Syntek & Gowin trademarks

[codeman38]

One interesting thing about Gowin's older monochrome games, as discussed in this thread, is that they're credited to a semiconductor company named Syntek (which is absolutely not to be confused with Sintax). According to the Taiwanese intellectual property office's trademark entry for Syntek, the trademark is owned by, well, Syntek Semiconductor. Or, in Chinese, 太欣 tai xin. And yes, they still exist.

So what trademarks does Syntek have? Well, Prince YehRude, for one, Magic Ball, for another. I don't see any others related to unlicensed GB games, though this 1992 logo of theirs (which they're still using; see their web site above!) can also be found in the ROMs.

But here's the interesting thing. The agent who filed the Syntek trademark is named He Lianguo (何連國). Apparently this guy does trademark registrations for a lot of folks in Taiwan, judging from a search for the name. But what's particularly interesting is that he also owns some trademarks... things like New GB, New GB Color, and V.Fame.

Coincidence? Could easily be, given that the guy seems to be a big trademark lawyer or something. But it's still worth mentioning.

Speaking of Gowin, incidentally, the name "Gua Gua Dragon" has existed since 1994, though the actual mascot only seems to have been trademarked in 1999 (in a much uglier variation than we're familiar with!). The current Gua Gua Dragon, however, only came about two years after that. (Also, I'd never noticed that his belly is a Game Boy. That's amusing.)

Oh, this is bizarre. Y'know whose logo is buried in the graphics for Gowin's School Fighter? SYNTEK. Same logo as in Prince YehRude, exactly. I don't see anything else that's left over from one of the monochrome games either, which makes it even weirder.

[Awesome Panda]

Syntek seems to be a hardware company to me, maybe they originally made the PCB for Gowin's games before changing to that stuff they produce now (or 2004 at least ) which would probably explain the "Semiconductor" in their name. Also, if Gowin's mascot has a Game Boy printed on it, then can I play it? I assume that they only made games for it.

[codeman38]

Cheetahmen

Sep 25 2010, 04:14:21 PM

Syntek seems to be a hardware company to me, maybe they originally made the PCB for Gowin's games before changing to that stuff they produce now (or 2004 at least ) which would probably explain the "Semiconductor" in their name. Also, if Gowin's mascot has a Game Boy printed on it, then can I play it? I assume that they only made games for it.[/quote]They had to have had some involvement with the games themselves beyond the PCB, though; their logo is buried in several ROMs otherwise credited to Gowin. Either the games were originally developed to be distributed by them, or perhaps they were the developer.

The most interesting case of this is "Rainbow Prince", which has the ROM header "GOWIN PRICE RAINBOW930920" (guess that means it was released on 20 September 1993!) as well as a Gowin boot logo (!), but which has the Syntek logo buried in the ROM graphics at the bottom.

Prince YehRude, on the other hand, was very clearly distributed by Gowin at one time, but is not credited to them at all; even the title screen has a hidden "(c) 1992 Syntek" on it that's visible in a tile editor, complete with Syntek's logo.

[Awesome Panda]

codeman38

Sep 25 2010, 04:20:26 PM

Cheetahmen

Sep 25 2010, 04:14:21 PM

Syntek seems to be a hardware company to me, maybe they originally made the PCB for Gowin's games before changing to that stuff they produce now (or 2004 at least ) which would probably explain the "Semiconductor" in their name. Also, if Gowin's mascot has a Game Boy printed on it, then can I play it? I assume that they only made games for it.[/quote]They had to have had some involvement with the games themselves beyond the PCB, though; their logo is buried in several ROMs otherwise credited to Gowin. Either the games were originally developed to be distributed by them, or perhaps they were the developer.

The most interesting case of this is "Rainbow Prince", which has the ROM header "GOWIN PRICE RAINBOW930920" (guess that means it was released on 20 September 1993!) as well as a Gowin boot logo (!), but which has the Syntek logo buried in the ROM graphics at the bottom.

Prince YehRude, on the other hand, was very clearly distributed by Gowin at one time, but is not credited to them at all; even the title screen has a hidden "(c) 1992 Syntek" on it that's visible in a tile editor, complete with Syntek's logo.[/quote]In other words, Gowin is probably an alias for Syntek?

[codeman38]

Cheetahmen

Sep 25 2010, 04:28:06 PM

In other words, Gowin is probably an alias for Syntek?[/quote]Don't even know if I'm that certain, honestly! But there was definitely some very close collaboration between the two companies. I personally agree with one of taizou's theories, that Gowin bought the rights to software which Syntek had originally planned to publish, and the development team came along for the ride.

[Awesome Panda]

One thing I'm wondering, has anyone looked through the games with a hex editor? Might be some hidden text in there.

[taizou]

ooh He Lianguo again. thats the guy I thought was connected to Ge De Industry Co, because they both registered that same "New G.B." trademark.. but maybe he was just an agent for them or something.

Gowin was using Gua Gua Dragon before 99 though - theres an early version (gameboyless) in Rainbow Prince. although strangely its ©1993,1994 in-game, despite the header saying 93.

(and i have absolutely no idea why Syntek's logo would be in School Fighter... bit of code reuse maybe, and the logo just happened to be left in there? thats still really weird though.)

[codeman38]

Cheetahmen

Sep 25 2010, 04:46:42 PM

One thing I'm wondering, has anyone looked through the games with a hex editor? Might be some hidden text in there.[/quote]I've looked. The only things I've found so far are:

Out of all the B&W Gowin games, only one, Mi Tu de Lu, doesn't have "GOWIN" in the header title. However, that one does have the following buried in the graphics: "LOSING TRIP © 1993, 1994 GOWIN Co. Ltd." (Note also the reference to the alternate title "Lost Trip".)

The text of the story cutscene in Prince YehRude is stored in plain ASCII. It also has the text "SYNTEK LTD" in plain ASCII, the only game to do so-- however, the ROM title is "GOWIN PRINCEYEHRUDE0920". So yeah...

taizou

 

Gowin was using Gua Gua Dragon before 99 though - theres an early version (gameboyless) in Rainbow Prince. although strangely its ©1993,1994 in-game, despite the header saying 93.[/quote]Yeah, I just noticed that too as I was looking back through the ROMs. It's definitely the earlier version of the mascot design, though.

[taizou]

oh yeah, one other random thing i noticed. Fire Dragon *does* have a logo screen, there are just no graphics on it. theres a noticeable pause before the title screen comes up, and thats where the logo should be - if you soft reset during gameplay (by pressing A+B+Start+Select, as in some licensed GB games - Fire Dragon is the only unlicensed one i've played that has this feature) it'll be filled with status bar graphics and 0's instead, and they do actually fade in and out.

seems weird that Gowin didn't put their own logo in there instead though. and that Puzzle Path/Losing Trip/whatever has Gowin copyrights in the ROM that aren't displayed. maybe the current dumps actually come from pirate versions? i'm really not sure though.

[codeman38]

taizou

Sep 25 2010, 05:49:18 PM

oh yeah, one other random thing i noticed. Fire Dragon *does* have a logo screen, there are just no graphics on it. theres a noticeable pause before the title screen comes up, and thats where the logo should be - if you soft reset during gameplay (by pressing A+B+Start+Select, as in some licensed GB games - Fire Dragon is the only unlicensed one i've played that has this feature) it'll be filled with status bar graphics and 0's instead, and they do actually fade in and out. [/quote]Fire Dragon is just weird. All of the graphics, save for GYY's logo, seem to be stored with some sort of RLE compression-- I need to figure out how to decompress it so that I can actually look at the tiles for more hidden secrets. There's similar compression used in Yong Yong's games, too, but I doubt there's any relationship there.

Edit: In the case of Fire Dragon, the RLE is 0x0B, byte to be repeated, number of repetitions. I could write a decoder for that pretty easily.
 

Quote:

 

seems weird that Gowin didn't put their own logo in there instead though. and that Puzzle Path/Losing Trip/whatever has Gowin copyrights in the ROM that aren't displayed. maybe the current dumps actually come from pirate versions? i'm really not sure though.[/quote]Given that all the current dumps are cracked ones with the cracking group's logo added, it's really hard to tell either way.

[Awesome Panda]

codeman38

Sep 25 2010, 07:33:40 PM

taizou

Sep 25 2010, 05:49:18 PM

oh yeah, one other random thing i noticed. Fire Dragon *does* have a logo screen, there are just no graphics on it. theres a noticeable pause before the title screen comes up, and thats where the logo should be - if you soft reset during gameplay (by pressing A+B+Start+Select, as in some licensed GB games - Fire Dragon is the only unlicensed one i've played that has this feature) it'll be filled with status bar graphics and 0's instead, and they do actually fade in and out. [/quote]Fire Dragon is just weird. All of the graphics, save for GYY's logo, seem to be stored with some sort of RLE compression-- I need to figure out how to decompress it so that I can actually look at the tiles for more hidden secrets. There's similar compression used in Yong Yong's games, too, but I doubt there's any relationship there.[/quote]Did you try Tile Layer Pro or Tile Molester? The latter sometimes has some tiles which you can't normally see in the former.

[codeman38]

Cheetahmen

Sep 25 2010, 07:40:06 PM

Did you try Tile Layer Pro or Tile Molester? The latter sometimes has some tiles which you can't normally see in the former.[/quote]Yeah, I used the latter. The problem is that the graphics are compressed - however, I figured out a way to decode them.

[taizou]

i think the Tile Layer Pro issue only applies to NES games anyway - TLP tries to separate the PRG and CHR, not always successfully. But GB games arent set up like that, so it shows the whole ROM.

[codeman38]

Turns out I was wrong about the specifics of the RLE compression; it's not quite as simple as I thought it was. I'll keep looking at it to try to figure it out, though.

Edit: Before each set of graphics, there's a byte identifying what the RLE marker is. It's not always the same throughout the entire ROM. I suppose I can just copy a particular chunk of graphics and then run my decoder on it.

Edit further: I got somewhat readable credits as a result. Han Min Liao is credited in there! We have a definite Gamtec connection here now...

Oh, yeah, and even without decompression, it's clear there's a "© 1993, 1994 Gowin" in there.

[taizou]

yeah i've actually completed Fire Dragon, the credits in full are:

STORY: Grateful Liu
PROGRAM: Jacy Wu, Grateful Liu
GRAPHIC: Ryohga Ju, Han Min Liao, Tzy Yi Lin
MUSIC: Han Min Liao

Tzy Yi Lin is probably Ziyi Lin, who's credited on a few Chuanpu games. No idea about the other three though.