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Operation Taiwan! Releases Part 1
Post Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 12:40 pm
Last edited by Bock on Mon Dec 27, 2010 3:32 am; edited 6 times in total
Merry Christmas all ! As usual in this period of the year, Santa comes down to deliver new dumps to grown up kids and maniac archivists!

Thanks to the new website backend and everyone's contributions we've been able to do great this year! Hopefully this is only the tip of the iceberg, and SMS Power resources and communities should be able to continue growing at a steady healthy pace next year.

Following my excursion to Taiwan last week (more details) and thanks to Wenli's help we now know a lot more about Sega 8-bit releases in Taiwan. As it happens, Aaronix released almost all the SG-1000 software library in Taiwan. There's also a lot of oddities, MSX based ports, and some games using a custom adapter that pretty much beef up SG-1000 to be on part with MSX1 memory wise, complete with hardware port remapping to ease the porting job.

Mainly thanks to Wenli's generosity, and thru other leads and purchases, I've been able to dump a large majority of the known Taiwanese library of Sega 8-bit games. I'll be working in the following months on releasing those new dumps.

Today we start up with 7 new dumps!
Let's start with the Sega Mark III releases. Aaronix listings mentions up to 24 releases (13 Gold Cartridges, 11 Yellow Cartridges + 6 Cards containing the same games) but we aren't sure if they were all indeed released. I could get access to 8 unique games and see the box for at least 2 more. As we develop knowledge about those releases we'll be updating the forum threads.

Most of this releases being merely logos and copyright information changes I won't be commenting on some of them. Take the opportunity to play those classics if you haven't already!




Fantasy Zone / Kuàilè xiǎo fēidié (快樂小飛碟) for the Aaronix Sega Mark III


Hokuto no Ken / Běidǒu shén quán (北斗神拳) for the Aaronix Sega Mark III.
A dump of the Aaronix version was made available on the internet a dozen year ago but had a ROM header forged. This one is nearly identical but doesn't have such header. Please note that in the process of hacking the game to include a new logo, graphic data for the final boss has been damaged. It was a long time assumption that the old dump was corrupted but the error is present on "original" cartridges.

Space Harrier and Double Target were confirmed as being same dumps as original Japanese versions.



4 MyCard games released as Yellow gold cartridges:

Great Soccer / Shìjiè bēi zúqiú sài (世界杯足球賽) for the Aaronix Sega Mark III
A previously available dump that was marked as a "hack" (the dump originally came from Mr Lee who also reside in Taiwan)

F-16 Fighting Falcon / F-16 for the Aaronix Sega Mark III

Comical Machine Gun Joe / Dàzhàn hēishǒu dǎng (大戰黑手黨) for the Aaronix Sega Mark III

Spy vs Spy / Dié duì dié (諜對諜) for the Aaronix Sega Mark III.

And finally two original MSX games conversion!



We have the famous Yie Ar Kung-Fu / Gōngfu (功夫) for the Aaronix SG-1000, a conversion from MSX1. The red cartridge pictured is one of the 3 variations of the game available in Taiwan. Some cartridges have a generic label, and later releases use cartridges of smaller sizes. Talk about endless research to track down all those versions! But who knew you could play Yie Ar Kung-Fu on a Sega Master System?



And we have Konami's Ping Pong / Pīngpāng qiú (乒乓球) for the Aaronix SG-1000, known as the first actual game accurately depicting a game of ping pong (obviously Pong was more abstract) and a penguin. It uses an interesting game mechanic although it takes quite some practice to become decent at it. Above all this game shall be forever remembered for showing a curious in-game banner saying "LOVE ALL".

Those conversions were created by appending a modified copy of the MSX1 ROM to a modified copy of the original game. Due to the close proximity between SG-1000 and MSX1 hardware, a handful code modification allowed to make such conversions. You can usually spot the conversions that embed part of the MSX1 ROM because they contains a prominent logo. Here it is an Aaronix logo, but other types of cartridges such as Jumbo cartridges - that we will discuss in the following months - also use the same technique.

Hope you have fun with those christmas dumps and all the obscure information from Taiwanese releases. Please browse our forums for more!

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Temporary Transitional Attachment Fairy
Post Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 12:53 pm
This message will auto destruct itself someday.
spy_vs_spy-sms-tw.zip (22.25 KB)
ping_pong-sg-tw.zip (15.22 KB)

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Oh, and...
Post Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 12:55 pm
For the sake of documentation :)
Taiwan-Food.jpg (130.63 KB)
Taiwan-Food.jpg

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Post Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 6:41 pm
Bock wrote
For the sake of documentation :)


Where's the dump?
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Post Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2010 9:05 pm
TheRedEye wrote
Where's the dump?

On top of the noodles?
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Post Posted: Sun Dec 26, 2010 3:18 pm
Nice finds!
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Post Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 2:05 pm
cool :)
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Post Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 2:06 pm
Wow, very impressive.
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Post Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 3:24 am
Really cool stuff....Aaronix (Taiwanese version of Sega mark 3) was the one I got when I was in junior high school....
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