Happy 26th Anniversary!

The tradition goes, and entries to our 2023 Coding, Music and Hacks competitions have have been posted now! You can grab and play them now. Voting starts soon!

And now on to our traditional releases of new dumps!

Exactly one year ago we released the first emulated Korean xx-in-1 multicart. I have been chasing them for decades and sitting on a pile of undumped and unemulated ones, as other projects took priority. With Ben Sittler independently pushing in this direction, we made enormous progress and both of us went into a dumping frenzy which continued into this year. Ben in particular did a majority of the work reverse engineering the new mappers, figuring out how to dump his cartridges and adding emulation code to Meka. I followed on his footsteps, dumped many of mine (we still both have a few unsolved ones), occasionally helping and reviewing mapper code.

Today we have 5 new multicart releases, totaling 429 games(*) We have several more we'll release over time as we are still going through what we have and figuring out naming conventions. Those unlicensed multicarts are particularly tricky to label as there are frequent inconsistencies between packaging, cartridge and in-game menu. That's not even accounting for multiple releases (patches, SMS/MD/GG sharing a compatibility layer), multi-cart code altering menu layout based on data, multicart containing other multicarts, multicarts with physical switches etc. As we will naturally drift toward Game Gear multi-carts we may have LOTS to release and will need to come up with tricky naming schemes as many different cartridges may be sharing a similar or same name.
(*) IF you were to trust their advertised count, which you cannot :)

Most of those games are using new mappers/circuit board. As of today, they are emulated by MEKA 2023-03-27 (today's release) and Emulicious, and we hope that other emulators will follow suit. None of those release will work on traditional flash-carts, but individual games may be extracted.

(1)









Our first release is Pigu-Wang 7 Hap - Jaemiiss-neun Game Mo-eumjip (피구왕7합 - 재미있는 게임 모음집) for the Sega Master System / Samsung Gam*Boy. Exhibiting an almost timid "7 in 1", this is nonetheless one of the most interesting Korean compilation: it contains 2 Megabytes (16 Megabits) worth of original Master System games developed in Korea. Most of the polished SMS-era titles are in this compilation: Dallyeora Pigu-Wang (dodgeball), 94 Super World Cup Soccer, Agigongnyong Dooly and more... Among the seven titles is one we haven't seen before: Bugtris, a 1 and 2 players Tetris clone where cleared lines turns into bugs that you have to squash. We also added a nice quality scan of the game box in the Scans section.

Note we also extracted the exact same dump from a Megadrive copy of the compilation, where the cartridge is set to run in SMS mode. Both versions are identical.

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Ascending to our next step, Super Game 45 (슈퍼게임４５) for the Sega Master System / Samsung Gam*Boy. With a joyful menu sporting My Hero's sporting, this compilation contains a few dozen Sega Mark III card games and MSX1 games modified for the SMS. Note quite 45 but still a nice amount. We have an index and translation of the menu in the link above (thanks to Ben Sittler for those).

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Coming after is Super Game 52 Hap (슈퍼게임５２합) for the Sega Master System / Samsung Gam*Boy. As you may notice from the similar title screen, this immediate successor of Super Game 45 and was developed and published by the same people. While we have still uncovered new brands of pirate multicarts, there are some recurring "big brand" and this is one of them. We don't have a menu index for this one yet (if someone can make it in the same format!) but this is double the size of the Super Game 45 and contains more unique games.

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Our next multicart is Super Multi Game - Super 125 in 1 for the Sega Master System / Samsung Gam*Boy. This is also a 2 Megabytes (16 Megabits) cartridge and contains a handful of modded MSX releases. It is notable because many of the MSX games have Korean logos.

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Our fifth multicart is Game Chongjiphap 200 (게임 총집합 200) for the Sega Master System / Samsung Gam*Boy. By game count it is our largest multicart release so far, but it is only a 1 Megabyte (8 megabits) cartridge and contains less unique games than e.g. Super 125 in 1 above. The MSX games we could check in this compilation appears to have less modifications: copyright scrubbing but no translated titles.

(6)

Lastly, we have an alternate dump for last year's Game Mo-eumjip 188 Hap (게임모음집188합) . I personally dumped two copies of this cartridge and got the same version (released last year) but Ben's copy was very slightly different. He posted it to a development thread recently but for the sake of visibility we are mentioning it here too. Read details about this variation:

The byte differences are in a region occupied by MSX BIOS replacement and menu code+data, I believe. The different bytes are at ROM offsets 0x11c1, 0x11c7, 0x11cd, and 0x11d3.

The differences are in the "trainer" (RAM patching) data for four of the King's Valley game variants in menu entries 101, 102, 103, and 104.

For menu entry 101, at address 0xFFE0 it replaces 0x55 with 0x03 (Bock's copy) or 0x04 (my copy)
For menu entry 102, at address 0xFFE0 it replaces 0x55 with 0x06 (Bock's copy) or 0x08 (my copy)
For menu entry 103, at address 0xFFE0 it replaces 0x55 with 0x0A (Bock's copy) or 0x0B (my copy)
For menu entry 104, at address 0xFFE0 it replaces 0x55 with 0x0B (Bock's copy) or 0x0E (my copy)

So for some reason, the maker of this multicart eventually replaced the starting level in one of their game trainer between two batches of manufacturing this multicart.

Hope you enjoy this foray into the little uncharted lands of multicarts... We hope to share more soon. Thanks for Ben Sittler for his invaluable help getting this to happen and still ongoing.

Help wanted!
- Site contributors: full index and details for those games would be good to add to the wiki.
- Emulator authors: support for those multicarts in more emulators would be nice. You can refer to MEKA sources on github for mappers details (or feel free to ask there).

As usual, we are running our annual Sega 8-bit coding, hack and music competitions. Deadline is our anniversary 27th March.

Happy new year 2023!

Following last month's release of three prototypes, and a Phantasy Star 35th Anniversary Retranslation Update, we've got another pile of goodies :)



A Prototype of the great Scramble Spirits for the Master System. A rare and charming two-players vertical shooter developed in Japan. The sample cartridge was sourced from the UK but as per its EPROM it seems like it was displayed at CES.

It curiously bears a 1989 copyright (vs final game saying 1988). Looking at simple data statistics does contains noticeably less meaningful data than the final release however so it appears to be a definitively earlier build: one can assume they intently bumped the release date to 1989 expecting the game to release that year?

See attachment for a photo of the cartridge.



A Prototype of Fushigi no Oshiro Pit Pot (不思議のお城 ピットポット) for the Master System.

Based on analysis by super-reverse-engineer Calindro, the changes in this build relates to how the game EDIT mode converts edited level to in-game mode. In the prototype some treasure chests seems to disappear when starting a level. This prototype was dumped from a Japanese collection a few years ago.



Super Penguin (슈퍼팽귄, 수퍼펭귄) for the Samsung Gam*Boy / Master System, a rare Korean original developed by SIECO. This is a basic MSX1/SG-1000 era platformer. Although undated, it seems to draw inspiration from the level art of Super Mario Bros 3 so was probably developed after.

Box art and in-game title are inconsistent in spelling, and the product number SI-3131G appears to be the same as Gangcheol RoboCop (강철 로보캅), also by Sieco. A equally obscure MSX version also exist.




Then we have Con-Dori (콘돌이) for the Samsung Gam*Boy / Master System, and MSX Soccer / Chuggu (축구) for the Samsung Gam*Boy / Master System, both unlicensed MSX1 ports. Con-Dori has unusually terrible audio.

Con-Dori was provided and dumped by bsittler who has lately been of tremendous help and instrumental with on-going work dumping and reverse engineer Korean XX-in-1 cartridges (leading to our release of Game Mo-eumjip 188 Hap (게임모음집188합) and many upcoming ones.



MSX Soccer has a Hwaseong / Hwasung Bumper Screen injected into the MSX BIOS replacement.



We are not done!
We have the rare Taiwanese version of The Circuit / Fēichē zhēngbà zhàn (飛車爭霸戰) for the Taiwanese Mark III., for which the cartridge was kindly provided to us by Eric Kuo. Thank you!






To finish, we have 4 "SMS game in a Game Gear cartridge" releases by Hung Tao Hsin (HTH), to complement the 24 releases we made in 2021:

HG 101-13: The Ninja / Dàshén rěnzhě (大神忍者)
HG 101-15: Choplifter / Ā pà qì (阿帕契).
HG 101-26: Aztec Adventure / Nazca'88, with erroneous box labels: Aztel Adventure (Nazca'88) / Ganbare Goemon (がんばれゴエモン).
HG 201-12: E-SWAT / Pīlì zhàn jǐng (霹靂戰警), dumped from the variant with E-SWAT art label.

In the tradition of other HTH releases: original Sega copyrights have been scrubbed and/or replaced with HTH ones, and games were modified to increase amount of lives/bullets.

Attached to this post are photos of original cartridges.
Enjoy!

It is 20th December and that means it is the Phantasy Star anniversary!

To commemorate we are today officially releasing another update to the retranslation project. New since last year:

• New languages: Spanish and German, plus a new "literal" English version
• Script updates based on better understanding of where every line is used and under what conditions
• Script and name fixes for very old errors
• Script engine now supports pronouns, and more complicated German tenses
• Quality-of-life improvements: option to equip when you buy, speed up text drawing and screen fades
• Bug fixes for the original game



Downloads in the form of IPS and BPS patches, to apply to your copy of the Japanese game, are available here:

https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SMS-CA (Catalan)
https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SMS-PT-BR (Brazilian Portuguese)
https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SMS-FR (French)
https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SMS-EN (English and Literal English)
https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SMS-ES (Spanish)
https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SMS-DE (German)

Enjoy while we wait to see what Bock has wrapped up under the Christmas tree...

We've got three new prototypes today!
Those prototypes are part of the Ed Semrad collection, and were recovered by the Video Game History Foundation. This collection contained prototypes from various systems and SMS Power! are releasing the Sega 8-bit ones on behalf of VGHF and Ed Semrad. Thank you!

Read more about Ed Semrad's Roms at the Video Game History Foundation website.
Other prototypes have been shared at Hidden Palace and AtariProtos.com (5/9/22 update)



An early prototype for King's Quest - Quest for the Crown for the Master System. One of the earliest (1984) of adventures games pioneered by Roberta Williams's team at Sierra, it was converted to the Master System in 1989 by Microsmiths with a reworked interface. It feels a bit old and clunky today, but discovering and mapping exploration games like those is something I quite enjoy.

We released a later prototype for this in April 2006, so we labelled our new release "Proto 0" as opposed to the "Proto 1" released in April 2006. The cartridge from Ed's collection had a date marking saying "1989.2.3". Exact differences with Proto 1 and retail release are yet to be dissected.



Our second prototype today is a later prototype of Monopoly for the Master System. Also developed in the USA, like King's Quest, this computer-game-feeling adaptation of the classic board features battery-backed up and handful of options.



Our third prototype today is a very minor proto build of Super Monaco GP for the Master System. Its turns out this sample cartridge has only 3 header bytes unfilled compared to the retail US version. It was likely a release candidate before Sega requested the header bytes to be filled correctly before mastering the ROM. Therefore don't expect any noticeable change in this one but releasing for completeness.

Enjoy!

A talented group of ROM hackers have released a patch for what is (depending on your point of view) the last untranslated (to English) Master System game, Tensai Bakabon. This is also an outstanding effort, including translation of all in-game art containing text, text "hidden" in level layouts, a full manual translation, a variable-width font renderer, and some very careful translation of puns and double meanings in the original text.



RomHacking page: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6544/

Our page: https://www.smspower.org/Translations/TensaiBakabon-SMS-EN

Thank you FCandChill, TheMajinZenki, cccmar!

Today is SMS Power! 25th Anniversary!!
Perhaps at this point that we are the oldest independent internet website being still alive and kicking? Who knows!

Prototype releases

Let's get thing rolling!

(1)
"AIMO" Prototype of Psycho Fox for the Master System.
First spotted in early magazine previews and reviews, the infamous "AIMO Logo" version of Psycho Fox was finally found after 33 years!
Partly developed by Vic Tokai (see thread) much of the development story for this game is still unknown.

Amusingly, the cult credit roll of this version feature a different face for "The Rich Man". Perhaps this was the top person of AIMO (or Vic Tokai) later replaced by Sega's one?





(2)
An even earlier prototype of Basketball Nightmare for the Master System. Exactly last year we released a Basketball Nightmare prototype. Then in October we obtained a rare development board from Japan which hosted 3/4 of a final retail build of Basketball Nightmare. Then in December we found yet another prototype of the game, this time much earlier.

Something quite special about this version is how it gives an insight into the programmers experimental and having fun. The credits sequence of this version display names in 3d wireframe! Kudos to NKOICHI for this surprising feat!





Watch a recording of the ending sequence here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdpzmMhyfhw

(3)
Next we have a surprising "Rolling demo" cartridge of Golden Axe which was exhibited at CES. In the vein of the earlier demos we've uncovered (such as Super Basketball) this is a non-interactive looping demo designed to attract bypassers. Except this one goes *BAM*:




Watch a recording of the rolling demo here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daB6lk3weCc

(4)
Unreleased Poker Face Paul's Cribbage for Game Gear. This was actually posted by programmer Matt Taylor earlier this year (along with sources) but we're putting it in the news to attract visibility. The game was seemingly fully developed but unlike the 4 other card games from the Poker Face Paul's series, this one was cancelled. Presumably because the rules of Cribbage appears to be insufferably complicated? :) Who knows.




(5)
Not done yet! For the first time ever we are releasing a bootleg multi-cart: [Game Mo-eumjip 188 Hap (게임모음집188합) for the Master System / Samsung Gam*Boy. Back around August Benjamin Sittler and I sat together to start identifying, reverse engineering and emulating several of the multi-carts that have been released in Korea. We are not done with the work yet but decided to release a first one today. This cartridge hold a whooping (PROBABLY NOT) 188 titles mostly based on MSX1 titles, with some Korean hacks and possible exclusives. Please help us build a listing and complete the huge Screenshots page (added screenshots for 40 games so far).

As of today this requires the latest WIP version of MEKA available here: https://github.com/ocornut/meka/releases/tag/meka-20220327. Other emulators will probably add support for this soon.












(6) (7)
Finally we have two long-awaited Brazilian releases which unforgivably got stuck in a blind spot of our release queue for a long while. The Brazilian 3-in-1 Game Box Série Esportes containing Great Volleyball, Super Futebol II and Wimbledon actually carries 2 unique dumps that are different from the known existing one.

Super Futebol II for the Master System, translated version from Game Box Série Esportes cartridge. This is actually a DIFFERENT ROM than the one released standalone as "Super Futebol II" in Brazil. The standalone release of "Super Futebol II" actually carries a vanilla unmodified version of World Cup Italia '90, whereas the version in "Game Box Série Esportes" carries a localized version:




Wimbledon for the Master System, earlier version from Game Box Série Esportes cartridge. This is actually a DIFFERENT ROM than the one released as "Wimbledon" in Europe. This appears to be an EARLIER build of the game, so we dubbed it [v0].

Left side [v0] from Brazil, Right side [v1] from Europe:




Coding, Music and Hacking Competitions!

The 2022 Competitions Deadline is and the end of the day. Watch this space tomorrow for entries!

Happy holidays to all our friends in the SMS Power community :)

We've been digging and sorting materials and we have four prototypes today. And more coming soon!

An early print of Astro Warrior / Pit Pit for the Master System. Similar to the infamous "Red Hang On" card this seems to be an early print. This one is marked in German, has the small ship artwork in red, an offseted label, a lack of picture on the back (see attachments for more photos). Thanks to Ddevilfingers for their help obtaining this one!

The actual ROM data is unfortunately a mere change in the SMS Header zone, with only 2 different bytes, so this will play exactly the same as the final game.







Next we have everyone's favorite blue duckling. A prototype of Dynamite Dux for the Master System.



This is a relatively easy game to get through - comfort food - quite charming in its overall design, catchy tunes, sometimes feels like a happy-go-lucky version of Double Dragon. According to my favorite new metrics for evaluating meaningful contents of a dump, the zipped version of this is 122 KB vs 132 KB for the final version, which suggest a fair amount of missing contents.



A prototype of Rampage for the Master System.



I remember my parents one time leaving for the night when I was 10 years old, leaving us with two older caretakers who brought SMS cartridges and we played this with them that evening. The game lets you get through by brute-forcing a bit but it makes sense to pay attention and maneuver your creature to optimize its path and get rid of danger early. It's a nice game but lack of graphics variety makes it feel repetitive.

The legal screen from the final release is missing from this one which instead has extra copyright information visible on the title screen.



Finally, we have a very early prototype of Summer Games for the Master System. We already released a prototype of Summer Games in 2007, but this one comes much earlier. Different title screen logo, and most Events are broken at this point of development and there's no audio. This was a cartridge to playtest the game early on. (zipped 52 KB vs 70 KB final game.)



If you get to play those prototypes and find other differences please post them in the thread! Youtube playthrough or other analysis welcome :)

Enjoy !!!

It is 20th December and that means it is the Phantasy Star anniversary!

To commemorate we are today officially releasing another (small) update to the retranslation project. New since last year:

• New languages: French and Brazilian Portuguese versions were added in January 2021, and today we officially release the Catalan version
• Script and narrative text boxes now use the full (safe, readable) width of the screen
• Some script fixes in English
• Some cosmetic bug fixes



Downloads in the form of IPS and BPS patches, to apply to your copy of the Japanese game, are available here:

https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SMS-CA (Catalan)
https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SMS-PT-BR
https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SMS-FR
https://www.smspower.org/Translations/PhantasyStar-SMS-EN

Enjoy while we wait to see what Bock has wrapped up under the Christmas tree...