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Messages - mmsc123

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1
Famicom/NES / SuperVision C64/128?
« on: October 27, 2020, 07:36:14 AM »
I found an advertisement from 1987 with Supervision advertising C64/C128 games. However, I didn't realize Supervision did anything Commodore related.

I know that they had pirate Atari carts https://atariage.com/forums/gallery/image/14857-atari-2600-unlicensed-bootleg-cart-by-supervision/ and the obvious NES pirates they had, but Commodore is completely new to me!

Does anybody know anything about their activities w.r.t?

Also unrelated, but was the Watara Supervision related to Supervision? My guess is no, but you never know.

2
Famicom/NES / Spica's origins
« on: February 17, 2018, 09:29:37 AM »
A couple months ago while researching the NES in Asia, I actually came across the origins of SPICA.

As it turns out, despite the whole court thing in Australia with the importer saying they were Taiwanese (http://bootleggames.wikia.com/wiki/Spica), they were in fact from Singapore! Although SPICA was trademarked in Taiwan: http://tmsearch.tipo.gov.tw/TIPO_DRE/servlet/InitLogoPictureWordDetail?sKeyNO=073056175 this was done in 1984, before the NES was released. Likewise, I've found the origin of the company.

When the NES was released in the Asian region, there was no central office yet in Singapore (there was one in Indonesia but it didn't handle warranties for Singapore), so the bottom of the NES' listed the retailers' name for warranty reasons, for example here: https://i.imgur.com/UHoLeh3.jpg In fact, the booklet that the console was sold with had to be written in/stamped to list where it was sold to get any sort of warranty.

Gan & Beng was one of the 3 original retailers that sold the NES very very early on (in 1986) in Singapore, and they even existed up until a few years ago. Luckily for us, they had a website.

Visiting the website from 2014, it shows that they were selling SPICA products: https://web.archive.org/web/20140528203842/http://gannbeng.com.sg/category/products/spica/

Doing a bit more research, Gan & Beng actually owned the SPICA brand: "SPICA is a registered trademark of Gan & Beng Electronics Pte Ltd"
Moreover, the brand was trademarked in 1988: https://goo.gl/o9QtCg

From all of my research into the Asian region, it looks like Spica's piracy activities were started in response to the many other stores selling the NES. In August of 1986, just 3 shops in the whole of Singapore stocked the console and games, and by October, it was everywhere; Toys r Us, Daimaru, and tons of other stores; advertisements no longer listed "available at store 1 2 3" but instead said something along the lines of available at every major store in the country.

Not only that, but Supervision games were being sold basically alongside official NES consoles. In advertisements you had a mix of pirates and official games, such as the Supervision game next to the official SMB 2 Asian version at the bottom right of this advertisement from 1989: https://i.imgur.com/Dvm3a0B.png so it was much more profitable for them to go into pirates.

We've discussed before how Spica seemed to use some legit boards/pcbs in their pirate carts (http://s4.zetaboards.com/PGC_Forums?topic=30120407/1/), and I think this explains why: they had at least in the past contracts with Nintendo, and had access to legit games. This also explains why SPICA didn't do Famicom stuff (mostly), since Singapore only used the 72-pin NES.

The company sort of still exists: http://www.sanace.com/About_Us/about_us.html but they never responded to me when I emailed about SPICA.

Ultimately, this means Spica now has 3 names: Keyman Electronics Co., Ltd (which seems to be linked to Taiwan), Gan & Ben Trading Co., and SPICA. The wiki needs updating with all this info, and I think it'd be worth checking a few other companies that aren't attributed to a country specifically to see if they were from Singapore too: SPICA was very unlikely the only one working from Singapore at the time

3
Famicom/NES dumps / Undumped/unavailable known variations of unlicensed games
« on: August 16, 2017, 07:05:14 AM »
The Australian version of Pyramid used EPROMS from AVE.

4
Famicom/NES / Hong Kong Game Cartridge Co Ltd.
« on: August 05, 2017, 12:25:02 AM »
Going off the discussion here: http://s4.zetaboards.com/PGC_Forums?topic=30120407/1/

I present a new, similar issue: Hong Kong Game Cartridge Co. Limited, also known as HKGCC seems to have done the exact same thing.
Unfortunately all the pics are dead, however:
A European (or Korean, but probably European since no Korean Slalom is known) pcb: http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?t=5395
A bootleg PCB (same link as before)
A genuine Famicom PCB w/ a 60-to-72pin converter in it: http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=5&threadid=21214

They were a 'pirate' cart company in Hong Kong during the NES days, releasing around 100 carts. They had two styles of boxes uses, one which was in Chinese, and another that was in English. The name of the games differed between Chinese and English, seemingly randomly too.
http://www.geocities.jp/rinkaku89/pachigame4/77_s-hongkong_nes_box01.jpg http://www.geocities.jp/rinkaku89/pachigame4/77_s-hongkong_nes_box02.jpg -- Note how it uses the "港龍玩具有限公司" name in Chinese, but also the HKGCC name in English..

Unfortunately not much is known about them. I'm looking for some PCB pics from any that people have if possible.




I've done some investigation into the company, and it turns out that the company has some interesting history.
I'm unsure of when it actually begin, but a flyer from July 1988 (or what claims to be from..) exists.
It was registered as a company on the 19th of October, 1990 in Hong Kong, with a name change from 港龍玩具有限公司 (which I believe means Dragonair Toy Co. Ltd)  to the HKGCC name. The colorful HKGCC boxes with Chinese on them say Dragonair, whereas the dark blue boxes say HKGCC in English.

The company's directors were [redacted], and [redacted]. The former of which was a "housewife" of Chinese nationality, and the latter of which was business executive of Japanese nationality. I have their addresses from 1990, but doubt they still live there, and also their "hong kong identity card ".
They also changed addresses for the company from a flat, to the location of First Island Secretaries (the company of their secretary) -- I would guess the operations were run out of this flat/apartment.

On the 25th of March, 1993, both of these people resigned from the company, and two new directors were put in place: [redacted], and [redacted], both British nationals. This may be Pong: [redacted] but who knows. For what it's worth, the document that shows this change, uses the name "Hong Kong Game Cartridge Limited" rather than "Co. Ltd" at the end. It lists both Pong and Yee as "Merchants" for their occupation. The address listed for both of them are the same house, so they're definitely related to eachother.

Nothing interesting happened for the rest of the year, until the 25th of August, 1994, when the company went into solvency with 0 debt and 0 assets (according to documents.) Back to using the correct "Hong Kong Game Cartridge Co. Limited" name, too. This document lists the directors as "[redacted]" and "[redacted]", so I don't know which order of the name is correct. I've tried a few contacts from Google and Facebook, but to no avail.
And that was the end of HKGCC.

5
Famicom/NES / International Cricket original game
« on: July 29, 2017, 12:53:07 PM »
taizou
Jul 29 2017, 12:25:39 PM
mmsc123
Jul 29 2017, 04:01:13 AM
Given that their game is called Lara Brian 2003 on one of the multicarts, I wonder if they have anything to do with the Lara Tennis Famiclone: http://www.evg2000.com/html/stand_Alone.htm
Probably not, since Lara TV Games seem to be from 1995: https://www.facebook.com/pg/LARA-TV-GAME-213801488667708/about/?ref=page_internal
"Lara TV Games" was definitely in India at some stage though, before the 2000s; some book I was reading references it being sold in Indian Bazaars.
I wonder why "Lara" is such a common name..[/quote]It's a clone of Brian Lara Cricket for the Mega Drive, hence the "Brian Lara 2003" name- I don't think Lara TV Games is especially related.

I do recall seeing a single cart version a long time ago but I don't think it was the original Mitashi release, I have no idea how it was originally released in India or if that version has the voice samples or not.. I guess it's possible the samples were recorded but dropped from the final game due to technical or ROM size restrictions.[/quote]I agree that they're likely unrelated, however I do find it slightly amusing.

Also, I didn't realise it was a straight clone of the Sega game; not surprising I guess, but still interesting nonetheless.

Here is a phd thesis that talks about the Lara TV Games btw: https://air.unimi.it/retrieve/handle/2434/250694/342234/phd_unimi_R09460.pdf (also talks about the official Samurai, but nevermind that)
"Their innovation rests in finding cheap body parts in China and then creating the plastic cover locally,in different shapes and colours"

Unfortunately that pic I linked before, https://imgur.com/GoTMbVt , is wrong, since Lara TV Games came out after 1995.. The book says "in the early days" :(

As stated, I'm currently in the process of contacting the guys from Mitashi, so hopefully they'll be able to answer some questions about the game. The only reason I'm interested in it is due to the Indian market that I'm researching, and it's a cricket game for the NES (something that interests me due to being from Australia..)

6
Famicom/NES / International Cricket original game
« on: July 29, 2017, 05:32:06 AM »
So I played the game, and couldn't find anything related to this;
"Dugar also had to record audio clips, which was done in India. "The game had commentary every time you hit a four or a six," says Dugar. "This was recorded here.""
There's music and sound effects, but no audio clips when hitting a four or a six. Can somebody check the rom to see if it contains any clips as Dugar mentioned in the article? This may suggest an original single cart exists and the x-in-1 ones are cut down versions of the original

7
Famicom/NES / International Cricket original game
« on: July 29, 2017, 04:01:13 AM »
Given that their game is called Lara Brian 2003 on one of the multicarts, I wonder if they have anything to do with the Lara Tennis Famiclone: http://www.evg2000.com/html/stand_Alone.htm
Probably not, since Lara TV Games seem to be from 1995: https://www.facebook.com/pg/LARA-TV-GAME-213801488667708/about/?ref=page_internal
"Lara TV Games" was definitely in India at some stage though, before the 2000s; some book I was reading references it being sold in Indian Bazaars.
I wonder why "Lara" is such a common name..

8
Famicom/NES / International Cricket original game
« on: July 28, 2017, 11:50:36 AM »
g0me3
Jul 28 2017, 11:42:10 AM
http://cah4e3.shedevr.org.ru/dumping_2014.php#210614

alt version is my dump fixed to run without multigame menu. it's full version... the single game version is a simple cut-down of the original[/quote]That's great, thanks. I suspect the 2000 version is the original.

Any clues as to who Profine is?

9
Famicom/NES / International Cricket original game
« on: July 28, 2017, 11:16:45 AM »
I'm surprised this isn't known already..

From http://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/features/tracing-the-origins-of-gaming-in-india-8-bit-cricket-sega-and-cloning-640129

"To capitalise on this, Dugar and Handa invested heavily in their hardware business. In order to make it happen Dugar began getting all the necessities in order beginning with integration options. He says he personally oversaw every facet of the operation from the semi-conductor level to software for making the cartridges on which the game would be on. There was also a question of coding the game itself. For this, he enlisted a now defunct company in Xi'an, China called Profine.

"It was very tough for me to teach Chinese people to make a cricket game," says Dugar. "I was 80-90 days in China for one-and-a-half years. Finally we came up with the product." While coding and manufacturing was taking place, Dugar also had to record audio clips, which was done in India. "The game had commentary every time you hit a four or a six," says Dugar. "This was recorded here."

Cricket proved to be a huge success for Mitashi. To the point where Dugar sold it in other countries where the sport was popular.

"We sold 185,000 cartridges in this country in 2 months time at Rs. 225 a cartridge," he says. "I put my whole stake for cricket game, Rs. 3.5 crore for development as well as the raw material. I used my total capital on one product. The margin was okay but later the product gave me lot. At the time it was a huge amount of money, people were calling me crazy.""



This is not the same game as International Cricket, made by Beam Software in Australia.

In the same article, he references "Video", which was a bootleg nes game maker in India during the time -- this is them: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/noesis-industries-ltd/infocompanyhistory/companyid-7897.cms Here are some pics of their carts https://postimg.org/image/mholn7pfr/ https://postimg.org/image/67yfkberr/
He also brings up "Mega", which is referenced on the Famiclone article on the wiki.


There are 2 games on ebay ATM that have "cricket" on them: http://www.ebay.in/itm/8-Bit-Video-Game-Cassette-Cartridge-9-In-1-International-Cricket-1942-Contra-2-/322605297831?hash=item4b1cc630a7:g:MoEAAOSwXtRZcg2O and http://www.ebay.in/itm/8-Bit-Video-Game-Cassette-Cartridge-22-In-1-Cricket-2008-Sonic-6-long-jump-/322607428010?hash=item4b1ce6b1aa:g:We0AAOSwpIxZc3JC
I assume they're the same game, despite the games having different names. I'm going to try and purchase the first one; hopefully the seller will ship to Australia.


From the same article:
"In 1997 we thought of doing our own brand" and ""The success of Brian Lara Cricket and Sega was the inspiration," says Dugar. "
He is likely referencing this game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Lara_Cricket which came out in 1995.

From http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Game-for-success/articleshow/9628599.cms
"In 1999, there came a turning point when Dugar and Gada decided to launch their own electronic gaming consoles at low prices to increase penetration. And thus was born Mitashi, which in Japanese means 'to watch'. They imported low-priced consoles from China. They also rolled out games like Contra, Mario, Roadfighter and Pooyan played on an 8-bit cartridge. Sales were nothing to write home about.

Mitashi's big break came when they used their in-house R&D centre in Bhiwandi on the outskirts of Mumbai to develop a cricket game. That product, Dugar says, became an instant hit and sold one million pieces. In 2006, they launched virtual gaming like boxing, tennis and ping-pong, perhaps the first in the country to launch such interactive games. "

So all combined:
"I was 80-90 days in China for one-and-a-half years. Finally we came up with the product."
"In 1999, there came a turning point when Dugar and Gada decided to launch their own electronic gaming consoles"
"Mitashi's big break came when they used their in-house R&D centre in Bhiwandi on the outskirts of Mumbai to develop a cricket game. "
This game probably came out in 1999 or 2000. I'll contact the men in this article and ask them about exactly when it was made.


Does anybody know what company "Profine" is?

I've found some references online to the game, but nothing like a dump or any info:
https://www.spriters-resource.com/nes/internationalcricketbootleg/sheet/89714/
https://famicloneblog.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/the-power-joy-ks-2523b/
http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=141555 (he says it''s for the 16bit sega but he is wrong)
http://s4.zetaboards.com/PGC_Forums?topic=8143608/2/#post8061513 - "there was a Famicom port of the Mega Drive version of that game listed on Famicom no Tobira (which seems to have disappeared unfortunately) called International Cricket 2000, or something like "Brain Lara Crieket" on the label. which had baseball players on it. naturally. for the longest time I ignored it because I assumed it was just a hack of some licensed cricket game or other, but it actually isn't." ---- If taizou is reading this, "Lara" was indeed a famiclone from India: https://i.imgur.com/GoTMbVt.png

10
Famicom/NES / Spica
« on: July 11, 2017, 07:32:18 AM »
So I have been going through my Spica NES carts, and found this:



This is not a "Hi-Q Spica" or "NEW SPICA" cart. Just plain "Spica." The cartridge doesn't have any SPICA markings on it, other than the label -- I only have one other cart that doesn't have spica markings, and it's yellow and actually has Nintendo printed on the back (similar to this http://www.ebay.com/itm/NES-DUCK-TALES-2-RARE-SPICA-NINTENDO-GAME-CARTRIDGE-FAMICOM-ONLY-1-N-EBAY-/302373089530?hash=item4666d730fa:g:wAIAAOSwBahU96Re) It has the same ribbed-design as the Hi-Q Spicas do ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hi-Q-Spica-Starwar-Top-Gun-NESA-008-260-in-1-Boxed-Asian-Nes-Famicom-Nintendo-/272740654576?hash=item3f809c1df0%3Ag%3A688AAOSwjvJZVK9f&nma=true&si=PmbA9sQwluYCTtbB%252BmJQbbFD05k%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 like this cart)


So, ok, looks like a normal Spica pirate except for the lack of Spica branding.
The only problem is, looking up the PCB, it's actually a licensed cart? -- http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=1696

So it's basically just a licensed Bomber King PCB attached to a Famicom->NES converter, and packaged in a Spica cart.

I also have a Spica Hi-Q version of Dragon Spirit which is retail too, that's just attached to a Famicom converter. It even comes with a manual(although it's water damaged / glued together and I can't open it): https://imgur.com/a/8uLDk


I also have a NEW SPICA box with a Supervision cart in it, which has a little sticker "TRJ" on the back over one of the screw holes, the same as another 'official' NEW SPICA cart:
https://i.imgur.com/rKaiN9W.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/L3EO8FO.jpg


Anyways, fcgamer goes into this a little bit here: https://fcgamer.wordpress.com/2015/07/03/the-konami-computer/


I suspect Spica, Supervision, Video Deon, .... are all the same company.
We know that Spica distributed a Spica-branded IQ-701 ( http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/FCA/1992/584.html?stem=0&synonyms=0&query=title(nintendo%20) ) which the dealings were by "Keyman Electronics Co Ltd"(I can't find anything about them, but I welcome others to try -- I found https://company.gongchang.com/p-210000/18656342_6795/ but I'm not 100% it's the same thing)

Anyways, I thought it was worth writing this due to the licensed thing.

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