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More Sega Channel prototypes dumped.

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Kiddo Cabbusses, Jul 20, 2011.

  1. Pirate Dragon

    Pirate Dragon

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    Gotcha! We missed out by one month :(

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  2. rganders

    rganders

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    Don't be so sure we missed out ;)
     
  3. Overlord

    Overlord

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    Iiiiinteresting. With this ability to build the menu files... how far in theory are we off being able to build entirely custom Sega Channel ROMs? Menus, games, the lot?
     
  4. rganders

    rganders

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    Technically the tools are there to do that already. It'd just be a bit tedious
     
  5. Kilo

    Kilo

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    A custom Sega Retro Channel service to distribute stuff like ROM hacks and homebrews sounds fun thinking about it. Entirely unnecessary with the convenience of modern internet, but still fun.
     
  6. LordOfSquad

    LordOfSquad

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    I think it'd be a great way to bundle a bunch of the more inconsequential mods together so your file directory stays a little tidier.

    Really satisfying watching all the progress made in here. I never experienced it back in the day but always been fascinated
     
  7. ndiddy

    ndiddy

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    Doing it the hacky way (making the game menu use the SSF2 mapper and appending game ROMs to the end to make a giant ROM) should be fairly easily doable for anyone with 68000 assembly knowledge. The biggest problems are that the tools for making the menu files are pretty clunky, and that you'd need to find emulators capable of loading a giant ROM file (I think BlastEm should work).
    EDIT: I think you would need a custom mapper, I didn't realize that bank 0 is fixed on the SSF2 mapper.

    We also have the tooling required to make a Sega Channel distribution image like the one RisingFromRuins uploaded, although running it would require an emulator to implement Sega Channel support.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2024
  8. rganders

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    The challenge with Sega Channel is that the units were fundamentally little cable boxes. The units take scrambled and fragmented data and cobble it back together.

    In terms of emulating, I know BillyTimeGames has a cool project that does this.
     
  9. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Genuinely,

    SpaceX is offering to put a small satellite into space for as low as $300K USD:
    https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/
    (yes this is a real service)

    Prices have dropped dramatically in the last few years - it might genuinely be feasible to launch a "Sega Channel 2" from Kickstarter funds alone by the end of the decade.



    I'm not suggesting you do that though - people are dying.
     
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  10. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    [​IMG]



    5:53

    Sega Channel was at Innoventions, and more importantly, the earlier 1994 menu was. Enjoy the one single screen from an unknown month (and the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon concepts - yes they put them on display, apparently)

    (don't know if any clues can be spotted in this concept art (9:00))

    EDIT: I just looked up if we had a page on "Peter Johnson" and Christ - he died in 1994.
     
  11. Kilo

    Kilo

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    I was thinking a Sega Channel successor could just be done over the internet rather than actually using satellites and stuff. But I mean, $300k does seem somewhat achievable.
     
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  12. Poderoso Joe

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    It would really be a dream to see the almighty Sega Genesis online again. I hope to make this dream come true with the launch of the new GF1 Neptune, which promises an online store for Mega Drive games and the launch of new accessories and exclusive games. I confess that I am excited to see a 16-bit console with online service along the lines of the most modern consoles today.
     
  13. cartridgeculture

    cartridgeculture

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    This video is from October 1994. Unfortunately, we can't use this to add any game broadcast months because the only screen we see is Test Drives. And (as far as I'm aware) we're listing Sega Channel games' broadcast dates for the full playable game, not the demo version. But hey we did pick up a bunch of VRC ratings.

    Note to self: adding a "Test Drive" line to the _sc Sega Channel Releases entry (like we do with some Saturn demos) would be helpful for distinguishing between these two dates.
     
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2024
  14. BillyTime! Games

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    Actually, Sega Channel Revival uses this exact method. SSF2 mapper for bank switching and a custom version of Genesis Plus GX to load roms almost to the limit of 100 MegaBytes.

    https://github.com/BillyTimeGames/Genesis-Plus-GX-Expanded-Rom-Size

    A custom bootloader was programmed in combination with addintrogen in order to detect menu selection to load into specific games/menus. Code for that is located at offset 20:0000 - 20:E100 in each rom. Bankswitching is done through code loaded into ram.

    Here is the end result in action.
     
  15. Pirate Dragon

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    Nice find. According to rganders there were only 3 months for the test markets which got repeated (looking through the newspaper archives there's also mentions of a three month test period). Florida doesn't seem to have been one of the test markets, and not sure cable would've covered Epcot anyway, so most likely they just used the local version with their own CDs. Here's the Test Drives for the second month (which should be July, presuming the test didn't get delayed again ...). The Epcot footage matches neither the launch month, nor the second, so might be the third month / August. It probably didn't make sense for Innoventions to repeat the older discs, so may have just kept the most recent disc with the latest games in until new discs started again in December.
     
  16. ashthedragon

    ashthedragon

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    Seems the same. I've never tried powering it on, though.
    [​IMG]
     
  17. Pirate Dragon

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    It may well have a different bios, the Canadian one used in the Canadian demo cart has French error messages.

    I found some more UK schedules (now EU schedules), they match the German ones, but not the Argentinian schedule. In hindsight this makes sense, the European/PAL channel was dealt with by TCI-International, but they didn't have the rights to distribute it in the Americas. So it seems that there was four versions of the Western Sega Channel; US, Canada, Europe, and South America (I'm guessing Chile and Argentina both got the same version, but I don't know for sure).
     
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  18. Muttvil

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    Looking at the headers of the recently found games, they all have product codes with the same T-series:
    Code (Text):
    1. T-148156    The Chessmaster
    2. T-148166    Klondike
    3. T-148186    Olympic Summer Games (Test Drive)
    T-148 doesn't look to be used anywhere else, so I guess it was for Sega Channel stuff?
     
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  19. Would you happen to know how to extract files from the disc image? I can't figure out how to open it, though clearly someone in here has.
     
  20. Pirate Dragon

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    It's not a disc image, the .IMG file is a file from the disc. ndiddy said they'll release the tools they wrote to extract the contents in a few weeks after they've tidied up the code.