MakonSoftStudio

[taizou]

All credit to RobGBA for this one - he was poking around with my (unsuccessful) dump of Harry Potter 3 by Yong Yong trying to get it working, and he discovered the string "MakonSoftStudio" in the ROM. he also found it in the existing dumps of Digimon 2, 4 and 5.

so, what is this MakonSoftStudio? Yong Yong's real name?  the makers of some development tool they used? Either way, Google returns nothing of interest, except an Android developer MLX found called Makon Mobile Studios whose games I can't seem to find for download. possibly a connection there?Okay there's *definitely* a connection here. This page has screenshots from one of Makon Mobile Studios' games, "Rolling Ball":
http://www.androidzoom.com/android_games/casual/rolling-ball_beexh.html
which is a remake of Rockball by Sachen! using the levels from the hacked version, "Lair's Secret"! omg! this shit all fits together now.

[Awesome Panda]

If the last Yong Yong/Makon Soft Studio GBC game was released around about 2003, what were they doing between then and Android games?

Also, if Yong Yong isn't the company then wouldn't it be a programmer who made the games?

[KingPepe]

Huh, that's interesting. Is there any more apps they did? I tried checking their page but it doesn't seem to list any. o_o

[taizou]

Yeah, they were all removed from the Android Market for some reason. I found one more (in both HD and non-HD versions) though:
http://www.androidzoom.com/android_games/casual/crazy-ball_bgiaw.html
http://www.androidzoom.com/android_games/casual/crazy-ball-hd_bghcn.html

[Robyn]

It is interesting knowing there are pirate developers that carry on with their job of programming games.

[Robyn]

Okay, every 'Yong Yong' game is actually by Makon. Every single Yong Yong dumped, broken OR working have MK as their maker code in VBA-M's Rom Information! Want proof of it? Here you are :
And you can find MK in a hex editor for Sonic 3D Blast 5.
EDIT : Whoops, forgot to mention that Rockman 8 is actually Sachen, not Yong Yong.
Also I forgot to add Pokemon Adventure ;^^

[Pepper-98]

Crazy Panda

Jul 28 2012, 09:04:23 AM

EDIT : Whoops, forgot to mention that Rockman 8 is actually Sachen, not Yong Yong. [/quote]Woah wait, really?!  I guess TBM was completely developed by Sachen themselves after all...?

Edit: Wait, is it really by Sachen, like does it say that in the ROM?  Rockman 8 shares a ton of similarities to Yong Yong/Makon Soft, including the several re-releases and the limited palette for the colorized ones.  I'm aware that Makon seemed to have some people from Sachen, but it still seems kinda odd unless they used the Sachen name before fully converting over to Makon.

[Robyn]

Qiezei

Jul 28 2012, 09:56:36 AM

Crazy Panda

Jul 28 2012, 09:04:23 AM

EDIT : Whoops, forgot to mention that Rockman 8 is actually Sachen, not Yong Yong. [/quote]Woah wait, really?!  I guess TBM was completely developed by Sachen themselves after all...?[/quote]Yeah. Rom Information for TBM shows :
Game title:       THUNDER BLASTER
Colour:            80
Maker code:     HY                          (holy shit , maybe ei how yang is in this?)
Maker name:    Sachen                    (see? told ya)
Unit code:       00
Cartridge type: 01(ROM+MBC1)
License code: 4b
And the other stuff isn't useful.
Oh yeah, Rockman 8/99 actually has no trace of developer, but the Licence code is the same.

[taizou]

hey thats interesting, I didn't even know companies used the maker code that way. Checking a few of my failed Waixing dumps one has "wx" in there and another has "sg". Sintax don't seem to use it (or they just use 01, Nintendo), and Vast Fame usually have A7 (Takara) I guess because their first game was a hack of Takara's KOF.

[Robyn]

taizou

Jul 28 2012, 10:38:37 AM

hey thats interesting, I didn't even know companies used the maker code that way. Checking a few of my failed Waixing dumps one has "wx" in there and another has "sg". Sintax don't seem to use it (or they just use 01, Nintendo), and Vast Fame usually have A7 (Takara) I guess because their first game was a hack of Takara's KOF.[/quote]And your waixing multi has A4 (Konami)

[taizou]

Waixing games seem to vary, they probably used a few different devs. A few of their games just have the header from Bokujou Monogatari 2 complete with its maker code (Victor)

[codeman38]

Great finds, everyone! Don't know how I managed not to notice this thread till now.

Some more fun with maker codes and other header-related stuff:

* Harry Potter 3 uses "@7" for its maker code, which doesn't seem to correspond to any official licensee. However, it's very close to Takara's code (A7)...as in, literally one bit off...and there's at least one other game that uses "@7": Crazy Richman 2! So perhaps HP3 really is some sort of Vast Fame side project. It definitely doesn't jibe with everything developed by Sintax, which, as mentioned above, uses code 01.

* There are at least two other RPGs which also have a header taken entirely from Bokujou Monogatari, but which aren't from Waixing (they even have a logo for "Hitek" in the ROM). "Heroic Sword" is one of them; the other is in GoodGBX as "Bokujou Monogatari GB2 (Unl)", even though it clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with Harvest Moon aside from the header. Curiously, these also seem to share a sound engine with the relevant Waixing games...which appears to be stolen from Link's Awakening.

* Vast Fame's GBA stuff appears to use the header info from Kiki Kaikai Advance. (Maker code DF, Altron Corporation; game ID DKIJ.) That would explain why their Lord of the Rings game plays an awful lot like Pocky & Rocky, then!

[taizou]

codeman38

Aug 12 2012, 12:28:57 PM

* Harry Potter 3 uses "@7" for its maker code, which doesn't seem to correspond to any official licensee. However, it's very close to Takara's code (A7)...as in, literally one bit off...and there's at least one other game that uses "@7": Crazy Richman 2! So perhaps HP3 really is some sort of Vast Fame side project. It definitely doesn't jibe with everything developed by Sintax, which, as mentioned above, uses code 01.[/quote]Yeah, I'm really interested in finding an original copy of HP3 (the version shown in screenshots by Sky League a while back) to see if it has any more apparent Vast Fameness, since the dumped version is from Li Cheng & they clearly hacked it up a bit. I'm getting a copy from Taobao that looks promising, but Qiezei bought one with the same label which turned out to be Pokemon Red - hopefully that was just a PCB mixup and they aren't all like that.

codeman38

 

* There are at least two other RPGs which also have a header taken entirely from Bokujou Monogatari, but which aren't from Waixing (they even have a logo for "Hitek" in the ROM). "Heroic Sword" is one of them; the other is in GoodGBX as "Bokujou Monogatari GB2 (Unl)", even though it clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with Harvest Moon aside from the header. Curiously, these also seem to share a sound engine with the relevant Waixing games...which appears to be stolen from Link's Awakening.[/quote]
Terrifying 911 I think uses the Link's Awakening sound engine too, which is kind of not hugely surprising since it's credited to Hitek explicitly. It's hard to tell, since the only video I know of is this review, which has a dude talking over most of it, but they talk about the sound around 5:10 and you get to hear a bit of it. Gowin's color games use the LA sound engine too - maybe a developer in common between all three of them there?

The somewhat-unexpected thing is that Terrifying 911 uses PC Paint fonts too, though, so maybe whichever developer that was is tied into the whole Gamtec group somehow? (or maybe they picked up leftover tools and stuff via Gowin from their mono games, which definitely were developed by some kind of Gamtec-connected entity)oh and on a tenuously related note, a lot of Sintax's games seem to be built over the first Harvest Moon - if you compare pretty much any Sintax ROM with Harvest Moon side by side, you can see they basically just overwrote the start of each bank with their own stuff, but left the Harvest Moon data in the rest of it. No idea if they actually made use of any HM code though.

[codeman38]

taizou

Aug 12 2012, 04:49:49 PM

Terrifying 911 I think uses the Link's Awakening sound engine too, which is kind of not hugely surprising since it's credited to Hitek explicitly. It's hard to tell, since the only video I know of is this review, which has a dude talking over most of it, but they talk about the sound around 5:10 and you get to hear a bit of it. Gowin's color games use the LA sound engine too - maybe a developer in common between all three of them there?

The somewhat-unexpected thing is that Terrifying 911 uses PC Paint fonts too, though, so maybe whichever developer that was is tied into the whole Gamtec group somehow? (or maybe they picked up leftover tools and stuff via Gowin from their mono games, which definitely were developed by some kind of Gamtec-connected entity)[/quote]Yeah, I'd thought the same thing from what I could hear in the Terrifying 911 vid. And I'd forgotten about the Gowin games using the same sound engine.

As for fonts, the RPG that's in GoodGBX as "Bokujou Monogatari GB2 (Unl)" uses PC Paint fonts on its status screens. So clearly there's some sort of connection between Hitek and the Gamtec cluster, but...beats me as to how tenuous the connection is.

taizou

 

oh and on a tenuously related note, a lot of Sintax's games seem to be built over the first Harvest Moon - if you compare pretty much any Sintax ROM with Harvest Moon side by side, you can see they basically just overwrote the start of each bank with their own stuff, but left the Harvest Moon data in the rest of it. No idea if they actually made use of any HM code though.[/quote]Ah, yes, I'd noticed that with the Ice Age games a while back.Oh, also, at least one of Gowin's color games (Magic Lamp) uses the sound engine from Castlevania II.

[Robyn]

Oh wow, I've been playing their games on mah NEW ANDROID PHONE! They're not half bad, actually. I managed to rip some music from them, so like if you want to listen to their lazy (but MIDI-like) music, I'll upload them later.
:O Well well well, their logo says YOWOO, whatever that means.