General Questions and Information Thread

That reminds me... i heard many moons ago as a kid of a strange service Sega once used back in 2000... Forgot the name of it but one day they decided that players would earn free money if they played the service for long enough or won enough games. Inevitably people exploited it. It was a funny yet sad story.

 

"Sega.com" is such a horrible name to look for. Thanks dot com bubble.


Around 2000/2001, Sega.com was put in charge of network code for Dreamcast games in the US. When that went tits up, they tried to flog their expertise onto other publishers. They were so successful with their attempts on N-Gage that Nokia bought the company, but before then...



Capcom's Auto Modellista (the one with the cel-shaded graphics) was set to use Sega.com's "Sega Network Application Package" (SNAP) system for its online bits. Here's IGN's take, but it was reported in a few places.

Problem: no versions of the final game seem to mention Sega anywhere. Capcom were very late to the "you should actually credit your developers" party, so there's a lot of pseudonyms in the credits roll, but no explicit mention of Sega.com helping with the network code.


Supposedly after its original 2002 Japanese release, Auto Modellista was reworked for its 2003 American one (before being re-released in Japan under the name "US Tuned" - this practise doesn't just happen with Sega!). I'm wondering if the online portion was a casualty of this process (though I should stress, it still shipped with an online mode, just maybe not a Sega-backed one?).

Several of Capcom's games dating back to 2000/2001 had online functionality so it's not like they were new to this. Though I'm not sure how much left Japan.


EDIT: just five more minutes. That's all I needed:
https://archive.org/details/auto-modellista-ps2-hiresscans

 

Do you see how this works - I spend ages writing a post about how I don't think Sega were involved... and then I find not only were they were involved, they were involved in other games too.

Although to be fair, in Sega.com's case, its SNAP technology was only used in the US PlayStation 2 version of Auto Modellista. No other regions had it, no other consoles had it, and most of the footage online is either non-US or non-PS2. Nobody seems to have uploaded a full run of the US PS2 version, so I have no idea if Sega are credited.

But I could check the manual:
https://archive.org/details/ps2_Auto_Modellista_USA/page/n33/mode/2up

And there's a SNAP logo and a credit for "Sega-Access Co., Ltd." and... oh, we didn't know about that one.

Access made all the Dreamcast web browsers outside of the US, and if you spend any time with the console, its logo tends to turn up. Well turns out Sega and Access got together and made a company, with the view of exploring multi-platform online technology. Auto Modellista is one game that benefitted.

Not that I'd know - the PAL version doesn't appear to have had online support... and only shipped on PS2... and CeX is charging £38 for a copy. Also apparently it's not very good, although given so much differs between regions (including physics) who can say for sure.


Anyway Sega-Access are credited in three more Japanese Capcom games:

- Biohazard Outbreak
- Biohazard Outbreak File #2
- Monster Hunter

and one by Bandai:

- Kidou Senshi Z-Gundam: AEUG Vs. Titans

Chances are Sega was only tangentially involved in these, but hey, things that happened.

 

If we're going to talk about weird instances of Sega not being properly credited, I have a good one: The Japanese version of Monsters Lair on the PC Engine CD. The North American version properly came over without the Wonderboy name, as just "Monster Lair." This is because, famously, Sega had a trademark on the name "Wonder Boy" until very recently, while Westone owned the code. Pretty much every other Wonder Boy game prior to Monster World IV was ported to multiple systems, just always without the Wonder Boy name.

EXCEPT The japanese version. It fully retains the name "Wonder Boy III." In fact, it's the only instance prior to the Sega Ages PS2 collection of the name Wonder Boy ever being used on any other non-sega console:



It's only on the cover, the in-game graphic omits the "Wonder Boy III" part. Neither the manual nor the CD Jewel case ever mention Sega anywhere on the cover, not in english nor Japanese. I wonder how on earth NEC was able to publish a game with Sega's trademark without crediting them.

 

An update to this situation.

So I'm setting up all my old consoles and when I get to the PS3 I download a game from the store and then go "I should look at DOA.". Lo, and behold the PlayStation Store did the opposite of the 360 store. DOA5U is there in "all" its 550 DLC glory. For some reason on the PlayStation Store DOA5U got to stay and Last Round went up as a page by itself saying that it has no DLC. This means we can at least make a DLC page for Ultimate on the wiki.

However, as I've come to learn, Core Fighters, the free version, should have been counted as its own game all along since it does have DLC (with some not available for purchase anymore), but on top of that, Last Round Core Fighters has already superseded it, but I'm assuming it's a simple name change and nothing else. So for example, Akira is DLC for Core Fighters. How much did he cost? Who knows! The store says he isn't available for purchase anymore. So unless we can find archived info for such things we are SOL on that front.

The kicker is that even though Ultimate stays intact on the PS3 store, names still changed for DLC when Last Round came about, so you'll be seeing DLC titled "Last Round" from 2013 when we know Last Round is a game from 2015. The only way to find out its old name would be through the 360 store which I talked about in my above quote. Amazing.

So anyway, "Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate: Core Fighters" and "Dead or Alive 5 Last Round: Core Fighters" now need their own pages on the wiki, because one of them (or both) has 152 pieces of DLC (and maybe some were delisted, who knows) and some of them are unique to the free versions. Joy.

 

I was interested in playing the new 2024 source port of Doom 1 and 2. I remember playing Doom back in the day on my old Pentium, but I'm not sure I ever got around to finishing it all. I might even have only ever had shareware Doom, it's been too long, I can't remember. I think I even played a bit of Saturn or 32X Doom at one point, but pretty sure I haven't played it all from start to finish, and I certainly haven't played Sigil or Legacy of Rust.

I fire up the new port in steam and I opt to use an xbox controller. I know keyboard and mouse is the best way to play Doom, but I don't feel like sitting up at my computer desk where I work all day, I just want to kick back on my bed with controller in hand. But I was horrified by the standard controls - left stick for forward, back, strafe left and strafe right, right stick for turn left and turn right, and the spongy right trigger for firing. It felt really unnatural - is this the standard FPS layout today? I can imagine it might make more sense when the right stick is also used to look up and down, but Doom is too old to have that feature. It felt really weird to have forward and back on a separate stick from turning left and right. It's not how I remember playing Doom in the past, didn't we hold shift to strafe?

I went into the options menu to change the control mapping, but there were very limited options on what you could change. After lots of messing around, I finally got a control scheme that felt right. I used the Steam controller settings to swap the left and right stick, so that the left stick now turns left and right. I then used Joy2Key to map 'W' and 'S' to the left stick up and down to move forward and back. Then I mapped the right stick left and right to the L and R shoulder buttons for strafing. I then used the in game button mapping options to move the fire, push, run and map buttons to the face buttons.

After doing all this, I then realised I could pull out my retro-bit 6 button mega drive controller (with the extra shoulder buttons), put it into x-input mode, and now I'm playing Doom with Saturn controls. Feels much better now.

 

That's been the norm since 2000's Alien Resurrection.

 

I guess it shows how long I've been out of the loop when it comes to FPS games. I kind of assumed that turning both sticks to the left would just give you a twice as fast left turn, and you'd still hold a (shoulder) button down to shift into a strafe. I guess I'll have to learn to get used to it if I find time to keep working through the Doom series (or just go back to keyboard and mouse, I suppose).

Anyway, if you want Saturn/32X style controls in the new Doom, it is possible with a fair pit of faffing about.

 

Alien Resurrection was the game to introduce that control scheme, but at the time everyone hated it. Then Halo was released, which also used it, and now suddenly everyone was okay with it.

 

Continuing from this thread;

Another one to look out for from this period; Massive!

From Dave Perry ("Games Animal", not the developer);

I could only find a few clips from this show on YouTube, none of which included the games content.

 

Inconveniently enough it does look like there are lots more shows uploaded from the following year, when Massive had already finished and been replaced by a bunch of other shortlived programmes in that time slot on ITV. I don't have the will nor time to look through all the episodes of Telegantic Megavision or WOW though (FWIW the latter looks most likely to have any gaming-related content, even if not actual reviews or coverage).

 

Massive! was the older kids, music-orientated section of Scratchy & Co. (like CD:UK was to SMTV Live), so you might be better off looking for that instead (the 1995 series, i.e. the first one)



Although from the looks of things, nobody's recorded that either. Guess everyone really was watching Live & Kicking on the other side.


...although I actually remember this one, which is more than can be said for Telegantic Megavision and WOW. Then again I also remember Anthea Turner exploding on UP2U and I wasn't even alive when that happened, so TV was weird in the 90s.

 

Some of the early third-party Dreamcast games credit Sega staff, presumably because mysteries were still being solved with the development pipeline.

One such game is Rippin' Riders aka Snow Surfers aka Cool Boarders Burrrn, and... it doesn't make things easy:


(22m)


Not many people play these mid-tier Dreamcast games online, so right now we're forced to play them ourselves. Which is great when it works:



One of Incoming's special thanks is too big for the screen. But with the power of... looking for it in a hex editor, I can reveal to the world that "AGINEER INTERNATIONAL D" is actually... "IMAGINEER INTERNATIONAL DIV.". What a thrill.

 

Today on "weird stuff from archive.org"

A 1993 catalogue from Spectrum HoloByte
https://archive.org/details/the-199...oftware-catalog-1993/page/n13/mode/2up?q=sega
Two undocumented Sega Sports games for PC - the imaginitively titled "David Robinson NBA Action" and "Joe Montana NFL Football". The latter not to be confused with the earlier PC game.

Neither seem to have been released, but hey, screenshots and box art.

 

Doom had a strafe key, yes, but it was always intended to use mouse to turn with. In the original, you can play the entire game with just the mouse, forward and back moves you, too. There are enemies and bosses later in the game that would be outright impossible if you cannot circle strafe, which requires you to be able to strafe and turn at the same time. Basically all the "boss" encounters in doom 1 and 2 require circle strafing.

 

I thought Sega had stopped licensing out their games by then, but maybe that was a regional decision rather than a global one. Of course, as these never got released it's still possible that it became a global policy. Would be interesting to see if there's any more info to find out about these.

 

But with the Saturn/32X style controls, I can still use the shoulder buttons to strafe and the stick to turn at the same time, or am I missing something? To me, when using the controller, it feels more natural to have forward and back and turn left and right on the same stick rather than on different sticks.

I'm sure it's a different story once looking up and down is added to the mix, but that's not an issue for original Doom. Even so, I could imagine a control scheme where the left and right on both sticks are both mapped to turning left and right, and if both are engaged at the same time you turn faster (to make up for how controllers are slower than mouse). Strafing left and right then remains on the two shoulder buttons.

 

ooh an addendum. 17 blocks of memory you say - I wonder what will happen if I don't have that.


All you have to do to fill up the Saturn's internal memory is save a city in SimCity 2000. So there we go, a copy of the Bahamas, make sure there's no cartridges plugged in and let's break MechWarrior 2, because why would they print an addendum if this didn't break MechWarrior 2??


... it doesn't break MechWarrior 2. In fact, there's even a password system specifically for those who didn't have enough memory to save. What a gigantic waste of time. But I've taken the screenshots so I might as well post them.


Do let me know if any Mega-CD, Saturn or Dreamcast games fail spectacularly if they can't save. There's got to be at least one, surely.

 

Mentioned this earlier this year. So it's not confirmed if this happens on Saturn, but Lemmings 3D apparently has some poorly written save code which ends up corrupting other saves depending on what you're doing. This is something I've only seen mentioned once, but it makes me wonder what's going on under the hood.
https://codiekitty.com/LEM/Oddities/index.htm