Apparently it's Sega model2 discoveries day. After finding some code in Sonic the Fighters that literally was useless, I felt it might be an engine leftover, and sure enough, the code actually did something in Fighting Vipers. Alternate Intro (Arcade Edition): The game must have 20,000 "VS" plays. 1 vs play counts as a player versus player match. If this condition is met and if P1 Start + P2 Start are held just before the attract mode ends and the first CPU vs CPU battle begins without any credits inserted, the player will be treated to an alternate attract intro featuring a very playful Honey instead of the Fighting Vipers logo. Also there are subtle differences to the attract into as a whole when this "cheat" is active. As @TrackerTD pointed out, this can be done in the 2012 XBL/PSN port simply by pressing P1 Up before the second attract screen, and the achievement "Sweet Tooth" is also unlocked by doing so. EDIT: Aww, don't have twenty thousand plays on your Fighting Vipers board? Don't worry, if you have a meager 15,000+ versus matches played, holding UP+START will start "Random Mode", which as the name implies allows you to play various, non-linear, characters in story mode instead of the same order of characters each time! EDIT: Someone on Twitter is disputing that it takes 15,000+ matches to activate random mode, as they said they have activated it on their cabinet and were absolutely sure it never had 15,000 plays on it. I will look into this, but that is kind of what the code says. Perhaps they had a different revision? EDIT2: They were right. holding UP+START to enter the character select screen will activate RANDOM MODE no mater how many plays the cabinet has, which makes me wonder what I am looking at in the code.
I've found this video and thought it might be of interest here. I'm not sure what it really is, but seems like footage of a lost Megadrive game? At least, I have never heard about this game... does anyone know what this is?
Nice find! It's Taiketsu Columns! on the Sega Game Toshokan (there is no article for the game itself yet).
As mentioned above, it's Taiketsu! Columns, the video was discussed in this thread. Sega originally released a cut down version of the retail version of Columns for the Sega Game Toshokan service (downloadable games had to fit within 48kb of RAM). It featured a reduced intro, just one BGM, no options, and just one mode, a special single player 1 hour time trial. This was for the competition "Sega Game Grand Prix 2" where high scores were uploaded with the leaderboard featured on Sega Net News. They seem to have replaced this special competition version of Columns with a completely re-written version called Taiketsu! Columns which was able to contain more content such as a two player mode. I've been meaning to update this thread and the Wiki with the undumped SGT games, I'll start doing that shortly.
While we're there, I think the Phantasy Star II text adventures will need renaming. this one starts off as "Yushis's Adventure" and then becomes "Yousis's Adventure", because translations be damned. "Eusis" is later used in Game no Kanzume Vol. 1. It's perhaps showing our ignorance - this is the main character from Phantasy Star II and we don't even have a firm handle on his name (in Japan at least. In the West he's called Rolf because why not). We have this listed as "ファンタシースターII テキストアドベンチャー ユーシスの冒険" in Japanese, which I think translates to "Fantasy Star II Text Adventure Yushi/Yousis/Eusis no Bouken". I know a lot about Sega but I'm not big on their RPGs. This needs a specialist.
The funny thing with the Game no Kanzume release is that the manual uses old screenshots with both "Yushis's Adventure" and "Yousis's Adventure", whilst the game uses "Eusis's Adventure". Footage from 1992 of the actual Sega Game Toshokan version shows that it also used "Eusis". So either Sega fixed the spelling after first release, or the rom floating about is a prototype. I'm inclined to go with the latter as the Phantasy Star Adventure games seem to have been developed in advance of the modem due to it getting delayed so much. So yeah, it should be "Eusis's Adventure".
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. It looks like all of the PS II: TA "Seganet" roms floating about except for Anne & Nei are prototypes, or at the very least earlier revisions. They have a different instructions screen, and the actual script is significantly different compared to the Game no Kanzume releases. Those Seganet roms seem to come from Sega's B-Club service in 2004. The Playstation 2 Phantasy Star Collection from 2008 uses those roms too. It looks like Sega either lost or mis-identified most of the final revisions in the decade between Game no Kanzume and B-Club. Interestingly they never fixed the "PLECE" spelling mistake in Eusis's Adventure. Whilst we don't have prototypes of Anne or Nei, there is prototype footage of Nei. This also misspels "PLACE", but this time as "PLASE". That was caught and fixed in the later revision.
The Chaos Engine/Magazine articles I've just been clearing out magazines that are on my hard drive, including these two issues of Sega Magazine... which just happen to review the same version of the game. Apparently two months can see a score drop by seven percentage points. That's not the difference between NTSC and PAL versions (or anything equally sensible) btw - this is reviewing the same game twice for fun. In fact this might be the third time - I haven't checked.
While sorting through my CVG UK mag scans, I remembered this april fool's joke from 1996 - AFTERBURNER 3000AD, starring Altered Beast, Gillius Thunderhead and Ecco the Dolphin! https://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File:CVG_UK_173.pdf&page=10
Word on the street is that an Aladdin advert from Sega was pulled by the advertising standards authority in the UK. Because Nintendo complained. Instead of having "Mike from Hampshire" one of these adverts apparently had "R R R R Rick". Rik Mayall was the centrepiece in Nintendo's advertising campaign at the time, and unlike in the US, thinly-veiled attack ads don't get past the regulators. I can't find it on YouTube - it'll be super rare now.
The funny thing being that the actor Steven O'Donnell from the SEGA UK adverts was also, of course, Spudgun from Bottom! Here's a recording from 6th November 1993 (a few days before release), it says Mike in that one (11:42):
There was a lot of inbreeding - the Cyber Razor Cut ads were produced by John Lloyd, who had just come off from Blackadder... and then would go on to make the Nintedo ads with Rik (and then later, QI).
Well... both starred on "Bottom" (in Portugal it aired on RTP2 ... this intro brings back many good memories ... every sitcom that you "Britons" watched we watched them too)... we really have to find that ad some day... I had no idea...
I know there's over 9000 different variants of arcade hardware out there, but I don't think this has ever been documented here?
Some proto Streets of Rage 2 footage to be seen here: We've seen a few bits and bobs from it before (Skate with the Eddie name, Hakuyo in Stage 1, Bare Knuckle 2 background graphic on the select screen), however in this one we get to see R.Bear (then known as Rocky) in action, and looking quite a bit different to the final.
If anyone wants a project: There were a lot of early 90s Sega magazines in the UK (and indeed gaming magazines in general). I'd quite like to know what the circulations were. The Audit Bureau of Circulation (which still exists, and has done since 1931) used to publish figures every six months. Some magazines (usually the popular ones) were happy to print the figures, but most kept quiet. There are logs online but they only date back until 2000 and they're not free to view... for some reason. Why this might matter - this July 1993 issue of Sega Mega Drive Advanced Gaming claims it's the most popular with a circulation of 42,685 (which presumably meant January to June 1993). Mega claims it had 55,612 during that period. So somebody's lying. tbh I just want to know why Maverick Magazines was publishing three different dedicated Mega Drive magazines in 1995, because that makes no business sense to me at all.
I've been collecting magazine "awards". One of my recent creations - The Games Machine "Star Player" award. Crappy scans means crappy results: If I knew the font I could have made a vector. oh. £42k to do this in 1990.
