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Topics - codeman38

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31
2000-present / Another variation on the Cyber Arcade Center
« on: July 03, 2011, 07:46:02 PM »
Sold by a home shopping channel in India: the HCL "Me" console.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NxC0FgQ_ak

(And yes, the entire narration is in Hinglish.)

Anyway... this is interesting because the ROM is identical to the Cyber Arcade Center (same title screen; same combination of Jungle & Nice Code games), but the chassis is entirely different. This one's got the same chassis as the VG Pocket Max/GamesPower 50, which is a known JungleTac product.

32
2000-present / The dark secret of EmuVT's origins
« on: June 28, 2011, 10:42:24 AM »
When I first used it, I got the distinct impression that VRTech's EmuVT emulator was just too polished to be entirely original code from VRTech. And I thought the interface seemed strangely familiar from some other emulator I'd tried in the past, but couldn't remember which.

Honestly, I don't know why I didn't think to run a string dump on the executable till now:

Quote:
 
NNNesterJ
WinClass_nnnester
NNNesterJ[K01]
NNNesterJ
NNNESTERJ_RESOURCE_DLL
Database_0=M:\Work\VT03\nnnesterJsrc023\famicom.dat
Database_1=M:\Work\VT03\nnnesterJsrc023\nesdbase.dat
Database_2=M:\Work\VT03\nnnesterJsrc023\ingredients.dat[/quote]
And they thought we wouldn't notice. Now where's the source code for the modifications, VRTech? ::dangles GPL license text::

33
Discussion Center / New version of Press Start font
« on: June 13, 2011, 10:34:34 PM »
For anyone who's at all into old-school video game typography, I've posted an all-new, completely revamped version of the "Press Start" font (the one based on the font from all those old arcade games) on my fonts page.

The main reason I'm bringing this up is for the benefit of the international crowd here. Unlike the earlier version of the font, which just supported Latin-1, this new version of the font includes support for all major Eastern European languages. And yes, this includes Cyrillic.

Feel free to make any critiques here, too-- if any kerning looks off, any characters look just plain wrong, or whatever. I'll gladly incorporate them into the next version.

Edit: Oops, just realized this probably would fit better into the "Big Old Arcade" forum...

34
1993-1999 / Credits for Jing Hua Yuan
« on: June 11, 2011, 12:03:16 AM »
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAIeXOxiNUI

Of course, they're in Chinese... but getting out the trusty Chinese OCR tool gives us:

藝術總監:鄭格寧,候濟恭
Art Director: Zheng Gening, Hou Jigong
監制:傅瓚
Producer: Fu Zan
策劃:宫英
Planning: Gong Ying
程序:黄國鋒
Procedure: Huang Guofeng
美術:宫英,余榕[青?] [not sure what that last character is, OCR couldn't identify it]
Art: Gong Ying, Yu Rong[qing?]
音樂:任永明
Music: Ren Yongming
測試:林發亮
Testing: Lin Faliang

Note especially the Producer field. Yep, that's the same dude responsible for that Contra hack.

Edit: Just realized I forgot to give credit for the video-- it appears to be KAGE-008 from this forum that uploaded the ending. Should've known it was someone here. :)

35
Hacker Center / Request: GBS ripping for VFame music
« on: June 04, 2011, 11:19:55 PM »
Anyone here have any experience at all with GBS ripping, or at least any pointers on how to learn it? I'd really love to see a good GBS collection of Vast Fame's music, because... well, it rules. :) Right now the only GBS rips that exist for their games are for Soul Falchion and both versions of Rockman DX3, which doesn't even begin to cover the dumped subset of their games, much less the ones that are copy-protected and might still have a salvageable sound engine.

The last time I tried finding the sound engine in a GB game using a debugger, I got completely in over my head. And this was in a game with a sound test. I imagine it's probably even worse when there isn't one.

I'm guessing the fact that all of their games use the sound engine from Rockman World 5 is probably helpful in that respect somehow, for a start...

36
Pirate Talk / Shenzhen Nanjing's consoles
« on: May 30, 2011, 12:17:50 PM »
(Split off from the Arcade Action 101-in-1 thread, which has become increasingly less about the Arcade Action console.)

Quoting taizou in the original thread:

taizou
 
I'm pretty sure Nanjing is behind that whole series - they're all on their site here.

one of the earliest was a OneStation lookalike called the "Digital Dragon system" with Nice Code games built in and a generic multicart bundled, but they seem to have abandoned the Nice Code stuff entirely now. They all take the same type of carts (same as the FC-3000/OneStation Elite I think - just miniaturised famicom carts) but I've never seen anywhere that actually sells additional carts separately since the FC-3000 itself went out of production.

there's also this one, the "NJ Pocket" which kind of gives the game away. although that one's 16-bit and it doesn't have a cart slot.[/quote]
And indeed, the GB Station and PVP Station are both listed on Nanjing's site.

But that's not all! Searching for the model number of the NJ Pocket, NJ250A, turned up this:

http://sznanjing.en.made-in-china.com/

Which is... exactly what it looks like. An index of products being sold wholesale by Shenzhen Nanjing. This includes the NJ Pocket, the GB Station, and the PVP Station.

They also list several "Arcade Game Stations", which are... interesting. No, they're not Wii clones like the Wow (I'm surprised those aren't listed on the site, actually)... these are PlayStation 2 lookalikes which can load movies and various consoles' ROMs from a flash card. Sounds very similar to the GameBox reviewed by TweeterMan... except, y'know, this one's made by Nanjing and looks like an older-generation system.
Apparently some of these portables are based on the 32-bit SP350 chip (Sunplus?), at least if this Alibaba listing is to be believed.

37
Pirate Talk / More pirate game console videos
« on: May 30, 2011, 11:55:07 AM »
From German YouTuber "00thedarkness":

Tchibo Pocket - Clearly Sunplus-based Jungle Soft. Some of the games are the same as the Zone 60!

Overmax Basic Player - 8-bit Jungle Soft, complete with the usual Contra sounds. Includes some games I hadn't seen before, though they're blatant ripoffs of more famous puzzle games. Oh, yeah, and Nice Code's track-and-field games-- what is this, the second time we've seen Jungle and Nice Code mixed in together?

Micro Game Power 40-in-1 - It's 16-bit Jungle Soft again! Also, what is it with Chinese devs cloning "Don't Pull"? Also, HORRIBLY OFF-KEY MUSIC.

GB Station Light - The version with bootlegged copies of licensed games. Ho hum. Though it does include the Mario hack of Joe & Mac, at least.

But by far, the most interesting of these has to be...

48-in-1 Sports Game - This one's new to me, though I know I've seen screenshots of its games before. A strange mix, and all 32-bit. There's definitely some Cube Tech on there (with the accompanying Italo tunes), but there's also a good deal of Niutai games like Horrific Collapsar. And again, a lot of Niutai's stuff blatantly rips off JungleTac, even in its music!

38
Other Pirates / Another odd case of sound effect reuse
« on: May 11, 2011, 11:08:29 PM »
First off, listen to the sound effect when the game is loaded in the Taiwanese DOS RPG "Flame Dragon 2":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhCTMws3HZ8

Keep that sound effect in mind. It is rather distinctive, after all.

Now, listen to the sound effect on the Mega Drive bootleg Samurai Spirits 2 when a game is started:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HURAFth88E#t=8s

It's pitched down, but... well, like I said, it is rather distinctive. :)

But wait, that's not all!

Remember Shenzhen Nanjing's Wii clone, variously known as the Wow, the Sport 6-in-1, and the MiniWi? Take a listen to its Hua Rong Dao and Memory games. You might recognize a sound effect in there somewhere.

39
1984-1992 / Another Super Fighter III/NTDEC connection
« on: April 23, 2011, 02:52:38 PM »
I don't know how I'd forgotten about this till now, but...

In this thread about the music in NTDEC's War in the Gulf, several people commented on how the sound engine sounded very much like that in Street/Super Fighter III. Taizou also pointed out that the uppercase font from SF3 was very similar to that in NTDEC's Porter.

Well, I think I've finally closed the loop.

Take a look at the lowercase font from Super Fighter III:

Posted Image

Not only is it drastically different from the uppercase, it's quite literally ripped from Turbo Pascal's graphics library. Much like the uppercase font used in a bunch of NTDEC's games.


Edit: For comparison, the font from Turbo Pascal's EGAVGA.BGI, as viewed in a tile editor:

Posted Image

Incidentally, this font does not include any numbers or punctuation; Turbo Pascal simply uses the video card's ROM to generate those.

40
Discussion Center / Bootleg Toys
« on: April 13, 2011, 11:38:09 PM »
Just setting up a thread to discuss strange bootleg toys... because sometimes they're just as bizarre as bootleg video games.

Here's two to start that I just found tonight while YouTube-surfing:

Super Change Tomas. A video review of a toy that's a cross between Transformers, Super Sentai... and Thomas the Tank Engine. Yes. Really. And here's a Japanese blog post with even more pictures of this bizarre mutation.

And from there, I somehow stumbled upon Bear of the Interest, which is, I suppose, what happens when Winnie the Pooh gets crossed with a Teletubby. The box has some hilarious Engrish on it. ("High Class Weapon"?!) And apparently, in further incongruity, it plays what sounds like a couple-seconds loop of a Smile.DK song Aqua's "Lollipop".

41
The Big Old Arcade / Long-lost NES prototype: "Bio Force Ape"
« on: April 07, 2011, 11:06:23 PM »
Don't know how I missed this till now, but the long-elusive prototype NES game "Bio Force Ape" was finally found and dumped just last month. It's perhaps the best game involving a superpowered mutant wrestling chimpanzee to ever grace the NES.

http://lostlevels.org/bio-force-ape/

Includes not only the ROM dump, but also a playthrough video of the whole game. It's not extremely long, and still very... prototype-y. But it's still awesome.

And it took twenty years for someone to actually find a copy!

42
1993-1999 / Credits for Dragon Knife
« on: April 03, 2011, 12:34:49 PM »
As OCRed from SpaceNinja's video of the ending:


制作群
Credits

監製: 申京川, 徐偉
Producer: Shen Jingchuan, Xu Wei

策划總監: 鳳雯
Planning Director: Feng Wen

策划: 施蒙岭
Design: Shi Mengling

程式: 雷德勇, 王小軍
Programming: Lei Deyong, Wang Xiaojun

美術: 施蒙岭, 汪晴
Art: Shi Mengling, Wang Qing

音樂音效: 韓利
Music & Sound: Han Li
Apparently Shen Jingchuan still works in the game industry, if the Chinese copyright database is to be believed.

And here's a blog post in Chinese (Google translation) from someone who had worked with Shi Mengling.
And of course, Xu Wei also still works in the industry. (Didn't think to convert the name to simplified characters first, so I found nothing...)

43
Mega Drive/Genesis / Legend of Wukong's composer an award winner?
« on: April 01, 2011, 09:00:04 AM »
The music in The Earth Defend and Legend of Wukong was done by a fellow named Ya-min Hsu-- or, as the latter's Chinese credits render it, 許雅民.

So I decided, as usual, to search for those Chinese characters.

What I found was... rather unexpected.

I guess this biographical sketch (Google translation) is of the same guy? Same exact characters, and... well, he's definitely a composer.

I'm curious what the chances are that two Taiwanese musicians would share the exact same name. Oddly, the only hit I can find mentioning both this guy's name and 悟空外傳 (Legend of Wukong) is taizou's GM-95 page!

44
Game Boy / Rayman IV for GBA
« on: March 28, 2011, 08:26:33 PM »
I remember seeing a weird "Rayman IV" bootleg advertised on some Russian sites a while back, and had always wondered what it was.

Well, we have an answer. Two videos' worth, in fact:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLJ6269hyF8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiAZYfhsRk0

Looks like it's by... whoever developed that Crash Bandicoot game that 64scener has. As well as that Digimon Adventure bootleg that still hasn't been found.

It's even got the same music as the Crash game. Like, exactly. The same exact tunes.

This also gives me more suspicion that this is the work of Sintax rather than Vast Fame. They're the only Chinese company I know of to have released games in German.

45
1984-1992 / NTDEC likes classic heavy metal
« on: March 28, 2011, 08:45:54 AM »
Now that the game's successfully been dumped, there's an NSF rip of NTDEC's "War In The Gulf" out there now on Gil Galad's site. You can find it in the 03-03-2011 pack (which he's mislabeled as 03-03-2010) on his news page.

Anyway... Check out the seventh song in it (tune #6, for players that start counting at 0).

Why, yes, that is indeed a chiptune version of the Scorpions' "Rock You Like A Hurricane". It's... surprisingly recognizable, actually.

Now I'm wondering whether any of the other tunes are classic heavy metal tunes I'm not recognizing. They sure sound like they ought to be, and several of them sound incredibly familiar but I can't place them.

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