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Operation Taiwan! Releases Part 2
Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 6:26 am
Last edited by Bock on Sun Jan 02, 2011 8:15 am; edited 4 times in total
Happy new year!

We have a LOT of dumps to release, and will process them in batches.





The situation seems that Aaronix legitly acquired license from Sega to distribute Sega 8-bit hardware and software in Taiwan. However, probably partly to Taiwan copyright laws at the time (or let's say the lack of) and a general care to hide Japanese brands, games were methodically modified prior to their release in Taiwan. For most of them, brands and copyright infos were simply blanked out, but for few game title changes slipped in. 'Championship Lode Runner' became 'Lode Runner II' and 'Home Mahjong' became 'Yon-nin Mahjong' (4-players mahjong, in reference due earlier 3-players mahjong release).


(left: Japanese version "Home Mahjong", right: Taiwanese version "4-players Mahjong")


(left: Japanese version "Sega-Galaga", right: Taiwanese version "Galaga").

For the next few updates we'll try to go and process games in their Taiwanese release order which loosely follow Japanese releases. We have 20 new dumps today, corresponding to 1983-1984 releases. In future games we'll have the later (and often better) games.

The way regular Taiwanese release are numbered is:
W-xxx product number : white cartridges, 8 KB or 16 KB ROM Japanese cartridges
B-xxx product number : blue cartridges, 32 KB ROM Japanese cartridges
R-xxx product number : white cartridges, 32 KB ROM Japanese MyCards or MSX conversions

This apply to the legit Aaronix releases, but there was also a handful of more or less dodgy types of cartridges from different makers. Will be develop on them on further updates.

W-001 : Borderline / Tōudù biānjìng (偷渡邊境) - WANTED
W-002 : Safari Hunting / Cónglín lìxiǎn (叢林歷險)
W-003 : N-Sub / Qiánshuǐ dàzhàn (潛水大戰)
B-004 : Mahjong / Shuāngrén máquè (雙人麻雀)
B-005 : Champion Golf / Gāoěrfū sài (高爾夫賽) - WANTED
W-006 : Guzzler / Shuǐ jīnglíng (水精靈)
B-007 : Congo Bongo / Jīn gāng sāndài (金鋼三代) - WANTED
W-008 : Yamato / Tài hé jiàn (太和艦)
W-009 : 007 James Bond / 007
B-010 : Star Jacker / Tàikōng chéng (太空城)
W-011 : Champion Baseball / Shìjiè bàngqiú sài (世界棒球賽) (dump released previously)
B-012 : Sindbad Mystery / Tiānfāng yè tán (天方夜譚)
W-013 : San-nin Mahjong / Sān rén máquè (三人麻雀)
B-014 : Golgo 13 / Gē ěr gē 13 (哥爾哥13) - WANTED
B-015: Orguss / Tàikōng guàishòu (太空怪獸) (same as JP dump, dumped from cart with 8-games label and no product number, WANTED cartridge with 'B-015' number)
W-016 : Space Armor / Dìguó dà fǎnjí (帝國大反擊) (same as JP [v0] dump).
B-017 : Monaco GP / Mónàgē sàichē (摩納哥賽車)
A116 : Monaco GP / Shìjiè sàichē (世界賽車) (non-Aaronix cartridge, same dump as above)
W-018 : Sega Flipper / Pīlì dàn (霹靂彈)
W-019 : Pop Flamer / Jīnglíng shǔ (精靈鼠)
W-020 : Pacar / Mí hún chē (迷魂車)
B-021 : Okamoto Ayako no Match Play Golf / Nǚzǐ gāoěrfū (女子高爾夫)
W-022 : Sega-Galaga / Mìfēng èr dài (蜜蜂二代)
B-026 : Zippy Race / Mótuō chē yóu měiguó (摩托車遊美國)
W-028 : Exerion / Dìqiú bǎowèi zhàn (地球保衛戰)
W-029 : Pachinko II / Bīn guǒ yóuxì (賓果遊戲)
R-030 : Home Mahjong / Sì rén máquè (四人麻雀)
B-031 : Lode Runner / Xún bǎo jì (尋寶記)

Stay tuned for next updates!

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Temporary Transitional Attachment Fairy IN VACATION
Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 7:13 am
Last edited by Bock on Tue Aug 02, 2011 6:14 am; edited 2 times in total
Trying to avoid duplicate work of posting files here - if you want download access please ask me by Private Message.

...

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Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 7:11 pm
Incredible spree - I never knew Taiwan got it's own originals. Congratulations finding these!
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 11:07 pm
Are there any originals?
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 2:08 am
derboo wrote
Are there any originals?

If you mean original development - not that I found. They are for most SG-1000 and MSX based software. The late software selection I found so far in Aaronix cartridges are:

- Magical Tree
- Cabbage Patch Kids
- Circus Charlie
- Yie Ar Kung Fu
- Ping Pong

All Konami games, so maybe Konami was involved in some licensing deal? Or it is just a coincidence because Konami was popular in the first place at the time?

Other non-Aaronix cartridges include MSX games from various publishers, but I expect those were not licensed.
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 2:13 am
This is extremely cool.....

So we now know (or to a reasonable degree) that Sega officially licensed hardware/clones for:
Brazil = Tec Toy
Korea = Samsung
Taiwan = Aaronix

but what about Othello Multivision? Do we still think this is definitely just an unlicenced clone by Tsukuda Original for the Japanese market?

That is the most logical, given that Sega had a presence in Japan at that time, but its an interesting question now all these Taiwanese games are surfacing....
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 2:17 am
Othello Multivision is definitively a licensed deal. There wasn't any illegal stuff going out in Japan at the time AFAIK.

Sega and Ni****do always had odd hardware licensed for third party (even Gamecube did it with Panasonic). Also the market was more loose in 1984/85 - remember that Sega made a lot of games for Famicom back then.
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 2:33 am
So Tsukuda Original sold the OMV in BOTH Japan and Taiwan? (http://www.smspower.org/Games/SpaceArmor-SG).

That's what I'm surprised about. I do get your point about it being the 80s though....was a lot more 'incestuous' I guess.

I guess it is also that Sega seemed far more "hands off" with the OMV compared to Samsung's clone for example (eg KR having a slightly altered version of Alex Kidd built in still). And from what I understand, the OMV is quite unlike (as in design) the SG-1000/MKIII/SMS from other territories.
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 2:38 am
Cassiel wrote
So Tsukuda Original sold the OMV in BOTH Japan and Taiwan? (http://www.smspower.org/Games/SpaceArmor-SG).

There's no OMV hardware in Taiwan as far as I know, but Aaronix released those games as regular SG-1000 cartridges.

Again, I'm not 100% sure that Aaronix release were fully legit. But:
- Hardware boards are the same.
- Many of the cartridge have a sticker warning about unauthorized copy ("we'll go after you if you copy")
- Releases are ordered and consistent

I also think that cartridges were rather expensive for the time (maybe Wenli can confirm?).
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 2:56 am
Oh I see, was going by the OMV tag in the database....

I guess it's reasonable to assume (Space Armor for example) was developed/sold/marketed in Japan by Tsukuda Original for their OMV console.

Aaronix subsequently released the same game, still with T.O. copyrights, under the Aaronix banner/boxes either legitly or semi-legitly (given the state of TW's IP laws at the time).

Guess we'll never know exactly what the situation was! LOL
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 4:39 pm
a couple of questions:

1. was the Tw dump of Sega Flipper the same as a Jpn one? if so, which one? the wiki profile lacks this info

2. can we then conclude that the carts
W-012 辛巴達 (Sindbad)
B-028 火鳳凰 (Phoenix)
mentioned in the old Taiwanese games thread ( the 9892 thread, since I cannot yet post links), are just B-012 and W-028 (with Exerion erroneously named Phoenix), or there might be further variants in the production numbers?
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 1:57 am
etabeta wrote
a couple of questions:

1. was the Tw dump of Sega Flipper the same as a Jpn one? if so, which one? the wiki profile lacks this info


Thanks for the detailed questions (I need people to double check things because I'm dealing with a shear amount of infos and sometimes make a mistake)

1. I had forgot to add the Sega Flipper dump to its Games/ profile. But the file was in the ZIP file linked in this thread. I have now added the dump on the main page (CRC32: 042c36ba).

Quote
2. can we then conclude that the carts
W-012 辛巴達 (Sindbad)
B-028 火鳳凰 (Phoenix)
mentioned in the old Taiwanese games thread ( the 9892 thread, since I cannot yet post links), are just B-012 and W-028 (with Exerion erroneously named Phoenix), or there might be further variants in the production numbers?


2. First about the name 火鳳凰 (it means Phoenix) and generally other Chinese names. Most of those names in Chinese have other meaning than the original game name. We haven't translated their meaning (yet) but showing the Chinese pronounciation on the various pages.

However, and this may be a point of debate, I decided for filenames and some other listing to keep refering to original JP/EN game names for two reasons:

(a) It would be really confusing for everyone and be essentially a huge source of name pollution (essentially we would double the number of unique names and half of them would be completely obscure/random names, eg: the writing for Star Force actually says Star Wars, this type of thing would be really confusing for people).

To weight my point: It would be essentially equivalent to attempt to catalog all variations of all early Famicom games using their different names as used in the Asian unlicensed industry. I don't think that MESS would want to do that.

(b) Most of the games don't have their title screen hacked anyway and still show that JP/EN name in some way.

(c) Some games are same dumps as JP/EN version, and some games have two different names in Taiwan with same dump.

Now about the product number themselves. The cartridges I've seen and dumped were definitively:
B-012 Sindbad Mystery
W-028 Exerion.

And you refered to this topic :
http://www.gamebase.com.tw/forum/30032/topic/82680587/1#82685962
W-012 辛巴達 (Sindbad)
B-028 火鳳凰 (Phoenix)

I suspect that forum post might be incorrect. The reason is that all known W-* games are <=16 KB ROM games, and all known B-* games are 32 KB ROM games coming from JP cartridges releases. With Sinbdad Mystery being 32 KB and Exerion being 16 KB, the product numbers from that forum post would be breaking the patterns.

Now it might be possible that those carts were also released with those product numbers (after all there was a lot of erroneous variations over others) but I haven't confirmed it and without further proof I would personnally ignore that as being given.
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Post Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2011 1:08 pm
yeah, chances were pretty high that the old taiwanese post was inaccurate (even if contained valuable info), but thanks for checking

concerning alt names, in MESS we have decided to use title screen names (just mentioning in comments if there exists alt titles, e.g. on the gamebox) so I have no problems if you refer to them with Japanese or Western titles, and the phonetic transcription you use in the wiki is absolutely fine! ;)
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Post Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 3:33 pm
I'm trying to gather some information regarding Tsukuda Original.

Does anyone know of any regular SG-1000 software that T.O. also sold under their own OMV brand/OMV boxes? To clarify, the ROM image would be the same as SG-1000 cart, but the cart/box would be branded OMV and sold under their label...

Or were the only 'real' games (boxed and branded T.O./OMV) the 10 or so we have already identified?
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Post Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 4:19 pm
Only games published by Othello Multivision (there's 8 of them).
Although the standalone game "Othello" on the SG-1000 is based on the game bundled with the Othello Multivision hardware.
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Post Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 5:42 pm
Interesting..... OK, thanks.
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