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Topics - codeman38

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76
1993-1999 / The Dragon / Chu Da D music reuse
« on: September 19, 2010, 06:53:17 PM »
I just discovered, thanks to a music rip by Gil Galad (see the 03/15/2010 collection on his news page), that the Big 2 card game "Chu Da D" uses music that's also found in Rinco's "The Dragon". Which, in turn, very clearly uses a sound driver from Sachen. Both games are copyrighted 1995.

Interestingly, Chu Da D is by neither Sachen nor Rinco. Rather, it's by a company (companies?) I haven't seen credited anywhere else, "Fortune Power - Jichang". The screen with their logos says... something I can't read, because it's in Chinese, but it involves the characters for both China and Taipei. I guess one's a Chinese distributor and one's a Taiwanese distributor?

77
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).

78
Pirate Talk / "Pokemon" and "Digimon" in Chinese
« on: September 05, 2010, 02:21:04 PM »
So I was just doing a bit of random Wikipedia research, prompted by the observation in the Wiki article on Pokemon Saphire that "Magic Baby" is what Pokemon are called in Taiwan. And what I found out was that in different parts of the Chinese-speaking world, Pokemon are called different things!

On the mainland, they're 口袋妖怪 Kǒudài yāoguài, which is a literal translation of "pocket monsters".

In Hong Kong, they're 寵物小精靈, which would be pronounced in Mandarin as Chǒngwù xiǎo jīnglíng, though I have no idea how it'd be said in Cantonese (Edit: According to MandarinTools.com, that's chung mat siu jing ling). This means "pet elves". (And yes, this explains that one bootleg version of Pokemon Crystal where the mons are referred to as "elves".)

And in Taiwan, they're 神奇寶貝 Shénqí bǎobèi, which are indeed "magic babies".

So now, if you see a Pokemon bootleg, you should be able to figure out where it's from.


The same is true of Digimon, too, for that matter:

In the mainland and Taiwan, they're 数码宝贝 / 數碼寶貝 Shùmǎ bǎobèi, "digital babies".

In Hong Kong, they're 數碼暴龍 Shùmǎ bàolóng (Edit: sou ma bou lung in Cantonese), "digital tyrannosaurs" - where the Chinese for "tyrannosaur" is, in turn, literally translated as "violent dragon". (Yep, this is why some of the Digimon games are called "Digital Dragon"!)

79
BootlegGames Wiki / Section idea: Development Tools
« on: September 05, 2010, 01:43:11 PM »
I'm considering adding a section for tools that were used by pirate developers in the development of their games. These will often be shared among games made by the same developer or closely related developers.

Things I'm considering adding include:
* PC Paint - A very popular paint program amongst pirate devs. Pretty much all the companies based out of the greater Taichung area (Gamtec, Chuanpu, V.Fame) used it, as did Super Game and BBD.
* Deluxe Paint - Equally popular amongst pirate devs. Hummer Team, BBD, and Yong Yong have all used this one, judging from fonts used in their games.
* Borland BGI - The graphics library from Borland's Turbo compilers, the font from which has appeared in games by NTDEC.
* Tomsoft Studio Sega Kit - Used for a number of pirate Mega Drive games.
* Gamtec Gameboy Hex -> Update Bin - Referenced in a number of pirate Game Boy ROMs. I still have no idea what this tool actually did (patcher? compiler? converter?), but it obviously existed.

Anyone think this would be worth adding?

80
Super Famicom/SNES / SNES pirate sound drivers
« on: September 01, 2010, 11:18:42 PM »
It's pretty much common knowledge by now that X-Men vs. Street Fighter pirate uses music directly from Street Fighter II, and that the Pokemon platformers use music from Bonkers. But there's another sound engine that seems to show up in pretty much every pirate that uses semi-original music.

Turns out that it, too, is from a Capcom game-- namely, Super Pang, a.k.a. Super Buster Bros.

This one's used in Pokemon Stadium, Tekken, and that Super Big 2 game that I saw on NicoVideo a while back. Pokemon Stadium and Super Big 2 both use a fanfare from Super Pang; it's track 28, "All Clear", in the music rip from SNESMusic.org. The sound effects are identical too.

And of course, the pirates actually apparently re-coded the Gravity Beetle theme from Mega Man X3 for the Super Pang sound engine; it's not ripped from MMX3 at all. Seriously, what.

81
Mega Drive/Genesis / Barver Battle Saga music rip
« on: September 01, 2010, 07:58:32 AM »
"ValleyBell" on the Project2612 forums has created what appears to be a full VGM rip of Barver Battle Saga. It's from the patched version, so the music includes the PCM percussion that's missing from the original pirate.

http://forums.project2612.org/showthread.php?p=3936

You'll need to sign up on their forums to download it, but it's worth it anyway if you're at all interested in Mega Drive game music.


Edit: Oh, yeah, this one's old news, but "projectstar" on the same forum ripped the Shui Hu Feng Yun Zhuan soundtrack, for those who still hadn't seen that post.

82
2000-present / Modern famiclones on NicoNicoDouga
« on: August 24, 2010, 02:00:32 PM »
I found a list of some Famiclone-related videos on Nico Nico Douga. This guy has recorded videos of all the games on two famiclones (the Famikonyarou 54, and the Japanese version of the DreamGear 101-in-1) along with some explanatory notes (which, of course, are in Japanese, but even if you can only read kana there's some interesting stuff in there).

The Famikonyarou ones are particularly interesting, because it shows comparisons of the hacked games with the originals.

http://es.nicovideo.jp/mylist/16977644

For those who don't have a NicoNicoDouga account, you can play the videos via the Nicovideo Redirector. Or alternatively, replace everything before the "sm" number in the URL with http://d.hatena.ne.jp/video/niconico/ and that should work too.

Incidentally, I learned something from one of these, thanks to a very rudimentary ability to read kana: the music in "Falling Blocks" on the DreamGear is actually from "Kero Kero Keroppi no Daibouken". No wonder it sounds 50 times better than anything else on the console.

83
Game Boy / Ice Age music source found!
« on: August 21, 2010, 04:55:41 PM »
I was just listening through GBS rips, and found the source of the soundtrack for both versions of Sintax' "Ice Age".

The game in question?

::drumroll:: Kandume Monsters. Also spelled "Kanzume Monsters" in some dumps. It's a Tamagotchi-style game that I honestly hadn't heard of either.  :)

Now if only I could find the source of the True Three Kingdoms music...

84
Game Boy / Stolen music in GB pirates
« on: August 21, 2010, 04:30:37 PM »
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this already on the RX Forums, but I figured it was worth repeating here because it's something I'm still quite curious about.

There is a game which is credited to Sintax called "Zhong Zhuan Qi Bing". More specifically, there's no in-game credit, but the ROM ID is "SINTAX MM V1007" - and since the game was inspired by the Famicom RPG "Metal Max", it seems like this is probably the right ID. It also has the boot logo which, if you sort of squint at it, looks like "Kwichuu" or "Kwichvu"-- another sign suggesting it's by Sintax. I believe this may be the same game as "Raider Max" on Sintax' now-defunct site, though it's hard to tell because the image wasn't archived with it.

Now here's the interesting part. This game uses the same music as "Super SLG", which is credited in-game to SKOB. It's also in the "Final Fantaxy IX" (sic) game that taizou owns, which is credited to TD-Soft. And aside from that, it's also in "Saishuu Gensou", a.k.a. "Final Fantasy Unlimited Saga", which has no in-game logo but also uses the "Kwichuu" boot logo associated with Sintax.

It's also very similar in style to the music used in Sintax' "True Three Kingdoms" (a.k.a. "Sangokushi Act C"), though as far as I know, none of the tunes are the same. (Then again, I haven't played very far in any of them. Anyone know if there's any overlap?)

So... is this music taken from a legitimate licensed game? Or is it just a bunch of pirates stealing each other's code? Were Sintax and SKOB in cahoots, or did they just steal from the same places? Because these are some curious coincidences indeed.

85
Pirate Talk / NusuttoSan's pirate game videos
« on: August 17, 2010, 01:34:54 AM »
So I just discovered this guy on YouTube named NusuttoSan who's posted some interesting videos of undumped pirates:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NusuttoSan

Some highlights include:
  • Bomboy, a Gamtec port of Super Bomberman to Mega Drive.
  • VFame's Pokemon Ruby, captured via Game Boy Player. With even more of a chance to hear VFame's awesome music. And more Engrish! Heh.
  • Pocket Monster Carbuncle. Or Ruby. Which we know better as Sapphire. Yeah, the Sintax one. Also, the reason its music is so good? It's stolen from a legit Super Robot Wars game (Dai-2-Ji Super Robot Taisen)!
  • Rockman X4. The unholy love child of Rockman 8 and Sonic Adventure 7. Played on real hardware.  <_<
Edited to add: Street Heroes GB! Wow, that music is ear-splitting. And it uses Ei-How Yang's fonts.

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