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Topics - codeman38

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61
Other Pirates / DDR Disney Mix (?!)
« on: February 10, 2011, 11:32:05 PM »
So here's something interesting I discovered while searching for videos of plug-n-play consoles on YouTube:

Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix

Yes, this is an officially licensed console by Konami and Disney. So why am I bringing it up in a pirate games forum? Well, just listen to it.

Perhaps my ears are deceiving me, but it sure sounds like Konami outsourced their work to whoever did the music for Shenzhen Nanjing's games and/or Gold Leopard King Dance.  8D

62
Game Boy / Video footage of Terrifying 911
« on: December 12, 2010, 08:15:26 PM »
I just found a video review of Terrifying 911, Hitek's September 11-themed "Metal Slug" clone, that was posted on YouTube.

The bad news: The entire narration is in Portuguese. (Do we have any speakers of that language here?)

The good news: It actually has gameplay video, in which the music is even partially audible. What I can hear of it, it sounds like it uses the same sound engine as "Heroic Sword"-- understandable, since that's also made by Hitek. And the graphic quality is surprisingly good-- much better than Metal Slug 2001/Beet Terrif Battle.

Anyway, here 'tis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNQjU2BXMts

63
2000-present / OneBus emulator found by cah4e3
« on: December 09, 2010, 11:11:32 PM »
For those who haven't checked cah4e3's dump blog recently, he's discovered an emulator for the OneBus NES-on-a-chip created by its manufacturers. This is the chip that powers both the Arcade Action and the DreamGear 75-in-1.

Apparently, it's manufactured by the Taiwanese company VR Technology.

Now here's the interesting part, however: If you go to the About box, you'll find out that this emulator was developed by... ::drumroll:: JUNGLETAC! There's a credit to "DJJungle", and a link to a web site that's no longer operational, but which at one point had some very dodgy stuff on it (including a full MS Office ISO!) judging from the Internet Archive.

64
1993-1999 / Hilarious "Super Micro Genius All-Stars" famiclone
« on: November 26, 2010, 12:16:17 AM »
Just found this video review of a Micro Genius famiclone with some amazingly bizarre packaging:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYPhxRQqY90

I love this. The blatantly false claims (Mode 7 on an 8-bit system)! The utter ripoff of legitimate Nintendo properties! And a random picture of Sonic on the box too!

65
Other Pirates / I think this copy of Dinosaur King is a bootleg
« on: November 18, 2010, 11:14:36 PM »
http://cheezburger.com/View/4177863424

Alas, I only found this on Failblog and not in person. But still... LOL.

66
Game Boy / VFame's Japanese is as bad as their English
« on: November 10, 2010, 10:39:19 AM »
Alas, I don't know enough Japanese to know just how bad it is, but apparently 「ロツワ」 (rotsuwa) has become a sort of inside joke amongst some Japanese fans of pirate original games. That is how VFame misspelled 「ロック」 (rokku) in the intro to Rockman Z. That's right. They misspelled the main character's name. (Admittedly, the characters do look similar if you don't know Japanese kana...but still...)

There's also frequent reference to 「せんソょうし」 (sensoyoushi, where the 'so' is in the wrong alphabet entirely) in the intro. I'm gathering this is probably supposed to be 「せんびょうし」 (senbyoushi), which means 'death from disease caught during war'. This is an amusing enough mistake that it's actually a keyword on one of the Rockman Z playthrough vids on NicoVideo.

I wish I knew more Japanese now so I could laugh at it even more. But if anyone here is reasonably fluent, here's that playthrough video again, with intro.

67
Other Pirates / MiWi Xtra (Waixing 16-bit console)
« on: November 08, 2010, 02:39:06 AM »
I just found some videos just now posted by YouTube user EncoreEnterprisesLLC of the "MiWi Xtra", a 16-bit all-in-one unit which (at least judging from the copyright numbers) was made by Waixing.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nenvt92jX-8
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGGJ9-cTWg0
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAM5oGO16Ns

Part 1 is familiar-- it's all stuff from the Zone 40, including the "Hitting Mices" game with Donkey Kong music and Puzzle Bobble sounds. Though it is worth noting that in "Diamond" (yes, the Arkanoid clone), they misspelled the title as "Diamono" in the in-game HUD. Wonderful quality control there, guys.

Part 2, however, is where the really bizarre stuff starts, with a bunch of seemingly new games that may or may not be made by Waixing:
  • "Aqua Mix" uses the Chemical Brothers' "Block Rockin' Beats" as its title music. Have they no shame? (Also, it's a Puyo Puyo clone, something I haven't seen very often on these units.)
  • The title music from "Golden Gate" is rather catchy, and I'm sure it's stolen from somewhere. Just like the Puzzle Bobble voices. Again. Interesting variation of Pong, incidentally.
  • I know I've seen the 'real' version of "Hammer" before, but I can't remember what the actual title is. Hit the block, get the enemy to fall in it, then hit the enemy.
  • "Rugged Hammer", not to be confused with "Hammer". The title music sounds familiar, but I can't place it. And the in-game music... wow, Waixing, you suck at looping. :)
  • "Pro Crack". ::gigglesnort:: It's Pang! And there's that Golden Gate music again.
  • "Harry" is very similar to the puzzle game "Araiguma Rascal" for Super Famicom, which in turn is probably based on some other game I don't know about.
  • The developers didn't even bother to give a title to the game at 7:38.
  • "Smart Bomber"... wow, a new version of their Bomberman game. Sounds like an Amiga MOD for the music.
  • "Maze Pac". Because one Tetris clone (Square) wasn't good enough? And this one doesn't even have music.
  • I'm pretty sure the title songs of "Apex Gun" and "Farm Keeper" are both real songs-- I especially swear I've heard the former before.
  • I have no idea what the heck is going on in "Loop Legend". But whoever programmed the music was definitely not one. Also, they can't spell "scene".
  • Again, a tune from the '80s I know I've heard but cannot place for the life of me in "Pets Crossing". (Edit: It's very close to Bananarama's "I Heard A Rumour", but not an exact match.)

Edit: Part 3 (which I've added above) shows the same sports games that are on the Zone 40, essentially.

Edit #2: Given the shared sound effects (e.g., the Puzzle Bobble "ready...go!"), I would guess that the games in part 2 probably are by Waixing despite the lack of registration numbers. But I can't find them by name in the Chinese copyright database, either. So who knows.
Hm. I just discovered that the Miwi and Zone 40 are both produced by a company called Eittek - however, they definitely have some sort of deal with Waixing. Either Eittek builds the hardware and Waixing makes the software, or else Eittek just buys OEM items from Waixing.

68
Mega Drive/Genesis / Wario Land 3 (Puggsy hack) dumped...but...
« on: November 05, 2010, 12:33:14 AM »
Somehow I missed this news back in October, but someone finally dumped the Puggsy hack "Wario Land 3". Sure enough, it's a lot less of a hack than I thought it was seeing it on a blurry screen-- they just replaced the logos and the Puggster himself.

http://blogsquirrel.blogspot.com/2010/10/wario-land-3.html

Edit: I can't actually seem to find any links to the ROM, though-- found a thread about it on SonicRetro, but it's disappeared from the site!

69
2000-present / JungleTac + Hwang Shinwei + Shenzhen Nanjing
« on: October 29, 2010, 09:28:14 AM »
OK, here's a really bizarre one for ya.

I just found this video review of a hitherto unseen DreamGear plug-n-play unit. It's very clearly made by JungleTac; not only does one of the games credit "DJ Jungle", but it's also identical UI-wise to the Centurion GamePad reviewed by HalfBlindGamer.

The second game shown on the DreamGear console is named Jewel Master. It is... (breathes in)... a hack of Magic Jewelry, credited to JungleTac, that uses music from some of Nanjing's RPGs. (Music which was, in turn, remade from Majin Eiyuuden Wataru, as I've pointed out here before. Oops, wrong one; that's a different tune, but from the same game, Golden Sun. All these Nanjing tunes sound the same anyway. :P )

I think my whole understanding of the relationships between all these pirate companies just got turned sideways or something...

Edit: Even more interestingly, HalfBlindGamer's version has the same game, but with completely different music, sticking with Jungle's more standard Contra sound driver. Go figure!

Edit #2: Oh, wow, this isn't the only game that uses Nanjing music. Space Castle uses Nanjing's remake of the Zelda dungeon theme. And yet, the rest of the games all still seem to use the traditional JungleTac music. Wei~~~rd.

Edit #3: Even more! In this part of the review, Move Fun has still more Nanjing music, this time from their Saint Seiya game.

70
Pirate Talk / Waixing-Jungletac connection?
« on: October 23, 2010, 12:44:34 AM »
So, on a whim, I decided to search for Waixing and Jungletac to see if the two were mentioned in the same place anywhere.

And aside from a page on the Bootleg Games wiki (woo!) and a few listings of plug-and-play famiclone manufacturers, I found this Chinese forum thread for C# help:
http://bbs.gameres.com/showthread.asp?threadid=41936

Note the post by 'mb' dated 2005-12-22. His e-mail address is at Waixing. His MSN Messenger account, on the other hand, is registered to a Jungletac address.

Interesting. Even if he didn't work at both of these companies at the same time, this definitely indicates that he left one and joined the other, at the very least. I'm guessing the MSN account was registered first, and then he moved to Waixing later, probably.

71
Pirate Talk / BBD's successor?
« on: October 03, 2010, 11:42:40 PM »
So I just discovered an otherwise uninteresting Chinese manufacturer of video game peripherals named Changxin. Their web site is http://www.dgchangxin.com/.

Here's the interesting part, however, and how I found it: if I'm reading the Chinese text correctly, this company is the successor to a company called Bu Bu Da, also based out of Guangdong, and founded in 1998.

Rinkaku89 has a dance game for Mega Drive made by that company in 1999, which he can't actually get to work. They're credited by their initials on the opening screen: BBD. There's also this hentai mahjong game that rinkaku has; although it's not credited under their Chinese name, it's likely the same company. And yeah, I assume this is probably the same BBD that developed Sintax's games, too.

Alas, they don't seem to develop software anymore, just hardware... and not even the interesting sort of stuff, either, just carrying cases and such. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

72
Game Boy / Digimon Sapphire (GBA)
« on: September 30, 2010, 10:13:37 PM »
For those who haven't been following NusuttoSan's YouTube channel... well, this is a real treat. A newly discovered Vast Fame platformer for GBA. And it's good. Much better than that Crash Bandicoot platformer animation-wise, and no, it's not that other Digimon platformer for GBA either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNG4k0h8qTg

Alas, the audio is significantly out of sync, but still. It's video footage of a Vast Fame game that nobody had ever heard of, on a system where they barely even had any known existence.

73
The Big Old Arcade / Envelope-pushing retro game soundtracks
« on: September 26, 2010, 12:09:02 AM »
Ever encounter a retro game soundtrack that's just so amazingly over-the-top you can't believe it's actually playing on the hardware it's playing on? Well, this thread is for those.

Here's one to start things off: Ottifanten: Kommando Störtebeker for Game Boy Color. What, you've never heard of it? Neither had I. It's a rather boring licensed game based off of a German cartoon, and was only released in German-speaking countries. But the soundtrack was done by Stello Doussis, a guy who'd gotten his start in the Commodore 64 demoscene... and oh, does it show. I seriously had no idea some of these sounds could be produced on 8-bit Game Boy hardware.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ2PjbKfpvs&p=7ACBE540FC2DF52D&index=1


Edit: And a second one: Super Adventure Island for SNES. Just keep in mind this is from an SNES game from 1992. Heck, I couldn't believe it in 1992.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5nVYcfylzc


Edit #2: Feel free to move this to the music forum if it fits better there, mods. I couldn't decide which one it went better in, since this is about music that was actually in retro games.

74
Game Boy / Syntek & Gowin trademarks
« on: September 25, 2010, 03:36:23 PM »
One interesting thing about Gowin's older monochrome games, as discussed in this thread, is that they're credited to a semiconductor company named Syntek (which is absolutely not to be confused with Sintax). According to the Taiwanese intellectual property office's trademark entry for Syntek, the trademark is owned by, well, Syntek Semiconductor. Or, in Chinese, 太欣 tai xin. And yes, they still exist.

So what trademarks does Syntek have? Well, Prince YehRude, for one, Magic Ball, for another. I don't see any others related to unlicensed GB games, though this 1992 logo of theirs (which they're still using; see their web site above!) can also be found in the ROMs.

But here's the interesting thing. The agent who filed the Syntek trademark is named He Lianguo (何連國). Apparently this guy does trademark registrations for a lot of folks in Taiwan, judging from a search for the name. But what's particularly interesting is that he also owns some trademarks... things like New GB, New GB Color, and V.Fame.

Coincidence? Could easily be, given that the guy seems to be a big trademark lawyer or something. But it's still worth mentioning.

Speaking of Gowin, incidentally, the name "Gua Gua Dragon" has existed since 1994, though the actual mascot only seems to have been trademarked in 1999 (in a much uglier variation than we're familiar with!). The current Gua Gua Dragon, however, only came about two years after that. (Also, I'd never noticed that his belly is a Game Boy. That's amusing.)

Oh, this is bizarre. Y'know whose logo is buried in the graphics for Gowin's School Fighter? SYNTEK. Same logo as in Prince YehRude, exactly. I don't see anything else that's left over from one of the monochrome games either, which makes it even weirder.

75
Game Boy / Gowin doesn't forget their roots
« on: September 24, 2010, 08:31:45 AM »
So I was looking at NusuttoSan's latest blog post, in which he provides scans from the manual to Gowin's GBC game Dino Century. And I noticed a couple things:

1. The style of the character art in the manual looks very similar to character designs I've seen in Chuanpu and Vast Fame packaging.

2. Take a look at the last page of the manual, which is a promotion for Gowin's other games. Notice anything? Yep. Although the GBC games seem to have been developed by an entirely different team, they're still advertising their older monochrome games which seem to have connections to VFame (Magic Ball, YehRude, Lasama, Rainbow Prince, and Mi Tu de Lu). I'm especially curious about the two Binary Monster games; this image from taizou shows the first to be a mono RPG, while the sequel is a platformer with VFame-looking graphics.

Edit: OK, I'm really curious about Binary Monsters after squinting at the back of the box even closer. Could this be the first game to use what we now know as VFame's RPG engine?

Edit further: An already-sold eBay auction for Binary Monsters. And that is definitely a PC Paint font I see on the title screen...

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