki Rangers!

Last time I did Stadia stuff was when I realized that Humankind was on Stadia and then archived everything then (even Monster Boy/Wonder Boy VII, which still doesn't have a wiki page) but you know, a second pass through by others parties is always a virtue. Plus Sega could have released other games by then.

 

Phil Harrison's CV is looking fun now - early PlayStation 3, Xbox One VCR, and now Stadia. Is there a job going at Atari.

Full set of Sega Stadia games (I think):
Football Manager 2020
Humankind
Judgment
Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 - The Official Video Game
Panzer Dragoon: Remake
Streets of Rage 4
The House of the Dead: Remake
Valkyria Chronicles 4

I'm not aware of any significant changes over their regular PC counterparts, but it would be good if either of Stadia's two users could have a look. It would be annoying to discover there were minor differences five or ten years down the line.


... though the platform presents issues that almost certainly won't be overcome by its closing date. If you wanted to take a screenshot of the title screen for example - the picture's going to be compressed to all hell unless your internet is perfect. IIRC even Digital Foundry gave up on that dream.

 

Only missing Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom as far as I know.

Anyone know if Valkyria Chronicles 4 title screen is different since it launched as "Valkyria Chronicles 4: Complete Edition" on Stadia?

 

for some reason, on the sonic pocket adventure on both sonic and sega wiki pages yuji naka was the superviser instead of supervisor

 

I took a break from Harmony tonight and scanned a couple of pamphlets instead.

Mega CD pamphlet

Dreamcast pamphlet

NEC LaserActive LD-ROM2 pamphlet

 

More clues they had problems launching the Mega-CD - no firm release dates for any of the software, just two or three month windows for when games were expected to arrive. Even if they ended up being pushed back, Sega usually had a precise dates for games scheduled to arrive within a few months.

The Mega-CD supposedly struggled in Japan and these early games show you why - Sega managed to launch the console without any first-party titles, and when they did release a game, it was Wakusei Woodstock: Funky Horror Band, which I'm told is pretty bad (and barely makes use of the hardware). This was the excuse used for delaying the Western releasses of the console - the software wasn't good enough.

 

https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_Pocket_Adventure

https://segaretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_Pocket_Adventure

Here's the links if someone wants to fix it.

 

lol, that's pretty funny.

 

I remember reading that early Mega CD developers were told to programme for the Mega CD game as if it was just a Mega Drive with a CD-Rom title, which 'may' explain why the early games made no use of the Mega CD extra hardware, not even for saves or PCM sound effects. The Mega CD launch ranks up there with the PS2 in Japan, poor launch software and no 1st part titles, well I guess one could count Fantavision.

The Mega CD sold really well in Japan at the start, it just didn't sell great latter and I blame SEGA Japan for that myself, they barely looked to make any use of the system and didn't look to use the ASIC chip and port the likes of Outrun, Super Hang-On, Space Harrier, AB 2, GF 2 to the system if it all they were, was using the Mega Drive base versions, just with full use of the ASIC chip and then use the PCM chip and the CD Drive for Arcade perfect music and sound effects. Just having Arcade perfect of Outrun music would have been a big deal back then, never mind with ASIC scaling. Soulstar and Batman Returns on the Mega CD showed what could have been done, and it was a shame SEGA never looked to have better Mega CD versions of Moonwalker, Strider, Ghouls N Ghosts on the Mega CD with more animation and Arcade perfect sound effects and music. It would have been great to have a super port of MD Strider on the Mega CD with all the Arcade game speech, Arcade perfect sound effects and remixed OST, just like Final Fight.

Its to SEGA America's credit that they were the 1st to really showoff what the Mega CD could do and also made a lot of hype for the system. I imported the Mega CD and it cost me a fortune, but gave up on the system and was gutted and disappointed with the system (I was hope for ASIC Mode 7 killing effects) but the early Japanese stuff was poor (other than Lunar) but in the run up to the USA launch got really hyped with all the planned titles and then in the UK Mean Machines gave way a video showing off Mega CD games and a early preview of Batman Returns with the most amazing scaling effects I had ever seen on a system. So I saved up for a Pal Mega CD and also got that and fell in love with the system and then just a little later, Datal brought out the CDX and Batman Returns hit the USA; Never before had I seen such impressive use of scaling and rotation in the home, not even the Neo Geo or FM Towns could match it.

Batman Returns was like having a State of the Art Arcade game in your own home and thats what the Mega CD really should have been about. Its such a shame only CORE, GameArts and the genuis that is John O'Brien looked to use the ASIC chip to it's max, thought they was nice ASIC effects in Switch and F1 BTL to be fair. I love the Mega CD (its my 2nd fav system after the Saturn) but it could have been so much more, if SEGA Japan really looked to use it.


Sorry to talk on a bit, BTW.

 

Yeah the Japanese first party release list for Mega CD is pretty weak, with a lot of filler. They managed to release 5 different CDs containing Mega Drive Game Toshokan download games as they were small enough to load straight to RAM from the disc, and most of the later releases were just localisations of western developed games. I really wanted one when it first came out in Japan, a local shop had one on display not long after with just the bios showing off it's sprite scaling and rotation tricks, it was really impressive for the time, but it was just way too expensive. By the time that the more impressive software started coming out that made use of the hardware next gen had already rendered it outdated ... Soul Star released after the Saturn in Japan for example.

 

Soulstar came too late in the west too. We really should have been having ASIC spirit scaling games from SEGA Japan very early in. Not even the Neo Geo could offer the effects Batman Returns was handling at a Hardware level even Sonic CD was a letdown for me in ways; That should have been a game to show off the ASIC chip and the Mega CD. Yet there's no scaling effects in-game (when very boss should have made use of the ASIC chip) the game makes no use of the PCM sound chip for better sound effects either and the bonus sections looked so poor and were so slow and worse still didn't even use the ASIC chip to scale the UFO's. It's sad to say the best use of the ASIC chip in Sonic CD is on the title screen cloud cheap and the bonus D.A Garden.

If you had SEGA Japan having its top teams making ports of the likes of Outrun, AB 2, Super Hang-On with scaling and music like that seen in Batman Returns, it would have a big deal in late 1992 and 1993 IMO. All that said mind, I still love the system when it was used it was a brilliant system and way better than the PC Eng CD-Rom IMO

 

Recently wrote the history of Sega development history up on Wikipedia (not Sega Retro sorry), and it was fun to compile all the history with all the sources that we have so far.

 

Great work trip