Sunday, December 25, 2011

Magic Lamp Scans (English Release)

 Happy Festivus Merry Christmas everyone!  My present to you all are scans of the rare English release of Gowin/Hotkid's Magic Lamp, an Arabian-themed Megaman clone.  Enjoy!









Friday, December 23, 2011

Collection Update #09 - 12/23/2011

  OH~ BABY~

  I've hit the motherload!  After FINALLY finding a site that can order from Ruten (I'm planning on doing a post on the site; it's called Taiwan Shopoholic if anybody's curious) and went crazy on some awesome unlicensed stuff.  Awesome stuff such as:


-Jurassic Boy 2 [超音速迅猛龍2銀 - Supersonic Raptor 2 Silver]: Sachen's GB port of their NES title Jurassic Boy.  The manual's in Chinese, and the cart is a shiny silver color.  One thing to note is that they released the GB port of Thunder Blast Man as Rocman X Gold (which I have a copy of) so they were meant to be "version counterparts" with one another despite them not having anything in common.  Another thing is that the title screen shows "Sachen (R)" in tiny white text at the bottom, but it seems to be the same as the ROM dump otherwise.  Says "Sachen" at bootup.

-Monopoly Madness [瘋狂大富翁]: At first I though it was the same as the ROM dump, but it's actually a prequel!  If you've played the ROM, you'd notice this...


...Which the name translates as "Monopoly Madness Gold Version" and the header to the ROM calls it "CRAZY RICHMAN 2"...This should've all been obvious, but I guess I was deceived by the Winsen copy (and the fact that unlicensed companies love to give their games life fifty different  titles.  For example, Rockman and Crystal also goes under the names Zook Hero 3, Battle Network Rockman Crystal, and Zook Man ZX4(?!)  Imagine how annoying that is when you're trying to find a copy of the game.)  The Winsen copy of the sequel has just "Monopoly Madness" on the label.  The game featues a different intro, soundtrack, and four less characters than Gold Version.  It also plays at a slower pace, which makes the game kinda boring at times.  The title theme is the same song as the third level in Pocket Monster 2 for the Megadrive (that castle level), so I'm guessing it's the same composer in this game as that one.  There's more differences to this game, both features and graphics, but I'm gonna try and do a video of it to show off everything.  Says "V.Fame" at bootup.

-Gals Fighter 2000 [女王格鬥2000 - 2000 Queen of Fighting]: A fighting game by Vast Fame that features a bunch of female SNK characters.  The gameplay is similar to E'Fighters HOT and Mark of the Wolves, two games assumed to be either Sintax (due to it plagarizing music from KOF '95, I believe) or Vast Fame.  I'm guessing those two were co-developed like Harry Potter 3 is believed to have been.  Anyway, the game features a great original soundtrack (like always) that features the first battle theme from San Guo Zhi and Shui Hu Shen Shou with a drum track added.  Quite a bit of fun.  I've noticed one character seems to be Sakura Kinomoto from Cardcaptor Sakura, though I think it's supposed to be Clara Hananokouji from Power Instinct or someone similar (though the game simply calls her "Mia").  Says "V.Fame" at bootup.

-Magic Lamp: I actually got this by accident, while someone else on one of the forums I frequent got my game (it was a complete copy of San Guo Zhi: Lie Chuan/Aoshi Tianjia).  Anyways, it's a platformer akin to Megaman, but not nearly as good.  The manual and game are in (surprisingly!) good English, but the game itself is the same as the Chinese version otherwise.  I plan on scanning this before I swap it with the guy for San Guo Zhi, probably the next update.  Says "Hotkid" on bootup.


-Shi Kong Xing Shou [時空星獸 - Space-Time Star Beast]: An awesome Pokemon clone by Vast Fame.  Features the same gameplay as Shui Hu Shen Shou, but with a more futuristic setting.  The game's the same as the ROM dump from the multicart.  Says "V.Fame" on bootup.

-Jurassic Boy 2 (again) - Another copy, since I wasn't sure if I'd get the complete copy before the listing ended.  Doesn't feature the Sachen copyright, but it does have different physics.  The best I can describe it is playing the game on a monochrome system, but without the lag.  To be more specific, Chen doesn't jump as high or move as fast (though he's still pretty damn fast) as the ROM dump, and you can do short hops in this version.  I want to say that it's a later copy that re-balances the physics to their appropriate level, but I'm not sure if this came first or not...You're weird, Sachen.  Says "Sachen" on bootup.

-Digimon Crystal: Same as the undumped Chinese version of Digital Monster 3, but published by Winsen.  Nothing else different about the game besides that, as far as I can tell.  I also got another generic copy of this game, but whatever.  Says "Nintoude" on bootup.

-Shui Hu Shen Shou Guidebook: A guidebook to Vast Fame's other fun Pokemon clone.  This seems to be published by a third party, as it also advertises for two pages a guide for Jun Tei Tai Sen, Zelda: Oracle of Ages, and Keitai Denjuu Telefang.  Has a complete walkthrough of the game, a list of monsters and their stats/attacks, attacks and their effects, character bios, etc.  It's all in Chinese, but it's pretty thorough.  I'll eventually scan all of this, hopefully before next Christmas.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Collection Update #08 - 12/04/2011 (Digimon Ruby GBC)

  Only one thing for the time being, but there will be a huge influx of spiffy Chinese crap coming in soon, including stuff from Ruten!  For now, we have...










  ...Digimon Ruby!  And no, the screenshots don't lie: it is in fact an Engrish translation of Digimon 3 Crystal, AKA Digital Monster 3.  Interesting things to note: the music is the same as the ROM version, which steals its soundtrack from another game of theirs, Shui Hu Shen Shou.  Another thing is that on bootup it shows a "Ruby" screen with three red diamonds on it, almost exactly like the bootup intro from Digimon Saphire.  Speaking of Digimon Saphire, the cover art for Ruby is very similar to Saphire's; the logo, background, etc. making me believe that New Game published my version of Saphire.  Lastly, I'm beginning to think that they might have published Pokemon Ruby as well.  They both have the same bland cartridge mold, both stick out of my Game Boy a bit when inserted all the way, and Pokemon Ruby was an Engrish release as well.  Edit: Codeman38 has confirmed that they DID publish Pokemon Ruby, and that my copy of Digimomn Yellow Jade and Digimon Amethyst have the same label design.  Thanks, man!
  Last thing I wanted to point out is that you start off with an oddball team.  You have two Lv 99 Cyclopsmons and an Andromon, a Lv 50 Tanemon and Motimon (which is called "Sticky Biscuit" in this game, amusingly) and your starter Digimon at Lv 04 (since I was TK, it was Tokomon, or "Diker Beast").  All except for the starter Digimon have about 3/4 of their health depleted.  I'm guessing they were meant for testing purposes but Vast Fame/New Game didn't bother resetting the team.  Finally, the game says "Nintendo" on bootup, just like Digimon Saphire and Pokemon Ruby.
  I'll put up a video sometime soon.  It won't be so much of actual gameplay, but rather the different bits of dialogue from the characters.  The game's pretty much the same as what we know, so it'd pay off more to show off the ridiculous Engrish writing than the dungeons and battles (I'll show at least one battle to give an idea of how the Engrish fits in).  Until next time!

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Feng Shen Banged

  Well, yesterday I discovered two things with Xin Feng Shen Bang that has ended up being both good and bad news.  Bad news first; I seem to have glitched the game out in a weird way (it happens right after the hawk guy leaves your team...Dunno his name off-hand): after that event, if you backtrack to the first "world map" you'll get stuck there.  If you keep going back to the first town, you can end up trapped in the upper area of town.  AND on top of that, certain events/bosses repeat themselves over again, even though I cleared them ages ago.  The second thing is that despite there being three save files, if you choose "new game" at the title screen, it'll erase all your saved data, even if you don't save.  This doesn't happen in any other Vast Fame title that I know of, and is really stupid as hell.  And thanks to those two things (regarding the first one, I'd probably have to restart anyway since not all the events are present.) I have to do the entire game over from scratch due to Vast Fame's rare occurence of incompetency.

  ...Fuck.

  The good news?  Just so I don't have to bother with it later on, I will be posting up casual playthrough videoes of the game like I did with Rockman Z.  I plan on working it to where I'll cut out backtracking and grinding to keep down the tedium, and I'll probably be doing it dungeon-by-dungeon, or whatever works best.  I also want to try recording music from the game as well, but how I want to do it I'm not certain on yet.  It would either be through my Game Boy Player (likely just the raw video to prevent the quality from downgrading a lot) or through an audio cable which would capture it in mono (example), so let me know which you would prefer (the cable would make it easier to do an MP3 soundtrack of the game, fyi).  If I have to play through this entire damn thing again, I want to be sure that I can get everything out of it right then and there.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Collection Update #07 - 09/09/2011

  Due to things in real life, such as the pursuit for my own place sometime before the new year, my collecting has slowed down quite a bit.  I still keep an eye out for interesting stuff, I'm just being more selective about it.  Anyways, more games:




(Clockwise from top-left:)


Digital Dragon [数码暴龙4水晶 - Digimon 4 Crystal]: Waixing's port of Digimon 3 Crystal by Vast Fame, which also goes under the name Digital Monster 3.  The manual is actually a full image manual rather than a handful of text pages like they normally do.  Fun fact: these square-boxed Waixing games are actually fairly-recent reprints, while the rectangular ones are the original releases.  They even have the same Izzy x Mimi box cover shown on their website where they advertise their other Famicom releases.  Same as ROM dump.


Doraemon [机器猫小叮当 - Machine Cat Small Ding Dong]: The strange Chinese name is supposed to be a combination of the two different names Doraemon goes under in China.  This is the Somari hack Waixing made that slightly improves the original game (and by that I mean it has better music, graphics, and slightly better level design).  One funny thing about the manual is that it's literally two pages long; it's just the outer cover with a summary of controls and story on the inside.  Same as ROM dump.


Bao Xiao San Guo [爆笑三国]: Also goes under the misname "Bao Xiao Tien Guo" and "Explosion Sangokushi".  It's a comedy-based SRPG where you control the three main protagonists from Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  It's kinda lackluster, honestly; none of your teammates can die (if you do, it's game over) and you have to heal them by skipping a turn, which revives about 10/15 HP a turn.  One thing I've noticed about this game is that it has a big Dragon Co. vibe going for it, in terms of graphics, audio, and even the iffy frame rate.  I'm not sure if it's a Dragon Co. game or if it's a pure Waixing project, but it sounds and feels very much like their Felix bootleg.  Anyway, it's the same as the ROM dump.


Digimon Pocket [數碼暴龍 口袋版]: Once again, I save the best for last.  This recent Taobao find is a different revision from the game found on the Silver Version 12-in-1 multicart.  Like with Digimon 3 Crystal, the only huge difference is that it shares the same soundtrack as their Pokemon Ruby game, with each track used in the same places as that game.  The only other differences I noticed is that A: Pabumon's electric ball attack doesn't seem as effective as in the multicart version (on the multicart, the attack drains most of the enemy's health in one shot, no matter what enemy it is) and B: the main character sprite is a Gold-esique character that was an NPC in Digimon 3 Crystal, instead of Tai's sprite.  Says "DIGI." on startup, exactly the same as in the link.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Collection Update #06 - 07/23/2011

  Keep on truckin' with another update (in "Z" formation):


Digimon Crystal Version [数码暴龙 水晶版] - It's Vast Fame's well-known Digimon RPG, but this one has all-original music!  And as usual, it's quite good.  Everything else about it is the same.  This also has save files on it for the end of the game, so I'll put up the ending as well as gameplay footage in the near future.  Says "DIGI" on bootup, though unlike the link it's in italics without the period at the end.

Digimon Crystal Version (again) - Just a generic bootleg of the previous game.  Says "Nintendo" on bootup.

Rockman 2002 DX3 [洛克人 2002 DX3] - Is this an official copy of Rockman DX3?!  Nope, another bootleg.  It's the very common version we've known for years, with all save files cleared.  Says "Nintendo" on bootup.

GB 2-in-1 - The first game is a hack of a strategy RPG (Fire Emblem?) with a poorly hacked Banpresto logo, and the other is Vast Fame's San Guo Zhi RPG.  Says "Nintendo" on bootup.  This is the last of the boring stuff, thankfully.

Spiderman 3 [蜘蛛俠3] - A platformer that tries to have beat-em-up gameplay but fails.  Has Pokemon Pinball's music (which sounds hilariously out of place at times) and the first boss is, oddly enough, Wolverine of the X-Men.  You can slowly climb up walls and launch a paralyzing web shot by crouching and pressing B.  It's not too bad, though the bosses are very easy since the enemy becomes "transparent" from temporary invincibility after each hit.  Says "Kwichvu" on startup, just like all of Sintax's games.

Metal Gear Solid 2 [合金裝備II] - This one has the same game engine as San Goku Shi - Act C, except without all the neat combos or the fourth part of the basic combo attack.  You don't do much damage, but you can juggle the enemy since they don't go flying back without that fourth attack.  There's also an overworld where you can select what stage to start, though at the beginning you can only select between two levels.  And for some reason, Snake has a weird walk animation that looks like he's quickly tip-toeing around, which looks pretty funny.  Haven't cleared a level yet, but they drag on a long time, just like in their Shin San Guo Zhi game.  Says "Kwichvu" on bootup as usual.

Videos forthcoming at my Youtube channel.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Collection Update #05 - 07/04/2011

  Happy Fourth of July everybody!  And to celebrate, here's a collection update.


(In backwards "N" formation:)
Da Hua Shui Hu [大话水浒] - At first I thought that this was the knockoff of Vast Fame's awesome Pokemon clone of the same name, but it's actually a totally different RPG!  Based off The Water Margin, of course, it has the same, if not similar, game engine as Wu Lin Wai Zhuan [NJ073] and shares the text system with said game and Feng Yin Dao [NJ072], a port of Link's Awakening.  Unfortunately, the game has poor damage calculation, as I've seen the enemies do damage from 0 to 75.  Another neat tidbit: this was developed by Nice Code Software, who's logo (along with SNT's) appear on startup.  Weird thing is, their logos don't always show up.  Like with the menus in GB multicarts, the logo doesn't appear if you reset or quickly turn the power on and off.  I wonder why that is?  Also, I thought it was Shui Hu Shen Shou, but it's called something different.

Little Red Hood [小紅帽 - Little Red Riding Hood] - The Chinese version to Sachen's infamous game.  The back has an advertisement for Metal Fighter that I should probably scan soon.

2003 Pocket Monster Sapphire [2003 口袋怪獸 藍寶石] - Well, look what we have here.  It's Pokemon Carbuncle, except in Chinese.  Weirder yet, it's based off of the Sapphire version, while Carbuncle was based off of the Ruby version.  Haven't played around with this much, but it probably works better than Carbuncle.

Fantasy Life [幻想人生] - One of Waixing's rare Game Boy titles, this one's a mixture of board game and RPG.  I don't really know what to do in this game, but...it's a board game.  I doubt it gets more interesting than that.  I gotta admit, though; this game seems better produced than their Famicom crap.

I have a couple more games coming in, which include some Sintax games (one has to do with Spiderman) and some possible Vast Fame stuff.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Magic Bubble (MD) & Feng Kuang Tao Hua Yuan Manual Scans

  More manual scans, courtesy of Pirateman!  First is Magic Bubble for the Mega Drive:











And now Feng Kuang Tao Hua Yuan:










  More to come!

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Sintax GBA & Beast Fighter Scans

  More scans ahoy!  First is Sintax's GBA (actually GBC) beat-em-up:






  And a version of Sachen's Beast Fighter which I'm guessing is an official Taiwanese release:




I like how the box says there's English instructions inside and that they wrote "GOME OVER" in the manual.  Oh well, as a (the only) Sachen fan this is a pleasant addition to my collection.  Keep an eye out for video updates!