Hidden credit screen in Harry Potter

[codeman38]

I have no idea how one accesses this (playing through the loop of three levels multiple times?), but there is most definitely a hidden screen in the ROM displaying the TomSoft logo and Tommy Xie's name and contact info:

Ah, upon further investigation, this may very well be a red herring - it's part of the "mcc68kab.001" file in TomSoft's Sega kit. So the game might not have been developed by Tommy himself, but by someone he gave his dev kit to.

[Awesome Panda]

If it was developed by someone else, then it'd explain why (to my knowledge, at least) the credits screen can't be accessed. Mind you, it could be a Russian developer seeing as the ROM name is "Harry Potter (R)".

[MLX]

Copyright hacked ?

[Awesome Panda]

Having found this page a couple of minutes ago, I'd say this box looks a lot more authentic than Dragon Co's Famicom carts, and the full name of this game is apparently Harry Potter MD. Neither Tommy Xie or Tomsoft are credited anywhere, so I'm guessing it's either a pirate release or developed by someone else.

[codeman38]

Cheetahmen

Mar 12 2011, 05:49:47 AM

If it was developed by someone else, then it'd explain why (to my knowledge, at least) the credits screen can't be accessed. Mind you, it could be a Russian developer seeing as the ROM name is "Harry Potter (R)".[/quote]I found an alternate version of the ROM on this Russian site that was labeled "Harry Potter (Unl)" and whose ROM header mentions the Tomsoft SDK.

The comment on that download, as translated by Google:

Quote:

 

Completely original ROM. ROM, known as Harry_Potter_ (R) has changed the title and should be considered Harry_Potter_ (Unl) [h1][/quote]So apparently the (R) dump is a hacked version, and the (Unl) version is an unedited dump.

Edit: Also, I think the box art on SegaGaga is a repro, or at the very least, a second-generation pirate. Several other cartridges in his collection have the same style package, and none of them seem to be originals.

[taizou]

some ex-Dragon people formed a company called Hummer Software (no relation) after Dragon closed, heres their archived website: http://waybackmachine.org/*/http://www.hummersoftware.com/
the videos page lists a few game names, including Harry Potter - not sure if its the same one, but its certainly possible..
edit: & Deer Hunter and Death Caliber are there too.

[codeman38]

LOL, doing an Internet Archive walk through that site is especially hilarious-- they bought an expired domain name from an American company which was, of course, also named Hummer Software. The earlier Hummer's only product? An evangelistic game called "Life's Battle" which was infamously reviewed by Lowtax on Something Awful.

I can definitely see why the older Hummer let the domain name lapse, though. I mean, really. A company making Christian-oriented games, known as Hummer. That's just opening oneself up for mockery.

[Awesome Panda]

codeman38

 

A company making Christian-oriented games, known as Hummer. That's just opening oneself up for mockery.[/quote]
I'm pretty sure the name is meant to be a reference to how people hum in church or something. It's still stupid, though.

(Looking through the Chinese Hummer page) So their controller thing is apparently "Assiduous"? I think it'd be more accurate if they took the last 6 letters off that.

Moving on to something more relevant, using the mystical powers of Google Translate, I think this team are directly connected with Dragon Co. From what I could understand, it says that Dragon were formed in 1997 and apparently made games for the Famicom and Super Famicom. In 1999, they (possibly Tommy Xie on his own) started developing games for the Mega Drive and supposedly the Game Boy. The last paragraph I looked at makes no sense, but I think it says that Hummer Software were formed in 2005 and carried on doing on Dragon Co. did before. Oh, and they made some TV games, but I've got no idea what's up there.

The list of games on the archive consists of Mega Drive games as far as I can tell. Sonic is listed on there, not sure if they got the license from Sega but I somehow doubt it. Fortune Fighter's description sounds a lot like Iraq War 2003 for the Mega Drive. There's a cricket game for some odd reason. Death Caliber or whatever it's called is apparently based off 9/11, and it's for the Mega Drive so it's probably another port of Metal Slug. You could apparently download the games at one point but of course, Wayback Machine can't do that.

One thing that's really weird is that in the "Job" section, the descriptions seem to consist of tags to pornography and pointless references to Alex Trebek and Pokémon, all written in Italian. Then again, that seems to have been a hack, because the latest update has a standard description in Chinese.

[codeman38]

Cheetahmen

Mar 13 2011, 12:31:10 PM

The list of games on the archive consists of Mega Drive games as far as I can tell. Sonic is listed on there, not sure if they got the license from Sega but I somehow doubt it. Fortune Fighter's description sounds a lot like Iraq War 2003 for the Mega Drive. There's a cricket game for some odd reason. Death Caliber or whatever it's called is apparently based off 9/11, and it's for the Mega Drive so it's probably another port of Metal Slug. You could apparently download the games at one point but of course, Wayback Machine can't do that.[/quote]Death Caliber's been dumped, actually:
http://rufiles.narod.ru/page1.htm

It's a shooting gallery game... that uses the D-pad rather than any sort of light gun. Oh, yeah, and with *really* bad cursor precision.

Oh, also? It's credited in-game to Glorysun. Maybe Glorysun were the publisher and Hummer the developer, or something like that?

[Awesome Panda]

codeman38

Mar 13 2011, 08:20:47 PM

Cheetahmen

Mar 13 2011, 12:31:10 PM

The list of games on the archive consists of Mega Drive games as far as I can tell. Sonic is listed on there, not sure if they got the license from Sega but I somehow doubt it. Fortune Fighter's description sounds a lot like Iraq War 2003 for the Mega Drive. There's a cricket game for some odd reason. Death Caliber or whatever it's called is apparently based off 9/11, and it's for the Mega Drive so it's probably another port of Metal Slug. You could apparently download the games at one point but of course, Wayback Machine can't do that.[/quote]Death Caliber's been dumped, actually:
http://rufiles.narod.ru/page1.htm

It's a shooting gallery game... that uses the D-pad rather than any sort of light gun. Oh, yeah, and with *really* bad cursor precision.

Oh, also? It's credited in-game to Glorysun. Maybe Glorysun were the publisher and Hummer the developer, or something like that?[/quote]So in other words, it's a ripoff of Billy Bob from the Mega Drive version of Action 52. That's what the description reminded of, anyway.

I'm guessing either you're right on that presumption, or they're the same company. That said, I'm not familiar with Glorysun.

[taizou]

heres Glorysun's website: http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20030201095545/http://glorysun.com/
sounds like they did use the Tomsoft dev kit, the English page mentions "SEGA debugging tools(nouse hardware)" &
"Music tool for SEGA.it can transplant MIDI to SEGA music". & they had a research branch in Xi'an.. so I'd guess that either both Glorysun & Hummer were spun off from Dragon, or they at least worked together somehow.