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Messages - kazblox

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2000-present / Shenzhen Nanjiing Technology game music
« on: May 05, 2017, 04:12:55 PM »
So, remember when I said that the sound driver was custom? Well it is, sort of....

Turns out that in the said Subor carts and the Shenzhen Nanjing games using the same sound engine, lies code from Double Dragon III. That explains the extremely familiar sound effects I'm used to. Looking at the code in the NSF rips, a big majority it is... Technos stuff. I think a separate set of unique routines do something with the music, looking at the code, but that's really it.

So really, one of the programmers at Subor just stole code from a Technos game, like any other bootlegger, but tacked additional crap on it a la Hummer Team.

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Oh yeah, and it's been a while since it happened, but the NES file for Adan y Eva just surfaced recently on No-Intro. So that's another one off the list as well.

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Famicom/NES / Impartial Judge hack of Myth Struggle... proof?
« on: April 13, 2017, 05:27:26 PM »
piratenesgames
Mar 12 2017, 05:01:07 PM
taizou
Mar 11 2017, 11:48:09 AM
hm, it would actually make sense if Idea-Tek was the connection here..

Idea-Tek (or at least their IP) was bought by TXC, and Chengdu Tai Jing Da Dong was originally a joint venture with TXC, so it's possible TXC provided Idea-Tek's sound engine to the TJDD devs. Meanwhile if some ex-Idea-Tek staff member(s) had gone to Cony after the TXC buyout, they could have taken the same sound engine with them.[/quote]Perhaps there is some connection the Idea-Tek and Micro Genius / TXC Corp. between also, because the one of Micro Genius game (Policeman) also used the Guo Qiyong's sound engine. At least the sounding and the sound effects are the same (the Policeman jumping sound effect is same of the Venice Beach Volleyball selection sound effect).[/quote]I have atleast checked Thunder Warrior, and it does use Guo Qiyong's sound engine. Journey to the West, published by TXC but developed by Tai Jing Da Dong Computer Co also uses Guo Qiyong's sound engine, according to a quick disassembly, even though the Idea-Tek had no relationship with this "joint venture" of sorts. Idea-Tek was in Taiwan, far, far, far away from Chengdu.

My theory is that when Idea-Tek was at it's knees, and went down only after distributing a few games under TXC, TXC quickly looked for a new developer to squeeze out a few more cash makers. This new team was supposedly a joint venture, and TXC probably gave it literally every development resource Idea-Tek had, through the form of code exchange. This includes Guo Qiyong's sound engine.

Thing is, did TXC ship Idea-Tek's tools overseas through mail? :lol: Internet and BBS would still be in the dial-up era at this stage.

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Pirate Talk / AV Super Gamtec Artisan
« on: April 04, 2017, 12:02:44 AM »
https://pastebin.com/0GKBn8wE

So I bothered translating the Super Pocohantas staff roll listed on maxzhou88's blog post about his work at Super Game. There's the usual bunch of programmers, but notice how the "Taiwan" section has people who worked at Gametec and AV Artisan.

Namely, Yeh Guohua, Song Xueren, and Yang Jinglong. I have no idea who the hell Xu Shichuan and Lin Peifang are, or if they were even relevant to Gamtec or Chuanpu.

This, in no doubt, confirms that Gamtec, or ex-Gamtec may have had an involvement in all Super Game games.

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Famicom/NES / Impartial Judge hack of Myth Struggle... proof?
« on: March 25, 2017, 02:18:04 PM »
Anything that looks different is just RAM/offset constants. The instruction blocks and initialization are the same for the most part.

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Famicom/NES / Impartial Judge hack of Myth Struggle... proof?
« on: March 11, 2017, 04:17:46 PM »
Well that confirms the Idea-Tek resemblance.... the sound driver even goes back to the Joy Van era.


Most of the TXC games also share the driver as well (well duh, Idea-Tek), except for Chinese Chess, which uses a simple data steam format. The latter mention appears to be the origin of the sound engine for Super Hang-On '97 (the game both runs the Square sound driver and this sound driver at once!), Pandamar (uses bmi check to enable the driver), including Nice Code and Waixing's many multicart games.

For a note of distinguishment, Nice Code seems to have written two drivers at some point though, one coming from the early 2000's (Strange Pop Pop, Dejectile, etc) and one that appeared later in the decade (SNT games, some multicart games).

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Famicom/NES / Impartial Judge hack of Myth Struggle... proof?
« on: March 10, 2017, 08:24:15 PM »
Funny you should say... Cony's sound engine is exactly the Chengdu/Waixing sound engine written by Han Li. So when it comes to the big hackfest competitions done by Waixing, there is a bit of irony here.

The music styles chosen by Cony musicians don't resemble the usual of Han Li and Xu Wei's work, so it even creates more suspicion here, for both companies that originated as early as 1993. I have yet to investigate if their driver appears anywhere else.

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2000-present / Shenzhen Nanjiing Technology game music
« on: March 07, 2017, 02:11:40 AM »
More curiosities:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFGBQh1JtYY

As you can see, it's another one of those DDR famiclones using the same Nanjing/DDR sound engine. Looks to be the same musicians as well. But especially, if you tune in at 30:20, the footage of the Hit Marmot whack a mole game, you can hear... Subor V5 title music?!?!

And if you look in the staff roll for SB-Win98 at 3:46 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuvWbpSb53U ...

SB-Win98
 

[/quote]
Su Zhaoqiang is the only one left in the Music role, compared to Subor V5's staff role which had Mao Shaolin and Gong Hongbin working alongside. Which means that the latter two, or one of the other, probably left Subor to compose for the unknown company that did DDR multicarts, considering how they were the only ones at the time who had access to this engine.

That same company appears to have survived at least up until 2006, evidenced by those crap VT03-based Strawberry Shortcake and Disney DDR plug and play thingamajigs. At this point, I'm taking guesses that Su Zhaoqiang did the music for Nanjing titles by the time Subor stopped making Famiclone computers. It makes an obvious point since Nanjing appeared to have started manufacturing of their games around 2003 or so, and Subor appears to have halted production of their computer Famiclones around 2001 and 2002.

But, my hypothetical prediction remains uncertain. Croaky Karaoke, Console TV Challenge, and the unique Gamezone titles seem to use the same sound engine, but it remains even more unknown about who composed for them. Also, Croaky Karaoke uses a different composition of Take On Me compared to Dance Master 3, so there could be other musicians that had access to the sound engine as well.

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1993-1999 / NTDEC? In my 9999999-in-1?
« on: March 02, 2017, 02:14:13 AM »
....so the sound engine used in most of the Unchained Melody multicarts pretty much is of NTDEC's sound engines. Specifically, the one used in NTDEC's earlier games such as War in the Gulf. All of their later games, including those manufactured under Asder, use completely different rewritten code that doesn't resemble the routines seen here.



Just wanted to point that out for future discussion.

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Pirate Talk / Chinese copyright database
« on: February 23, 2017, 03:10:10 AM »
This feels like a stupid question to ask, but has China's searchable copyright database gone anywhere off the charts?

All the old links from 2011 that were on these forums went bust and now they just show up as "Sorry, Page Not Found", and trying to do anything related to the only search box that is on the front page of ccopyright.com.cn also leads to that same error.

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2000-present / Shenzhen Nanjiing Technology game music
« on: February 15, 2017, 02:33:57 AM »
taizou
Apr 21 2015, 07:56:10 PM
Nanjing's later sound engine sounds a lot like the one used in various DDR clones and keyboard famiclones from around 2000 or so[/quote]Funny thing you should say... Nanjing's own sound engine IS the sound engine used in those DDR/keyboard famiclones.

I did a code comparison in Mesen myself, and found that most of the code between Lei Dian Huang Bi Ka Qiu Chuan Shuo and Hot Dance 2000 are the same. I initially thought that this driver came from a licensed game, but it doesn't look to be, after trying to do a code/data lookup in the GoodNES set and finding no matches with any official Famicom/NES release. Looks to be more of a custom driver.

The only game Nanjing has ever made that uses the TOSE sound engine is, you guessed it, Kou Dai Bao Shi-Yin. Which provides a funny connection, speaking that the musician who worked for the Nanjing games probably landed their first jobs at... Subor. Yep.

Specifically, the team who was contracted by Subor to make Subor V5.0. This multicart appears to predate when lots of keyboard famiclone companies tried to copy Windows, but most importantly, the development team for it probably were a precursor to Shenzen Nanjing themselves.

Coincidentally, this multicart of sorts looks like it uses the same engine as I was talking about earlier, due to how it shares some sound effects seen in the Yu-Gi-Oh NSF. If only I had a ROM dump to verify!!!

More so, a bunch music from there, even the default music in the "Music Appreciation" menu appears to have made it's way onto educational famiclone multicarts. I can already spot the latter in the russian Education Computer 26-in-1 menu. :)

Luckily, the multicart itself neatly has a staff roll, which divingkatae from TCRF translated almost every part of (except acknowledgements):
http://pastebin.com/Eawvfv5W

Which gives us a possible leeway to Nanjing's musician: Mao Shaolin, Gong Hongbin, or Su Zhaoqiang. Do we know any of these people?

Spoiler: click to toggle

Spoiler: click to toggle

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Famicom/NES dumps / ROM Requests
« on: February 09, 2017, 11:31:54 PM »
Would anyone here with barely any nesbbs access like to run through urchins and cactuses to provide the site's ROM of Subor V5.0?

It's been available on there, but as far as I know, it's difficult to go on since it's invite-only. Screenshots in the "fcpic" repository seem to be the only thing that are to the public. Doing this would help me further on my attempts to tie any connection from Subor to Shenzhen Nanjing...

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Pirate Talk / Waixing-Jungletac connection?
« on: January 25, 2017, 09:35:03 PM »
Time to necrobump this topic from the holy afterlife that I thought this thread was going to get sent to, a.k.a. death! :pandahappy:

Anyways, about the Jungletac and Waixing connections; You weren't all completely wrong. 2 years ago, someone posted a video of some sort of a KT-0001 multicart with minigames copyrighted by JungleTac.
Some of the games are completely new, while some others... Well, see for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0nyO8B_gjI

Spoiler: click to toggle

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