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Maxim
Site Admin
Joined: 19 Oct 1999
Posts: 7468
Location: London, UK
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| Shinobi Kidd vs. Mari-Oh: EGM, 1989 |
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Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 11:58 pm |
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I'm just finishing up some maps and was Googling for some details when this page popped up with:
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An ancient preview of this game in an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly from 1989 calls the game Shinobi Kidd. The first boss in the game is a large samurai called Kabuto. However, in the preview they showed a screen of the same boss, and he looked all too much like a beloved plumber of which everybody knows. And his name was MARI-OH. MARI-OH. What was Sega thinking? Thank god they changed things around before it got ugly.
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Do we have any old magazine collectors who can verify this? Maybe get us a scan?
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Bock
Site Admin
Joined: 08 Jul 2001
Posts: 5102
Location: Kyoto, Japan
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Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 2:17 pm |
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| Have this, will post tonight.
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ccovell
Joined: 26 Dec 2004
Posts: 214
Location: Japan
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Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 3:56 pm |
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Yes, I have this issue too. But it's tucked away in Canada...
It's the same issue that shows some other unreleased games (like more SMS ones? and Xybots for the Turbografx, etc...
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Bock
Site Admin
Joined: 08 Jul 2001
Posts: 5102
Location: Kyoto, Japan
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| Alex Kidd in Shinobi World with Mario |
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Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 12:35 am |
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(thanks Jess Ragan for the scan)
Maybe can someone check if the graphics data are still hidden in the final game/ROM?
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Maxim
Site Admin
Joined: 19 Oct 1999
Posts: 7468
Location: London, UK
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Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 1:21 am |
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Cool :) Taking a quick look, the Alex character tiles are still in the rom, but the Mari-Oh ones seem not to be. It looks like they drew a "Mandara" boss image, too, for the level from Shinobi that didn't get to this version. (I'm not greatly familiar with Shinobi, but that thing looks a bit like a mandala, however more so than in any Shinobi screenshot I could find.)
(This image is 3x scaled for your viewing pleasure.)
Last edited by Maxim on Thu Mar 22, 2007 8:22 am; edited 2 times in total |
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CRV
Joined: 02 Jan 2005
Posts: 509
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Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 3:32 am |
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| So the main character was supposed to be a mini Joe Musashi, not Alex Kidd?
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Maxim
Site Admin
Joined: 19 Oct 1999
Posts: 7468
Location: London, UK
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Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 10:40 am |
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| I think they just wavered between how much it looked like Alex Kidd and how much it looked like Joe Musashi - notice the trademark Alex Kidd long-hair-in-front-of-the-ears things. The final design looks much more like Alex.
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lCEknight
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Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 11:15 pm |
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| Holy shit, this is awesome!
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Jacko
Joined: 01 Feb 2004
Posts: 1346
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
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Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:22 am |
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errm yeah try to refrain from the swearing ICEKnight,
but yes this topic was of great interest to alot of people. Was this ever an official release? or was it just a game hack?
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CRV
Joined: 02 Jan 2005
Posts: 509
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Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:24 am |
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| Jacko wrote:
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errm yeah try to refrain from the swearing ICEKnight,
but yes this topic was of great interest to alot of people. Was this ever an official release? or was it just a game hack?
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It's not a hack. It's from when they were working on Alex Kidd in Shinobi World.
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Jacko
Joined: 01 Feb 2004
Posts: 1346
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
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Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 12:28 am |
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Oh right,
thanks for that CRV
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profund darknesss
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Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 4:44 pm |
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| That's sweet. I wonder what else is buried in the rom?
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Maxim
Site Admin
Joined: 19 Oct 1999
Posts: 7468
Location: London, UK
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Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 5:00 pm |
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| I had a good look through. The ROM is actually very wasteful - huge amounts of space are blank. There's a lot of uncompressed sprite art which will pop right out in Tile Layer. Background graphics are compressed in the usual way, so my tile decoder tool can show them; nothing exceptional turned up in my search. I'm sure they could have got another level in the ROM if they'd actually tried to optimise the space usage.
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Nezuji
Joined: 01 Sep 2005
Posts: 28
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 4:00 am |
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| Maxim wrote:
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... the trademark Alex Kidd long-hair-in-front-of-the-ears things.
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Sideburns? ;)
Nezuji :)
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Maxim
Site Admin
Joined: 19 Oct 1999
Posts: 7468
Location: London, UK
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Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:16 am |
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| Nope :) Sideburns are a beard-based affectation and thus grow out of the cheeks of a man; Alex Kidd just grows his hair long in front of his ears. "Sidelocks" is apparently the word I was grasping for.
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Nezuji
Joined: 01 Sep 2005
Posts: 28
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 5:08 am |
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| Maxim wrote:
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Nope :) Sideburns are a beard-based affectation and thus grow out of the cheeks of a man; Alex Kidd just grows his hair long in front of his ears. "Sidelocks" is apparently the word I was grasping for.
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Oh, OK. I looked again at some pictures of Alex and I see what you mean. But isn't Alex Kidd's look supposed to be loosely based on Son Goku, the Monkey King from Journey to the West? That's why I was thinking sideburns.
Nezuji :)
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ICEknight
Joined: 03 Apr 2001
Posts: 412
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Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 10:41 pm |
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| Jacko wrote:
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errm yeah try to refrain from the swearing ICEKnight,
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Too late?
=(
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Bock
Site Admin
Joined: 08 Jul 2001
Posts: 5102
Location: Kyoto, Japan
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| Shinobi Kid preview |
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 2:08 pm |
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From UK "S - The Sega Mag", issue 4, march 1990.
CES Show Report.
Along wih the price redution, Sega announced that there will continue to be new titles released for the Master System, and many were on display. As well as games already featured in S there were new up-and-coming titles such as Ultima IV, Golfamania, [b]Shinobi Kid[/b], Assault City, Slapshot plus Super Monago GP and [b]Simple Fighter[/b] (both announced but not shown) and R.C. Grand Prix from Absolute Entertainment, although none of the previous third party licenses (Activision, Parker Brothers, Epyx) plan to release new titles for the Master System.
Of these, Shinobi Kid was about the best. The tune is from Shinobi, but the Character is a small kid. He has some of the same moves and a new power: instead of walking through the screens, he can grab the occasional lamp pole or bar and start spinning faster and faster around it. Pushing the button releases him and he flies across several screens, knocking out any bad guys alongs the way. The screen scrolls horizontally and sometimes vertically downward into a maze and then back up to ground level. At the end of each level, after he rescues all the tied-up hostages, he must fight the end-of-level boss. One is called Mari-Oh (as a sideswipe at Ni****do's Mario character). Defeat Mari-Oh and he shrinks down in size and disappears. |
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Paul Jensen
Joined: 29 Jun 1999
Posts: 244
Location: California, USA; Hiroshima, Japan
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:28 pm |
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| Just a note about the name Mari-oh. The suffix "-oh" means 'king', 'lord', etc., so Mari-oh means something like 'King Mari', but of course sounds like the name of the (in?)famous plumber. So, like a lot of things, the nuance gets lost in translation.
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Bock
Site Admin
Joined: 08 Jul 2001
Posts: 5102
Location: Kyoto, Japan
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Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:01 am |
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| Also remember that the original name for this boss in Shinobi is Ken-Oh.
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alex_kidd_in_shinobi_world_02_517.png
