Nanjing takes on V.Fame at their own game

[taizou]

maybe this is common knowledge. but hey. I just noticed it. Namely that Nanjing's 2004 NES RPG, "Shui Hu Shen Shou" is nothing more than a ripoff of Vast Fame's 2001 GBC RPG .. which also happens to be titled "Shui Hu Shen Shou". Uncanny eh? I can't believe that never occurred to me until now.

comparisons from the first few mins:

..momotaro?

all the sprites are different for some reason. even though other graphics made it intact

Nanjing's really benefits from the higher resolution here - the mountain is covered by text boxes in V.Fame's for all but about 5 seconds of this scene.



from screenshots Nanjing's doesnt look too bad.. simplified in some places, but actually better in others thanks to the NES' higher resolution. but obviously thats not the whole story. Nanjing's also lacks the intro from the original, lots of animations are missing, and, of course, the music - V.Fame is (ahem) famed for its music. Nanjing isnt. What you get in Nanjing's port is one battle tune, and one other thats played absolutely everywhere else. And I havent played either version for more than five minutes, but I'd be very surprised if Nanjing's doesnt become horribly unbalanced later on. (your pokemon monster thing at least has entirely different moves, which doesnt exactly bode well)
so, in conclusion, v.fame wins. this time, every time, forever.

[KingPepe]

It's Nanjing, what did you expect? They're lazy anyways.  :JY:

[taizou]

Yeah, true. At least they actually bothered to rip graphics from the game they were porting, instead of recycling a bunch of stuff from Pokemon or something.

[KingPepe]

The characters in Nanjing's version look like edits of the Pokemon characters though but that could be me.

[taizou]

Yeah, some of them could be, but at least they are edits, and they look like they belong there... they arent just, like, Professor Oak's lab slapped unmodified into Chrono Trigger or something

[codeman38]

Nanjing's programming is just sloppy in general. At one point during the first scene, a character stands in front of the text box.

Edit: Also, it just loses something without that Mega Man sound effect accompanying the little (!) emotes. Heh.

Edit #2: The GB original's battle interface is the same one used in Shi Kong Xing Shou! I wonder which came first? They're both from 2001...

Edit #3: The battle theme and the victory jingle in the GB version are taken from Queen of Fighters 2000. Guess Vast Fame were all for reusing music even then.

[Awesome Panda]

codeman38

Oct 3 2010, 12:12:11 PM

Edit #3: The battle theme and the victory jingle in the GB version are taken from Queen of Fighters 2000. Guess Vast Fame were all for reusing music even then.[/quote]I guess the composer for V.Fame left sometime around 2001 and that Shi Kong Xing Shou came after the other one (I'm not good with Chinese names myself) Of course, V.Fame would wipe the floor (not literally) with SNT anyday, as shown here.

Edit: BTW, Taizou, there actually 6 songs in SNT's game, not 2. Mind you, they're all awful and some are reused from the Harvest Moon pirate. BTW, is it possible that these games are actually based off an official title that V.Fame happened to copy better?

EDIT by KingPepe - It's Taizou you doofus.

[taizou]

Cheetahmen

Oct 3 2010, 12:52:29 PM

I guess the composer for V.Fame left sometime around 2001 and that Shi Kong Xing Shou came after the other one (I'm not good with Chinese names myself) Of course, V.Fame would wipe the floor (not literally) with SNT anyday, as shown here.[/quote]their GBA games all seem to have original music though (except the half-Sintax ones). he was probably still there, just too busy or something.

Cheetahmen

 

Edit: BTW, Taizou, there actually 6 songs in SNT's game, not 2. Mind you, they're all awful and some are reused from the Harvest Moon pirate. BTW, is it possible that these games are actually based off an official title that V.Fame happened to copy better?[/quote]
ah lol. Well thats what I get for passing judgement on a game after only playing it for five minutes
I think it was probably V.Fame's original game though... or if they copied it from somewhere else, Nanjing copied V.Fame's copy.

Cheetahmen

 

EDIT by KingPepe - It's Taizou you doofus. [/quote]

[Awesome Panda]

taizou

Oct 3 2010, 06:05:12 PM

ah lol. Well thats what I get for passing judgement on a game after only playing it for five minutes
I think it was probably V.Fame's original game though... or if they copied it from somewhere else, Nanjing copied V.Fame's copy.

Cheetahmen

 

EDIT by KingPepe - It's Taizou you doofus. [/quote]
[/quote]I wouldn't be surprised if they did TBH, given the nature of pirates they're no strangers to love plagiarism.
BTW, Pep, I thought I did write Taizou originally. That's what I get for being lax on my spellchecking.

[codeman38]

Ooh, now I'm wondering about something else.

Waixing's Digital Dragon is very clearly based on Digimon 3 for GBC. In fact, it even has the same title as Digimon 3, except with a 4 instead of a 3 (and in Simplified rather than Traditional Chinese, naturally).

So is this another case of a mainland NES developer ripping off Vast Fame?

[taizou]

the weird thing in that case is that Waixing does seem to have at least *some* connection to the whole Taichung group of developers, or if not, they coincidentally happened to use PC Paint for a few of their games (eg some of the Dragon Quest translations, Le Comte de Monte Cristo and their Contra clone Desert Storm). so if they did rip off Vast Fame, they were ripping off a company they had some kind of tenuous link to.

[codeman38]

taizou

Oct 3 2010, 08:46:23 PM

the weird thing in that case is that Waixing does seem to have at least *some* connection to the whole Taichung group of developers, or if not, they coincidentally happened to use PC Paint for a few of their games (eg some of the Dragon Quest translations, Le Comte de Monte Cristo and their Contra clone Desert Storm). so if they did rip off Vast Fame, they were ripping off a company they had some kind of tenuous link to.[/quote]Ooh, yeah, I remember noticing the PC Paint thing in some of Waixing's games too. I wonder whether there was any connection there, or if it was sheer coincidence?

Edit: Whatever the case may be, they were using PC Paint as far back as 1997; the Waixing logo in Doraemon uses a font from PC Paint.

[taizou]

yeah the logo screen in tons of their games (even as late as 2009) uses a PC Paint font. but Le Comte de Monte Cristo is one of the few I've seen to actually use the fonts anywhere else, and thats ©1996. Desert Storm is 1996 too. so maybe they only actually used PC Paint for a few of their earliest games, but just recycled the same logo screen in pretty much everything else?

[Awesome Panda]

taizou

Oct 3 2010, 11:14:51 PM

yeah the logo screen in tons of their games (even as late as 2009) uses a PC Paint font. but Le Comte de Monte Cristo is one of the few I've seen to actually use the fonts anywhere else, and thats ©1996. Desert Storm is 1996 too. so maybe they only actually used PC Paint for a few of their earliest games, but just recycled the same logo screen in pretty much everything else?[/quote]Wait, they've been using those weird copyright dates since 1996? And I thought it was made in 2005 or something, seeing as it was sometimes bundled with their cheapo games like those you find on Dream Gears and such. Also, if it was made then, wouldn't that mean Super Fight I came out in the same year seeing as that's when Super Contra 7 was released and Desert Storm has some of the same graphics as it? Mind you, seeing as Super Contra 7 appears to slightly modify the Contra engine and Desert Storm doesn't, the latter might have been made first.

[taizou]

yeah, the format was different back then, but that seems to have been when they started using them. Super Fight I's number is 960418, Desert Storm's is 960419, so they must have been made (or at least registered) pretty much at the same time in 1996.