Tangentially related Sega stories

Mini one

While "not doing work" this morning, I noticed SorachiJirachi uploaded some screenshots for Ishido: The Way of Stones/Comparisons. IBM CGA is a bit weird:


CGA has a bunch of modes, and as the text in the top right is hard to read, I was convinced at 8AM this morning that this was the wrong one. But no, turns out Ishido uses the rarely seen 2-colour 640x200 mode - fair enough.

But hey, there's one missing from the list - the Hercules version! I can still look leet and cool and



hmm.

I've only really used Hercules mode for wiki purposes, so I hadn't seen this before, but apparently it's quite common. Hercules officially runs at 720x348 monochrome, but if you were incredibly lazy, you could just stick the 640x200 CGA graphics in there and introduce massive black borders.


And turns out quite a bit of software does this. If you were stuck with a Hercules card I guess it's better than nothing, but they could have at least centred the image!


I'm in two minds to add this to the wiki. On one hand, Hercules is an officially supported mode for Ishido, but on the other, it is literally the same as CGA just with extra borders - borders you could hide by changing monitor settings. And does it help with Sega comparisons? Probably not.

(and I mean the above photo shows another problem - monochrome cards were usually paired with green or amber monitors, so greyscale screenshots are not necesessarily reflective of what the user sees anyway)

Interesting though

 

This isn't really related to anything Sega, but I have a very particular set of skills, and I thought I'd use them to semi-solve a mystery.



Here's a Walt Disney Classic - when The Little Mermaid was released on VHS, one of the spires of King Triton's Castle is apparently shaped like a penis, causing complaints, a recall, and a new print run. Currently this is about as far as the story goes - it was speculated that some disgruntled employee was responsible... and uh... well that's it.

It's right in the middle. I point this out because it wasn't obvious to me years ago when I first saw it.

Anyway this design is based on footage from the film itself, seen within the first minute or two:

It's dodgy, but as a quick redraw for a home release, it's not too far off. I don't think it's outside the realms of possibility that this could be a mistake.

Anyway I wasn't planning on looking too far into this because I was just telling a story for non-internet purposes, and the audience aren't super obsessive over detail. But I wanted to establish some basic facts, such as "when did this happen"... which the internet isn't very clear on.

The film was released in (US) cinemas on 17th November 1989. It was then brought to "videocassette" (that's VHS and Betamax) within six months, debuting around mid-May 1990.

Wikipedia claims there were other versions, which is true... but these came later in 1990(?) and seem to have addressed the "problem":

Video8: make it shiny!


LaserDisc: redraw the top!

(Disney call it "Laser VideoDisc" and "CAV Laser VideoDisc" but whatever)

so yeah, clearly it was clocked as being a problem but... uh. erm. The internet says the VHS/Beta releases have "banned covers". Which would have you believe that Disney recalled the product and replaced all the artwork. And because of that, we can charge stupid money for second-hand copies - it's rare!

except
https://picclick.com/?q=little+mermaid+vhs
it's not rare. And every single one of these appears to have the so-called "banned cover" (disregarding the 1998 re-release, the sequel, and the animated TV series of course).

International versions seem to use altered art, though I haven't explored when those were released, and often the logo obscures Triton's castle.


My theory - Disney noticed the problem mid-1990 and addressed it in future re-issues, but never bothered to fix the VHS and Betamax versions because they didn't care enough. And I should stress, this thing sold very well - they were probably several print runs over the course of 1990 (and 1991?).

Ultimately I suspect this was "recalled" in the same way other Disney movies were - this was right in the middle of the "Disney Vault" phase, where the company would only print things for a limited time to drum up interest, before pulling the plug for x years. So they let it run its course and came up with a brand new design for the next re-release.

 

If you were curious what "its course" was, I think we're looking at about April 1991 when The Little Mermaid went back into the vault (at least in the US). And then they aired it on The Disney Channel in May.

So November 1989 (film) -> May 1990 (home video) -> May 1991 (TV) - that's a quick turnaround. This is the film that kicked off the so-called "Disney Renaissance", but looking at those dates... it suggests they weren't super confident in its box office performance yet. Though with supposedly 10 million home copies sold, maybe they had a plan all along.

(RE: the original VHS is not rare)


Anyway who cares. Well it does secretly solve a different mystery - the Sega game Ariel the Little Mermaid doesn't follow the film's plot at all, which a lot of people (even at the time) thought was a little weird. Looking at the above... I think I know why - we have it marked as a late 1992 release, when the film was stuck in the vault. A better match would be the television series which debuted in the Autumn of 1992. The TV series is a prequel (because spoilers: ARIEL IS A MERMAID), and the stories are inconsequential, just like the game.


That being said, I can't explain why the two Beauty and the Beast games were released in late 1993, almost two years after the film. But that's Sunsoft's problem I guess.

 

As the new multimedia expert, riddle me this


From a 1993/1994 UK catalogue from The Software Toolworks: there are separate listings for "PC CD" and "MPC CD" for The San Diego Zoo Presents... The Animals!. This might matter because as there's a Mega-CD version, there might be more comparisons to do.

The problem is that this is a horrible title to search for, not just because of its stupid name, but because there's 4328093284092 slightly different versions and re-releases and nobody has kept track because it's not a "game".


My gut instinct is there was only one "PC" version and they're trying to be cute, but this sort of thing can be elusive. It's also not the only piece of software in the catalogue to do this - "The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia" has PC CD and MPC CD releases each priced at £293.95. Bargain!

 

I was a in a "cleanup technical information" mood, when I came across Logic Puzzle Rainbow Town. I hadn't played it and our description was brief, so I had a little dig.

We had this listed as a "Picross clone", which turns out isn't accurate. Nintendo/Jupiter have been releasing Picross games since 1995, and yeah, they're entertaining in their own little way, but question:



Are they in colour?


... well... yes, the newer ones are (and there's even Sega-branded version) but Logic Puzzle Rainbow Town was released in 1996 - I think it might be the first. In fact, it may be the first in any medium - it's very difficult to tell (there's also an... "overlay"(?) mode which is super confusing but might be unique?)

(I think "g" stands for "guess", aka "we're not going to tell you". We don't have a manual)

It's also claiming to have 737 puzzles which far exceeds Nintendo's efforts. The music is annoying after a while though - I'd be surprised if many people beat this thing back in the day.

So yeah, the wonky CG makes it looks cheap and nasty, but this could be a pioneer. Do we know otherwise?

 

I made a mistake when researching the above. I stumbled across nonograms.org, where people submit their own designs. There are tens of thousands of designs.

After learning how to solve these "properly", I tried tackling one of the XX large puzzles today. On average these take 6-9 hours to complete, maybe more.


It's like a drug. Don't do it. I've been so unproductive, and it wasn't even a particularly pretty image in the end. Good god.