General Questions and Information Thread

I lack the skillz and OCR is failing:

https://archive.org/details/shining-force-bloodline-of-the-divine-dragons/page/n347/mode/2up?q=sega

When was this book published? This is Shining Force Shin Ryuu no Kechimyaku, something the wiki didn't know existed until today.

 

That's a Super Famicom controller designed specifically for playing Game Boy games through the Super Game Boy peripheral. As you can't play Game Gear games on SMS / MD there isn't an equivalent. You could use SMS / MD controllers on a Game Gear for player 2 in SMS mode via the Master Link Cable.

 

I think we need clarification @doc eggfan, are you saying you want a Game Gear shaped controller? If so, AFAIK nothing like that exists, but if you wanna DIY something you could probably hack a broken Game Gear into a controller, or put a breadboard into a replacement GG shell.

 

Yeah, a Game Gear shaped controller would be nice for playing emulated game gear games. I bought one of those super game boy controllers for playing emuated game boy games, and I thought it would be nice to have the equivalent for the Game Gear. It doesn't need to be a full size Game Gear shell, but just have a similar feel - similar dpad and similar button configuration. I wondered whether anyone else had already done it.

 

Some Japanese modder made a consolised GG with a modded SMS pad (added start button), but I'm not aware of a GG styled controller.

 

Because I like to hurt myself, I've spent the last couple of days adding more magazine reviews, particularly for Dreamcast games, because that's where a lot of the holes were.

One of the aims of the "let's aggregate lots of numbers" task was to prove or disprove a long standing theory - that the US was biased against "European" sports games, so would rate them lower, and vice versa (e.g. Madden rules, FIFA drools). But while ignorance can be a factor, from what I've seen, a good game will usually get good marks regardless of where it's released. It might not sell, but that's a different story.

I have encountered another ~Dreamcast mystery~ though: WWF Attitude/Reception

As I always say, the numbers are only vague estimates with plenty of error, but this is unusual - the British hated this game, the Germans loved it. When there's so much difference in opinion, it leads me to think there might be something specific about the German release we don't know about. A weird quirk, or something spooky?

 

Backreading back pages and they were also sponsor of Tein's rally team at the 1996 (ST185 Celica) and 1997 (ST205 Celica) seasons of Asia Pacific Rally Championship (APRC), which included stops in Indonesian and Australian tours of the WRC that year:



Helpfully, their 1997 car were also prominently shown in the cabinet's marquee. (The in-game version of Celica GT-Four ST205 WRC in that game is also not Toyota Team Europe's car, but Team Tein's; while their suspension for the illegal turbocharger ended that season, TTE went for the new Corolla WRC, though they did enter the Celica for several rounds when the Corolla wasn't yet ready.)


---

EDIT:

Probably a season change from being based on 1987 to 1988 (given 1987 champion Nelson Piquet is on the title screen), since Brabham sat out that season in an ownership change and March had some hype of being the "naturally aspirated champion" in 1987 (FIA held a one-off sub-championship for teams running naturally aspirated engines, vs turbo ones they were phasing out for 1989, that season). Video System's Tail to Nose also had similar playable team choices, too.

 

I might dive into this myself, but in case someone else is desperate:

Sylvester and Tweety in Cagey Capers was released by Time Warner Interactive in late 1994, and the consensus was... "it's fine". But apparently it used to be less fine - I've seen a couple of magazines claim they were given access to a "TecMagik version", so near completion that they may have even printed reviews of it (some of ours date back to May/June 1994).

Electronic Games even reviewed it twice:
https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:ElectronicGames2_US_21.pdf&page=68
https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:ElectronicGames2_US_25.pdf&page=88

The story seems to go that TecMagik was planning to release this game in the summer of 1994, and then... something happened, with TWI taking over publishing duties and putting out a better product. The game was seemingly first announced at Summer CES 1993 (although it may have just been mockups at that point), but versions were on display at Winter CES (January) and the following Summer CES 1994. 18 months between announcement and release suggests a troubled development for the time, which might be understandable considering the copanies involved (more on that in a bit).

A couple of years ago Hidden Palace released a prototype, and it's TWI-free:
https://hiddenpalace.org/Sylvester_&_Tweety_in_Cagey_Capers_(Oct_11,_1993_prototype)
(it used to be called "prototype B" - I'm guessing there's a good reason they changed the name)

I think this is mislabled. For one, other than some logos and copyright details, it appears to be largely the same as the final (which is to say, "just as broken"), and if the final game is dated late 1994... well, this is dated October 1993, which would suggest TecMagik sat on it for a year. That would be odd.

I'm not entirely sure what TecMagik's fate was, but having another publisher step in last minute doesn't suggest they were financially healthy. Granted, that publisher was Time Warner Interactive, and this is a Warner Bros. property, but when the game was still being previewed in the gaming press and taken to conventions across 1994, you wouldn't expect it to be a licensing issue. All signs point to TWI rescuing this one from cancelation - it's unfortunate they didn't think to save Steven Seagal is the Final Option too.

My gut instinct right now is that our prototype is newer than it claims, which in turn means I probably shouldn't make a wiki page until we get a better answer. Incidentally don't trust the ROM headers - they both claim December 1993, when TWI didn't get involved until mid-1994.


So why does the game kind-of suck? Well despite good intentions, TecMagik weren't too great at quality control - they put a lot of money into Andre Agassi Tennis, whose reception was... mixed, then Pink Goes to Hollywood, which is also not too good. Developers Alexandria would later give us Demolition Man and the "please make it stop" Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Rings. I guess tolerance levels were higher then, but when I look at something like Aladdin from late 1993, which redefined how cartoon-to-video game adaptions could be, Cagey Capers looks ancient in comparison.


The only interesting titbit is that it actually plays the "Merry-go-round broke down" theme used with Looney Tunes, as opposed to "Merrily we roll along" that was used in Merrie Melodies. I use the term "interesting" loosely, because it's not interesting at all.

 

Oh lads sorry I made a mistake.

https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:ElectronicGames2_US_24.pdf&page=78

three times.

 

US version of Sylvester & Tweety released in September 1994, UK version was due out September 22nd (TWI was even advertising it with a street date in the trade press), but I'm not sure if it slipped or not as it didn't chart until 1995, but TWI was "celebrating the release" of it with a competition in the Telegraph late October. They certainly put a decent amount of marketing behind it. I did look into what happened to Tecmagik before, it might have been mentioned in CTW, but I'm currently moving house so can't check at the moment.

Looking at the box made me notice for the first time that nearly all of TWI's MD & GG games were made in Ireland. Now I'm intrigued into finding out which company in Ireland was making Sega cartridges.

 

Information was buried in the wiki - apparently the game was finished in August 1993 but TecMagik lacked the funds to produce cartridges. It sat around until summer 1994 when TWI stepped in.

So I guess that prototype date might be accurate after all. They really did sit on it.

 

Food for thought.

On the wiki it notes that Taku Makino (that's the guy who sculpted Sonic, by the way) is credited on Golden Axe The Duel... but as "S. Makino".



It appears Sega Retro has no clue why he's credited with a S in The Duel, but did manage to connect the dots thanks to a Dengeki Online article that mentions him as the designer autographing a print in passing.

Since his given name is just one kanji (卓), I looked into the readings of said character and Wiktionary says that it has several; one of them being Suguru. This appears to confirm that it's a misreading of his name, but I'm not too confident. If you can read kanji, please tell me if this is correct.

 

This has turned up on archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/micro-mart-magzine-uk-issue-140-april-1991/page/136/mode/2up?q=sega
Issue 140 of Micro (Computer) Mart, a computer trade magazine I didn't know existed... which is impressive because they published 1445 issues between 1985 and 2016.


I thought it was odd that despite being in the wiki business for 15 years, I hadn't spotted this one before. The 2015 and 2016 issues are archived (and aren't of much interest for our purposes), but nothing before then is, and even if you go on ebay right now, the oldest issue you will find is #328, from 1995. Despite being a weekly publication, it's more or less a complete unknown.

Granted, there might only be a few years where this publication is useful to Sega (or NEC) Retro - it's a computer-centric magazine and most of it is adverts, but... there's some Sega reviews. Who knows how devoted to console coverage it was during the early 90s.

 

I'd call it a classified ads paper rather than trade, a bit like Auto Trader, but for computers. I didn't know they had editorial content, a few Sega reviews and a US Gold interview in that issue, nice find!

 

Obscure detail I just realised, that US Gold interview and the reviews were by someone who went by the name of "Henriques". Someone by the same moniker also edited MTV's teletext magazine Mega Byte. The games in both were also supplied by "Disk Drive" and "Telegames", so it's possible that the content on Mega Byte was also published in Micro Mart (or vice versa).

 

From what I understand, Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II is an enhanced port of the Dreamcast game Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2. I think the idea is the Dreamcast game(s) is Episode I, while Episode II is unique to the GameCube (and later Xbox).


I'm not sure exactly when this package was announced, but it seems the original message was interpreted as "Sega are planning to bring Phantasy Star Online to the GameCube", to which the question is, "what does that mean, version 1? Version 2? A theoretical version 3?". The English press aren't clear about that - it's just PSO on the GameCube. The situation was later made worse, as once Sega had something to show (Nintendo Spaceworld 2001?), they used the working of "Phantasy Star Online for GC". You'd have to wait a few months for the "Episode I & II" bit to come along.

But no matter, it's obviously just one product throughout, right?

https://archive.org/details/gamecube-release-catalog/page/n18/mode/1up

Maybe not! According to this old catalogue, "Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2" was planned for the GameCube, which suggests it may have been a straight port with no "Episode II" at all.

Alternatively, the catalogue is wrong.

 

Oh! I can answer some of that! PSOv1 was the original release, and PSOv2 that added Ultimate difficulty, upped the level cap, added a few QoL changes, and added two new areas - "Temple" and "Spaceship" - accessible only through Versus mode. PSO Episode I and II for GCN and Xbox added an "Episode 2" that featured the Temple and Spaceship areas as "VR" levels at the start of the chapter, then also added a few other VR levels followed by new regular levels "Central Control Area" and "Seabed" and a storyline tying them all together. Given the scope of work I don't find it likely that the original plan was just a port of PSOv2 to Gamecube? It's not impossible, however, and I'm willing to be proven wrong.

Another wrinkle to this is that our wiki claims "It is believed that the original intention for Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 was for it to be be released alongside and have the same content as Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II with cross-platform multiplayer support but the discontinuation of the Dreamcast lead to active development on the Dreamcast version to be stopped in favour of the Gamecube and Xbox version." however I've never heard this rumor before today? There is no source for the claim listed, either. It looks like this edit by user "Leon" from 2019-08-07 is where the claim was added?

Edit: They were available via VS mode, not via missions.

 

What do you mean by "a few other VR levels"? That they got boss fights?

 

This is probably wrong - Ver. 2 on the Dreamcast arrived more than a year in advance of the GameCube version (and indeed before the GameCube itself).