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General Questions and Information Thread

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Andlabs, Aug 25, 2011.

  1. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I would be partial to changing the wiki page so that it reads something like:
    Because then it's not defintively saying "there was a 32X version", only that a magazine said that there was. You could even explain on the wiki afterwards why they're wrong.

    ... well okay
    https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:CVG_UK_150.pdf&page=32
    two magazines in this case. But you know what I mean.


    Honestly I don't know. My default is to trust other humans, and if there's something worth challenging, challenge it.



    Incidentally a Daytona USA/Development subpage could probably do with being made, as there's a lot of information out there.
     
  2. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Something the internet might not have seen before:

    https://segaretro.org/Sega_Mega-CD/Boot_ROM

    Every Mega-CD start screen and menu. Or at least, the ones I don't have to fight to get working. I hadn't realised how many times they re-drew things - you'd think they'd choose one design and stick with it.


    Might do the Saturn at some point... though Saturn emulation is always a faff.
     
  3. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Calling it.

    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    Ladies and gentlemen, this is the standard Sega logo for the Sega Mega Drive from 1990-onwards (JP left, US/EU right). This precise positioning, colour scheme and style of ™ symbol - this is presumably the logo Sega wanted everyone to use.

    Obvious right? Well no - as explained in a post earlier in the week, there's a lot of minor variations out there. In 1988 and 1989 most Sega logos had a ® symbol in all regions. They switched to this in 1990 and it became the gold standard for every Sega Mega Drive game going forward. I think it was more about setting guidelines for third-parties, although it wasn't well enforced, and EA, Namco and Tengen had other ideas.

    In the standard Sega logo, the logo appears instantly fully formed, the gradient "moves" upwards and to the right for one "rotation", and then it disappears instantly. This is the baseline implementation - other games obviously did a bit more with it.

    I believe there's a standard Game Gear one too but I need to look at more examples to confirm.

    [​IMG]

    This actually means my signature is wrong. It animates in the wrong direction and rotates twice.
     
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  4. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    The standard Game Gear Sega logo. Looks a bit wonky with square pixels but it cleans up a bit when stretched to 4:3.

    This one is completely static. Some developers (especially Western third-parties) opted for a black background because the blue is strange, but blue appears to have been the default.


    Well that was thrilling.
     
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  5. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Correction:

    Unlike the Mega Drive, where maybe 70-80% of games use some variation of the "standard" Sega logo, a lot less care was put in to the Game Gear. First-party Sega releases (and Sega's Japanese friends) usually derived from the above "blue background" Sega logo, but it doesn't seem to have been Sega of America's first choice.

    This one pops up more often:

    [​IMG]

    Basically the standard Mega Drive logo, sans a white border. This logo is bad not just because the colours are wrong, but because it's not designed for the Game Gear's native 8:5 aspect ratio - it's for the Mega Drive's 4:3... so it'll look stretched. But despite this, it's a very common choice, as the Game Gear had more Western-made games than Japanese ones.

    (you also occasionally see it on the Mega Drive - I thought it might be a "sports logo" since it seems to appear more often in sports games).

    Chances are this was chosen because some developers/publishers liked to have an animated logo, but they didn't like the idea of drawing one from scratch. Interesting then, that the animation is often wrong - as a really poor visual example, this is how it's meant to look (at an angle):

    [​IMG]

    versus how it often ended up looking:

    [​IMG]




    The chosen logo depends on the publisher. Some did it better than others, but none worse than our old friends at Acclaim:

    [​IMG]

    Not only is it horrendous, it appears across multiple titles - it wasn't a one off.

    Here's roughly what looks like on a real Game Gear:
    [​IMG]

    Do you think it's wide enough?
     
  6. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    This was a story back in 2015/2016 but we didn't act on it for some reason.

    Sega uses two different shades of blue for its official logos. #008dd0 in Japan, #0060a8 elsewhere.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    This is a confirmed thing on both sides of the Pacific. Nobody really knows why.


    Is it still enforced? You bet:

    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    At least... sort of. Truth is Sega are rarely consistent with their shades of blue - even today official material wanders a bit over the spectrum, but the two colours above appear to be the aim at least.
     
  7. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Evening. Here's an aircraft carrier:

    [​IMG]

    Ever wanted to know what the "128" stood for? Well this apparently is a reference to "Studio 128" (スタジオ128), the team behind After Burner.

    https://twitter.com/jfodxvsqgxsoeoy/status/1124303863639470080


    This post is brought to you by the Sega AM2 page, which is housing 35 years of software and should probably be split up because spoilers: "Sega AM2" didn't exist in 1988 (or 1990).
     
  8. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I swear these Japanese magazines are like rabbit holes.


    In Virtua Racing, you secretly drive "Bugatti sports cars".

    https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:SegaMagazine_UK_04.pdf&page=50

    They swapped the model for a F1 car, but it plays like a Bugatti. So says Yu Suzuki.


    Cross reference with that Fantasy Factory video I posted a couple of years ago:


    4:40

    ...is that a Bugatti? Sort-of looks like one. A few seconds later and you'll see a 3D render of an F1 car (p.s. this might be the first time Yu Suzuki's name was up in lights), and on the side, "B.V.".


    B.V. is a prototype name for Virtua Racing. When the game was first demonstrated in March 1992, that's what it was called. And nobody knows what it stands for.

    Virtua Racing/Development


    ...Bugatti begins with B.
     
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  9. Aerosol

    Aerosol

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    Sonic (?): Coming summer of 2055...?
    Bugatti Virtual(-izer)??

    And yea that's a Bugatti. Jesus Christ.
     
  10. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Pick a Japanese magazine at random and you're bound to find something

    https://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File:SSM_JP_19951201_1995-12.pdf&page=180

    This is Sega AM2 talking about Virtua Fighter(s). A "50% complete" build that they threw together for the Amusement Machine Show in 1993. The magazine is dated December 1995... which means Sega were analysing prototypes before you guys even knew what a prototype was.



    Japanese Virtua Fighter 3 coverage, circa 1995 - month after month of detailed progress, comments from developers and analysis and comparisons with past efforts.

    US Virtua Fighter 3 coverage, circa 1995 - "Virtua Fighter looks awesome!!"
     
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  11. Loop

    Loop

    Pure of Heart. Dumb of Ass. Member
    Technically predicts the naming of the Bugatti Veyron...?
     
  12. Gestalt

    Gestalt

    Sphinx in Chains Member
    First Ristar and now this. Is Twitter really that powerful?
    [​IMG]
    I would love another Skies of Arcadia, but what are the chances? It was the first RPG I ever beat.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2020
  13. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Something to look out for:

    In addition to the bazillion other things we do, we have the best set of company logos on the internet. Problem is, colours aren't always accurate - especially with older material where we've had to extract things from scans or whatever.


    [​IMG]

    If you ever find any (presumably official) material that tells us exactly what colours things are meant to be, do let us know. When I find vectors of things, they're often in black and white, so I have to guess the colour scheme. With real instructions, I don't have to do that.

    For Compile here, those are DIC colours. So it's not just any old pink, it's DIC 584B, or #FF6AC4 Compile pink.
     
  14. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    Written on the Wiki on Segaretro's Model2 page is the following:

    The actual language of the source is as follows:

    The keyword missing from Retro, and unless I'm misinterpreting here, is "develop", as in a developer board. That does make more sense as Fighting Vipers runs fine on any old Model2b board and that Yu Suzuki was not referring to the final game board itself, but a comparison of the development board, possibly the ones used to show the game as seen in the magazine.

    I'd like a second set of eyes and opinions on this, as my research and asking around doesn't seem to indicate any overclocking of the Model2b board specifically.

    EDIT: This could also draw a comparison between the two boards themselves, there's not enough context, but VF2 is a Model2A board and FV is a Model2B board. I don't believe there is a clock speed difference between the to maincpu processors. Retro doesn't have good info on the 2A specifically the GPU, but perhaps that may have been what Suzuki meant as well. The context of this interview is fairly sloppy. I will investigate my 2A and 2B boards when I have time.
     
  15. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Yeah it's all second-hand knowledge (from System16 IIRC). There are games there that are listed for both Model 2A and Model 2B which always struck me as strange.
     
  16. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    Dynamite Cop was made for the 2A, 2B, and 2C :psyduck:
     
  17. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Hey I haven't talked about Sega logos in all of two seconds:

    [​IMG]
    https://segaretro.org/File:PS2PressInformation_2001-09_Corporate_Sega_Logo_Guidelines.png

    Recently grabbed from an old PS2 press CD (spoilers: it's taken me all evening to upload the contents why does the server have to suck when I want to use it).

    Not only does the logo change colour depending on region, it changes shape depending how big or small you're planning to print it. If less than 7mm in size, the inner lines get thicker.
     
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  18. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    RE: Sega colours

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    Thanks to Leon we can see the difference in Phantasy Star Online 2, just in case you might have thought it was a print-only thing.

    If you were feeling brave, you might suggest this is why Sonic the Hedgehog was often drawn with ligher shades of blue in Japan.
     
  19. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    The US has a long history of nagging people in arcade games.

    In the 1990s, men called William told you not to use drugs and to recycle - I can't tell if this was actually mandatory but all the major arcade manufacturers selling in America added the screens. Except for when they didn't.

    [​IMG]

    It almost certainly worked because as we all know, there are no drugs in America anymore.

    Wikipedia is currently claiming these screens were being forced into arcade games between 1989 and 2000. I think the cut-off is more like 1998, but as MAME usually defaults to Japanese versions of games, it's hard to say. Apparently this was also used to identify counterfeit machines as well... although given that half the games I've checked have the option to change region in the service menu (and thus disable these screens), I can't see how that was a thing.


    But it turns out the AAMA have never stopped nagging - they're just very bad at it. There's been a rating system in place for about 25 years and I've never seen it mentioned.

    [​IMG]

    "commonly used four letter words"

    [​IMG]
    You either get in-game messages, stickers on the cabinet, or both. Only America does this, and while it seems to have been standardised around 1998/1999, Mortal Kombat 3 was issuing warnings back in 1995.

    I'm not overly sure what the point was though. In order to see the parental advisory message in MK3, you have to watch the attract mode... where characters violently beat each other up. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 even shows fatalities (and then-fake character Rain... which means the attract screen was worth watching even if you didn't have the money to play the game).

    Other clues of potentially violent video games include massive gun controllers. People might die in The House of the Dead - who knew?


    So yeah,

    [​IMG]

    bit of a joke.
     
  20. Xilla

    Xilla

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    I remember the Winners Don't Use Drugs screen being quite common up and down the UK, a good way of telling where arcade owners sourced their Street Figbter 2 ROM boards!
     
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