General Questions and Information Thread

Adding a missed release date which was one day after it's E3 appearance the text slightly overlaps, but it's still legible. I see that this is taken into account for close release dates by extending the next day's entry past the prior entry. Maybe add this feature to missed dates if that's not too difficult. Also, the DevelopmentBob doesn't display the region a release date was missed, but maybe that's all now redundant as it's displayed in the timeline.

 

Surprisingly it seems that Sega has recently (Aug-Sep 2021) attempted to fix some of their SMS dates.

Final Bubble Bobble has been changed from 88-07-02 to 88-07-31. This fits with the last release schedules published in Famitsu and Micom before it disappeared from the schedules. An earlier schedule published in Beep had the 88-07-02 date, so it seems that they were using a "missed release date" for this game.

Unfortunately prior to ~April 1988 Sega only gave schedules down to third of month, which is a thing in Japan. Early third is days 1 - 10, middle third is days 11 - 20, and late third is days 21+. So we may never be able to get exact dates for many Japanese SMS games.

Fantasy Zone II has been changed from 87-10-17 to 87-08-01. July issue of Beep (published early June) has it scheduled for July, unfortunately I haven't seen the schedule from the August issue which probably gives the third of month. It debuted at #1 in the Beep sales chart which covered the month of July (87-07-01 - 87-07-31). The charts in Famitsu were bi-weekly, which can narrow it down further. Unfortunately the chart where Fantasy Zone II debuted followed a double issue, so covers 4 weeks. Famitsu didn't say which dates the charts covered, but people have calculated which dates the charts should cover based on when Famicom games debuted. Based on those estimates FZII debuted at #3 in the Famitsu chart covering 87-07-06 - 87-08-02. It seems unlikely that it would chart so high with only a couple of days in the chart, so probably released early-mid July. Sega's new date is closer to what it should be, but still doesn't match the contemporary evidence. As all of their new dates are either last or first day of month I wonder if they're actually placeholders for months.

The Pro Yakyuu Pennant Race has been changed from 87-08-17 to 87-06-30. July issue of Beep (published early June) has it scheduled for mid-June. It debuted at #4 in the Beep chart covering June 1987 (87-06-01 - 87-06-30) and at #1 in the Famitsu chart covering 87-06-08 - 87-06-21. The chart debuts match the mid-June schedule just ahead of release. Again Sega's new date is closer, but still slightly off, which supports the idea that they could be placeholders for month of release.

Those are just the ones that they've attempted to fix, there are many more that are also wrong.

 

First catch:

Le Mans 24 Hours/Development

the "European" build date of Le Mans 24 Hours on the Dreamcast is apparently after it launched in France/Germany/Spain.

Which means either one of these dates is wrong, or there's an earlier retail version of the game that hasn't been dumped.

 

It made the Media Control chart for October in Germany, so the release dates seem pretty solid as all three retailers have it releasing in those countries the same week in October. Whilst it's not too uncommon for retailers to forget to update the page when a game gets pushed back last minute it would be unlikely for all three to have done it for the same game. It's probably just an error in the build date, but it does leave open the possibility of an earlier undumped build. We don't even have box art for the Spanish version uploaded yet, so maybe some of those Euro variants are still to be dumped.

 

Because I'm the coolest kid in school, I'm currently playing through Project Gotham Racing 2 on the original Xbox. PGR is the continuation of Metropolis Street Racer, the highly regarded Dreamcast game which I... never really sat down and played, even though I've owned a copy for over 20 years.

Although maybe I didn't need to - while the internet told me PGR was a "spiritual sequel"... it's pretty much the same damn game. Same tracks, most (if not all) of the cars - it's really just replacing the Sega facelift with a Microsoft one, while polishing off the edges and adding more stuff. So I'm more qualified than I thought to update our Sega Retro coverage.

MSR had a protracted development timeline. There's a super early "internal demo" floating around where Richard Jacques has taped the radio, so you can float around untextured cities while listening to Heart FM adverts from 1999. But one of the more interesting changes is the Honda S2000:



There are no Hondas in the final version of MSR (or PGR), but the S2000 is drivable in that internal demo (and not only that, it's the first on the list!). There's a lot of speculation as to why it was cut - some noise about car damage or Honda not liking the idea of the car leaving the ground in jumps (??) which I'll have to look into at some point. Rumours seem to have spread at launch that you can absolutely drive this car once you complete the game (spoilers: you can't), but from what I gather the only remnants are a couple of references to Honda (and the US branding, Acura) in the game's files, neither of which are ever seen during play.



https://segaretro.org/File:MSR_DC_Art_IMAGE05.jpg
(and a red one)

There's also this car in early press material which, because I don't know what generic late-90s Hondas look like, I can't identify. Maybe you can spot more - they were quite keen on showing races at night so it's hard to identify what anything is.

 

Sorry, I can't answer either. I own the game but tried it, didn't like it at all and abandoned it. In fact, I only bought it second hand because it was absurdly cheap. Was it really that important? Because I felt I had bought a really generic racing game without much expectations.

EDIT: Delete please, the game I own is Tokyo Highway Challenge.

 

Let's talk about the mother load of untapped information: Japanese newspapers. Not too long ago I realized I had access to historical newspaper databases through work and I've since been spending time browsing the many Sega-related articles available. For example, a search of Sega president Hayao Nakayama in the Nikkei Shinbun returns over 600 matches.

Here's a fun example, from the July 21, 1993 issue of Nikkei about the delay of the release of Street Fighter II' SCE on the Mega Drive:



The text, if you want to run it through a translator:

The TLDR:

The article discusses rumors behind the delay of SFII' on the Mega Drive. It introduces the rumor that Nintendo applied pressure to Capcom to delay the release so that the SNES's SFII Turbo would be released first, and the rumor that Sega's Nakayama complained directly to Capcom's Tsujimoto that it was a breach of contract. Apparently, after Capcom officially announced SFII' in March 1993, Nintendo was not very happy, and Tsujimoto said he told Nintendo's Yamauchi "We're going to continue to devote our strongest development team to Nintendo software." The article ends by discussing the complicated strategies involved in order to work with Nintendo in Japan and Sega in North America, and suggests that perhaps Capcom is the one doing the manipulating here.

Of course, we now know a lot more about this story:

https://www.polygon.com/a/street-fighter-2-oral-history/chapter-4
https://hiddenpalace.org/News/The_Lost_Street_Fighter_II:_Champion_Edition_for_Sega_Mega_Drive

 

We were missing this relatively in-depth preview from the Flying Nightmares magazine articles page. It makes it sound like a remake of AV-8B rather than a straight port. It also says AV-8B Harrier Assault was originally the title of the Mega CD version. I'd be inclined to merge the two as it just seems to have been a name change during development rather than a different project.

 

I wonder if there's anything about SG-1000 / SC-3000 release in July 1983. If we believe Sega then it released on the same day as Famicom (83-07-15), but Sega's dates from then aren't very reliable, and I haven't seen any contemporary evidence confirming that date.

 

Here's what I found in the Nikkei:

The first news of the SC-3000 came on April 28, with an expected release date in July. Then, on May 11, it was rumored that Sega was also developing a low cost game console.

Then, on June 14, 1983, we have this article:

So a specific release date for the SG-1000 is given as July 15. Another article from July 13 also gives the release date of the SC-3000 as July 15.

However, that's all there is - no mentions of the releases on July 15.

 

Excellent stuff, thanks for checking! It's good to have confirmation that it was actually due out on the same date as Famicom, I've been a bit suspicious of that until now. It's interesting that SC-3000 seems to have been announced first, that's something that was difficult to confirm from computer magazines which naturally focused more on SC-3000 than SG-1000.

 

No prob. Hideki Sato has said (don't remember where now) that the SC-3000 came first, and the SG-1000 was an afterthought.

Let me know if there are any other specific / worthwhile things to look up and I'll see what I can find... Time permitting.

 

I can't even have a meal these days without something turning up:



I had the ITV on in the background. Don't judge me - Countryfile is awful.

And this is the effect of funny things on the internet - a one-off ad in Viz is now a "slogan". And the effect of me being on the internet is that I know the story behind this.

...what is my life.

 

Ha! There's a story about how some SoJ executive went mad after seeing one of those. I guess one of the researchers on The Chase must be a retro gamer ... still the last question I'd expect to see :D

 

Ecco and drugs ...

 

"No, I never took LSD, but I did read a lot from John C. Lilly." - Ed Annunziata ... but he also said this ...

 

Funnily enough, a great run-through of the 1980s consumer video game market in Europe went out of its way to specifically mention those Viz ads today, alongside the fact that they only really happened because Sega Japan had little authority over what Virgin Mastertronic were doing in the way of marketing. I had forgotten about that anecdote about someone from that side eventually seeing them though - that's priceless.

 

These Ecco ads. I don't have words.

How many times do you think the same issues advertised the Pico.

 

https://retrocdn.net/File:BirminghamEveningMail_UK_1996-06-01_page_32.jpg

Sega Europe's Summer 1996 Mega Drive line up. Baku Baku Animal is listed. Previously discussed here as listed on Sega Europe's website.

Anyway, apart from that all of the others seems to have been released. They also mention some older games as getting re-released. Sonic 2 had already been re-released, with Taz in Escape from Mars, Mega Bomberman, and Streets of Rage 2 on the way. Sonic & Knuckles is also mentioned. All of the 1996 games mentioned have "CE Marks", and all of the re-releases have "CE Mark" variants. Games from 1995 and earlier don't seem to have had CE marks, and Sega seems to have dropped the use of them late 1996. Third party games from 1996 also have them, except for Codemasters. Saturn CD-Roms from the same period don't seem to have them either.

https://www.cemarkingassociation.co.uk/electromagnetic-compatibility/

I suspect the CE mark was included from 1996 due to this directive. Presumably they were being overly cautious by including it at first and dropped it later when it became clearer exactly which products were required to carry it. So this can date re-releases with CE marks to 1996, I don't know if there's any more 1996 re-releases that weren't mentioned in the article.

We have a scan of the CE version of Taz 2, but not the earlier non-CE version. Sonic & Knuckles is interesting, the CE version isn't on the wiki, but there are a lot of them on Ebay. They have the PAL outer box and manual, but the insert box is red like the US version, and the cartridge is also the US version. It seems that Sega Europe repackaged excess US stock as this game was region free.

Looking at the Mega Drive chart for 96-06-08 Taz 2, Bomberman, & SoR 2 all jumped up the charts a lot of positions, so it seems that they were re-released around that time. We can see the new RRPs for some re-releases in the All Formats chart. Sonic 2 was only £9.99, this was actually the second drop for this game, it was £19.99 prior, and originally £39.99. Taz2 and S&K re-releases were both priced at £19.99.