gdri.smspower.orgGDRI :: Game Developer Research Institute

Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. Main Page From Game Developer Research Institute Jump to: navigation , search FOLLOW GDRI ON TWITTER :: Recent Changes GDRI (Game Developer Research Institute) is a website dedicated to researching the companies and people involved with video game development, especially the hidden world of contract development. To find out more about who we are and what we do, read our about page . Otherwise, please click one of the links on the menu to the left, or read our blog below. (For increased enjoyment, go to a random page .) Car Race (MSX) CRV ( talk ) 00:09, 20 April 2020 (UTC) Everyone's got to start somewhere, and everyone includes Kan Naito. Naito is better known as the founder of Climax Entertainment, the company behind Landstalker , Dark Savior , and Runabout , but he made his professional debut as a teenager back in 1983 with this MSX title. (He wrote about it in his column in Mega Drive Fan magazine .) [UPDATE!] Naito has corrected me on Twitter and said his first game was Neko no Bouken ( 猫の冒険 ) for the PC-6001 . Now back to Car Race ... It's a rather simple game: Drive your car down the road, avoid other cars, and pick up fuel. It's also somewhat counter-intuitive because the faster you drive, the less fuel you use. You need to step on the gas right away, or you will drain quickly. Car Race was published by Ample Software, where Naito was working part-time. Yuichiro Itakura and Manabu Yamana also worked there. Itakura left and started Zap , where he was joined again by Naito and Yamana. Naito and Yamana then headed over to Chunsoft, where they worked on Dragon Quest games, and the rest is history. Chase H.Q. (X68000) CRV ( talk ) 05:04, 11 April 2020 (UTC) The Sharp X68000 is renowned for its high-quality arcade ports, but they can't all be winners. Take Chase H.Q. ...please. Just look at it. The sprites are all pixelated, the scaling is choppy, and there are no branching paths. The music is pretty rockin', though. One tweet alleges the X68000 version of Chase H.Q. was supposed to be published by Dexter under the name Chaser H.Q. So far I have not been able to substantiate that. Instead, it was released as a genuine port via Brother's Takeru vending machines through Tierheit, which was actually a brand used by developer Falcon . Falcon did not develop it, however; it was by a group called RAY-NET. I'm not sure if it's accurate to call RAY-NET a doujin group; the aforementioned tweet refers to them as an "amateur group." They also wrote tools and music drivers that were also used in games like the X68000 version of Pipe Dream . Five Games Nobody "Finished" (So Finish Them!) CRV ( talk ) 03:33, 5 April 2020 (UTC) (Presumably people have beat these games, just not on Youtube where we can all see it and get the credits.) 1. Spiral Wave (PC Engine) An obscure game even in Japanese circles, I think. It's a third-person shooter with a lot of text. Fortunately, I did find someone who said they worked on it at Gingham Soft . [more...] Wing Arms/Musashi/Formation Attack CRV ( talk ) 03:59, 29 March 2020 (UTC) Someday I need to write up a post about Wing Arms for the Saturn (or maybe this is enough). It's a 3D flight game featuring WWII-era aircraft where you shoot down other planes and ships and such. It was by a little-known developer called Bell that had some former T&E Soft members on staff. Programmer Tetsuya Yamamoto revealed in The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers: Volume 2 that Wing Arms is essentially an update of a PC (Japanese DOS/V) game Bell made called Musashi . While Wing Arms has different missions, the sole mission of Musashi is to sink a giant battleship. There's very little information about Musashi , but I did find a page with some screenshots . A few months later, I noticed another Bell programmer had a game called Formation Attack on his Facebook profile . I figured this was some other game. Then by chance I found an ad for it in Computer Gaming World Issue 121 (see right). It looks to be the US version of Musashi . There's no proof this ever came out, and I've never even heard of Spunky Computers U.S.A. before. It's an odd name and an odd logo, and I can find no record of such a company existing. Hmmm...I suppose this post had no point to it, but what else what do you have to do? Arcade Classics (Game Gear/Genesis) CRV ( talk ) 23:46, 16 October 2019 (UTC) I told you about a lawsuit Atari Corp. launched against Sega of America in 1993 that alleged infringement of a patent concerning horizontal scrolling ( US patent #4,445,114 ; originally filed by Atari, Inc. back in 1980). As part of a settlement, both parties agreed to a cross-licensing deal. That meant Sega games could appear on Atari systems, and Atari games could appear on Sega systems. Would Sonic have his own game on Jaguar? It sure seemed like a possibility. As it turns out, Sonic was not even on the table (see previous post on the lawsuit), and according to Atari president and CEO Sam Tramiel in a November 1995 interview with Ultimate Gamer , there was one additional catch — the games had to be at least a year old. He went on to say they'd have to wait for games like Virtua Fighter , even though the arcade version of that came out in 1993. Since this deal only seemed to apply to home games (again, see previous post on the lawsuit), they probably had to wait for the Saturn and 32X versions to become available. This would also mean Sega had to wait for Kasumi Ninja *, released in December 1994 (or so the Internet says). In the meantime, they licensed some of Atari's (home versions of) arcade favorites. These would be released in a collection for the Game Gear and Genesis simply called Arcade Classics . Development duties fell to a small contractor near Chicago called Al Baker & Associates , which did Disney's Bonkers: Wax Up and Taz in Escape from Mars for Game Gear. From the old Al Baker & Associates website : "Sega wanted three Atari classics converted to the Genesis with as much integrity as possible. Each game would have two play modes: the orginal [sic] game and an updated version. "7800 Centipede and 2600 Missile Command were converted from the original 6502 assembly language code to the Z80 for the Game Gear version and then from the Z80 to the 68000 for the Genesis. While all the code specifically associated with sound and graphics had to be re-written, the initial conversions were done using our own 6502 to Z80 and Z80 to 68000 assembly language converters. " Pong , a hard-wired console game which was reverse engineered for the Game Gear, was initially converted from the Game Gear to the Genesis using our Z80 to 68000 assembly language converter. The video and sound modules were then rewritten to complete the process. All its play modes were faithfully reproduced." (Given the hockey variations included [and the fact it's called Ultrapong in-game], Pong appears to be based off of Atari's Ultra Pong system .) Keep in mind when Sega's compilation was released. The year was 1996. It was the early days of emulation on PCs, Digital Eclipse's Williams Arcade Classics was out, and the Namco Museum series was on its way. Retrogaming was on an upswing. Then again, this was also the twilight period after the Saturn came out when most people, and even Sega, stopped caring about the Genesis and Game Gear. For that reason (not the lack of games), and that reason alone (because everybody was itching to play Pong again), Arcade Classics — the only product to come out of this Sega-Atari licensing deal — was quickly forgotten. *It is not known if Sega had any interest in Kasumi Ninja . Post updated June 15, 2020 Monopoly (Game Boy Color) CRV ( talk ) 19:22, 27 May 2019 (UTC) Back in 2010, I interviewed programmer Scott Marshall, who worked on Ghoul School , R.C. Grand Prix , and Genesis Frogger , among other games. He also adapted the Game Boy version of Monopoly (origin...