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View topic - Sky Fighter (SMS/KR), Cave Dude (GG Proto), Action Fighter & Captain Silver Protos

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Sky Fighter (SMS/KR), Cave Dude (GG Proto), Action Fighter & Captain Silver Protos
Post Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2016 4:40 pm
Last edited by Bock on Sat Oct 01, 2016 10:43 am; edited 3 times in total
Phew, long time without any new releases. Let's get to the meat of this!



We have finally managed to get our hands on a copy of Sky Fighter (보라매 전사) for the Samsung Gam*Boy / Master System, a shooting game from 1990. The game was discussed in HG101 article on Clover Soft, showing a single screen from an advertisement. It was apparently released on both MSX and SMS, but up to this day the MSX version hasn't surfaced. This SMS dump of the game is the first version available on the internet. The vertical shooter is reminiscent of Aleste / Power Strike with weapon changes, stationary shooting bases. Even though it isn't as good as most official releases and has horrendous music, it is quite playable and has a place among the higher quality original Korean titles.

The game was very kindly sold to us by retroworldkorea.



Our second dump today is Cave Dude for the Game Gear, an unreleased prototype among others Innovation Tech tried to get released on the Game Gear in the US. The game runs in Master Syste compatibility mode. Somehow it appears that a few of those Innovation Tech cartridges have been doing the round among collectors. The game was also developed in Korean and known as Toto World 3 there, and is also best known as a part of the Australian 4 Pak All Action compilation. Our new dump today is actually pretty much identical to the version in 4 Pak All Action but as extra copyright and other information that were blanked out for the compilation.



We're not done yet! We have got a Prototype of Action Fighter for the Master System, that we are labelling [v0] in contrast with the retail [v1] and [v2] versions. The prototype has yet to be studied for differences, but one interesting thing is that its High Score table contains names that were removed in the final release:



(on the left, the new prototype) (on the right, the retail version)

With so little known about the developers behind some of those early games, the presence of SETSUO, WAKIHARA, KAWAMURA, FIGHTER, HANEDA, KENJI may be of interest to game historians.



Finally, our fourth release today is a prototype of Captain Silver for the Master System. It is based on the stripped down 128 KB version but it hasn't been examined for differences with the retail game yet.

According to our notes this should be our 908th release (probably +/- 3 considering our notes and counting gets a bit dodgy sometimes).
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Temporary Transitional Attachment Fairy
Post Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2016 4:41 pm
This message will auto destruct itself someday.

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Post Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2016 2:03 am
Thanks Bock, retroworldkorea, and others!

As you said, the "music" in Sky Fighter is awful, it could do with a hack to disable it.

I take it that the Action Fighter proto is from the "pre-release" version? Are any other known pre-release carts yet to be dumped?
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Post Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2016 6:29 pm
Nice to see more prototypes being dumped and released, thanks for sharing them!

...I'm a bit curious on why you're labeling the Action Fighter prototype as "version 0", though, instead of just calling it a prototype? Does the ROM header label it as version "0" and the final versions as "1" and "2"?
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Post Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2016 6:49 pm
The final versions have 1 and 2 in the header, which is unusual as most games have at least a 0.

Labelling this one 0 is a little arbitrary (as the header is 0xFF blank). Consider that those cartridges are merely pre-release, however rare so are but they are part of the main version lineage somehow? It's all a little arbitrary (tagging them as [Proto] itself is debatable, even if I think it is the right thing).
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Action Fighter differences
Post Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 1:28 am
Some differences I've noticed between the Action Fighter prototype and final release:
- Rather amusing game over message
- No cats
- No easter eggs
- No cheats
- Destroying hang glider waves gives you speed power-up instead of rockets. Vice versa for destroying jets
- E & F letters change colour
- First boss (submarines) are a slight different color
- Bosses are 1-hit kills. Their attack patterns also seem incomplete
- Different text (spelling mistakes and poorer english)
- 1st level flying section contains blimps
- No cars in flying sections
- Can't change back and forwad between car and bike
- Some of the music / sound effect cues seem slightly off
- Game seems generally harder and faster
- When landing, parts of cloud tiles become grey
- Entering Sega truck doesn't take into account what power-ups you already have
- Different level layouts

I'm sure there's more but as you can see, it's quite a different version of the game
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Post Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2016 3:21 am
BKK wrote

As you said, the "music" in Sky Fighter is awful, it could do with a hack to disable it.


The music is indeed really bad. The game has a nice intro screen - and an overload of enemies / bullets - but the music makes it unplayable.

30s into the game, and I was literally killing myself :P
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Post Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2016 9:51 am
Thanks for all the efforts guys, you are awesome =)
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