More Sega Channel prototypes dumped.

This is all that has survived from CompuServe... but it's basically just accounting crap...

https://archive.org/details/2015-05-compuserve-raw-disks

https://medium.com/@mpnet/trying-to...isk-images-posted-on-archive-org-b1c62ce6012b

which is a shame... because I quite like these things from the early days of the internet... I'm a guy from the mid-80s and 90s who didn't have the chance to experience it when it first came out... and I'm not American either...

 

ICEknight went through the list of games, I'll repost his work:

Code (Text):

1. EXCLUSIVES
2. Klondike
3. Olympic Summer Games - Test Drive
4. Sega Channel Game Guide
5. The Chessmaster
6.  
7. NEW BUILDS?
8. Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble
9. OutRunners
10. Super Volleyball
11. World Series Baseball '96
12.  
13. KNOWN DUMPS WITH DIFFERENT PADDING
14. Flashback - The Quest for Identity (USA) (En,Fr)
15. Phantasy Star II (USA, Europe) (Rev A)
16. Punisher, The (USA)
17.  
18. KNOWN DUMPS WITH WATERMARKS ADDED
19. Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle (USA)
20. Berenstain Bears' Camping Adventure, The (USA)
21. Ecco - The Tides of Time (USA)
22. Richard Scarry's Busytown (USA)
23. Sonic & Knuckles (World)
24. Strider (USA, Europe)
25. World Series Baseball (USA)
26.  
27. MATCH KNOWN DUMPS
28. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters (USA)
29. Arcus Odyssey (USA)
30. B.O.B. (USA, Europe)
31. Ballz 3D - The Battle of the Ballz (USA, Europe)
32. Castlevania - Bloodlines (USA)
33. College Football's National Championship II (USA)
34. Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (USA)
35. Fatal Labyrinth (USA, Europe) (En,Ja)
36. G-LOC - Air Battle (World)
37. Generations Lost (USA, Europe)
38. Granada (Japan, USA) (En) (Rev A)
39. Hard Drivin' (World)
40. Junction (Japan, USA) (En)
41. Jungle Strike (USA, Europe)
42. M-1 Abrams Battle Tank (USA, Europe)
43. Marsupilami (USA) (En,Fr,De,Es,It)
44. Mega Bomberman (USA)
45. NCAA Football (USA)
46. Pele! (USA, Europe)
47. PGA Tour Golf III (USA, Europe)
48. Rugby World Cup 95 (USA, Europe) (En,Fr,It)
49. Saint Sword (USA)
50. Shinobi III - Return of the Ninja Master (USA)
51. Space Harrier II (World)
52. Streets of Rage 2 (USA)
53. Taz-Mania (World)
54. ToeJam & Earl (USA, Europe, Korea) (En)
55. Ultimate QIX (USA)
56. Valis (USA)
57. Vectorman (USA) (Sega Smash Pack)
58. X-Men (USA)
59. Ys III (USA)
60. Zoop (USA)

 

I'm not going to give a speech although I would like to thank everyone here for all of your hard work and dedication to this channel. I am speechless an humbled to see so much talent and devotion here, I feel proud to be a member of this community and I thank you all for making this happen.

 

And we thank you for sharing that Sega Channel disc with us... Just out of curiosity... how long had you kept that disc?

 

It was in a locker for about 24 years since 2000? I think, I didn't even know it was there.

 

Wow!... 24 years?... Incredible!... keep it safe... it's a historical artefact... it's the first time we've seen an authentic Sega Channel disc here... and we never actually thought we'd see one...

 

Well it won't be going back in the locker, time to put it in the safe I suppose.

 

found in a legal filing for Time Warner affiliates



We already had this info floating around in press releases (short of whatever TCID Games is- Tele-Communications Inc. Digital Games?), but.... doing business as Sega TV? No not the UK television campaign of the same name. Because of that ad campaign and the fact that "Sega TV" is kind of just the term someone might settle on when describing the Sega Channel, finding into on the Sega Channel Sega TV is really difficult.

Now here's the curious thing: STT Video Partners, the company that Time Warner, TCI, and Sega of America created to market (and partially manage?) the service, largely did business under the name Sega Channel. Former employees call it that name, the company themselves called it that name, and its the name that a lot of Sega Channel merch is legally copyrighted to.

Has anyone seen an official usage of the term Sega TV to refer to the Sega Channel?
What are the chances it was a working title for the service?

 

Apparently there are references to this name buried within demo cartridge 4. TCRF has this listed, we don't. Someone should fix that.

 

Alan Murphy (artist)... he needs a page...

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XKryl

https://www.artstation.com/princeofpixels

 

well thats enough for me to call it

I'll get a page for Alan Murphy up too

 

If you have time upload all this artwork too... It's midnight here and I'm very sleepy...

 

Hm. U.S. 1 claims Alan Brooks Design created the Sega Channel logo. But then Alan Murphy does the same.

My first thought was: his full name is probably Alan Brooks Murphy, or something. But it's actually Alan J. Murphy. I've been researching the discrepancy here for a while, and I have no doubt Alan Murphy created the actual logo. Maybe.... Alan Murphy was working at Alan Brooks Design, and that's why the article attributes the logo to "Alan Brooks"? Are these actually two different people? They seem to live on different coasts, went to different universities, etc...

EDIT: Both could be responsible - Alan Brooks could have conceptualized it/sketched it/etc, while Alan Murphy translated it to the Mega Drive. After all, U.S. 1's logo (attributed to Brooks) is a print version, while the early Sega TV logo listed on Alan Murphy's ArtStation is an emulated screenshot of Mega Drive graphics.

Any insight here?

 

I was able to get the September '96 help viewer to run by adding zeroes to the ROM file after the game header until the code location matched the addresses in the vector table. I'm not sure why this was necessary, maybe it had something to do with the functionality for jumping directly to a game's help file? This also works with the other help viewers on the Sega Channel dev CD (P__\SIT\HELPBIN) that don't load in an emulator.

Edit: I also managed to get the SCMENU.OUT COFF file from SCTOOLS\MENUTEST on the dev CD converted into a .BIN and got it running in an emulator. It's an unfinished version of the February 1996 menu (not sure if we have any footage of that month's final menu to compare with). There's some unique music in there for you GEMS fans. See here for that (apparently the 1 mb zipped ROM file is too big to upload as an attachment).

 

Amazing job guys, this is one of the most incredible and historical days for the SEGA research community!
Also, I actually have a Chilean Sega Channel unit, could it be helpful to extract something from it?

 

Probably so... is it very different from the American one?

https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:32X_Introduction_and_System_Features_-_26_-_04_-_1994.pdf&page=37

That's what it sounds like... or Alan Murphy created this logo (which is basically conceptual artwork that has never been officially used) for the demo cartridges (I know that this artwork is used in one of the demo cartridges... Demo Cartridge #4 if I'm not wrong... or one of the others... I can't remember... he also made this one but the "Sega Channel Spark" effect seen in the intro is credited to Bruce Straley of Pacific SoftScape) and later Sega hired Alan Brooks (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanbrookscreative/) to make the final logo and Alan Murphy translated it to the Mega Drive (which is what seems most right)... but I'm not sure... but don't worry too much about it for now (or if you want to change something based on what seems most right to you, feel free to do so.)... something will turn up in the future... and by the way... well done! ...

 

Great work! This file has a few differences in games to the ones listed in SIT/GAMEGUID/GUIDE0296.BIN

That file is dated 96-01-12 compared to SCMENU.OUT which is dated 96-01-23

Looking in SCMENUS/02SA96.MNU (96-01-04) it matches the GUIDE0296.BIN (96-01-12), whilst 02GI96.MNU (96-01-22) matches SCMENU.OUT (96-01-23).

So it looks like the line up changed slightly during development, I'll correct the schedule which originally came from the game guide.

Home Alone: Family > None
VR Troopers: Arcade > Express
Motral Kombat 3: Express > None
Risk: Puzzlers > None
Light Crusader: Arcade > Fantasy
Mutant Chronicles: None > Arcade

Edit: It seems quite late in the month for them to still be working on February. Maybe this was the finished menu that they then used to test some things (music?) they wanted to implement in future menus.

There also seems to be prototype PAL menus in SCMENUS/MISCMENU created through the latter part of 1995.

Edit 2: Unfortunately there's no known footage or pictures of 1996-02 to compare with.

 

That's some bold claims.

 

I got all of the game rom file names from the dev disc (1994-12 through 1996-02) and found all the games with multiple roms. These are the ones that should be different to the full game;

The Adventures of Batman & Robin
ADBATSPC: Demo of stages 1 and 3 from level one.

College Football's National Championship II
COLLGFB2: Competition; Finish a game and write down team and total yards from the game stats screen

Comix Zone
COMXSPC2: Demo of level 1
COMIXPG2: Demo of level 2

Mutant Chronicles: Doom Troopers
MUTCHSP3: Demo of levels 1-3

Earthworm Jim
EWJPREVW: Demo of levels 1-2
EWJPROMO: Demo of levels 1-2 with a competition password and code on completion
EWJHINT1: Video hints
EWJHINT2: More video hints

Earthworm Jim 2
EWJ2SPEC: Demo of 3 levels
EARTHJ2: Demo of 3 levels (is this different than above?)

Mortal Kombat 3
MK3_TD: Demo with only Kung Lao, Nightwolf, Sindel, and Kano playable
MK3SPEC: Demo with a competition password and address on winning 3 rounds in a row
MK3PARTA: First half of full game (32MB games don't fit)
MK3PARTB: Second half of full game

Primal Rage
PRIMALTD: Demo with 3 of 7 characters
PRIMALCN: Full game with a competition password and code on completion

Xmen 2
HXMEN2: Demo of levels 1-2
XMEN2SPC: Demo of levels 1-2 (is this different than above?)

There was also Boxing Legends of The Ring which had 2 different file names (LEGENDS and BOXNGLEG), but as it predates the Sega Channel I think it's unlikely to have been Sega Channel specific. Maybe one is the Chaves II variant.

In addition these games only have one rom, but are Sega Channel specific;

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers
SUPSF2LE: Limited edition with half fighters (32MB+ games don't fit)

Triple Play '96
TRIPSPC1: Competition; Password after playing any 3 innings.

Along with games only known to have released on Sega Channel;

Berenstain Bears' Pico
BBEARPCO

Garfield: The Lost Levels
GARF1220

The Flintstones
FLNTSTN

There are also international games which were only released on Sega Channel in the US which may have different versions (such a Megaman: The Wily Wars which has different copyright info), but it's hard to know which versions were used.

I now realise that the Sega Channel adapter supported games up to 24 MEG in size, not 16 MEG as I previously thought. WSB 96 being a "Limited Edition" threw me off, but that must've been intentionally limited in order to give people a reason to still buy the cart.

Scholastic's The Magic School Bus: Space Exploration Game hadn't appeared on Sega Channel up to that point, but 2 roms are rated;
MAGSCBUS: Probably the full version
MAGSBSPC: Probably a demo or competition rom going by the "SPC" (special?) which is in other demo file names.

 

I think that covers all the outliers on the wiki except for "Double Dribble: Championship Edition" (which might be a mistake?) and "Gotron" (which might not exist?)