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I've been interviewing Hitoshi Akashi, CEO of Beyond Interactive. Before starting Beyond, he worked for Zap, a publisher and developer started by Yuichiro Itakura, who later started the now-defunct ISP HyperNet. Akashi rattled off some titles, one of which was Summer Games for the SMS, on which he was the game director and programmer. Don't know if this means Zap did anything else for Sega...

Looking over all this stuff, I noticed the title screen on Summer Games says "Adaptation Game (C)Sega 1988," yet the back of the box says 1991. The 1988 date makes sense as Akashi was working at Zap at that point. So does that mean the game was delayed for three years?

The style of the game seems more 1988 than 1991.

How about this for a theory: Summer Games is an Epyx title. The conversion was done in '88 but that was an Olympic year and Epyx had its Olympics game "The Games: Summer Edition" doing the rounds at the time, so they asked/forced Sega to hold off to avoid the competition (even though their title wasn't available on the SMS). Still, 3 years is a long time to wait. It's quite possible they forgot about it...

Maxim wrote

How about this for a theory: Summer Games is an Epyx title. The conversion was done in '88 but that was an Olympic year and Epyx had its Olympics game "The Games: Summer Edition" doing the rounds at the time, so they asked/forced Sega to hold off to avoid the competition (even though their title wasn't available on the SMS). Still, 3 years is a long time to wait. It's quite possible they forgot about it...

Perhaps Sega felt it missed a chance to cash in on the '88 Games and decided to hold off until the '92 Games.

But Olympic Gold was for Barcelona '92. It would be silly to release Summer Games at the same time; summer 1991 would be more sensible (not that sense ever comes into these decisions).

Some more answers came in Friday morning. Summer Games was being done for Sega of America. Sound was provided by Sega of Japan. The person in charge of sound was whoever did the sound on Columns (I guess that's Tokuhiko Uwabo).

I'm thinking that maybe Summer Games was cancelled originally, but Sega had a hole to fill, so they unshelved it.

Author	Message
CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Whodunit: Zap Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:56 am
CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	I've been interviewing Hitoshi Akashi, CEO of Beyond Interactive. Before starting Beyond, he worked for Zap, a publisher and developer started by Yuichiro Itakura, who later started the now-defunct ISP HyperNet. Akashi rattled off some titles, one of which was Summer Games for the SMS, on which he was the game director and programmer. Don't know if this means Zap did anything else for Sega...

CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 1:39 pm
CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Looking over all this stuff, I noticed the title screen on Summer Games says "Adaptation Game (C)Sega 1988," yet the back of the box says 1991. The 1988 date makes sense as Akashi was working at Zap at that point. So does that mean the game was delayed for three years?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 2:16 pm
	The style of the game seems more 1988 than 1991. How about this for a theory: Summer Games is an Epyx title. The conversion was done in '88 but that was an Olympic year and Epyx had its Olympics game "The Games: Summer Edition" doing the rounds at the time, so they asked/forced Sega to hold off to avoid the competition (even though their title wasn't available on the SMS). Still, 3 years is a long time to wait. It's quite possible they forgot about it...

CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:16 am
CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Maxim wrote How about this for a theory: Summer Games is an Epyx title. The conversion was done in '88 but that was an Olympic year and Epyx had its Olympics game "The Games: Summer Edition" doing the rounds at the time, so they asked/forced Sega to hold off to avoid the competition (even though their title wasn't available on the SMS). Still, 3 years is a long time to wait. It's quite possible they forgot about it... Perhaps Sega felt it missed a chance to cash in on the '88 Games and decided to hold off until the '92 Games.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:14 pm
	But Olympic Gold was for Barcelona '92. It would be silly to release Summer Games at the same time; summer 1991 would be more sensible (not that sense ever comes into these decisions).

CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 11:57 am
CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Some more answers came in Friday morning. Summer Games was being done for Sega of America. Sound was provided by Sega of Japan. The person in charge of sound was whoever did the sound on Columns (I guess that's Tokuhiko Uwabo). I'm thinking that maybe Summer Games was cancelled originally, but Sega had a hole to fill, so they unshelved it.

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