More Sega Channel prototypes dumped.

This is turning out to be a glorious day here at Sonic/Sega Retro ... and things have been sorted out in just a few days... now to finish on a high note, all that's left is to have the Garfield: The Lost Levels rom available... but that should take longer...

 

The other month with multiple versions, really teasing Primal Rage (1995-08);

 

I'm genuinely wondering if each month should have its own page on Sega Retro. I never really expected to see proper Sega Channel dumps - all the news and game tips and artwork (I was very close to posting that Cyrax one) will be worth documenting, and of course these Earthworm Jim and Primal Rage events - we're not doing them justice at the moment.

We may also have rethink Test Drives. Again, it never crossed my mind that we'd be seeing significantly altered ROMs. And if there are genuine prototypes here... well yeah.

 

It's tempting... and then link them to the main page of the Sega Channel or the Sega Channel US schedule...

 

Yeah, they should get their own page, at least the ones we have details beyond the schedule for.

A lot of the Test Drives are just the full games but with a time limit set which the adapter keeps track of. I have been meaning to go through and document the ones which are unique roms, along with the ones which had to be cut down or split because they were >16 Meg.

 

Sega Channel (US; 1996-09-01)

There's a start - I might invent a new Sega Channel Bob so they're not treated as "games". This will need expanding.

EDIT: I dun gon dun dat

 

BTW, I wonder if the reason why the stuff from the Sega Channel dev CD ends in February 1996 is that Sega switched to using a different company than Foley Hi-Tech to do the menu art/music after that point. It would explain why the menu art changed from the hand-drawn pixel art look we see in all the menus up to January 1996 to the digitized clip art look we see in everything after that. I'd email Dave Foley to ask, but I believe he just got found guilty of securities fraud and is facing 30 years in prison, so I'm not sure he'd respond.

 

O_o

 

I have been watching all the progress you all have made the past few days. Incredible work! Thank you for making my dreams a reality. :D

 

It did. Also worth noting for the sake of filling out the roster...September through November 1994 did not have dedicated game rosters. They reused the June-Augusr rosters to save the time and prepare for the launch

 

Rad, thanks. I'm going to get this added to Iron Hammer right now. Could you give me a bit of info for the article? Things like what year/month it was broadcast, any details you might know, etc

 

Fuck!... 30 years?!... I thought he'd got less jail time... he was the one who put those Sega Channel Server Boards up for sale on ebay in 2020, which were bought by User:DaveyPocket (an arcade/electronics collector), who got us these high-resolution photos (we didn't even ask him for anything... he just bought them and uploaded the photos to Sega Retro the next day... and that's how we learnt that it was he who had bought them)...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/file/761486/dl

https://web.archive.org/web/2017050...-man-gets-two-year-prison-sentence-for-fraud/

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/two-indicted-over-theft-of-arcade-software-3225746.php

 

Sega Channel schedule (US; 1994-06-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1994-07-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1994-08-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1994-09-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1994-10-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1994-11-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1994-12-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-01-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-02-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-03-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-04-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-05-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-06-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-07-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-08-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-09-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-10-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-11-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1995-12-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-01-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-02-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-03-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-04-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-05-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-06-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-07-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-08-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-09-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-10-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-11-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1996-12-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-01-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-01-17)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-01-31)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-02-14)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-02-28)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-03-14)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-03-28)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-04-11)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-04-25)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-05-09)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-05-23)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-06-06)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-06-20)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-07-04)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-07-18)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-08-01)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-08-15)
Sega Channel schedule (US; 1997-08-29)

ding

There's still some pretty big gaps in our knowledge. Those recent videos might help (though if we're looking at 1997 with multiple updates a month, it might be tricky to pinpoint exact dates).

 

Went through the dev stuff to find out what the original filenames should've been. There's a list (P_/STOOLS/SCRIPTS/RATINGS.TXT) of what seems to have been the roms available to them at the time. As this file was made in January 1996 it's missing the later games, and quite a few earlier ones, which checking the schedules hadn't been released on Sega Channel up to that point. Some of these games were also in the Sega ROM Archive discs and have the same filenames. I added a few filenames from there which weren't on the dev disc (denoted with "*").

Code (Text):

1.  
2. CFTBALL2.BIN   4 College Football's National Championship II
3. FATL_LAB.BIN   7 Fatal Labyrinth
4. WANDRSYS.BIN*  8 Wanderers From Ys
5. BOB.BIN       10 B.O.B.
6. BALLZ.BIN     11 Ballz
7. CASTLEV.BIN   12 Castlevania: Bloodlines
8. GENRLOST.BIN  13 Generations Lost
9. GRANADAX.BIN  14 Granada
10. PUNISHER.BIN  15 The Punisher
11. SHINOBI3.BIN  16 Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
12. SONKNUCK.BIN  17 Sonic & Knuckles
13. SPACHAR2.BIN  18 Space Harrier II
14. STRAGE2.BIN   19 Streets of Rage 2
15. STRIDER.BIN   20 Strider
16. TAZMANIA.BIN  21 Taz-Mania
17. VALIS.BIN     22 Valis: The Fantasm Soldier
18. VECTRMAN.BIN  23 Vectorman
19. XMEN.BIN      24 X-Men
20. DROBOTNK.BIN  25 Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
21. FLSHBACK.BIN  26 Flashback
22. ULTIMQIX.BIN  28 Ultimate Qix
23. ARCUS.BIN     31 Arcus Odyssey
24. PHSTAR2.BIN   32 Phantasy Star II
25. NCAAFBALL.BIN 33 NCAA Football
26. PELE.BIN      34 PELE!
27. PGATOUR3.BIN  35 PGA Tour Golf III
28. ALEXKIDD.BIN  36 Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
29. BERNBEAR.BIN  37 The Berenstain Bears' Camping Adventure
30. ECCO2.BIN     38 Ecco: The Tides of Time
31. BUSYTOWN.BIN  40 Richard Scarry's Busytown
32. G_LOC.BIN     42 G-Loc
33. TJ&E1.BIN*    46 Toejam & Earl
34. MEGABOMB.BIN  47 Mega Bomberman
35. HARDRIVN.BIN* 48 Hard Drivin'
36. WSBASE.BIN    51 World Series Baseball
37. RUGBY95.BIN   52 Rugby World Cup 1995
38.  

Edit: Corrected VECTORMAN.BIN > VECTRMAN.BIN

 

And it's making headlines already... @ndiddy and @RisingFromRuins you are now famous people ...

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/11/two-lost-sega-channel-games-have-been-found-and-preserved

 

Not his first rodeo. He's a habitual line stepper

 

For real?! OK... I'm not condemning him... everyone has their own life and problems... and Sega's forefathers Martin Bromley and Richard Stewart were no saints either... I'm grateful to him for everything he did in the 90s...

 

So I had a look to see if I could fill this - it's been a while since I specifically went after Sega Channel, so it was possible something has turned up in the months and years since.

...and there's not a huge amount - nothing as helpful as a "schedule", but I was able to work out a few things.

The (US) Sega Channel logo was created by "Alan Brooks Design"
https://archive.org/details/us16249800unse/page/50/mode/2up?q="sega+channel"

Very little survives of his website:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991128131743/http://www.alanbrooks.com:80/sega.html
(later iterations don't like to mention Sega Channel)

p.s. you might have noticed, but there are three logo animations in these dumped menus - you have to soft reset to see the other two.


You could probably guess this from the aethstics alone, but the Scientific Atlanta adaptors came first:
https://archive.org/details/columbuscallpost80lync_49/page/n7/mode/2up?q="sega+channel"
Coaxial Communications of Ohio appear to be taking credit as the first compny to use the General Instrument system, and this is from December 28th 1995.

This might explain why we've seen more SAs than GIs.


I also accidentally got caught up in something else: Sega Forum. I'm too young and too British to remember CompuServe being a competitor to the World Wide Web, but Sega of America signed up with this thing in November 1994 as an alternative to their website. Part of this would have involved showing the Sega Channel schedules - probably all the way up until its demise.


and hey, maybe I should have noticed it being printed in US manuals for the best part of three years, but I didn't.

I don't expect any CompuServe archives exist (just like SoA's old website circa 1994 wasn't saved), but it's another thing to look out for. It seems a more likely place to find 1997 schedules than print magazines, because after the service launched... they're generally not interested. It's kind-of surprising how much the video game and technology mags didn't care - yes there were bigger gaming stories elsewhere, but even the exclusive titles were overlooked.

 

I know there's no need to remind you of this... but save those two on Retro CDN... ...

 

I've looked before, but not much chance of anything getting archived. A bit off topic, but it does mention Sega Channel so here's what else I have;

Forget where this is from (1994);



Consoles+ 41 (also covers Sega Channel in the article);