Author Topic: Post-Megadrive era  (Read 2475 times)

FireRat

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Post-Megadrive era
« on: November 30, 2019, 12:01:48 PM »
Hello.
This thread doesn't have "much" to do with the chinese game development but rather what's mostly been done from latin-america; I'm really writing this out of boredom, but turns out you can draw a lot of similarities, confusing info that leaves you wondering why they did what they did, and so on.

Our story begins with TecToy during the nineties. They are the official SEGA distributor in Brazil. I don't exactly know how/why TecToy managed to sell MasterSystem/MegaDrive systems for so long (you'll find most of those Model 3 MDs here!), but the equivalent Brazilian price tends to be similar to what I seen in Chile for famiclones, and according to what little I understand from economy, the "modern" console gaming has always been more expensive and out of reach for Chile and Brazil than more developed countries, so I'd theorize on monetary reasons.

From some point TecToy had a partnership with Brazilian-based DevWorks Game Technology, and/or individual people from said enterprise at first; it's difficult to set specific dates though, since DevWorks games are only copyrighted/credited to TecToy or AtGames alone, but the situation begins to clear up from around 2005 onwards.

During the nineties, TecToy and/or DevWorks were behind a couple romhacks, and the infamous unofficial Duke Nukem 3D game; all projects of dubious copyright infringement.


A lot of stuff has happened during the 2000s:

TecToy takes the "system-on-a-chip" route, and develops some SoCs based on the MegaDrive Model 3 design. Those are very accurate chips, for example the TCT-6705 can run TiTAN Overdrive with no flaws, but none of these chips are licensed by SEGA. Ouch.

New development kits for MD have been done, and there's a strong interest for one in particular, nowadays known as SGDK. It's the most complete so far and includes everything necessary to write any ROMs in short time; with memory management libs, sprite management libs, custom sound driver... SGDK's part is important, but more on that later.

New distribution/development groups appear. Super Fighter Team would re-release Japan-only games to the rest of the world, and WaterMelon would release a homebrew RPG, Pier Solar.

Following the idea to re-release old console systems, AtGames begins the Firecore project: A new SoC-based console, that includes a list of bundled games, just like most Chinese pirates. They get SEGA's license to do it all legally. They attempt a partnership with WaterMelon and TecToy, but they face two issues: There's no agreement to bundle Pier Solar within the Firecore system, and can't use TecToy's SoCs because aren't licensed (note, unlike China we DO have copyright laws, but no one cares).
The Plan B? AtGames outsources development for a new (and licensed!) SoC with extended features to another enterprise in Taiwan, and DevWorks prepares a bunch of games for it; they translate their works from portuguese to english, and attempt to create a bunch of new "arcade" games of varying qualities using SGDK in record time.
The whole plan is very rushed and gives a poor result on the consumer though: The new wireless control system can't handle 2 players correctly, games have mixed DevWorks/TecToy/AtGames copyrights, and the taiwanese SoC, the RedKid (2500 is the most known model) SEEMS to have compatibility issues. Some Firecore derivates offered a SD Card slot, but loading games from SD usually resulted in less compatibility than running a built-in or cartridge game.
That's just the tip of the iceberg though, the major fault for bad compatibility actually goes to DevWorks itself. Dang, by that time they had early versions of the almighty SGDK, yet 90% of these "games" are very very crappy. There's one game where all you do is jump, but the whole screen shifts around you, in reverse!. Awful music, dreadful graphics, disappointing program. I swear Nice Code done a far better job in comparison, in the functional and audiovisual. Remember how the majority of new MD consoles from the latest 15 years had bad sound? The RedKid 2500 needs a BIOS, to configure the SoC, and display the game list if there's no cart inserted. And guess who wrote the BIOS... ? Yep, DevWorks. And their BIOS happens to be bad enough that almost everything is configured incorrectly, and life happens to be bad enough that every RK25-based console rely on this same bad config, including chinese MD pirates.

It took TecToy to release the RK25-based MegaDrive 2017 in 2017, so some external Brazilian developers would FINALLY mind on tackling the issue from root, but in return we got a nice hacking guide and an overview on extended features (greater color modes, more VRAM) in other forums. Only then would TecToy (or DevWorks) mind on porting Muller/Neto's bugfixes to their official BIOS.

Today, the MD scene is still active, but I'd say in slower steps. WaterMelon is pretty much gone after the whole Paprium fiasco, which in part indirectly damages the indie dev's reputation. Super Fighter Team is over too. However, and thanks to SGDK, new and better groups appeared over time, such as Studio Vetea behind Papi Commando saga, or Mega Cat Studios developing and publishing new titles on MD, NES, PC... no new software is licensed AFAIK, but there have been no legal complaints from SEGA so far. And let's not forget the Sonic Hacking scene, which has grown very greatly in the recent years, and is actually encouraged by SEGA themselves.


As for me... I wouldn't be here if wasn't by piracy; I got involved into game dev thanks to these famiclones and multicarts, and since I first played a SEGA ROM pack called "Segamania", only gone deeper. I've worked with the MD for around 10 years so far, writing VFX and features for some Sonic hacks, and I'm close to actually finish my third attempt of game engine from scratch to be used in a future homebrew.
So I say, it's amazing, what seems to be a similar climate against Chinese game dev, the luck has been different. Working in a 16-bit system isn't much more expensive than an 8-bit system (AFAIK), follows similar exigences, but if the programmer is good enough, it only takes an artist's decision to make a modern game, with modern art style, that could even be an "equal" to modern games nowadays. The video system at least, seems to have aged well enough. Also pretty much any device could now emulate the MD with no slowdown, and even the cheapest licensed hardware would do, given a proper BIOS. And IMO it's amazing how, although our contries (except USA's Mega Cat) may not be nearly as rich as China, managed to push the MD for so long.

guyzis

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Re: Post-Megadrive era
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2019, 01:34:46 PM »
Hello, and welcome to the forum! Ya from Brazil? Frankly i didn't know Tectoy was an unlicensed game dev, althrough i do recall they had licensing issues. They had plans on releasing a game based on Programa do Ratinho, but they couldn't. I know nothing at all, but i must say, not many bootlegs for MD were released. As for that game about jumping, could you please give me the name of it?

I'm aware that it's interesting from a nostalgic point of view to resurrect old consoles, thus making perfect sense Tectoy fabricating their own versions of the Sega Genesis. BTW, wasn't Sega purchased by Nintendo? Then why doesn't Nintendo do anythin' bout it? Nin's pretty harsh with copyright, as they cancelled the Commodore 64 port of Super Mario Bros.

FireRat

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Re: Post-Megadrive era
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2019, 02:32:08 PM »
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Hello, and welcome to the forum! Ya from Brazil?

Haha, not really, I'm from Chile, and I'm the only chilean doing major developments on MD. We had no console war, Nintendo had an expensive console monopoly all throghout the nineties. This is why my first console was a famiclone, and I only met the SEGA games through this SegaMania pack
I'm part of a small group made mostly of Brazilian members though, called Harder Project, we have released a couple of Sonic hacks so far, and this whole research only came to fruition because I wanted to make compatiblity patches for our games to work on the Megadrive 2017, with proper sound :P

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Frankly i didn't know Tectoy was an unlicensed game dev, althrough i do recall they had licensing issues.
TecToy has an actual license from SEGA, I don't think they "intend" to do a bad work, but here in latin-america there's a very weak (if non-existant) copyright encouragement, so it's not difficult to fall into shady area, without even questioning it. To put an example, 90% of our TV programs use at least 1 unlicensed, stolen song from somewhere else. 31 Minutos had to be fully re-edited for international release, and every episode had different music. If I made a homebrew game with music from Sonic 3 and a port of Despacito (lol), I doubt anyone in latin-america would even care. And, after all, I certainly don't care (much) if our stuff gets pirated, it helps get our work more known nevertheless.

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BTW, wasn't Sega purchased by Nintendo? Then why doesn't Nintendo do anythin' bout it? Nin's pretty harsh with copyright, as they cancelled the Commodore 64 port of Super Mario Bros
Nah, AFAIK SEGA is just a third-party which happens to release some of their latest works under Nintendo brand. They still hold all rights to what they had during the olden days, and apparently they're still big in Japan with their arcade cabinets