General Questions and Information Thread

Coverage of the UK Sega Challenge Final 1993.

 

Presenting "I Magnifici Sette", a Commodore 64 magazine published in Italy.

Do you notice a problem? It came with a covertape with 20(!) full games, and not a single one of them has a recognisable name.

There's a reason for this: due to lax copyright laws for software at the time, there was nothing stopping this magazine taking full fat, commercial video games and slapping them on a freebie tape. All they had to do is change the name. So they did.



And now, an unlicensed commercial release of OutRun (and 19 other games) can be yours for not a lot of money.

There were 34 issues of this magazine - I don't know how many have Sega games on them, but I'd guess more than one.

 

Getting a bit bored with this current task: Category:Old ExtraTable template

This is (mostly) a list of Saturn games which have extra files on their discs, e.g. developer messsages or images or in some cases, screensavers. These pages use the old ExtraTable template (aka "these things exist"), rather than the new preferred method of showing the files on sub-pages.

So for example. a game I did recently:
Goiken Muyou: Anarchy in the Nippon/Hidden content
Goiken Muyou: Anarchy in the Nippon/Technical information
Now you can marvel at three-decade-old pre-renders for a game you probably haven't played.

Non-Japanese discs were never checked, and the contents can differ between regions. Case in point: Fighting Vipers has an extra document on the Japanese disc. It's not present on the US disc, and I haven't checked the rest.


So if you're keen to dig into some old Saturn games... here's a nice list to prioritise.

 

Using the power of copy-pasting from hex editors:

Fighting Vipers/Command list

A bunch of empty tables! Fun fact: the game stores these strings in a different order to how they're displayed in the training mode. Thanks AM2!


We have fighting games with move lists already (e.g. Virtua Fighter) but these are baked into the main page. And that's fine for the first Virtua Fighter, but when you're dealing with 70-80 moves per character, it starts to become a scrolling nightmare, and is therefore worth splitting.

I'm using Template:MoveListTable, but there might be a better solution, and called it "command list" because that's what Fighting Vipers calls it. But the template might suck for this purpose, and maybe a more universal term like "moves" or "move list" would be better so everything matches.

As I've hinted at beforre, I want to be able to accommodate screenshots (aka "this is what a punch looks like") in a similar to our teletext coverage (animated GIFs won't be pretty on consoles with more than 256 colours at their disposal). Not that I have plans to actually take these screenshots, because oh my god the task is huge (and I'm not sure how much I trust Model 2 emulation), but if the capability is there, that would be nice.


Virtua Fighter 5 seems to be averaging around 150-200 moves per character - I'd expect the new one to have more(?)

 

Good idea. You have good subpage ideas.

I assume it's called Command list and not Move list to accommodate non-fighting games, yeah?

 

Template:MoveListRow3

something like that maybe, idk.

I also don't know why there's a MoveListTable/Row2

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_for_Legacy_Computing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_for_Legacy_Computing_Supplement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_SC-3000_character_set

And a font for displaying them;

https://babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Pseudographica.html

https://segaretro.org/Block_Break_Game/Technical_information

This seems to work well, I was able to cut and paste even the recently added characters such as the racing car. Just need to settle on which unicode characters to use for the equivalent SC-3000 characters as I'm not sure I agree with all of the "potential Unicode equivalent" examples in the SC-3000 character set article. The only one which doesn't seem to have an equivalent is $ce, which is half an "A" to combine with "E" to produce "Æ". As SC-3000 wasn't sold in countries that use that letter, then it's unlikely to be used by type-ins anyway.

As Fabio's conversion software seems to only understand the ASCII character set I'll make a script to find and replace the non-ASCII unicode characters with the hexadecimals for the SC-3000 character set. That way you should be able to copy the type-in from the wiki and convert it to tape or disk formats, although I've uploaded a tape image on that page anyway (still WIP on how to present those Technical Information pages).

 

While I still don't know the code for displaying the secret credits in Harley-Davidson & L.A. Riders (which Yasuhiro Hayashida has occasionally mentioned on Twitter), a friend of mine connected with Paul from Supermodel Discord server to get me the credits from the CROM file.
https://segaretro.org/Harley-Davidson_&_L.A._Riders/Production_credits

A lot of people from what's the clearly the more high-end 3D games team at AM1, that worked on WAVERUNNER, WATER SKI, THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD, MOTORAID, THE OCEAN HUNTER, etc, as opposed to anyone from their puzzle teams. Weirdly not a lot of DYNAMITE BASEBALL developers despite that being the previous game Kazunari Tsukamoto produced? Just composer Masanori Takeuchi and 2 graphic designers Toshihiro Ando (environment) and Kazuya Kitazato (animations). I feel like @Ted909 will enjoy learning Hiroyuki Taguchi contributed too.

This is what they are in hex code for reference

 

So I'm looking into this right now. Two things make manamoon as an album very different from Crush 40 albums in relation to the games where its songs are featured:

• According to the Roommania#203 Kanzen Guidebook (or at least a book review of it) and basically everthing written about the game, you play as some kind of god who intervenes in the life of Taihei Neji, a college student who won't leave his room, so that he gets out of his shell. Serani Poji and manamoon exist as actual things in the Roommania universe. It's an All About Lily Chou Chou type of situation in which the main character of the game is obsessed with a musical act.
• Sasaki Tomoko isn't only behind Serani Poji and isn't just the sound director for the game: she also co-wrote it, and the original plan for the game is hers. Her explicit objective with the whole project was to bridge real life and the game world.

So it's more than just cross-promotion. It's integral to the game that Serani Poji exists in the game and outside of it, because that was Sasaki's vision not as a musician, but as a game designer. I think it's especially important to document the album in this light. The same doesn't apply to other albums, but manamoon would really need a page in my view -- if not for being an album that exists in real life, at least for being an album that exists in Roommania #203

 

Adding to this, one-room survival is to New Roommania: Porori Seishun what manamoon was to the original Roommania. Came out 4 months before the game, but the songs from that album are used as ending themes in the game's stories, and end up in your Sound Collection once you've heard them.

Here's Yosuke Okunari referencing it https://x.com/okunari/status/1734865893677797863
Tomoko Sasaki referencing it https://x.com/tokioheidi/status/1714477387415724455
News article about a live concert and mentions of how New Roommania's bumping up the numbers of Sound Collection songs from 400 to 1500 https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20021222/sega.htm
List of where each song is used https://w.atwiki.jp/gamemusicbest100/pages/3132.html
Strategy guide list for completing your Sound Collections https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...Z-NQrU/edit?pli=1&gid=287752602#gid=287752602

Songs that aren't used for endings:
4. LOVELABOR (this is a remix of the credits theme from Super Galdelic Hour, a game developed by EXRAYS/POLYGON and published by ENIX, but which outsourced its soundtrack development to Wave Master. There were plenty of games like that in this period, especially Artoon's games like Blinx had Wave Master as a contractor)
9. mi nie we bon (like the previous song, appears in your collection from the start of the game)
10. spiral da-hi! P.R.R. mix. (P.R.R. is short for Porori, that's what the Japanese track title uses, so literally named after the game it appears in. Also it's a special reward somewhere in the game, "Prize Selection")

I think it's also worth pointing out that the titular song manamoon is actually much older than Roommania. The earliest appearance I have of it is on OLIO, a 1994 album part of a 3-album series. All 3 are mostly populated by SEGA composers and directed by Katsuyoshi Nitta and Yoshiaki Kashima. I've considered adding them before but they're not really related to any Sega product directly, only by creatives.

 

Excellent-- does the first game work similarly? As in, you'll unlock songs as you unlock endings? I'd like to rewrite the first game's page in the Wiki but even a gameplay series of videos with commentary doesn't explain much because it's really a one of a kind game.

 

@Palas I'm not sure if endings unlock songs, but probably. You definitely unlock more slots(?) with each scenario, jumping from "25 to collect", to "50" to "100" and finally "400". From what I've read in Dreamcast Magazine, you unlock sounds by interacting with things in the environment that make noise, like TVs, radios and CDs.
https://retrocdn.net/images/6/60/DCM_JP_20000211_2000-04.pdf (pdf page 69)
https://retrocdn.net/images/e/ec/DCM_JP_20000317_2000-09.pdf (pdf page 145)

For context, the way the game functions is that you're a god-type character who hangs around the house of Neji Taihei (surname prename), a lonely guy who thinks he's unique but doesn't really know what makes him unique. You basically just prank him, mess around with his house, influence him into doing certain things... sometimes he leaves the house and you can screw around even more. That's in Gasaire Mode (ガサ入れモード), where you have a movable first-person camera, instead of having to switch between preset cameras. That's how it works in Nozoki Mode (覗きモード), where you can only click to throw balls that draw Neji's attention.

Something to keep in mind about the sound collection is that the things you get aren't just songs. You get commercials and TV shows too, that's why things like the TV still work. Here's a video showing the video stuff in the sound collection
It's not necessarily "songs", it's "sounds that get stuck in your head", so commercial jingles or quotable TV shows make a lot of sense.

There are Serani Poji songs used during the credits of every scenario, but there aren't enough scenarios for even half the album
S1 a huge pocket in space
S2 time is flowing slowly
S3 looking up the blue sky
S4 which one of the twins ?

 

Mr. Incredible: Kyouteki Underminer Toujou and the corresponding film were launched with something called the Mr. Incredible Campaign. Or maybe Japan just slaps the word "campaign" on the end of any marketing campaign? Either way, Disney Japan (?) offered some pre-order bonuses for the PS2/GC/GBA versions:



The PS2 and GameCube versions got a specially branded card deck. And the GBA version got.... uhh a fruit roll-up? A watch? Translation says "stamped pen". Stamp pen?

 

A "magic marker"... with a rubber stamp on the other end with The Incredibles symbol on it...

 

@cartridgeculture That sounds about right from all the campaign pages I've read, which were always marketing campaigns with limited time merchandise. If you go to the Japanese Wikipedia page for Campaign, it defines it as a "promotional activity undertaken by a business, organization, or individual such as a celebrity to promote the company", while mentioning that, in English, it's more often used in reference to political campaigns.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/キャンペーン

 

Looks like some US copies of Panic! advertised a contest where buyers could win a WWF Royal Rumble pinball machine. I'm at work so I can't do proper uploads/references. Anyone know anything more?

 

I've come across a small curiosity while doing personal research on Shining In The Darkness. While looking at the Japanese manual scans we have available on the wiki I noticed that there's a discrepancy between the original 1991 release manual and the digital manual from the Mega Drive Mini 2 on page 26.

For those who don't know, the original Japanese release has a cross on the shrine you find in the town section of the game. This was censored in the western (American & European) release, where they replaced the cross with a different graphic, which resembles what could be a stained glass window.

It looks like it's possible that the Japanese Mega Drive Mini 2 version of the game might have this change as well, as the manual from that version of the game was edited to show the shrine with the stained glass window graphic.


While I do not have access to a Japanese Mega Drive Mini 2, we'll just say I found a "cool, totally legit" way to play the ROM from it...
...and indeed, after checking the town area I can confirm that this change does exist in this version of the game!


This makes me wonder if they've changed anything else in the game for this release. Unfortunately my knowledge of the Japanese language is basically nonexistent beyond some surface level things, so playing through the game this way is going to be a no-go for me. I'm glad I could at least find and verify that this change exists though.


I'd also like to mention another tidbit I've learned about this game. Between the original Japanese and western releases they changed how the naming screen at the beginning of the game works.
In the original Japanese release of the game once you type in all 5 available spaces for the main character's name the game immediately starts without letting you erase any kana. However the Western release removes the functionality of the game automatically starting when all 5 spaces are filled with letters, this unintentionally introduces a bug where the integer selected goes past the last value for the 1st character's name, and while you can't really see what you're doing past a certain point you can rename the rest of your party (Milo and Pyra). I haven't tested this next part out but I theorize that once you go past the 5th letter value of Pyra's name you can potentially start editing other parts of RAM beyond the character names just by inputting letters.
Anybody who feels like messing around with this is free to, I feel like speedrunners could use this to possibly finish the game much earlier than usual if this theory is correct. (Edit: I've just checked other parts of the Internet and this one is already well known about. I really thought I've uncovered something new here. Oh well!)


There's some other interesting things I've found out about this game, but I'll mention that stuff another time and only if people are actually interested. This post is already longer than I anticipated. lol

 

Woah nice find! I'll get this added to the wiki. Unless you'd like to sweep
me off my feet and do it yourself ~

Can you explain that US name bug? I'm having trouble understanding it.

 

Feel free to add it to the wiki if you wish. I don't mind.

Sure. I probably got some terminology mixed up with that explanation anyway.

So basically you get to name the main character at the very beginning of the game. As you can see here the game allows you to use up to 5 letters in his name.


For whatever reason once you enter the 5th letter of his name the character naming screen doesn't know that that's the end of his name. The letters on the left side of the screen (A, J, and S) seem to lock you into pressing the END button when you input those as the 5th letter on the name screen, giving you the intended result of capping the letter limit. But if you use a different letter right of those such as T, you can actually move the cursor left and off of the END button and put in a 6th letter, and then a 7th letter, and so on.

As you can see here I put in "S" as a 6th letter:


Each letter used in the main character's name is a hex value stored in RAM. When you type in the 6th letter of his name you're actually altering the next byte in memory, and the byte that comes right after the main character's 5th letter of his name is the beginning of the 2nd party member's (Milo) name. You cannot rename this character by normal circumstances but this bug allows you to do it. With the screenshot I showed you the first letter of Milo's name has been replaced with an "S" so now his name is "Silo" in memory. If I input a 7th letter, lets say a "P", this character's name will now be "Splo" and so forth. Each party character can have up to 5 letters per name just like the main character's name.

So the first 5 letters you input as normal is the main characters name, 5 more letters in memory after that make up Milo's name, then the 5 letters after that make up Pyra's name, then when you start putting in letters after the 15th letter you put in you start editing values beyond the names in memory. This means you can put in corresponding letters to byte values in memory. (Note: You can't seem to see what you're putting in past the 13th letter as the letters you input after that begins going off screen.)

I found this post on another forum right after writing my previous post here. A user on there types in "Z" 128 times and it overwrites parts of his main character's inventory giving his main character a bunch of Bronze Armors in his inventory. The hex value for "Z" in character names is $37, I'm assuming Bronze Armor's hex value in the inventory table is also $37, I haven't checked that far into it. But essentially anything that's stored in memory after the name data can be edited this way, which includes the main character's inventory among other things.


Hopefully that makes enough sense. I'm not really used to explaining technical things like this.

 

Close enough, welcome back Wild World RAM editing