Samuri/Star Angel - a Hummer Team plug & play console

[taizou]

codeman38

Jun 14 2011, 10:00:26 AM

Now I'm wondering what exactly the relationship is between Hummer, Zechess, and ABABsoft...[/quote]yeah, and Rinco as well. I'd guess those three were all just hardware manufacturers and/or publishers and Hummer always handled the actual development, but I can't be sure.  

(Speaking of hardware the controller that comes with the Zdog is fucking awful. especially compared to the Samuri which is quite well-built. & the Samuri looking like that Timetop console makes me wonder if Zechess outsourced the actual manufacturing to different companies in China or something)

KingPepe

 

Holy crap, this is just amazing. I wonder what that Ping Pong game is like.[/quote]
Plays just like a Wii clone pingpong game, your character isn't visible and you just have to press A at the right time. its nothing all that special, I like the character portraits though.

MLX

 

The companies that originaly released them are owning the rights and the source code for them. I guess Hummer was getting a lot of money but when they would leave the publisher, they would loose all the sources codes and stuff. (The games are copyrighted to JY for exemple). [/quote]
that only seems to have been the case with JY though - some of their games released under NT or Ge De (SF4, Somari, MK4 etc) have been re-released, but no JY game ever has (to my knowledge). maybe they signed an exclusive contract with JY but not the others.

[Awesome Panda]

taizou

Jun 14 2011, 11:48:12 AM

MLX

 

The companies that originaly released them are owning the rights and the source code for them. I guess Hummer was getting a lot of money but when they would leave the publisher, they would loose all the sources codes and stuff. (The games are copyrighted to JY for exemple). [/quote]
that only seems to have been the case with JY though - some of their games released under NT or Ge De (SF4, Somari, MK4 etc) have been re-released, but no JY game ever has (to my knowledge). maybe they signed an exclusive contract with JY but not the others.[/quote]If that was the case, then how would JY be able to take action against redistributing games published by them? The Hummer games they published were all illegal ports, so it's not like they could take it to court.

[MLX]

I think Taiwan use a separate copyright service (remember that NTDEC copyrighted PacMan there). So it could have worked at the time I think.

[taizou]

Cheetahmen

Jun 14 2011, 11:54:37 AM

If that was the case, then how would JY be able to take action against redistributing games published by them? The Hummer games they published were all illegal ports, so it's not like they could take it to court.[/quote]Well, I dunno. It was Taiwan, it was the 90s, maybe they could. as far as I know until 1999 foreign copyrights didn't apply in Taiwan unless they were explicitly registered. so the only copyright enforceable in Taiwan would have been on the original elements of the games like Hummer's program code and whatnot.

edit: and yeah, what MLX said. That's why Nintendo had to sue NTDEC through their US division, they didn't have a case in Taiwan. and I guess NTDEC were stupid enough to have a US division so they kind of brought it on themselves.also: i found Handel Liao's Picasa account http://picasaweb.google.com/104777954693978867426/Zdog#

has some screens and even a couple of preproduction sketches of the Zdog. One thing that's odd is I haven't found anything about the Samuri from any page related to Liao or Zechess, its all Zdog. Maybe the Samuri was never officially released before Zechess went out of business, but they'd already had a bunch of units manufactured and someone just found them in a warehouse and stuck them on Taobao.

[Awesome Panda]

Probably just me, but that Pac-Man clone looks like a hack of the NES version.

[taizou]

oh hey I did a bit of detective work on that sketch (if only i had magic CSI infinite enhancement software)
 if you flip it and increase the contrast, it looks like it was drawn on the back of something interesting:


http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/9346/mapflip.jpg

possibly some kind of Hummer document or invoice or something?
that definitely looks like Hummer (the horse) in the top left but the company name looks more like "Summer Technology Co., Ltd" (maybe it is an H though, and theres just some kind of pencil mark or shadow making it look like an S)... but either way I haven't been able to find anything relevant on google for Summer or Hummer Technology.

then theres a number VT038M0003, which I guess means VT03 8 megabit ROM no. 0003 or something, and possibly a list of games? the only one I can make out is Kangaroo-something, which i suppose would be either Kangaroo Fighter or Kangaroo Hunt.

[Awesome Panda]

Definitely looks like an S to me, although they'd be a bit stupid to make an alias by changing the first letter of their name IMO. What I don't get is why it looks clearer than the rest of the name.

[taizou]

yeah, it does look clearer, that's what makes me think its from something else (maybe there's another piece of paper underneath?) and its not actually part of the name.

[Awesome Panda]

Might be. The message is obviously written in Comic Sans but the S looks a bit different than it's supposed to.

[KingPepe]

Something odd I noticed about Hummer when I was looking at his mane. In the photo, it shows him having a curl instead of a spike like in the normal pictures. Nothing big but I guess his design changed a bit overtime?

[codeman38]

"Hummer Technology Co. Ltd." in Chinese would be "悍馬科技有限公司", which... seems to also be what's written above the name if you squint at it. However, I'm only finding mainland sites of very similarly named, but unrelated, companies with a Google search of that. Hm.

Edit: Actually, the more I squint at the English name, the more it looks like it might be "Simmer"? I wish that first Chinese character weren't covered up by the sun!More suggestion that ZDog = VDog:
- In the menu screenshot, the "Z" is in a completely different font from the rest of the title.
- On the title screen, the "Z" is awfully small for the space that it's filling. Which is sort of shaped like a "V". (Note how the "DOG" part neatly fits into its space, in contrast.)

[Awesome Panda]

codeman38

Jun 14 2011, 03:15:12 PM

Edit: Actually, the more I squint at the English name, the more it looks like it might be "Simmer"? I wish that first Chinese character weren't covered up by the sun![/quote]Looking at the Chinese characters (Traditional, if I remember correctly that's what they use in Taiwan) I don't think it says "Summer". As far as I can tell it says Hummer like it should, but what the S is doing there is beyond me.BTW, are any of those 59 (or however many it is if you discount the rehashes) games supposed to be Pink Jelly?

[taizou]

I don't think so - Pink Jelly (the character) shows up in a lot of them, but Pink Jelly (the game) was just a rehash of Panda Adventure, and theres nothing using that engine on there. (or on the Zdog for that matter)

[MLX]

What other old Hummer games are in the zDog ?

[taizou]

only Titenic and Ping Pong, as it turns out. I thought because one of the first games I tried turned out to be Titenic, it'd probably have a few more, but most of them are just variations on the same stuff from the Samuri.