More Sega Channel prototypes dumped.

No, not just Virtual Sonic, "Virtual Sega", which was a bundled album line. The albums included are Virtual Sonic, Vectorman, Toejam & Earl (Sega Chanel), X-Men 2: Clone Wars, and Comix Zone.

They literally threw GEMS files to create the album. I wonder if all the samples could be found and studio quality versions of the Virtual Sega album line could be remastered!

EDIT: Has Nemesis been alerted that SEGA.EXE has been found? They considered this a top-priority above all else iirc due to it's specific nature in relation to development.

 

This is nothing new ... you must have seen this video before ... do you guys recognize the music that Howard Drossin is playing? Starts at minute 9:39... it's the theme used in the Sega Channel menus... i hope I'm not sharing something that you guys already knew... if it's the case just ignore it ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knvgx8KDbOI

 

With regards to the GARF1220 file, presumed to be Lost Levels build 95.12.20 (retail Caught in the Act rom is 95.09). This Sega of America QA video from 1996 (filmed June 95 - Feb 96) features them downloading the latest builds in order to burn and test them. One of the files on the monitor is named "GARF1208" (Dated 12-08-95);

 

Ah! That appears on the Virtual Sonic album called "Boss Opera". The whole album is composed by Drossin.

 

Chilean commercial
Japanese and Taiwanese commercials

A little while ago I unsuccesfully tried to buy a Taiwanese Sega Channel CD that I thought might have been one of the local cable channel's monthly discs. It turns out that it was just a promotional VCD containing the commercials linked above.

Lots of info about the Japanese Sega Channel here.

He said he had it from June 1994 - May 1996, but it may have ran for different lengths depending on the local CATV operator. Some interesting things that I don't think have previously been documented;

Subscribers got a thick A4 book roughly every quarter with instructions for all of the games planned to be released over those three months (along with the months that those games would be available. He has un-numbered books June - August 1994 and September 1994 - February 1995 (this one seems to be the only book to not cover three months). After that he has quarterly books numbered 2 to 6, which implies that the first June - August book was #0. There have been contradictory reports on whether the Japanese Sega Channel started in June or September. I think that this suggests that it was probably just a limited test launch in June, with a full launch in September. He notes that he is aware of more books up until #8 (previously posted in this thread), which covered September - November 1996. So the Japanese Sega Channel probably ran from June 1994 - November 1996.

Contents from the June - August 1994 book list 40 games, with months for each game's availability. Each column adds up to 30, so we now have the first three months schedule (although it's a low res picture). The fact that they only rotated 40 games for the first three months (Japanese Sega Channel had 30 games/month) is another suggestion that this period was just a test launch.

It's noted that the Sega Channel logo was different at the beginning (in both the first two books and screenshots). Was there a different bios in the potential test period still to be dumped? If original test period adapters were replaced after the test phase then they might be quite rare.

Exclusive games; The previously undocumented (until the roms earlier posted in this thread) "Nyuushi Chokuzen Check Nanmon Kimon Kiki Kaikai" and "Sega Planet Quiz" are noted with screenshots from the quarterly book, along with a newly documented game "LaSalle Ishii no Quiz! Kyoiku Iinkai". It's based off of "Nyuushi Chokuzen Check Nanmon Kimon Kiki Kaikai", but starring the celebrity LaSalle Ishii instead of the Sega Channel bird. Presumably different questions. Incidentally, there was also a LaSalle Ishii game on the Famicom. Also noted are "Game no Kanzume Otokuyou" and "Dyna Brothers 2: Sega Channel Special", unless any other exclusives were released in late 1996 (which seems unlikely as SoJ had already dropped support for the Mega Drive by then) then that would seem to be the complete list of Japanese Sega Channel exclusives.

Early releases; Most games appeared on Sega Channel several months after release, but there were some exceptions. Alien Soldier had a preview version (I guess the equivalent of "Test Drive", which doesn't seem to have been as common as on the US Sega Channel) which released 95.01.01, quite a bit ahead of the full retail release date of 1995.02.24. Gouketsuji Ichizoku (Power Instinct) released 1994.11.18 at retail, and 1994.12.01 on Sega Channel. I guess that this was a late decision as they seem to have sent out a separate Sega Channel branded manual for this game to subscribers.

 

That second video has a link in the description - there's a fair bit about the Taiwanese version too.

These are impressive finds!

 

See, you've got me excited and I've gone and found things



Japanese Sega Channel merchandise that will need to be documented. Not sure if these were sent to subscribers - it seems an odd thing to buy from a shop.


This scan is taken from a Japanese publication known as "Jugemu" (????) which apparently ran from 1995 to 1999. It's a gaming magazine, but you can forgive me for not noticing it before as most of the covers look like this:




Really screams "video games".

 

Awesome findings! ... I'll have a beer in honor of you both... />

 

Did a bit of digging with Garfield: The Lost Levels. I knew nothing about this game and still probably don't, but people have poked this one before.

I did a couple of write-ups:

Garfield: Caught in the Act
Garfield: The Lost Levels

Half the internet's research relies on a T-shirt:


(and even then it's missing the pirate-themed stage)


The story goes is that the Mega Drive version of Caught in the Act shipped with 5 levels, the PC with 6, and the Game Gear with 7. The Game Gear accounts for Robin Hood and the vikings, while the PC has the space stage. A stage set in ancient Rome didn't make it anywhere.


All of these versions were handled by different developers, though there was an extensive design document that they were all working from. Each of these aforementioned levels were at least partially completed for the Mega Drive, but time, cartridge space and a general lack of fun saw things scrapped during the summer of 1995 after months of development problems. Some were previewed in magazines before then.


The Lost Levels was worked on by yet another team, which presumably took some of the leftovers and tried to patch them up for a release in 1996. But there seems to be confusion as to which levels were patched up, and indeed how many actually count as levels. All that is known is that Sega said there "three" of them.

The internet claims that these include the levels seen on the Game Gear, and a scrapped part of "Catsablanca" involving a train (that was axed so late in development that it appears on the US box). But that's 2½ levels at best, not three. Developers have gone on record to say that the space level was more-or-less completed but didn't fit on the cartridge (the Sega Channel service presumably wouldn't rectify this unless The Lost Levels only included lost levels), but that the Robin Hood level might have been mostly done too.


Cruicially though, it seems as if the weaker stages were taken out, so there's a good chance Garfield: The Lost Levels not only lacks all of the content from Caught in the Act, it may consist solely of half-baked designs that weren't much fun to play. Which is impressive given that Caught in the Act is already filled with half-baked designs that aren't much fun to play - even the developers don't know why they were forced to start with the horror stage*.




*fun fact: Bug Too and the original Gex start with horror stages. Gex even takes place in a TV - just like Garfield!

 

More:

 

That's an obvious fake.

I feel that we shouldn't even give the benefit of the doubt anymore until we're shown something that we can't replicate ourselves. We live in an era where fakes are rewarded with "likes" and followers, after all.


EDIT: Eh, he just admitted that it's only video editing, in the comments.

 

Wow! I've been collecting every screenshot of Sega Game Toshokan I've come across, planning to make a rough reconstruction of the post-connected service with screenshots and the dumped soundtrack. I never expected to see the whole of the actual service recorded! It's actually pretty much how I expected from screenshots (but wasn't sure whether the timer and byte number went up or down, it's down), but there's lot's of new screens here. Just a shame that we didn't get to see any undumped content.

 

He posted another video, this time of Flicky, which was in the same "Action Games" menu as Teddy Boy, so we don't get to see any different menus yet. Hopefully he'll post more including undumped stuff in the future.

Sega Net was available nationwide (and even internationally ... there is an article in a US magazine where they tried it out), whilst Sega Channel was restricted to the few local cable companies that carried it. So I'm guessing that Sega Channel just wasn't available where he lived.

I've translated the menus and will post more about it in this thread.

 

I could have sworn Kinetic Connection was released for the Mega Drive in some form, but as far as physical releases go, it's a Game Gear exclusive (guess they ran out of space for all these tiny little ROMs on those two massive Mega-CD compilation discs).

A Game Gear exclusive with horrible music and a clumsy control scheme (which is impressive given its simplicity). This Mega Drive version looks a lot better.

 

Data overload! Kinetic connection was licensed, which is probably why it was never re-released.

Taiketsu! Columns looks like it's been completely re-written for Game Toshokan. There was another version of Columns on the service in 1991 which was closer to the original, but it was cut-down with one of the title screens missing and only one tune. That was a special competition version for "Sega Game Grand Prix 2" (the first one used Flicky) which was just a sixty minute time attack mode with online leaderboards on Sega Net News. Presumably high scores were saved to the Game Toshokan cartridge and uploaded next time you logged in. It looks like they replaced it with Taiketsu! Columns when the competition ended as I don't see it in any of the menus.

As I've suspected, Riddle Wired was episodic (generally two volumes/month). The released ROM is just one of many other missing volumes.

All ROMs are under 48KB. So 16KB of main RAM would have been reserved for Game Toshokan, with the remaining 48KB used to store the downloaded software. So 48KB was pretty restrictive. Still, they could have ported SMS card titles.

I also don't understand why they didn't release more than the initial batch of Sega Music Collection ... that would have been really easy content to add each month.

One of the videos is of the undumped Pyramid Magic Yokokuhen (Trailer), it's quite a bit different to the full game released sometime after.

In the Sega Net News section Sunsoft had their own magazine "Sunsoft Net News" where they not only advertise games for Sega systems, but also their games for Nintendo systems and PC Engine.

Someone might want to post this in the relevant Sonic forum.