I'll consider buying JP Gameworld if you folks are willing to watch me Livestreaming it. :P While it is ROM dumped, the emulation seems prettty bad... the Story Mode appears to break critically on the last page, rendering it unwinnable. I need to see how it's supposed to play.
Has anyone seen a western Pico game in one of those japanese clam shell cases before? Found an auction in Italy that has a copy of the Richard Scarry game with one here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sega-Pico-console-Kids-Megadrive-Educational-IN-SCATOLA-RARO-PAL-CON-2-GIOCHI-/391686974198 The case doesn't have a Japanese Pico logo at the top so either it's unique to Italy or maybe a custom cover? EDIT: ah nevermind its mentioned on the wiki lol Also my current Pico collection for the fun of it. Finally got a boxed and fully working system and it came with the Tails game which is nice. Oh and in case anyone missed it I did a let's play of Sonic's Gameworld last year, though it runs at a slower PAL speed and this was when I only had a slightly-wonky Pico.
Riiiiise from your grave, thread! On a semi-related subject, I'm interested in several Pico ports to PC that were done as part of the Paso Pico series, especially as a couple of them look to be unique to PC (making me wonder if they had been planned for Pico and then cancelled.) Does anyone know if digital copies of these are floating out there anywhere?
I would suspect not - it was tricky enough trying to find evidence that those games even existed (and there'll still be re-releases I don't understand)
Not related ... this is probably no novelty... i found this some time ago... just an archived page of "Sega of Japan" website... there's some Pico stuff here with images (click the blue squares)... I don't know Japanese ... so I think I'm not the best person to deal with this... Edit: and this one ... a partnership with RICOH
I have a question about the existence of a particular game. The Sega Retro wiki lists the existence of a "Ninja Sentai Kakuranger" game released for the Pico, however the release year is unknown, the serial number is just guessed, and I can't seem to find any evidence of this game existing. Is this an error, or is there simply an undumped game floating around out there? I know that some Kakuranger assets were used in the Bandai compilation "Tanoshiku Asonde Nouryoku Up!! - Tanoshii Youchien" from '94, but I don't think that this is what was being referred to. Any clues, intrepid detectives?
Our Pico coverage isn't good, mostly because... there was no (English) Pico coverage to speak of before we came along. There was a list vaguely pointing in the direction of games - no photographic evidence, and IIRC a lot of it was wrong. I think there's a few other "games" in a similar position - I couldn't prove they existed. Quick search gives a clue as to why this particular one might be wrong, though: "?????????????" This isn't a game, but chances are it's been mistaken as one. I think these are replaceable pads? All I know is that there's at least five others and they're all undocumented.
I'm not exactly sure of what those things are... but I guess you're not far from the truth... there's some info here (in Japanese)... in fact there's a lot of Pico curiosities in that Japanese blog ... like that Pico TV (of which I have never heard of) ... here's the home page...
I don't know, what's odd about that is that the picture above seems to feature the characters from Seijuu Sentai Gingaman from 1998-1999 (Loosely adapted to Power Rangers' "Lost Galaxy" season that ran in 1999). Ninja Sentai Kakuranger on the other hand ran from 1994-1995 (even more loosely adapted as the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers' "Ninja Quest" story arc in 1995). This isn't like the US where Power Rangers were originally an ongoing storyline for years so retailers could get by using new suits for older material, either; Super Sentai featured a new set of heroes for each season from the start and was already very well established by the 1990s. Of course, what's interesting is that the Japanese characters in the logo look closer to the Ninja Sentai Kakuranger logo than they do the Seijuu Sentai Gingaman logo? I don't know any Japanese so I can't make heads or tails of what the logo actually says.
Actually, they're the characters from Gekisou Sentai Carranger, from 1996, which was adapted into Power Rangers Turbo. Kakuranger was two seasons prior. Now, I believe that the above image is actually being sold on eBay at the moment, and looks to be some kind of replacement cards for the touchpad thing on the Pico. Now, due to the yearly refresh of Super Sentai and it's associated merch-train, chances are if there was actually a dedicated Kakuranger Pico game, it would've been in '94. However, given the existence of "Tanoshiku Asonde Nouryoku Up!! - Tanoshii Youchien" from '94 which includes a few small Kakuranger minigames, I'm really not sure if an actual Kakuranger game was released. Carranger's follow up Denji Sentai Megaranger got a Pico release too. But I don't think Gingaman did. They're the Rangers with the weird Charlie Brown zig-zags. Carranger look like.. well, cars.
So then. "Beenaland" (??????) "Picoland" (?????) Explain. (There are a lot of undocumented arcade machines like this)
Waitaminute... That's suspiciously similar to Dinosaur King, among other games, tech... do you think these types of cabs were repurposed or the card systems technologies were just an evolution from this Beena/Picoland into the mini card based systems Sega distributed later on?
Yeah there's a lot of sharing going on - Sega had a whole line of cabinets aimed at children which never left Japan... and I don't understand any of them. Recently I've come across a set of Kids Medal games which share similar cabinets, and there are 349485039248032 variants of Mushiking/Dinosaur King and it's truly frightening. Though maybe not as bad as Love and Berry: Dress Up and Dance!. Just looking at it makes me want to wash my hands.
Something I've just noticed. The original cardboard box export releases have product codes MK-490xx-xx. Then later they came in plastic cases and the product codes were MK-498xx-xx. It seems that Sega Europe had already stopped distributing Pico by then, so only Italy (via Giochi Preziosi) and Taiwan got these. The one exception was "A Year at Pooh Corner", which retained the original code in Taiwan (with Taiwanese region code "16"). That was generally a pack-in, which could explain the difference. I could find four Italian plastic case releases, but couldn't see the code for "Mickey's Blast into the Past". It seems likely that it was MK-49801-13 ("13" was the region code for Italy), but that needs confirmation. MK-49021-16 A Year at Pooh Corner MK-49800-16 Soreike! Anpanman: Eigo to Nakayoshi 2 Tanoshii Carnival MK-49801-13 *[Mickey's Blast into the Past]*??? MK-49802-13 The Berenstain Bears' A School Day MK-49803-13 Richard Scarry's Huckle and Lowly's Busiest Day Ever MK-49804-13 Tails and the Music Maker MK-49805-16 Doraemon: Nobita no Machinaka Doki Doki Tanken! MK-49806-16 Gakken no o-Benkyou Soft Kazu-Suuji MK-49807-16 Mickey to Ooki na Furudokei Which means that there might have been only five Taiwanese releases, although it's still possible that some came after 49807, or that there were Chinese versions of the Italian releases.
