The Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Thread (NEW)!!!

[Ed Oscuro]

Golden Axe also wraps around (castle on the back I think?), and I think Super Shinobi II as well (showing more of the bridge?)

Those Mega Drive wrap-around inserts for the plastic clamshell cases have some of the finest artwork ever released for a regular video game, especially painted artwork which has become rare since. But of course everybody just remembers dopey Mega Man and Strider covers...

[ST Dragon]

Oh nice - I didn't know the MD jacket was a gatefold. It's actually a really cool bit of artwork, in a totally unhinged 80s fantasy way.

And let's not forget the abducted girl on the far left, which its obvious that the 5 animalistic bosses had been having their go with her until our lone beastly hero "took care" of them...

Perhaps some bestiality innuendos right there as well?!...

Indeed! I always considered the 80s & early 90's game covers as works of art that could easily be placed in galleries. Especially the fantasy & Sci-Fi oriented ones which are on the lines of Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, Ken Kelly & Ernie Chan.

[BIL]

Golden Axe also wraps around (castle on the back I think?), and I think Super Shinobi II as well (showing more of the bridge?)

Yep! Awesome stuff in both instances. Although not technically a true gatefold, Koutetsu Teikoku aka Steel Empire is another great use of the extra real estate. There are probably tons of other good examples I'm forgetting, it's been a while since I dug through my 16-bit gear. I miss the days of custom game packaging, so much more characterful than generic CD/DVD cases.

Shinobi III's manual is pretty awesome too, besides looking good it has a nice continuity by showing you how Joe got up onto that bridge for the cover shot:

And let's not forget the abducted girl on the far left, which its obvious that the 5 animalistic bosses had been having their go with her until our lone beastly hero "took care" of them...

Brings to mind Phelios, the other Greek mythology-influenced action game where a damsel in distress is progressively ill-treated by the big baddie whose ass the manly hero must kick before it's TOO LATE.



Namco & Sega, the ultimate pervin' team.

[ST Dragon]

Golden Axe also wraps around (castle on the back I think?), and I think Super Shinobi II as well (showing more of the bridge?)

Those Mega Drive wrap-around inserts for the plastic clamshell cases have some of the finest artwork ever released for a regular video game, especially painted artwork which has become rare since. But of course everybody just remembers dopey Mega Man and Strider covers...

Actually most Japanese Mega Drive clam boxes featured wrap around covers:

Arrow Flash is quite nice:



And the modern interpretation is nice too:

[ST Dragon]

And let's not forget the abducted girl on the far left, which its obvious that the 5 animalistic bosses had been having their go with her until our lone beastly hero "took care" of them...

Brings to mind Phelios, the other Greek mythology-influenced action game where a damsel in distress is progressively ill-treated by the big baddie whose ass the manly hero must kick before it's TOO LATE.



Namco & Sega, the ultimate pervin' team.

Well NCS / Maisya aren't that far from the title either...
As they did bring out the Cho Aniki brothers!!

Remake of Maisya / NCS's classic shooter from the PC-Engine, funny parody shooter, featuring two semi-naked muscle men Adon and Samson as the main characters, and a bunch of muscle men as bosses. The player's objective is to guide a legendary glob of protein to holy lands through groups of enemies that are aiming for the protein in order to get the ultimate physique!

This game goes down in the annals of gaming history as the gayest shooting game ever. Not many games can take that title!
So Enjoy!
Then fire up Dead or Alive 2, don't worry you'll be ok.

I bought this game.
Reason why I bought it? Cause the two guys on the cover told me to...
Do I regret it?
NOWAY...I’ts a shmup!!!!













http://nfggames.com/games/aichoaniki/
http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/sexual-games/10.php
http://www.encyclopedia-obscura.com/gamescho.html
http://hardcoregaming101.net/choaniki/choaniki.htm

[ST Dragon]

Hagane's Super Famicom box is another fine example of the classic "lone foregrounded hero VS rogue's gallery" motif!

And Strider Hiryu too

[Ed Oscuro]

Actually most Japanese Mega Drive clam boxes featured wrap around covers:

Indeed they do! I think games that don't are the exception, and even those tend to have the pattern behind the hero's portrait wrapping around to the back.

[BIL]

Crossposting from the Ninja Gaiden thread, here's a much better quality Expert no-miss of Vampire Killer to replace my earlier one. Demonstrates how to play like a ninja.

[Edmond Dantes]

Marginally related, I just happened to stumble across this:

What "All I Want" from Crazy Taxi would sound like on a Mega Drive

[BIL]

Having been rounding out my Toaplan home library lately, becoming unexpectedly fond of Tiger Heli (the sniper tank wars begin!), I've been re-reading blackoak's excellent Toaplan interview translations (all can be found here).

You were right Ed, MD Tatsujin was definitely handled in-house by Toaplan at Sega's request, and although I can't find definite confirmation at the moment I think it's safe to say MD Daisenpu was a product of the same arrangement. Same Same, Hellfire, Zero Wing and Slap Fight MD are all cited by Toaplan members as in-house, too.

I still wonder about MD Kyukyoku Tiger. Of the in-house Toaplan vert ports, Same Same and Daisenpu's reformatted screens feel great to me while Tatsujin seems a bit on the cramped side; I put that down to the game's heavier reliance on fast static bullet patterns and the noticeably larger ship sprite. Maybe the latter is something Toaplan resolved in the subsequent ports, SS's biplane and DSP's Zero are minuscule compared to the big orange Tatsujinmobile.

Even Tatsu doesn't feel nearly as boxed-in as K.Tiger, though. I gave it a spin after finding the AC ver on TSBv1 surprisingly easy. As expected, yep, it's way harder, but essentially due to lack of breathing space. Surprise, gunboat flotilla in your face! With this being the only Toaplan vert on the console without the "status bar on right" formatting, and no recognisable names in the credits, I'm tempted to think this was all Treco. I actually do like the claustrophobic feeling of this version, as well as the incredibly punchy explosion sfx and meatier guitar sound, but it's hard to shake the sense of battling against the formatting more than anything else.

Besides KT that leaves V-V, Snow Bros and Wardner Special for Toaplan MD ports of unconfirmed origin. Nobody seems to talk about Wardner Special much. Sure looks ugly as sin compared to the PCB, unlike Snow Bros, but I've not played enough of it to comment any further.

I love how there's a photo of Slap Fight's monstrous PCB in the MD version's manual - "look at this big ugly non-JAMMA m^$%*£er, I bet you're glad you've got this handy MD cart!" Yes indeed!

[BrianC]

Having been rounding out my Toaplan home library lately, becoming unexpectedly fond of Tiger Heli (the sniper tank wars begin!), I've been re-reading blackoak's excellent Toaplan interview translations (all can be found here).

You were right Ed, MD Tatsujin was definitely handled in-house by Toaplan at Sega's request, and although I can't find definite confirmation at the moment I think it's safe to say MD Daisenpu was a product of the same arrangement. Same Same, Hellfire, Zero Wing, Slap Fight MD, V-V and Snow Bros are all cited by Toaplan members as in-house, too.

I still wonder about MD Kyukyoku Tiger. Of the in-house Toaplan vert ports, Same Same and Daisenpu's reformatted screens feel great to me while Tatsujin seems a bit on the cramped side; I put that down to the game's heavier reliance on fast static bullet patterns and the noticeably larger ship sprite. Maybe the latter is something Toaplan resolved in the subsequent ports, SS's biplane and DSP's Zero are minuscule compared to the big orange Tatsujinmobile.

Even Tatsu doesn't feel nearly as boxed-in as K.Tiger, though. I gave it a spin after finding the AC ver on TSBv1 surprisingly easy. As expected, yep, it's way harder, but only in the sense that you're playing with blinders on. Surprise, gunboat flotilla in your face! With this being the only Toaplan vert on the console without the "status bar on right" formatting, and no recognisable names in the credits, I'm tempted to think this was all Treco. I actually do like the claustrophobic feeling of this version, as well as the incredibly punchy explosion sfx and meatier guitar sound, but it's hard to shake the sense of battling against the formatting more than anything else.

Besides KT that just leaves Wardner Special for Toaplan MD ports of unconfirmed origin. Nobody seems to talk about Wardner Special much. Sure looks ugly as sin compared to the PCB, unlike Snow Bros, but I've not played enough of it to comment any further.

I love how there's a photo of Slap Fight's monstrous PCB in the MD version's manual - "look at this big ugly non-JAMMA m^$%*£er, I bet you're glad you've got this handy MD cart!" Yes indeed!

I remember reading about sound engines at sega-16 and I found a list at gdri.smspower.org. Fire Shark, Hellfire, Truxton/Tatsujin, and Daisenpuu use Toaplan's custom sound engine. The sound engine for Twin Cobra is GRC/Raika no Papa, which is the same engine used in Battlemania 2 and Decapattack. I remember reading that Zero Wing's port was done by Toaplan, but, for some reason, that uses the Cube/Noriyuki Iwadare sound engine rather than Toaplan's own. Snow Bros also uses the Cube/Noriyuki Iwadare engine. Not conclusive, but does hint at Twin Cobra not being done by Toaplan, which I'm 100% sure of since, if I remember correctly, there was an interview posted on this forum where the designer said it wasn't done by Toaplan.

List of sound engines

Edit: Checked Wardner and it uses Visco's sound engine. I hear about the FDS port even less than I hear about the MD version, though.

This page lists Twin Cobra as being done by a company named Graphic Research (who did sound for some Vic Tokai games).

[BIL]

I remember reading about sound engines at sega-16 and I found a list at gdri.smspower.org. Fire Shark, Hellfire, Truxton/Tatsujin, and Daisenpuu use Toaplan's custom sound engine. The sound engine for Twin Cobra is GRC/Raika no Papa, which is the same engine used in Battlemania 2 and Decapattack. I remember reading that Zero Wing's port was done by Toaplan, but, for some reason, that uses the Cube/Noriyuki Iwadare sound engine rather than Toaplan's own. Snow Bros also uses the Cube/Noriyuki Iwadare engine. Not conclusive, but does hint at Twin Cobra not being done by Toaplan, which I'm 100% sure of since, if I remember correctly, there was an interview posted on this forum where the designer said it wasn't done by Toaplan.

Excellent, thanks for the info! Hadn't thought to look up the sound engines. Incidentally I'm not surprised Twin Cobra and Battlemania 2 use the same one, both games have some of the MD's finest guitar sounds.

[stryc9]

So out of the Tengen ports, let me get this straight: Snow Brothers was Toaplan in-house, Gauntlet was M2... but what about Marble Madness and V-V?

J Marble Madness rocks by the way, the music is a perfect rendition of the arcade

Ahh... the amount of times I pinched the skin of my hand on that damn trackball back in the mid eighties!

[Ed Oscuro]

GDRI is well-researched indeed, but I don't know how helpful their bare-bones list presentation of the games is. What did Graphic Research actually do for the Twin Cobra port?

[BIL]

So out of the Tengen ports, let me get this straight: Snow Brothers was Toaplan in-house, Gauntlet was M2... but what about Marble Madness and V-V?!

edit: I'd originally said here that V-V was mentioned in blackoak's Toaplan Madness interviews along with Slap Fight MD as in-house, but having double-checked the statement, it's referring to the AC version.

[BrianC]

I thought I remembered reading that the Tengen Toaplan ports were from Tengen Japan with someone who used to work at Toaplan?

Edit: Checked at mobygames and some of the staff of Grindstormer also worked on Taromaru (A Time Warner Interactive game, which Tengen/Atari Games later became).

[BIL]

I've personally never heard that about ex-Toaplan employees moving to Tengen, but it's clearly a topic that'd take some researching, considering both Toaplan's stated lack of organisation and the company having grown considerably larger by the end of its life (both per Tatsuya Uemura in Gaijin Punch's Toaplan Forever interview translation).

It may be that the Tengen ports were joint efforts between Toaplan staff and Tengen staffers/contracted parties. Uemura was with Toaplan until the end, and he's at the top of Slap Fight MD's credits and also listed as producer. On the other hand he's the only Toaplan name in V-V's credits, as "special thanks." Snow Bros MD doesn't seem to have credits at all. All seems rather ad-hoc.

edit: oh, nice. Interview with Mikito Ichikawa (Slap Fight MD supervisor) at GDRI, which briefly tells how MNM Software approached Toaplan about porting the game to MD. So along with Batsugun SS and ToaSBv1 (developed by Gazelle and published by Banpresto in unclear legal circumstances), Slap Fight MD is yet another Toaplan home port we owe to good fortune (MNM initiated the project on their own).

Funny how both Uemura and Masahiro Yuge have expressed great admiration for Konami's game music, and Koshiro produced a stellar Gradius-alike score for Slap Fight MD's original mode. Makes the game feel even more like Toaplan's Gradius by way of Xevious. I love the intense boss theme and the awesome yell that accompanies it. "Terminate the flagship!" I'd call its relentless pulse Raiden Fighters-esque, but it predates those games' soundtracks by years.

[BIL]

Oh FUCK yes. The only thing I wasn't loving about SFMD was the shield never timing out like in the AC ver - makes things too comfy, and its annoying beeping was obviously never meant to be heard for long periods. TOAPLAN MODE TO THE RESCUE. Press A+B+C simultaneously at the Options menu and, besides the difficulty setting turning blood red, the shield will now time out just like in the AC ver. Wheee!

[BrianC]

Thanks for the info. Telling from the credits at mobygames, it looks like Toaplan was involved in the Snow Bros NES port. The director, planner, and one of the music composers are from Toaplan. It looks like the programming was done by the same company that programmed the NES Flintstones.

Edit: read more info at gdri.smspower.org here. Definitely same programmers as Flintstones Rescue of Dino and Hoppy NES, but it's unclear if it's the same company.

[stryc9]

Ha ha, nice work BIL.

[yojo!]

Once you enable "Toaplan Mode" in SFMD, the difficulty setting goes: easy ,normal , hard , hardest, and then normal1. normal2.....normal20+
what's up with that?

[Ed Oscuro]

Is that arcade difficulty + loops?

[BIL]

Is that arcade difficulty + loops?

Yeah, I was thinking that's a possibility. Or maybe it's related to the shield timeout somehow. Will have to investigate, for now I've just been playing the hell out of arcade mode on Hard. This game rocks! The port fucking rocks too! It's even cooler knowing it was a dream project that ended up attracting Toaplan themselves and attaining Port Ever status. And Yuzo Koshiro just happened to be a high school buddy of the project lead. The stars aligned for this one.

NOW THAT IS THE SHOOTING BGM

What do you mean I'll be hearing from your solicitors



TANKMAKU. HEAVEN IS HERE INSIDE MAH SOUL.

[Rob]

I'll have to try that one again. Last I played it seemed like it was going to loop endlessly with little resistance (on whatever the hardest difficulty without code is). Most of the other Toaplan ports are all pretty-really tough on hardest, so kind of lacking on that point.

[BIL]

Actually, despite what I said about Hard difficulty previously, from comparing to MAME it seems the port's arcade mode is roughly even with the PCB on defaults (provided you've enabled the shield timeout, of course - the game is completely broken without it). Haven't played the MD mode enough to comment, but I did find it really easy to loop on defaults when previewing the ROM months back. That was with the infinite shield, though.

[BrianC]

This really makes me want the MD port of Slap Fight/ALCON now. Too bad it's so danged expensive.

[Limbrooke]

Actually, despite what I said about Hard difficulty previously, from comparing to MAME it seems the port's arcade mode is roughly even with the PCB on defaults (provided you've enabled the shield timeout, of course - the game is completely broken without it). Haven't played the MD mode enough to comment, but I did find it really easy to loop on defaults when previewing the ROM months back. That was with the infinite shield, though.

Infinite shield is only snooze mode if you only use shot which obliterates everything and has "ok" range. Of course not many people switch weapons but there are a lot of secrets of which certain weapons will uncover at times. Finding/accessing them while keeping the shield is a bit more challenging. Still, good to know there is code for more accurate play.

As for MD mode, my only issue is it's a bit short to loop.

[BIL]

Just looped SFMD's arcade mode - Ed is right, the "Normal-2, 3," etc is a loop select. It'll even display the proper loop in the status area.

The second loop definitely feels more like the MD version of Same Same on Hard difficulty - sniper tanks taking fast potshots everywhere. I imagine the SFMD original mode would be even moreso with its flying enemies. I don't think SF is as hard a game for pure survival as stuff like Same Same or Tatsujin anyway, though. It gets a lot trickier when switching around weapon configurations for a little score-boosting space gardening, but it's a more relaxed affair overall.

Are those flowers that spring up and wilt at a few points in DoDonPachi a reference to Slap Fight, I wonder?

Infinite shield is only snooze mode if you only use shot which obliterates everything and has "ok" range. Of course not many people switch weapons but there are a lot of secrets of which certain weapons will uncover at times. Finding/accessing them while keeping the shield is a bit more challenging. Still, good to know there is code for more accurate play.

As for MD mode, my only issue is it's a bit short to loop.

The default shield's beeping alone is enough to make me hate the thing, honestly, never mind it permanently making the player four times as hard to kill.

[BIL]

Looped SFMD's original mode on Normal (as always, shield timeout ON). Actually feels a bit Compile-ish with the ability to ride bursts of invincibility if the power bar is managed well. The way the typhoon bomb picks up and displaces bullets and powerups is so cool, and there's something really satisfying about building up the ship's weapons, doing some damage, then shedding the bulk in a hugely destructive blast. Definitely still a bit on the easier side by arcade standards, but never dull and pretty tense at points. The last stretch is nonstop screenwide destruction. I don't mind the short loop at all, the fast pacing suits it. Phenomenal soundtrack.

I realised why the MD's arcade mode feels easier than the AC version despite enemies not shooting any less. Since you've got a longer vertical playfield in the AC ver, enemies are onscreen longer and get more opportunities to shoot and congregate. Best to treat the port as its own entity, not that most of us wouldn't do that anyway.

Really happy with this game overall, lots of love went into this package. Incidentally, I don't recall any other games in my collection not displaying some variation of the classic blue/white gleaming Sega logo at bootup. Naughty Tengen! At least they didn't cook up some impossible-to-remove custom cart shell like they did on the NES.

[BrianC]

Really happy with this game overall, lots of love went into this package. Incidentally, I don't recall any other games in my collection not displaying some variation of the classic blue/white gleaming Sega logo at bootup. Naughty Tengen! At least they didn't cook up some impossible-to-remove custom cart shell like they did on the NES.

At least that shell looks pretty cool and reminds me on Genesis cart shells. I noticed MD/Genesis has a few custom cart shells (Taito and Sunsoft), but they don't vary as much as the JP Famicom shells, where Konami, Sunsoft, Namco, Irem, and Taito had their own designs. I like the standard cart shells for both JP and US MD/Genesis.