Forums

Game page:
https://www.smspower.org/Games/GameDeCheckKoutsuuAnzen-SMS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 27, 2020
MIRACLE WORLD - Not-for-sale Traffic Safety Sega Master System game from 1987 resurfaces!

Game de Check! Koutsuu Anzen for the Sega Master System / Mark III
Original: ゲームでチェック！交通安全 [gēmu de chekku! kōtsū anzen]
Literally: “Let’s check with a game! Traffic Safety”

The SMS Power! community is happy to celebrate its 23rd anniversary today by unearthing and preserving yet another extremely rare game title for the Sega Master System! We are also releasing a complete Japanese to English translation patch for the game.

Active since 1997, people behind SMS Power! have been meticulously documenting and preserving Sega 8-bit history. About one thousand titles, including many obscure ones, are catalogued and have been digitally preserved. Hardware has been researched, documented, hacked, augmented. Games have been reverse engineered, secrets found, soundtracks extracted, long lost staff credits made public, countless prototypes have been found. Every year the site hosts a competition for people making games, demos or music on Sega 8-bit systems.

This release has been made possible with help from NPO Game Preservation Society (NPO法人ゲーム保存協会) in Japan.

What is it?

Game de Check! Koutsuu Anzen is an educational Sega Master System/Sega Mark III cartridge commissioned by The Tokio Marine and Fire Insurance Ltd and developed by Sega in 1987.

A lengthy research article by SukaSega (in Japanese) has a list of known appearances of this long lost game over the years, mostly from non-game publications. In January 1988, both the Hoken Mainichi Shimbun and Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspapers wrote about it.

(images from SukaSega)

Below machine-translated extracts from for the Hoken Mainichi Shimbun article:

Quote

Production of video games for traffic safety education Co-development with SEGA Co., Ltd. for lending to residents’ associations, kindergartens, etc.

Tokio Marine has been planning and producing a video game software for traffic safety education through joint development with SEGA Enterprises (President Hayao Nakayama) to promote traffic safety education and traffic safety education. The video game software "Check by Game! Traffic Safety" is designed so that children and adults can enjoy the game naturally, deepen their understanding of traffic safety, and learn basic traffic safety rules. The three games are packaged together in one software cassette. [...]

Quote

The project has received a prize from the Japan Traffic Safety Education Promotion Association (Chairman Hideki Okazaki).

Tokio Marine is a company aiming to become a comprehensive security service industry, while providing peace of mind to the general public through the spread of property and casualty insurance, while preventing accidents themselves is an important social mission, and various services related to safety and disaster prevention.

Quote

As part of this service for customers, the company hopes to prevent traffic accidents, which have become a major social issue today [...] the company hopes that as many people as possible will enjoy the video game, which will help raise public awareness of traffic safety.

Quote

This project was created mainly for the purpose of being widely used in traffic safety campaigns at kindergartens and nurseries, as well as for community-wide traffic safety campaigns such as residents' associations, neighborhood associations, and children's associations. Will be rented out for free with a game console (SEGA Master System).

Quote

Contact the nearest Tokio Marine Co., Ltd. or its agent. Software cassettes are not for sale. [...] Tokio Marine has prepared 200 sets of the video game software for traffic safety education, and installed them at its branches nationwide along with game consoles (a total of 1100 units). They will also consider increasing the amount of software and hardware lent to the public depending on future reactions. [...]

On January 21, 1988, a similar article in “Insurance” states:

Quote

For video game software, 200 games are prepared, and for game machines (SEGA / master system), 100 machines are prepared and prepared for application. (Software cassette not for sale)
The contents of the game are packaged in a single software cassette with three games that match each age.

On August 30, 1988, another article in Zaigai (~Business World) gives a higher production number::

Quote

Tokio Marine has prepared 300 traffic safety education televised games and installed them at branch offices nationwide together with 200 game consoles. It can be borrowed free of charge for groups wishing to use it.

The game briefly appeared in a Japanese TV show in 1988:

All those findings are courtesy of research done by SukaSega.

It’s not clear today what happened to those 200 or 300 cartridges. Were they actively rented by many schools and associations? We have no evidence of Sega fans saying that they were exposed to this game in 1988. The game seemingly wasn’t promoted to gamers, and the Master System was not particularly popular in Japan either. Likely many of those cartridges were unused, lost or destroyed.

Auctions

On December 29, 2009, a loose cartridge surfaced and was auctioned on Yahoo Auctions, with an initial price of 3 million yens (about US$33,000 at the time). No bids were placed on the auction, but it appears that the cartridge was eventually sold outside of the auction, to a private collector, for an unspecified amount of money. We were aware of the auction at the time but unable to reasonably bid such an amount, we opted out of it. The collector who purchased the cartridge at the start of 2010 did not intend to share its contents, but posted one screenshot of the title screen on their website.

In October 2019, another copy of the game resurfaced on Yahoo Auctions. This time, the game came with extra previously unseen contents: a briefcase, a Master System console and two large manuals. Initial price was 3.5 million yens. No bids were placed over a two month period and eventually the seller decided in mid December to turn it into a regular open auction, starting at 1 yen. We decided to bid, gathered funds and we won the auction for 521,000 yens (see purchase thanks/credits below). The NPO Game Preservation Society (NPO法人ゲーム保存協会) in Tokyo helped us with handling of the auction and transporting the briefcase to France. We also decided to have them dump the cartridge and fully scan manuals while in Japan, in order to avoid any risk that the game may be lost or damaged while transporting.

We got it !!!

We at SMS Power! have preserved and shared almost a thousand games over the years and we are happy to share this one as well.

See the Game de check! Koutsuu Anzen page for details.

Screenshots

More screenshots at https://www.smspower.org/Screenshots/GameDeCheckKoutsuuAnzen-SMS

Manuals

All scans at https://www.smspower.org/Scans/GameDeCheckKoutsuuAnzen-SMS

*EDIT* To clarify, the inside pages were all mediocre-quality copies. We scanned them the best we could and Game Preservation Society cleaned the scans a little.

Soundtrack

The game supports both PSG and FM audio (the FM chip was only available in Japan).
It is as yet unknown who composed this soundtrack.

Maxim extracted both PSG and FM and created standalone VGM packages with them. See the Game de check! Koutsuu Anzen page for VGM packages details.

Youtube playlist (PSG version):

Unofficial English Translation

Because of the significance and rarity of this game, we decided that we’d try creating a translation patch for non-Japanese reading audiences so they could enjoy it. Maxim (SMS Power!) reverse engineered the game code, extracted the script and created custom tooling to reinject code along with translated text, new fonts and translated graphics into the game. Damian Rogers (Sudden-Desu.net and member of NPO Game Preservation Society) helped translate the game script to English.

A full english version of the game is available today:
https://www.smspower.org/Translations/GameDeCheckKoutsuuAnzen-SMS-EN
Full source code and tooling for the translation will be made available on GitHub shortly after.

Enjoy!!!

Credits

The game was purchased thanks to generous donations from:
- Carnivol
- Jair
- Wiggy2k
- Hubz
- RetroRumper (http://www.gamingalexandria.com http://preservegames.org)
- Kusfo
- SavagePencil
- Badsector
Which accounted for about 30% of the total auction price.
The rest was paid by Omar C (Bock) / SMS Power!

*EDIT* The original post accidentally omitted Wiggy2k from that list, apologies to Wiggy2k!

NPO Game Preservation Society (NPO法人ゲーム保存協会)
Auction handling, dumping, scanning & cleaning, transport, translation

Maxim (SMS Power!)
English translation patch, reverse engineering, hacking, soundtrack extraction

Damian Rogers / RyogaMasaki (NPO Game Preservation Society)
Japanese>English text translation

marklincadet
Translation logo graphics

Calindro, Paul Jansen
Additional hacking and translation help

Cyrus C
Photos

Omar C / Bock (SMS Power!)
Purchase, coordination, additional hacking, screenshots

11 Cartridge (800px).jpg (33.8 KB)

06 Manuals (800px).jpg (37.97 KB)

SukaSega-mainichi.jpg (76.11 KB)

SukaSega-insurance.jpg (69.29 KB)

04 Briefcase (800px).jpg (41.04 KB)

Auctions 2009.png (155.46 KB)

Manual Pyonkichi Page 1 (380px).jpg (21.6 KB)

Manual Pyonkichi Page 8 (380px).jpg (35.07 KB)

Auctions 2019.png (125.94 KB)

♫♫

game_de_check_koutsuu_anzen-proto-sms.zip (123.91 KB)

1- Koutsuu Anzen Kyouiku you TV Game Manual (1400 px).pdf (3.85 MB)

2- Pyonkichi Adventure Kaisetsusho (1400 px).pdf (5.82 MB)

game_de_check_koutsuu_anzen-proto-sms-english-translation.zip (898.44 KB)

Bravo!

Well done all.

Having played this game an awful lot and listened to the soundtrack a lot too... good luck you guys!

Challenges:

* 100% in Driving Sense Test - especially Driving Technique is tough
* Speed run in You're The Best Driver. There are some interesting hacks, like sometimes you can corner at 40km/h and speed past obstacles...

Bravo!!!

Thank you !
A nice gift for the community.

Maxim wrote

Having played this game an awful lot and listened to the soundtrack a lot too... good luck you guys!

Challenges:

* 100% in Driving Sense Test - especially Driving Technique is tough
* Speed run in You're The Best Driver. There are some interesting hacks, like sometimes you can corner at 40km/h and speed past obstacles...

Developing speedrun tech on a driving education game. :D

Thank you so much!

This is fantastic and every bit as brutal and charming as I'd hoped it'd be.

It can't be too common for a genuinely ultra-rare piece of software history to be publicly released alongside what seems to be a brilliantly put-together fan translation. The VGMs are very much welcome too.

Thank you hugely to everyone involved; this community is incredible.

Thank you! :)

Awesome find! Thanks a lot for your continued efforts, and for the discovery of this lost gem! :)

Marvelous! Things like this -- new discoveries, sharing, hard work -- are what it's all about. A great treat in a tough time.

Bock wrote

Credits

The game was purchased thanks to generous donations from:

*cough* ;)

wiggy2k wrote

*cough* ;)

Sincere apologies, I had your name in my original "credits" list and when typing names in the post it somehow I missed you. I've added you in the list and added an extra note for visibility stating you were forgotten from the original list. Also double-check everyone else while doing so (you were the only missing name). So sorry, and thanks again!!

I made an account just to say thank you all for doing this. Also, the pedestrian in the driving game looks a lot like the player character from Maze Hunter 3-D!

Author	Message
Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8703 Location: Paris, France	Not-for-sale "Game de Check! Koutsuu Anzen" from 1987! Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 1:54 pm Last edited by Bock on Sat Oct 17, 2020 8:52 pm; edited 15 times in total
	Game page: https://www.smspower.org/Games/GameDeCheckKoutsuuAnzen-SMS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 27, 2020 MIRACLE WORLD - Not-for-sale Traffic Safety Sega Master System game from 1987 resurfaces! Game de Check! Koutsuu Anzen for the Sega Master System / Mark III Original: ゲームでチェック！交通安全 [gēmu de chekku! kōtsū anzen] Literally: “Let’s check with a game! Traffic Safety” The SMS Power! community is happy to celebrate its 23rd anniversary today by unearthing and preserving yet another extremely rare game title for the Sega Master System! We are also releasing a complete Japanese to English translation patch for the game. Active since 1997, people behind SMS Power! have been meticulously documenting and preserving Sega 8-bit history. About one thousand titles, including many obscure ones, are catalogued and have been digitally preserved. Hardware has been researched, documented, hacked, augmented. Games have been reverse engineered, secrets found, soundtracks extracted, long lost staff credits made public, countless prototypes have been found. Every year the site hosts a competition for people making games, demos or music on Sega 8-bit systems. This release has been made possible with help from NPO Game Preservation Society (NPO法人ゲーム保存協会) in Japan. What is it? Game de Check! Koutsuu Anzen is an educational Sega Master System/Sega Mark III cartridge commissioned by The Tokio Marine and Fire Insurance Ltd and developed by Sega in 1987. A lengthy research article by SukaSega (in Japanese) has a list of known appearances of this long lost game over the years, mostly from non-game publications. In January 1988, both the Hoken Mainichi Shimbun and Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspapers wrote about it. (images from SukaSega) Below machine-translated extracts from for the Hoken Mainichi Shimbun article: Quote Production of video games for traffic safety education Co-development with SEGA Co., Ltd. for lending to residents’ associations, kindergartens, etc. Tokio Marine has been planning and producing a video game software for traffic safety education through joint development with SEGA Enterprises (President Hayao Nakayama) to promote traffic safety education and traffic safety education. The video game software "Check by Game! Traffic Safety" is designed so that children and adults can enjoy the game naturally, deepen their understanding of traffic safety, and learn basic traffic safety rules. The three games are packaged together in one software cassette. [...] Quote The project has received a prize from the Japan Traffic Safety Education Promotion Association (Chairman Hideki Okazaki). Tokio Marine is a company aiming to become a comprehensive security service industry, while providing peace of mind to the general public through the spread of property and casualty insurance, while preventing accidents themselves is an important social mission, and various services related to safety and disaster prevention. Quote As part of this service for customers, the company hopes to prevent traffic accidents, which have become a major social issue today [...] the company hopes that as many people as possible will enjoy the video game, which will help raise public awareness of traffic safety. Quote This project was created mainly for the purpose of being widely used in traffic safety campaigns at kindergartens and nurseries, as well as for community-wide traffic safety campaigns such as residents' associations, neighborhood associations, and children's associations. Will be rented out for free with a game console (SEGA Master System). Quote Contact the nearest Tokio Marine Co., Ltd. or its agent. Software cassettes are not for sale. [...] Tokio Marine has prepared 200 sets of the video game software for traffic safety education, and installed them at its branches nationwide along with game consoles (a total of 1100 units). They will also consider increasing the amount of software and hardware lent to the public depending on future reactions. [...] On January 21, 1988, a similar article in “Insurance” states: Quote For video game software, 200 games are prepared, and for game machines (SEGA / master system), 100 machines are prepared and prepared for application. (Software cassette not for sale) The contents of the game are packaged in a single software cassette with three games that match each age. On August 30, 1988, another article in Zaigai (~Business World) gives a higher production number:: Quote Tokio Marine has prepared 300 traffic safety education televised games and installed them at branch offices nationwide together with 200 game consoles. It can be borrowed free of charge for groups wishing to use it. The game briefly appeared in a Japanese TV show in 1988: All those findings are courtesy of research done by SukaSega. It’s not clear today what happened to those 200 or 300 cartridges. Were they actively rented by many schools and associations? We have no evidence of Sega fans saying that they were exposed to this game in 1988. The game seemingly wasn’t promoted to gamers, and the Master System was not particularly popular in Japan either. Likely many of those cartridges were unused, lost or destroyed. Auctions On December 29, 2009, a loose cartridge surfaced and was auctioned on Yahoo Auctions, with an initial price of 3 million yens (about US$33,000 at the time). No bids were placed on the auction, but it appears that the cartridge was eventually sold outside of the auction, to a private collector, for an unspecified amount of money. We were aware of the auction at the time but unable to reasonably bid such an amount, we opted out of it. The collector who purchased the cartridge at the start of 2010 did not intend to share its contents, but posted one screenshot of the title screen on their website. In October 2019, another copy of the game resurfaced on Yahoo Auctions. This time, the game came with extra previously unseen contents: a briefcase, a Master System console and two large manuals. Initial price was 3.5 million yens. No bids were placed over a two month period and eventually the seller decided in mid December to turn it into a regular open auction, starting at 1 yen. We decided to bid, gathered funds and we won the auction for 521,000 yens (see purchase thanks/credits below). The NPO Game Preservation Society (NPO法人ゲーム保存協会) in Tokyo helped us with handling of the auction and transporting the briefcase to France. We also decided to have them dump the cartridge and fully scan manuals while in Japan, in order to avoid any risk that the game may be lost or damaged while transporting. We got it !!! We at SMS Power! have preserved and shared almost a thousand games over the years and we are happy to share this one as well. See the Game de check! Koutsuu Anzen page for details. Screenshots More screenshots at https://www.smspower.org/Screenshots/GameDeCheckKoutsuuAnzen-SMS Manuals All scans at https://www.smspower.org/Scans/GameDeCheckKoutsuuAnzen-SMS EDIT To clarify, the inside pages were all mediocre-quality copies. We scanned them the best we could and Game Preservation Society cleaned the scans a little. Soundtrack The game supports both PSG and FM audio (the FM chip was only available in Japan). It is as yet unknown who composed this soundtrack. Maxim extracted both PSG and FM and created standalone VGM packages with them. See the Game de check! Koutsuu Anzen page for VGM packages details. Youtube playlist (PSG version): Unofficial English Translation Because of the significance and rarity of this game, we decided that we’d try creating a translation patch for non-Japanese reading audiences so they could enjoy it. Maxim (SMS Power!) reverse engineered the game code, extracted the script and created custom tooling to reinject code along with translated text, new fonts and translated graphics into the game. Damian Rogers (Sudden-Desu.net and member of NPO Game Preservation Society) helped translate the game script to English. A full english version of the game is available today: https://www.smspower.org/Translations/GameDeCheckKoutsuuAnzen-SMS-EN Full source code and tooling for the translation will be made available on GitHub shortly after. Enjoy!!! Credits The game was purchased thanks to generous donations from: - Carnivol - Jair - Wiggy2k - Hubz - RetroRumper (http://www.gamingalexandria.com http://preservegames.org) - Kusfo - SavagePencil - Badsector Which accounted for about 30% of the total auction price. The rest was paid by Omar C (Bock) / SMS Power! EDIT The original post accidentally omitted Wiggy2k from that list, apologies to Wiggy2k! NPO Game Preservation Society (NPO法人ゲーム保存協会) Auction handling, dumping, scanning & cleaning, transport, translation Maxim (SMS Power!) English translation patch, reverse engineering, hacking, soundtrack extraction Damian Rogers / RyogaMasaki (NPO Game Preservation Society) Japanese>English text translation marklincadet Translation logo graphics Calindro, Paul Jansen Additional hacking and translation help Cyrus C Photos Omar C / Bock (SMS Power!) Purchase, coordination, additional hacking, screenshots 11 Cartridge (800px).jpg (33.8 KB) 06 Manuals (800px).jpg (37.97 KB) SukaSega-mainichi.jpg (76.11 KB) SukaSega-insurance.jpg (69.29 KB) 04 Briefcase (800px).jpg (41.04 KB) Auctions 2009.png (155.46 KB) Manual Pyonkichi Page 1 (380px).jpg (21.6 KB) Manual Pyonkichi Page 8 (380px).jpg (35.07 KB) Auctions 2019.png (125.94 KB)

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8703 Location: Paris, France	Temporary Attachment Fairy Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 1:57 pm Last edited by Bock on Fri Mar 27, 2020 8:12 pm; edited 2 times in total
	♫♫ game_de_check_koutsuu_anzen-proto-sms.zip (123.91 KB) 1- Koutsuu Anzen Kyouiku you TV Game Manual (1400 px).pdf (3.85 MB) 2- Pyonkichi Adventure Kaisetsusho (1400 px).pdf (5.82 MB) game_de_check_koutsuu_anzen-proto-sms-english-translation.zip (898.44 KB)

matt Joined: 05 Jul 2017 Posts: 67 Location: Cornwall, United Kingdom	Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 2:43 pm
	Bravo! Well done all.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14959 Location: London	Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 2:57 pm
	Having played this game an awful lot and listened to the soundtrack a lot too... good luck you guys! Challenges: * 100% in Driving Sense Test - especially Driving Technique is tough * Speed run in You're The Best Driver. There are some interesting hacks, like sometimes you can corner at 40km/h and speed past obstacles...

kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 900 Location: Spain	Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 3:22 pm
kusfo Joined: 29 Mar 2012 Posts: 900 Location: Spain	Bravo!!!

ichigobankai Joined: 04 Jul 2010 Posts: 546 Location: Angers, France	Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 3:30 pm
	Thank you ! A nice gift for the community.

KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 533	Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 3:41 pm
KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 533	Maxim wrote Having played this game an awful lot and listened to the soundtrack a lot too... good luck you guys! Challenges: * 100% in Driving Sense Test - especially Driving Technique is tough * Speed run in You're The Best Driver. There are some interesting hacks, like sometimes you can corner at 40km/h and speed past obstacles... Developing speedrun tech on a driving education game. :D

Revo Guest	Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 5:58 pm
Revo Guest	Thank you so much!

bumtree Joined: 01 Apr 2016 Posts: 45	Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:39 am
bumtree Joined: 01 Apr 2016 Posts: 45	This is fantastic and every bit as brutal and charming as I'd hoped it'd be. It can't be too common for a genuinely ultra-rare piece of software history to be publicly released alongside what seems to be a brilliantly put-together fan translation. The VGMs are very much welcome too. Thank you hugely to everyone involved; this community is incredible.

law81 Joined: 21 Oct 2015 Posts: 304	Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2020 11:11 pm
law81 Joined: 21 Oct 2015 Posts: 304	Thank you! :)

drludos Joined: 18 Mar 2020 Posts: 33	Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2020 11:50 pm
drludos Joined: 18 Mar 2020 Posts: 33	Awesome find! Thanks a lot for your continued efforts, and for the discovery of this lost gem! :)

goldenband Joined: 24 May 2010 Posts: 127 Location: New York	Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:38 pm
	Marvelous! Things like this -- new discoveries, sharing, hard work -- are what it's all about. A great treat in a tough time.

wiggy2k Joined: 03 Apr 2020 Posts: 1	Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2020 3:26 pm
wiggy2k Joined: 03 Apr 2020 Posts: 1	Bock wrote Credits The game was purchased thanks to generous donations from: cough ;)

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8703 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2020 5:09 pm
	wiggy2k wrote cough ;) Sincere apologies, I had your name in my original "credits" list and when typing names in the post it somehow I missed you. I've added you in the list and added an extra note for visibility stating you were forgotten from the original list. Also double-check everyone else while doing so (you were the only missing name). So sorry, and thanks again!!

Oxwah Joined: 04 Apr 2020 Posts: 24 Location: Buffalo, NY, USA	Thanks! Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2020 11:56 am
	I made an account just to say thank you all for doing this. Also, the pedestrian in the driving game looks a lot like the player character from Maze Hunter 3-D!

Forums

View topic - Not-for-sale "Game de Check! Koutsuu Anzen" from 1987!