Sega sold a lot of toys and stuff in the past... it's amazing the quantity of things this company made in the past ... I can't tell exactly the number of times my jaw drops when I stumble in this things while researching in the web... most of them were never seen before in the West...
Time for a Sega Jigsaw-off. Who wins? This set of Chocoball (??????) jigsaws? Chocoball is a brand of... chocolate balls in Japan. Sega did some merchandise for this thing around 1998 for some reason (or rather, "Sega Sunlike" did. Sunlike looks like something Sega absorbed?). They seem to have surpressed the Sega brand with this stuff, but it's there if you look. Yes we will have to document mascots for Japanese chocolate at some point. There are more Chocoball jigsaws than I have listed here. or... This jigsaw of James Dean from 1994? I don't know if this is part of a set - it genuinely looks like Sega had a hand in releasing a jigsaw of James Dean in Japan for some reason. The man died in 1955 and I'm not sure how much of a cultural effect he had on 1950s Japan, but hey. I am fairly confident there are more Sega-related jigsaws than 32X games.
Well... there's large communities of "Elvis Presley" fans and impersonators, and also "Rockabilly" style fans with those classic hairstyles of the 50's in Japan... so it makes some sense...
You may be aware of Usenet posts on google groups which are a great source of pre-www online info. It's quite US-centric though. In the UK there was CIX. Surprisingly they're still going today, with all of their threads going back to 1987. Free sign-up, but limited to 5 "forums", so if you start getting time-outs on posts, then you need to manually delete forums (you get subscribed to them when you read a forum). There was quite a tech orientated culture on there, so lots of devs etc ... I found quite a few interesting posts by people such as Ian Oliver of Cross Products (such as they sent 1500 Saturn dev systems to SoJ). You can also read the thread about the Saturn's UK release "Saturnday", with insiders tipping off ahead of time. I haven't had a proper search yet, but probably lots of info to be mined from there, and quite a few Sega specific forums.
I think I looked once (after watching this), but unless you're hunting for a very specific thing, it's a bit overwhelming (much like the modern internet). There was an internal discussion a while ago about references that are "probably true", but it didn't get anywhere - this idea that, in addition to referring to facts that are backed up by written sources, that we could say "we are 90% sure this was the case but we can't entirely prove it". So as an example, I remember walking into a GAME store in 1997 (this one if you're interested) and seeing close-up, 3D models of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles running aimlessly in black rooms with no scenery in an effort to promote Sonic R (aka "this is what the running animation looks like" and nothing else). There are clues that suggest I'm not mis-remembering things: https://info.sonicretro.org/File:SonicRMenu.JPG but I haven't found any concrete evidence. And yet I'm certain I saw it. And even if multiple people on these boards back me up, without footage it may never be fully proven. So I would like to apply this to old bulletin board conversations. If all these people were talking about, say, the UK Sega Channel in 1996, that's a really strong indication that it was broadcasting, but we can't technically prove it.
Yes, it's a bit overwhelming at first, but I think I've sussed it out now (Their "CIXReader" software helps). So yeah, most posts are by random users "I bought X game in X store on X date", so probably not too helpful for sourcing. However, due to it's preeminent role in the UK tech industry, many well known names posted on there. So for example, when the original poster is a well known person, then we should be able to source an article with "Ian Oliver of Cross Products said X"* *Source: CIX Forums: consoles/sega 1994.06.05 Or something like that at least.
It would be better to have a copy of the relevant post or a screenshot. I can't see a way to mass download the whole forum unfortunately.
One thing is certain ... there is a lot of information there ... for example ... does anyone here wondered why a SNASM 2.1 exists? ... as you guys now the SNASM was originally an idea of Martin Day (SN Systems) but was co-developed with Ian Oliver ( Realtime Games Software, Cross Products... my idol... I can't express in words how much I admire him... this man is a genius) and Andy Craven (Vektor Grafix)... when Martin day and Andy Beveridge began to work with Psygnosis creating Psy-Q , Oliver Developed SNASM2 completly from scratch (I mean... very different from the original SNASM) becoming more slow in the process ... so Ian developed SNASM 2.1 to adress these problems... it's a good story ... revealed by a programmer (can't remember who)...
I think it might be a lot of copying and pasting raw text into pages on Retro CDN (similarly to how we've done interviews and press releases on Sega Retro). It'll probably be awkward.
Truth... it's good info... but difficult to use as a proof...I'm not saying I don't believe it ... but...
Here's the Sega related forums that I've found; (Since) 02/08/1987 videogames/consoles 04/10/1991 sega/general 09/07/1992 consoles/sega 26/01/1996 saturn/general 05/05/1998 katana/chatter 04/06/1998 dreamcast/general Early SMS review (I've never heard before that finding the maze game was supposed to be a competition, or at least rumoured to be); PAL FM Sound unit planned?
I don't know exactly how we should keep that info... but I admit it's valuable info... I think we should find a way to use it and preserve it ... but how?
Badlands is a 1984 arcade game by Konami. It uses laserdisc technology. It's quite rare. http://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/o252192979 So then, what do you think's going on here? If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say Sega made the hardware this game ran on... but it's definitely strange for Konami to make a lovely LaserDisc sleeve for an arcade game. And then to have a full Konami-branded instruction manual but a Sega-branded instruction card. Very strange.
I don't know what to say... but now I'm curious to know... that's really strange... In USA this game was distributed by "Century Inc."... the Arcade Museum has photos (low resolution) of 3 different cabinets for this game... but no clues at all... so what this means?...
Have I ever mentioned the Italians? I probably should: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXAblov5Hw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg1_jXp5CJs There's been a number of (sadly watermarked) videos uploaded to YouTube in recent weeks. Lots of quick cuts and flashing text, and no, these aren't parodies (and I'm awarding points to whoever can get a clean version of this Mega Drive theme tune). The best part of this period is Giochi Preziosi spending an unhealthy amount of time plugging what is essentially a piece of plastic with two flashing LEDs. "Sonic Badges" turn up on eBay from time to time - there won't be a child alive in Europe today that's impressed by one. (p.s. I don't know if these videos need splitting up, or they were all aired as one big thing, or what)
I can deal with the first if you want... now an offtopic request ... can you delete this magazine?... because I confused this one with a Dragon Ball Z supplement and it ended being named as DBZ...
My project for the weekend (maybe): https://segaretro.org/Shadow_Dancer:_The_Secret_of_Shinobi/Development Don't quite like the layout yet but it gets the point across - Sonic Retro-style game development pages, on Sega Retro. A bit like X-CulT or Unseen64, except more flexible... and only Sega-related.
Here's something that exists: Victor released a complementary set of speakers for the Wondermega - the "WONDER SOUND". Not entirely sure if we should care, given that it's just a standard set of speakers, but it's mildly interesting.
Points to whoever can identify where this clip came from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERAKHMCXGmM Yes that box is better than what the final game shipped in.
