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Messages - codeman38

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781
1984-1992 / Jing Ke Xin Zhuan NSF investigation
« on: September 19, 2010, 06:28:54 PM »
Cheetahmen
Sep 18 2010, 05:26:10 PM
It's on Gil Galad's site, in the news section. :P[/quote]::facepalm:: D'oh, that's what I get for only looking in the Music section!

Edit: And wow, more NSFs that I had no idea even existed, including Panda World and Harry's Legend! How the heck had I not looked at the News page? Seriously?

782
2000-present / Shenzhen Nanjing's sound driver: origins?
« on: September 18, 2010, 07:18:58 PM »
Cheetahmen
Sep 18 2010, 07:11:24 PM
I've seen those as well. I'm assuming whoever did the music for SNT's games also did the same for those Famiclone menus as well. Maybe SNT did PC Famiclones at some point or another?[/quote]I'm wondering if there's a connection with GLK Dance, myself. Gold Leopard King is a fairly prolific brand of keyboard Famiclones.

Edit: Oh wow. GLK Dance is indeed Gold Leopard King. Here's proof from a random Argentinean YouTuber.

Edit again: And here are some Gold Leopard King Famiclones made by Feng Li. Yep. Definitely the same company.

783
2000-present / Shenzhen Nanjing's sound driver: origins?
« on: September 18, 2010, 07:06:33 PM »
Cheetahmen
Sep 18 2010, 06:42:15 PM
Well if Shenzhen Nanjing ripped the sound engine from another game, it could've been from International Cricket. It was included on that pirate multicart you mentioned (which has the horrible Harry Potter game on, BTW :P ) and the menu of that cart uses an 8-bit rendition of a song called "Serenade" (I think) which can be found on one of those music player applications on a Famiclone computer ROM I had at one point. If I remember correctly the main menu on that ROM used the same sound driver as SNT's later games, but don't quote me on that.[/quote]Ah, yes, that's another thing-- several Famiclone menus that I've seen have that very same vibrato sound on their tunes too.

784
2000-present / Shenzhen Nanjing's sound driver: origins?
« on: September 18, 2010, 06:01:07 PM »
OK, so we all know how most of Shenzhen Nanjing's latter games have a... distinctive... sound to them. They're very easily identified by overuse of vibrato in the melody line and clunky-sounding percussion using the noise channel.

The interesting thing is, Nanjing's music wasn't always like this. Based on Gil Galad's NSF rips, the first game with this sound driver appears to be Jin Yong Qun Xia Zhuan (NJ031); all prior games had a very different sound driver, with several of these games using the same tune heard on the menu of the OneStation 99-in-1 carts.

But here's where it gets interesting.

There are two NES Dance Dance Revolution clones with very similar music, heavy on the vibratos and noise-channel percussion: "GLK Dance", credited to a company called Feng Li, and the anonymously developed "Hot Dance 2000". They seem to be based on the same engine, and judging from the name of the latter game, they're probably around 2000-- i.e., probably predating the Nanjing games. (Nanjing's FF7 is copyrighted 2004, for instance.)

So I guess Nanjing hired the sound programmer from these games and had them do music for their RPGs. Or something.

But it gets even weirder.

In 1988, Beam Software of Australia-- yes, the same company behind the utterly infamous Back to the Future game-- developed a cricket game for the NES titled "International Cricket". Naturally, it was PAL-only, because the only people interested in that sport were in Commonwealth countries. I only discovered its existence thanks to a pirated multicart ripped by cah4e3.

Now admittedly, I don't know much about NES assembly, and know even less about NES sound chip programming, but the music in this game sounds shockingly similar to Nanjing's stuff-- same vibrato effects, same percussion noises. If you want, you can find an NSF of it on the HCS64 archive. (Someone who does know more about NES programming, could you look at this to see if my suspicions are at all correct?)

So did the GLK Dance developer, and in turn Nanjing, steal their sound engine from an obscure cricket game? Because that would be a wonderfully bizarre story if it is the case.

Edit: Hm, Beam did several other sports games with the same sound driver. "Aussie Rules Footy" (another PAL-only one, naturally) and "Bo Jackson Baseball" (this one's NTSC, naturally).

785
1984-1992 / Jing Ke Xin Zhuan NSF investigation
« on: September 18, 2010, 05:24:46 PM »
Where exactly did you find the NSF of this game? It's not on the hcs64 archive, nor is it on Gil Galad's site so far as I can see.

786
BootlegGames Wiki / Undumped games list
« on: September 18, 2010, 12:42:21 PM »
Ooh. I wonder if Pokemon XD is actually the Pokemon-titled Digimon platformer? It says "ACT" on the cart, which suggests it's some sort of action game rather than an RPG.

Or at least it's some sort of Pokemon-themed platformer anyway. Maybe it's something completely different. I wish these auctioneers would post screenshots. ^_^

Heck, I'm just surprised to see a GBA cart explicitly credited to Sintax..

787
Game Boy / New Game Color Advance/(N) company
« on: September 17, 2010, 09:44:57 PM »
Oh, another interesting observation: the box art for Rockman Crystal, on the same page as the Rockman Zero box, has the same dodgy-looking seal, but no Croc copyrights or "seal" misspelling. I have a feeling there's a common thread here.

Edit: More randomness. The barcode on Rockman Crystal is for Mario Golf Advance is from a number of games according to Google... probably bootlegged ones, heh. Appears that the legit game that used it was Fifa 2000 GBC. The one on the New Game Color Advance games is for... go on, guess... yep, it's Croc 2.

788
Game Boy / New Game Color Advance/(N) company
« on: September 17, 2010, 09:30:35 PM »
taizou
Sep 17 2010, 06:07:27 PM
so it seems to be kinda an interesting case of a company that started out making standard pirates, then moved into publishing pirate originals under the "New Game Color Advance" name.. i wonder if there are any more out there?[/quote]WhiteLionness' copy of VFame's Pokemon Ruby has the same branding-- see the very end of her recording. So there's definitely some sort of VFame-Sintax thread here, at the very least.

Edit: Better shot of Pokemon Ruby here, via this RX Forums thread. And it, too, has the N-in-a-circle.

Edit again: And the back of the box, for those without access to the RX forum. Yep, it's got Croc/Argonaut/Natsume credits.

789
Game Boy / GBA Digimon RPG from Vast Fame
« on: September 16, 2010, 06:27:42 PM »
Barver
Sep 15 2010, 08:04:36 PM
Was away for a bit, kinda late response.. :)

I gotta play it again, but from what I remember the music is pretty much standard GBC stuff yeah. But it has PCM sounding percussion playing, which also keeps cutting off if you go into a menu and then [/quote]Oh, hm. Interesting. The mysterious Crash Bandicoot pirate original is the same: PSG for all the melody, with PCM for percussion. So perhaps it is Vast Fame's work...

790
Pirate Talk / Some new back info on pirates
« on: September 14, 2010, 11:14:41 AM »
taizou
Sep 14 2010, 05:56:16 AM
oh yeah, and that whole Gamtec thing explains a lot, all those companies around Taichung that seemed to share staff and resources and stuff... i guess Gamtec was the centre of that whole operation. they probably supported development and supplied tools and stuff (except with C&E, i suppose they were pretty self sufficient) right up to the last few Sintax games in the mid(?) 2000s, as well as making a few games in-house themselves. which is kinda interesting because way back when I first noticed a bunch of Taiwanese games using the same fonts, before I knew they were from PC Paint or anything, my first assumption was that they were all made by Gamtec. i've found out a hell of a lot more since then but in a way I was right :D[/quote]Hee, yeah. Before I knew of PC Paint, I also thought they were some sort of Gamtec originals. But now that I know their origin, it still seems like the Gamtec 'cluster' is the only group that uses those fonts!

(Incidentally, a while back I realized that there's actually a legitimate PC game that uses the fonts from PC Paint-- "Hocus Pocus" by Apogee. I really should've noticed the fact that the fonts weren't Gamtec originals well before then. :) )

Quote:
 
and one thing i read in one of maxzhou88's blog posts recently, he mentioned Super Game's music was outsourced to a taiwanese company which ported the original MD games' music to their own (stolen) sound engine.. so i suppose that was almost certainly Gamtec.[/quote]Ah, that would definitely make sense! To be honest, I hadn't even thought of the fact that the sound engine might be outsourced. And the graphics needn't be outsourced; Gamtec could have just given them a copy of PC Paint and let them loose...

791
2000-present / V-Mega Famiclone
« on: September 12, 2010, 11:21:13 PM »
Wow. I found the video of this thing a while back, and had forgotten about it... I didn't even notice the NTDEC music connection. And given that I've seen some other educational Famicom carts credited to Asder (Edit: Like this one from the related videos!)... could easily be possible.

I'm guessing this thing probably uses the same enhanced graphics chip found in some of Waixing's clones and the Yobo Factor 5. It still looks 8-bit to me, just with a fancier palette. Probably has a similar sound chip to that one DDR clone, too, given the heavy use of voice sampling.

(Also, as an aside, I can't get over the completely random mixing of British and American English on that cart. Reminds me of Steve Martin's old routine about teaching your kids the wrong words for things.)

792
Super Famicom/SNES / SNES pirate sound drivers
« on: September 11, 2010, 02:03:35 PM »
...Y'know, I just realized something.

There's a certain other unlicensed developer that was rather famous for writing original music using a sound driver stolen from Capcom. And we have reason to suspect, thanks to that one guy's Chinese forum posts, that they might have developed SNES games before becoming vastly famous (see what I did there?) on the Game Boy.

Hmm. It does make you wonder.

793
Pirate Talk / Some new back info on pirates
« on: September 08, 2010, 08:55:47 AM »
taizou
Sep 8 2010, 06:57:43 AM
the SNES game probably came first - i guess it was made by some ex Chuanpu people who later formed V.fame?
[/quote]Could easily be! Pretty much all the SNES pirate originals are of games with Chuanpu connections on Mega Drive (e.g., the High Seas Havoc sound engine), so yeah...

Quote:
 
the whole Sintax/Vast Fame collaboration thing explains a lot though. Maybe thats why that "Zook Hero 3" (or whatever) that Sky League dumped looked more Sintaxish to me, even though its V.Fame's series. and hell maybe that also explains those weird RPGs that run on VFame's engine.[/quote]Ooh, yeah, could very well be. Particularly since the music was stolen from another game (Telefang).

Edit: And if I recall, Sky League did indeed confirm in a post somewhere on their forum that Zook 3 was credited to Sintax.

Quote:
 
though i wonder what that "FC9 Street Fighter" thing was supposed to refer to? i don't know of any actual ports made by V.Fame really.. in fact the whole graphics-from-screenshot thing and making a cutdown version of Street Fighter reminds me more of Hummer Team. hmm. Unless it really *was* V.Fame that made SNES Digimon, and theyre talking about some other SFC game they made (like that Street Fighter EX port, maybe?)[/quote]Ooh, I hadn't even thought of that, that it might've been a typo for SFC. That seems a much better description of the SFC pirates I've seen than the FC ones.

Only other thing I could think of that might have VFame connections was Super Game's Mortal Kombat port... but that had 10 player characters. :P

Quote:
 
edit: actually Rainbow Prince (and possibly others) does have a Gowin logo screen featuring Gua Gua Dragon, and thats copyright.. 1994ish? (not 100% on this, im going from memory) so I guess the split must have happened fairly early on. [/quote]I wish I knew what the production date was for Meng Huan Zhi Xing, SKOB's only monochrome GB game that I know of. Had to have been after the mono version of Last Bible was released in '92, for obvious reasons...

794
Game Boy / GBA Digimon RPG from Vast Fame
« on: September 08, 2010, 08:44:59 AM »
Graphics look pretty good, to be honest!

Is the music outside of the title screen VFame's typical GBC stuff?

Also, I wonder whether this is the game that the poster on 17173.com was saying was a VFame/Sintax co-production. Hard to tell, really, given the existence of that Digimon platformer...

795
Game Boy / Shaoling Legend
« on: September 08, 2010, 08:40:36 AM »
taizou
Sep 8 2010, 06:45:33 AM
i just got a Sintax game i've never heard of before (much thanks to codeman38 for the tip) - its called "Shaoling Legend: Hero, the saver" on the label and "Fantasic ShaoLin Kungfu" on the title screen. its a beat em up, basicallly the same engine as True Three Kingdoms and stuff, but the music is stolen from one of the KOF games this time. and its pretty good![/quote]If that's the case... then I have a sneaking suspicion that  Final Fantasy X Fantasywar is probably Sintax' work! The stolen music was practically a giveaway anyway, but the fact that there's a Sintax-credited game with KOF music makes the suspicion even stronger.

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