General Questions and Information Thread

Well, I played it and won the race (by 3 seconds...) and I didn't even get a highscore screen, the game got reset immediately after the minimap showing which forks were taken. I was playing in Arcade mode, maybe Original mode is different?

Also that tune isn't in the rip from Project 2612.

EDIT: forget that, Project 2612's rip is far from complete, I found a Virtua Racing jingle LOL (it plays if you select the Virtua car which is unlocked through a cheat in the title screen). Also surprised how well that car handles, I thought its grip was gonna be crap like its Virtua Racing counterpart.

 

The North American OutRunners doesn't have the Virtua Racing stuff in it. Only the Japanese version does.

But I checked both and I don't think either have credits screens. Unless you have to do something amazing.

I imagine if it exists, it's hidden within the ROM somewhere.

 

Well, turns out there are credits if you beat Original mode after all (using that BGM in the video). And the Virtua Racing car is the final challenger, including the menu theme changing to the Virtua Racing one the moment it's revealed. The Winner tune is completely different for that last race too o_O;

EDIT:

Credits: http://sik.mdscene.net/.junk/OutRunners%20(J)%20%5b!%5d.gs1
Race against VR car: http://sik.mdscene.net/.junk/OutRunners%20(J)%20%5b!%5d.gs0

 

¯\(º_o)/¯

Apparently beating Original mode entering the Virtua Formula cheat unlocks the following in the BGM test:

• Jingle Bell
• Mode select
• Beginner start
• Goal
• Staff roll

 

...And could it be related to "Dynamite Duke"?

 

sup
http://segaretro.org/File:Saturn_AS_Box_Front_NTSC.jpg
Find me an "Asian" country which uses NTSC, and has its mains electricity at 200-240V.

My current wild stab in the dark is the Philippines. I'm hoping someone knows more about this than I do.

 

And here's another "Asian" Saturn to confuse me
http://segaretro.org/File:Saturn_AS_Box_Front_NTSC_White.jpg
This shouldn't be as confusing. Distributors often slapped their little stickers on boxes and they an be traced back to a country. This one has a "Wywy Group" sticker - I've traced this back to Singapore.

But this doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Singapore uses PAL-B/G, not NTSC. Though they do meet the voltage requirement at 230V.

"Well obviously, Squirrel, they couldn't care less and sold NTSC stuff to PAL users"

Wrong
http://i49.tinypic.com/2uh4dpw.jpg
Mega Drive games were PAL. So either a conscious effort was made to sell incompatible hardware or we're dealing with another country. Problem is, the Wywy Group was booming in the 1990s, and then we start running into problems, because suddenly you find their operations span a good chunk of the region.

How big were this company? They worked with Sega to build indoor theme parks. I think it was called "E-Zone". I don't know it still exists.

They were in Indonesia and Malaysia, but neither use NTSC. They were in Thailand, but Thailand had its own distributor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_power_systems
http://countrycode.org/tv-standards



oh and in other news

did you know they sold Sega 32Xes to war-torn gulf states?

 

Or they're like Argentina and TVs support both PAL and NTSC (over here our analog TV system is PAL-N but originally VCRs were NTSC only so TVs started supporting both systems, and it stuck).

 

Considering I started the day thinking I wouldn't find any Asian models at all, I've done rather well

A partially solved issue
http://segaretro.org/File:Saturn_HK_Box_Front.jpg
Though you can barely read it in this image, there's a sticker that reads "WKK something". So I'm pretty confident at this stage that this is a Saturn from Hong Kong.

http://segaretro.org/File:Saturn_AS_Box_Front_White_2.jpg
Don't recognise the logo on this one though. There's actually quite a bit of text but the shininess doesn't agree with cameras. I think it might be from Thailand... but if it is, that means Sega changed distributors between this and the Mega Drive

http://segaretro.org/File:Saturn_AS_Box_Front_VCD.jpg
This one is pretty amazing though, to the point where I'm not even sure Japan got it. It's a Sega Saturn... with the ability to play VCDs. There are cards that let you do this in other regions, but I've not encountered a Saturn that has this functionality straight out of the box...
http://segaretro.org/File:Saturn_AS_VCD.jpg
..and actually prints it proudly on the console

for the record, VCDs were strangely popular around China and surrounding countries, but were never really picked up by anyone else. We were all happy to stick with VHS and move on to DVD.

 

It's MK-80230-07
http://i49.servimg.com/u/f49/16/89/42/91/ss20-212.jpg

There's a good chance the HiSaturns or V-Saturns had VCD support straight out of the box but I'm pretty sure none were released by Sega. VCD wasn't amazingly popular in Japan either. Tons of people got the Video CD Card but it was always something you would buy separately


good to have confirmation on the Thailand one though

 

That seems to be a prototype name for Passing Shot.

 

So in my internet travels I found an image on a Brazillian message board and it turned out to be

http://segaretro.org/File:MD_AS_Box_Front_PALD.jpg

An "Asian" PAL-D Mega Drive.

There's only one problem... nobody uses PAL-D in Asia. This would make more sense if it were SECAM D, but I don't know if by the rules of Sega, PAL = SECAM.

For the record, PAL-D countries:
-China
-Czech Republic
-North Korea
-Poland
-Romania

SECAM D, just in case

-Armenia
-Azerbaijan
-Belarus
-Chad
-Georgia
-Kazakhstan
-North Korea
-Kyrgyzstan
-Lithuania
-Moldova
-Mongolia
-Russia
-Tajikistan
-Turkmenistan
-Ukraine
-Uzbekistan
-Vietnam

worth a good chunk of those belonged to the old Soviet Union until 1991-ish, so this Mega Drive may be older than them.

 

Hint: when a game has region lock-out, it refers to the European region as "PAL AND SECAM", so yes, I think they're considered the same for the console.