General Questions and Information Thread

You mean this ad that's been hanging around the net for years
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76zRPVUTTbM

December 1992-ish, actually. They didn't start bundling Sonic 2 with consoles straight away, and... well most of the lineup in the background were released in 1992.


If you want to get really fancy, this was broadcast on TSW, the ITV franchise of the South West at the time. Which means, when Sega Retro is fixed and we start collecting Sega-related retail ads (because why not), there could be a good half dozen variants of this advert for other regions of the UK.


In slightly related news I noticed that Toys 'R' Us have got their staff to sing those jingles this year. It's pretty bad.

 

From the May issue of I/O magazine:

https://archive.org/stream/Io19835/IO_198305#page/n577/mode/1up

I think this might be a plea from Sega for companies to publish their games on Japanese home platforms. Dated May 1983, this pre-dates the launch of the SG-1000/SC-3000 and any Japanese Sega publishing deal I can think of.


p.s. the call was answered by Micronet, who published Flicky and Champion Prowres Special in 1984/1985. Pony Canyon also published some SG-1000 -> MSX ports but that was a bit later.



Feel free to use this collection of magazines to count the number of Japanese computers you've never heard of,

 

Someone want to translate the sticker for me please?

 

Rotate it, crop it, and then upload the image to one of the many optical character recognition websites on the net. Then use Google translate.

Until a week or two ago I had assumed the non-English ones would be crap - turns out that's not necessarily the case!

 

Should the Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap remake and Wonder Boy Returns get Sega Retro pages? They're not published or developed by SEGA, but like Shenmue III it's based on a franchise of which they (in this case partially) own the license. Also both are remakes of games that were originally published by SEGA.

 

Do they own the wonderboy license anymore? Their registered trademark on the name expired a few years ago shortly after they published the VC collection, and Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap has no mention of sega at all, and Bock claims he licensed the name and music from LAT Corporation, not Sega. Contrast to Shenmue III, where Yu Suzuki speaks openly about dealing with Sega.

EDIT: RE: Sega as a Publisher -- if we have pages for everything Sega Published, we'd have to have pages for things like FIFA and Battlefield 3.

EDIT AGAIN: For clarification, if you'd like to check, here is where you can check international trademarks: http://www.wipo.int/branddb/en/

under advanced, enter "Wonder Boy" as the text, and the classification as "9"

EDIT THE THIRD: Ok, since the last time I searched this, things have changed. Sega's trademark to "Wonder boy" in japan has changed from "inactive" back to "active."

However, the US trademark belongs to Cyberfront Korea Corporation.

Is Dragon's Trap coming out in Japan?

 

There's no Sega involvement, so no.

Shenmue III is borderline, because Sega holds the license. Although there will be an argument for a page regardless because some work on the title would have been undertaken by Sega when the first two games were in production.

We think Sega's more of a "distributor" in a lot of cases - these are games worth noting on the wiki, but they're not set for individual pages if Sega had nothing to do with actually creating the product in some way.

 

But there's a page for things like The Conduit...

 

Trademark != copyright.

Their trademark ownership determines whether someone else can make a game called "Wonder Boy".

Their copyright ownership determines whether someone else can make a game using the graphics, music, level design etc. of the original game.

 

Well that's demonstrably not true. I'm not trying to spaghetti-argue here, really. Rather, things get complex once you start to really get into the vast history of Sega.

But to bring it all around, I wouldn't say the dragon's trap remake or monster boy deserve pages, personally.

Sega never had a copyright on those wonderboy games. Westone did, which is why they were able to port them to non-sega systems. All sega ever had was a registered trademark. Which is precisely what is being discussed, because the game is WONDERBOY: The Dragon's Trap.

 

The end game is that it should be true - obviously there are many pages left to make. Although granted, it may never make sense to make individual pages for telephone cards.

We have a pretty big collection of Sega-published oddities, from Britney's Dance Beat to Killzone, and I'm sure there was a list of Sega/EA Japanese things somewhere. It's all in scope.

 

right, and that's what I mean. I have a Sega branded one of these:



There are sega-branded food items and clothing and board games. Obviously there has to be a line somewhere. The history of Sega is so vast.

(And, really, I didn't mean to get pedantic)

 

I did think about doing clothing once.

But you see I've been doing this job too long - it wouldn't feel complete until I had photos of every Arsenal shirt in the 2000/2001 Premier League season. Including the ones sold to the public. In every size.




We've actually got some Sega branded RF units on site. Amazingly it's important - in the UK they originally shipped Saturns with SCART cables, and people with old TVs wrote in to complain. They went back to RF at some point - we don't know exactly when!





It's all in scope and should be done... though that's not to say it's high on my list of priorities :v:





(btw we have a list of OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED SEGA SCREWS)

 

That's not an RF Unit. I would actually expect RF units on this site, because those are sega hardware.

That's a RF socket adapter. To make a better comparison - I also have a sega branded coaxial cable (it came with my Sega Channel), and I wouldn't expect that to be put up online. The socket adapter is more like the coaxial cable than an RF unit.

EDIT: Finally found an official name for that type of product, it's a 75 to 300 Ohm UHF/VHF Matching Transformer.

 

I know what it is, but that RF Unit was the closest thing I could find on short notice that has a page.

Connectors are within scope and if it's one of the things that came bundled with a Sega Channel install... it should be documented. "Here's all the things that came in the box" etc.



Don't think I haven't thought about making a "Photos of screws" category

 

To clarify - Sega Channel didn't actually come in a box to the customer, TCI had to come out and install it. I'm guessing sega sent their installers a bunch of equipment for them to install with, as the cable they ran from my Sega Channel box to the wall used a Sega branded, blue coaxial cable. I'm pretty sure that RF socket thingy came with my Sega Master System, as I've had it for yeeeeeeears and only had a need for it back when I had a faux-wood TV, which coincides with the SMS days. I've held on to both over the years because I thought they were cool; both are at my parents place, so if the wiki really is that anal, I could try and grab some scans sometime.

Regardless of derail, Dragon's Trap remake page: yay or nay? I shot Bock a message over twitter asking if the game would release in Japan, which, according to the trademark, would require some bit of Sega OKing the project, but he hasn't replied.

 

Doesn't seem to have a Sega logo, but the Dragon's Trap remake has this on the title screen:



And Wonder Boy Returns has this on the title screen:

 

Then they might qualify.

These are really borderline cases and I'm not sure I'm totally keen on fattening out the wiki with "kind-of related" games - for example, Ridge Racer RIIIDGE RAAACER on the Vita has the Daytona USA Hornet as a downloadable car, and I've been on the fence for years whether that would constitute a page.

But I suppose when you think Wonder Boy or Shenmue, you tend to think "Sega". Maybe more than the Japanese release of Destroy All Humans.

But then it's still not really a Sega product.





What's the nicest way of saying "maybe, but there are more important things to do and you should do those instead"