I hate that term. I noticed this morning that there are more "new" Dreamcast games than I expected - I haven't paid attention in a couple of years, and in that time a couple dozen limited-run physical releases have taken place. There's a few on the Mega Drive too, and possibly other consoles. Some of the more obvious ones are already covered on Sega Retro but there are many more that aren't - do we have a list somewhere? And these are real games you can buy commercially with real money. That is to say, you get a real cartridge or disc that plays in a real console. I was writing a list myself, but the nature of the business means games can be delayed multiple years and possibly even cancelled altogether. You also get a lot of mock-up packaging and people burning discs for themselves, which doesn't necessarily mean the game has been released commercially, but it's tricker than normal because unlicensed games typically don't follow Sega's strict design standards (which is the diplomatic way of saying "the official box art can still suck"). I'm also fully aware of the Sonic ROM hacks that make their way onto aliexpress through dubious means. That's something else we probably need to cover, but I'm less concerned about that rightn ow.
I'm pretty much on top of it, having bought every dreamcast indie release since 2008, and will aim to sort it out towards the end of the year. I'm just really busy at the moment. If someoone else beats me to it though, by all means. Mike's guide is a pretty good place to start http://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2018/07/the-dreamcast-junkyard-presents-a-to-z.html
I did make these two topics: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=34631&pid=833812&st=0&#entry833812 http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=37902&pid=924137&st=0&#entry924137
That PDF confirms we're not too far away as far as the Dreamcast is concerned (spoilers: that information needs absorbing). The gaps that concern me are in our Mega Drive coverage - there are a few games like Barbarian for example: The story seems to be that there was a very small run of physical cartridges, but you can also get the ROM and go make your own versions. And you can also buy lesser copies on Aliexpress but Christ knows what the legal situation is with those. (and there's a few different variants - you can one that looks like the ZX Spectrum version (but not). Not quite sure what the appeal of a not-Spectrum Spectrum port is over a new run of cassettes (or disks??) is but hey) Also more importantly(?) I want a name to categorise these things that hopefully isn't "indie" because Barbarian there was a full-price multi-platform game in 1987.
Unlicensed developer? Technically that's what they are. EDIT: Derp, missed the 1987 bit: I'd assume that one WAS licensed, then. Limited developer? Short-run developer?
I'd like to think of it as a sub-set of "unlicensed", so they're not being bundled with Accolade's things, old Chinese tat and multi-carts. This might not be possible to do - people have continuously been developing for the thing since 1988. But I feel there needs to be an option to separate the "old" from the "new" somehow.
They're usually referred to as "aftermarket". i.e. unlicensed and released after the final official game (whatever that is).
As far as I know, these are just homebrew remakes, not even ports. The physical version is just your average bootleg like all those Sonic Megamix cartridges. By the way, its author told me months ago that a new Barbarian would be released this year on the Mega Drive "by a professional coder", not sure if he meant new builds of these remakes (since they run like crap on NTSC systems).
"aftermarket" works - there's a few awkward ones like Beggar Prince (although perhaps given the huge gap between its original Taiwanese release and the English version, that should be split up anyway) but I'll have a bit of a play.
Category:Mega Drive aftermarket games This will never be clean - I was going to write a proper guide but even I'm not too confident with it. My critera: - It has to have been released after official support for the console has been dropped (MD: 2002-ish, DC: 2007-ish but there's a few exceptions between 2002 (US/EU) and 2007 (JP)). - It has to have been released commercially. - There has to be a decent number of units. Which given that you generally have to buy in bulk, it probably expected from a commercial release. - There has to be consent from the developers in some form (aka the "aliexpress knock-offs don't count" rule). This also blocks multi-carts and hacks. - It has to have been shipped on a physical medium that can play in a real console. So basically it's part of a planned attempt to enter the Mega Drive games market after that market is "officially" dead. i.e. it's "after market". This is a list of games I think we're missing pages for: Double check they meet the critera before making those pages. Also there's probably many more. On the Dreamcast, it's looking as if most unlicensed games are aftermarket ones. The only game I am not sure about is DreamParaPara which we don't have a release date for, but then it is supposedly stealing content from Konami so I don't think it passes the test.
