onmode-ky

This game was first announced quite a while ago, but then it got hit with a huge delay. In fact, I'd thought it was still in development even now, but it seems it was, in fact, released this summer in Japan. The delay was still very long, though, as it was originally planned to be out at the beginning of last year. Anyway, a few days ago, NIS America put up this poll for people to vote on what images will be on the inside face of the cover inlay. I was confused by their wording at first, but I think this is what's up: the front and back covers visible in an unopened copy of the game are already chosen, by NIS America themselves, and what you're voting on here are the front and back covers of the reverse side of the inlay--the top pick image will be the reverse's front cover, and the runner-up will be the reverse's back cover. Personally, I'd like to see choice #3 as the reverse's front cover, with choice #4 (those little things look a little like Patapons!) as the reverse's back cover. An interesting detail to glean from this poll: the official English title is The Witch and the Hundred Knight, not The Witch and the Hundred Knights. I wonder why that is. onmode-ky

214,500. Probably won't have time to try again later in the week. onmode-ky

My UMD copy of this arrived a week ago. For the most part, it looks like a typical UMD case, but the back cover has no description text whatsoever; it's just the wraparound of the front cover's background image, with the required legal and logo stuff at the bottom. On the plastic wrap (which is just a vacuum seal, not a Y-fold), there is a holographic Gaijinworks sticker in the upper left corner of the back cover, a sticker which is also on a Certificate of Perspicacity that came packaged with the UMD. The sticker is individually numbered (identical between the UMD case one and the one on the certificate, of course) for each of the ~3000 copies of the game. The certificate reads: Also, there are sprinklings of Latin at the borders. The lower left corner has "Anno Domini MMXIII" ("In the Year of the Lord 2013," of course). The left side has "Fac fortia et patere" (I had to look this up: "Do brave deeds and endure"). The right side says, "Vincit omnia veritas" ("Truth conquers all"). The bottom is where the fun stuff is. Across the bottom, there's "Quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur"; my amateur translation for this is "That which is said in Latin is viewed highly." The phrase is split a bit oddly, between "dictum" and "sit" (the latter being the verb for everything prior to it), and what is it that splits them? "MMMDCXCIX." That's the price of the UMD, 3699 cents. The bottom right seems to have a picture of a ninjutsu hand position. Someone was having fun. Incidentally, while this is the lowest North American UMD print run (not including that Hilton training UMD), the lowest UMD print run in the world seems to be the 300 copies of Elminage Original published by Ghostlight recently over in Europe. onmode-ky

Regarding the RedKid series of chips that AtGames has been using in its Sega Genesis compilation plug-n-play systems, I found a claim in a Sega-16.com thread last year that it's actually derived from the single-chip Genesis implementation that Radica created for their Arcade Legends (later renamed "Play TV Legends") Genesis systems in cooperation with Sega Toys (who sold them in Japan). There was no concrete proof given on that point, but the user did give a link to the summary of a lawsuit that he/she claimed led to that development. Starting from there, I found a partial trail that does seem to support the claim. The lawsuit cited is the only easily locatable part of a series of lawsuits, probably because it's the only one in a US District Court, rather than a California state court. The legal action story seems to start with Radica filing suit against AtGames. There is no date given for that action in this August 2005 SEC filing, but it says: The "previously" in that is in relation to the filing's primary topic, other legal conflict between Radica and AtGames during 2005 (which I'm about to get to). What we do get dates for, combining the US District Court case's summary and the SEC filing, are the following (note that the undated "previously" suit likely took place after some of these dated events, particularly the first one): - January 4, 2005: AtGames obtains an exclusive OEM license from Sega for their old platforms' software library. - March 2005: AtGames sublicenses some Sega titles to Jakks Pacific (almost undoubtedly for plug-n-play purposes). Recall that Digital Eclipse converted a few EA Sports Genesis titles to the Sunplus SPG110 for Jakks Pacific. I don't know precisely when that was done (though Jakks' EA license acquisition itself was announced in July 2004), but a January 2005 Amazon.com user review proves it was released earlier than this action. As the conversion was primarily done via an automated, custom tool (created by noted Atari 8-bit programmer John Harris), further Genesis projects likely could have been done with minimal resource investment. The Genesis library was thus probably that much more attractive to Jakks--or, well, maybe Jakks would have just used AtGames' Titan hardware, but I think it would not have been to their satisfaction. - March 2005: AtGames sends a letter to Radica, challenging their exclusive plug-n-play Sega license. Radica meets with Sega and threatens them with legal action if Sega allows AtGames' Jakks agreement to proceed. Sega decides to side with Radica. - April 2005: AtGames commences arbitration against Sega, scheduled to begin in November 2005. - June 13, 2005: AtGames launches a civil suit against Radica in California Superior Court, "alleging intentional interference with contract and unfair competition." - July 12, 2005: Radica files to get the action moved to federal court, based on a legal convention about foreign arbitral awards. - October 7, 2005: US District Court grants AtGames' motion to remand back to state court, based on the fact that no arbitration agreement exists between Radica and AtGames. That's all I have, unfortunately. Nothing about what actually happened during the AtGames-Sega arbitration. What the Sega-16.com forum user asserts is that the settlement resulted in a sharing agreement between Radica and AtGames, including Radica's Genesis hardware forming a new base on which AtGames built their subsequent Genesis products. There is one AtGames-side element that vaguely supports this assertion. My LinkedIn quote in post #40 of this thread, from the AtGames engineer, says about the RK/RK2 (RedKid) chips, "Conducted technology transfer." When read with no context, this phrase could have many possible meanings. With Radica added into the picture, though, it suddenly could refer to the transfer of Radica's Genesis technology to AtGames, then getting modified to become RedKid. Therefore, it does seem quite possible that AtGames' 2012 Sega Genesis plug-n-play systems are direct descendents of Radica's 2004 Arcade Legends Genesis line. An interesting find! Radica itself, meanwhile, was bought by Mattel in 2006 and is no longer in the plug-n-play market (they do other tech toys for Mattel now). onmode-ky

Actually, per my findings as reported in this post and the one right after it, AtGames has used Genesis-on-a-chip implementations since at least 2008. The game ROMs run natively on the RedKid/RedKid 2 chip, not through an emulation layer. Any infidelity to the original Genesis is due to incomplete reproduction of the original architecture's behavior, the same as how most NES-on-a-chip implementations do not have full, 100% authentic reproduction of the original NES' behavior. Just as reproducing an architecture in software (i.e., emulation) can introduce errors, so can reproducing an architecture via a single-chip consolidation. Personally, I'm still unable to withstand AtGames' 2012 Genesis products' sound problems (different channels seem to play in different keys), so they still have some work to do. As for the Flashback 3 and 4, those do run via emulation, on their Titan ARM chip. Well, no, since it does not run on emulation. "To emulate" means "to pretend to be like" something else. In computing terms, the pretending aspect is the practice of running a different instruction set on the host hardware, by inserting a translation step in the middle. This is usually accomplished via software, i.e., an emulation program. Hardware emulation is hardly ever done outside of labs; that's where you build additional hardware on top of the host hardware to do the instruction translation. If your host hardware already uses the same instruction set as your software, then it isn't called "emulation" at all. It's just natively compatible--even if it doesn't replicate all the behaviors properly. Do you remember the floating point problem with early Pentium chips? Later revisions fixed the problem. However, the fact that the two don't have the same behavior doesn't make one an emulation of the other; they both run the x86 instruction set, just with occasionally different behavior. You can say I'm being too picky with the definition of "emulation," but since we are specifically discussing whether or not things run through hardware here, I thought we needed to clarify the terminology. In summary: - AtGames' SMS/GG systems - hardware natively runs the game ROMs, on the Noza chip - AtGames' (current) Genesis systems - hardware natively runs the game ROMs, on the RK or RK2 chip; their older systems may have run via emulation - AtGames' 2600 systems - hardware runs the game ROMs through an emulator program, on the Titan chip - AtGames' Intellivision systems - unknown right now onmode-ky P.S. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind on how they feel about AtGames' products. Your reaction is based on the end result; I'm just clarifying details of what's under the hood.

20,630. A pretty hard game. Getting past 5000 is not guaranteed for me. Anyone want to compare lowest scores? I think I got a 350 once. onmode-ky

Strange that the C64 DTV plug-n-play is hard to find nowadays. It had multiple revisions, and even the first revision had its first production run in the quarter million range (reports at the time, repeated now on Wikipedia, say QVC's purchase of that full run numbered ~250,000). I guess they just rarely go up for sale these days. The PSP camera you have is the 1.3-megapixel original model. At the time, Sony didn't release any game software for use with it. Like the PSP's GPS add-on that also never released in North America, it was just added functionality. A few years later, Sony developed a 0.3-megapixel camera model (i.e., it can go up to 640 x 480 for still pictures), cheap enough so that it could be bundled with newly developed games without impacting the price significantly. The first such game was Invizimals, developed by Spanish studio Novarama and released in Europe in 2009. An augmented reality game reminiscent of Pokémon (capturing and battling creatures), it was popular enough in Europe to spawn two sequels on the PSP (in 2010 and 2011), and a PSV game and PS3 game are scheduled for debut in February 2014 alongside a 26-episode animated series. North America got the first and second games only, and both were a year behind their European releases. Aside from the Invizimals trilogy, the PSP camera is also used by the PSP edition of EyePet and its sequel, released in 2010/2011 (North America didn't get the sequel; clearly, the European PSP market has been livelier than the American one for this demographic). If you want something really unique for your PSP, definitely look these up. onmode-ky

Wow, an entire bookcase! Are any of those opened (all of mine are)? AtGames might not be using ARM-based chips anymore. Given that their current Genesis systems are all GOACs, they may have switched architectures for other projects, too. But, I'm just nitpicking here, and I do think it's likely that the Intellivision will be emulated, ARM or whatever. Bill Loguidice feels they're going for a fair amount of authenticity with the project. Personally, the last plug-n-play that got me really interested was the 2011 Taito one that Jakks did, which you also have. The fact that Code Mystics developed it with their emulation engine played a big part in it catching my eye. More recently, I was also rather interested in this year's Star Wars Clone Trooper game (enough to drive half an hour into unfamiliar territory to find one), but that was more out of curiosity regarding certain technical aspects of it rather than personal interest. Sure you have! It's in my picture up above, in post #61! It's at a different angle in my shot, though, and I only mention it in my picture's description as "Capcom." raindog is right; that one is the "capcom (gk)" line in my list. I remember that when I saw the press release about it in 2004, I was very excited, because 1942 was the exact title I was really hoping to see in one of these retro plug-n-plays. Little did I know it would be nearly 2 years before it was actually released--and then when it did, it seemingly was restricted to Canada for many months. I gave up waiting for it to show up in my local stores and asked a relative in Vancouver to get me one from a Future Shop/Best Buy (thus, mine has a bilingual box). I think I only ended up seeing it in a store myself one time, in a Toys 'R Us a long time later. Thankfully, it fully lived up to expectations when I finally did get and play it. The ports of the 3 games play very well. I think you should open yours up, raindog. Incidentally, while some Capcom games for the Genesis have seen plug-n-play releases, no other Capcom arcade plug-n-play ever got released--but Jakks Pacific had plans for more. As noted at my site, ports for Mega Man, Section Z, Gun.Smoke, and Mega Man 2 were all worked on, by two different studios at different times, and the latter pair were even completed and ESRB-rated. The former pair, meanwhile, seem to have been started on even before the games that did get released. Say, if anyone here has a Flashback 3 or 4 (the AtGames Flashbacks), would you mind opening it up and posting a picture of its PCB? One of my first clues that AtGames had switched processors on their Genesis systems was from a picture of a recent model's PCB, which had some ID data silk screened on it. I'd like to see if the Flashbacks may have that as well. onmode-ky P.S. I recently took a photo of the PCB in a Bandai Pac-Man Connect-and-Play (2012). It has an 8-MB SDRAM module (overkill for those games?), 2 glob tops (presumably ROM and MCU), something I think is an EEPROM (save data), and no useful text printed anywhere. Bandai implied in its PR statements that the system ran on emulation, but I still don't know what chip it uses.

I've made what is likely to be the last update of 2013 to my plug-n-play info website, including the latest pair of pnpgames*.txt files (also attached to this thread's first post). The main updates of note: all post-2007 AtGames Sega Genesis/Mega Drive systems are now identified as running their games natively rather than through an emulation layer (and the chips AtGames uses for its Sega products have been added to the CPU data table); both of Jakks Pacific's 2013 models (Duck Commander and Star Wars Clone Trooper light-gun-style games) are now dated with actual retail appearances; AtGames' Intellivision announcement is included; some older AtGames systems have had their game lists added to the Retro Contents page; a nifty easter egg in a (non-retro) new release has been added to the hidden codes section. As usual, my site's revision history lists all the changes in detail. So far, it still looks like 2013 will only have 2 new products in the plug-n-play category, the gun games from Jakks. AtGames announced the Intellivision tie-up, but it was revealed so recently that I think there's a good chance there won't be an actual release from the venture during 2013. They also have other products in the works, but given that they haven't been revealed yet at all, it's difficult to say what might arrive before the end of the year. All in all, the Intellivision announcement spices things up a bit, but 2013 is still on track to be the deadest year for plug-n-play since the market's revival. onmode-ky

Nitro Ball: 2,851,440 Pinball Action: 481,580 I didn't play much of the former. I really like pinball, though, so I worked on Pinball Action . . . but man, what awful physics. In Pinball Arcade, my accuracy is pretty good, but in this game, it's like shooting in the dark sometimes. There was even a game where I scored less than 14,000 points total. And after racking up my high score above, further efforts went straight into the toilet; I was scoring less than the first extra ball marker half the time, maybe worse. Really, I don't know how to account for such a dramatic dive in my scores. Didn't feel tired, but still, I guess my recommendation for how to do well at Pinball Action is "don't play for too long"! onmode-ky

Thanks for your help! Is that how the games are listed in the system menu (I kind of expected them to put the Sonic games at the front, as they've done on some other units)? I notice that some of the titles have been shortened, which I'm guessing is to make them fit on the menu screen. I'm confused about Opa-Opa, though; this was the Japanese title of Fantasy Zone: The Maze, but that title already appears earlier in the list. What's the title of the actual games that load when you pick these two selections from the menu? Are they really the same game, with regionally different title screens? Or is maybe one of them Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa? FunPlay, eh? Yet another brand under which the SMS/GG 20-in-1 appeared (though you never knew if the game selection got changed each time). These first appeared in late 2006, the very first one to attract attention being the Coleco-branded model (noteworthy because they were being sold in Target stores). Another brand at around that same time was PlayPal. All of these are by AtGames, just licensed out. onmode-ky

Yes, but the part of the packaging with all the Metroid Prime imagery is actually just a slipcover (i.e., it only has 4 sides). Once you slide that off, the box within is a standard Limited Edition Platinum GameCube box. It may be that the slipcover that was around your box was discarded or lost. Or, maybe your game and system were just purchased separately. Sorry for adding some confusion to your topic. onmode-ky

I'll take you up on that offer. In fact, the POGA model illustrates the problems I have with tracking AtGames. I don't even have it in the plug-n-play lists that I keep both at my website and in the Comprehensive Listing topic here in the Dedicated Systems subforum. That's probably either because I thought it was just a renaming of a previous release (though I see now that this one has 30 games, not 20 like the first SMS/GG releases) or because I couldn't tell at the time if this was actually released (there are some things listed at AtGames' site that don't seem to have made it out to consumers). The POGA's listing at their website doesn't even use the name "POGA," despite their picture of the packaging clearly having that name on it. On top of that, if you search "sega poga" on YouTube, there are no results for this product, and what you get instead is a different product with that name, a handheld system that takes Genesis cartridges. So, is there more than one POGA? Is it a product line, not a single product? Or is it just a poorly thought out reuse of a name? Anyway, is there a date anywhere on your POGA or its packaging? I'd like to know at least the year of release, so I know where to stick it (my lists are chronologically ordered). If I were to guess, I'd say 2010, but that's just conjecture. If you're comfortable opening up the unit, there's probably also a date printed on the PCB. onmode-ky

Since your GameCube is Platinum and has its box, were these (according to said box) the pack-ins? My own GameCube is a Platinum model that came with Metroid Prime and the bonus disc. The box is themed around the game, so it's easy to tell that they were initially together. onmode-ky

I've noted this before in another topic, but if you're specifically interested in plug-n-play systems which contain retro games, I do keep a page at my website which lists which games are reproduced on which systems. It could be helpful if you're trying to determine whether a specific game has had a plug-n-play release. I don't have complete AtGames coverage, though; over the years, they put out so many SMS and Genesis/MD releases, with such poor differentiation and documentation, that I didn't try to sort it all out. Also, I don't cover any unlicensed releases. onmode-ky

Forgot about this until about 10 minutes ago. . . . 5000. I don't even know what the other button is for yet! I've just been throwing passes. onmode-ky

I have news to share! My speculations in the post above that AtGames' latest Genesis/Mega Drive systems have been based not around a software emulator running on an ARM implementation, but rather a Genesis-compatible (mostly) RK2 chip, are indeed true. But that's not the biggest news here. No, the biggest news is: our assumptions that AtGames Genesis systems run via emulator on their Titan ARM have been incorrect since at least the very beginning of this topic, over 5 years ago! Take a look at the first few posts in this topic. Do you see the references to "RedKid cartridges"? It turns out that the "RK" in the RK and RK2 16-bit chips' names is merely an abbreviation for "RedKid"! While the term "RedKid" was shortly superseded in the consumer-facing space by "Firecore," this means that since at least mid-2008, AtGames' Genesis systems have run not through emulation on an ARM but rather through Genesis-on-a-chip hardware. Obviously, it is not a 1-to-1 perfect GOAC, but then, compatibility is a frequent issue with NOACs as well. What does this revelation mean for the consumer? Nothing, really; what you're buying is still a device that plays Genesis games with varying degrees of fidelity. However, everything that has been discussed around the Internet about AtGames products using an ARM derivative and a Genesis emulator has been wrong, at least for the past half decade. While it is true that they worked on a Genesis emulator on ARM architecture, and it is true that they developed an ARM-based chip called "Titan," we don't actually know for sure (yet) if those two things were ever used in an actual released product. If they were, that was only done for a couple of years for so, before the advent of the RK chips. History is written corrected by the victors researchers! onmode-ky

Hmm, it sounds like you may be under the impression that this is the first appearance of Shantae since her original GBC game. If that's so, and if you have a compatible system, I advise you to check out Shantae: Risky's Revenge on DSi/3DS or iOS. Originally released as DSiWare in 2010, it's the first Shantae sequel. A third game in the series is coming soon to the 3DS eShop, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse. Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, if successfully funded, will be the first Shantae game not originating on a Nintendo handheld, but it's definitely not her first appearance since 2002. I'm still trying to pick a backer tier. onmode-ky

I thought at first that maybe the text was just poorly organized, and those sentences weren't actually meant to describe Mega Man but rather some other game mentioned in close proximity. However, a look at the actual paragraph makes it clear that he really [thought he was] was talking about Mega Man. It's a passage which starts out talking about Capcom USA's NES censoring, though, so I'm inclined to think he may not have been talking about either Alex Kidd or Bubble Bobble. Can anyone think of any Capcom NES games that had a character eating hot dogs for energy? Incidentally, I was playing Wild ARMs some time ago, in which the female of the 3 main player characters has a huge appetite for hamburgers in the English version. Hamburgers are certainly not an alien food in Japan, so it was entirely possible that it was hamburgers to begin with in the Japanese release of the game, but I went looking in Japanese Wikipedia to check. It turns out that the hamburgers she adored were originally yakisoba (a Japanese fried noodle dish). onmode-ky

I'm submitting two scores, because I'm not sure which one is really at the settings we're meant to use. I assumed when I started playing that we were using the default settings, as we typically do. Without looking at the dip switches, I reached: 54,970. Mind you, in my first 10 tries or so of this, I never scored higher than 2200 and was getting pretty frustrated because it felt like the game simply wasn't responding to my directional inputs. Then I realized that, uh, it really wasn't responding to my directional inputs, because I was using my controller's directional pad when the game was listening on the left analog stick. -_-;; I swapped the controller's stick and pad inputs, and voila! Much more playable game. After recording that high score, I glanced at the dip switches just to make sure, and I saw that they said "Difficulty ? Hard." We're not using the default settings? I switched it to Easy and retried the game . . . but it was noticeably more difficult after the first area! Try as I might, I could not get any higher than: 38,590. But, which one is the right setting? The default is apparently not Easy, but Easy is harder than Hard . . . is my MAME just screwed up? At any rate, if we're supposed to be on the default, 54,970; if we're supposed to be on the Easy setting that is actually harder, 38,590. onmode-ky

Do the three of you have Ys Seven? Xseed's limited edition of that also came with a cloth map. I actually have three of said map, through various unusual circumstances. From what I've been hearing, the soon to release Killzone: Mercenary is the cure for that problem. onmode-ky

57. No time to try making it through the whole game, unfortunately. onmode-ky

Based on Amazon.co.jp, it doesn't seem like it (top group is "Used - Acceptable [Condition]" copies, while bottom group is New copies). Do you have a Game Boy Player? I imported mine when Play-Asia.com had them at a discount, because I wanted it to match my GameCube's color (and I think we only got the black one in North America?). Of course, you would need to run Freeloader every time you used it. Personally, if I were going to Japan, I'd look for handheld (except 3DS) and PS3 games, since those are inherently region free. One of my imported GameCube games spews garbage instead of Japanese text on the screen when I'm running it via Freeloader. Or maybe I'd look for a cheap Japanese PS2 and copies of Namco X Capcom and Thunder Force VI. Oh, and I'd probably also shop for a lot of anime, manga, and assorted merchandise, but that's another story. onmode-ky

The Mortal Kombat plug-n-play reviewed very well back when it released. It leaves out some of the graphical effects and requires a pause for memory swapping when characters get switched during gameplay, but it plays accurately to the original arcade game. A while back, I posted some details about the underlying hardware of this system. The port was done by Chris Burke via line-by-line translation from the original arcade source code. Same here. Oh, and $5 for Brave Fencer Musashi, new? Sure beats Amazon Marketplace sellers' $80 and up prices. We still don't have the game in the PlayStation Store's PS1 Classics section, either. onmode-ky

25,090. Is it just me, or does the car sometimes not respond to your input for a moment? I had a crash in which I was very much pressing left while the car continued toward the right, into a pursuer. And more than one time, I hit the wall at the top or bottom of the screen and then just stopped, for a crash from behind, even though I was pressing left or right (and no, not arrow intersections). onmode-ky