Drx Releases New Genesis/MD Protos

[asmikace]

I just googled the Jesse Ventura game on Youtube and found out it was about to be localized by Dreamworks, the same people who brought Target Earth, Fire Shark, and Mystical Fighter. Makes you wonder what other Japanese only games were about to be localize but never happened.

[Sik]

I know that Star Cruiser was fully translated (swearing included!) and ready for release but they decided not to at last minute as they were afraid it'd be a flop (and apparently reviewers were trashing the game as well).

[NeoVamp]

I know that Star Cruiser was fully translated (swearing included!) and ready for release but they decided not to at last minute as they were afraid it'd be a flop (and apparently reviewers were trashing the game as well).

I would love to see that one in English, best intro ever!

[Crom]

I know that Star Cruiser was fully translated (swearing included!) and ready for release but they decided not to at last minute as they were afraid it'd be a flop (and apparently reviewers were trashing the game as well).

Do you remember where you got this info? Specifically that it was fully translated. The only thing I've been able to find is an article in EGM which is incorrectly cited on wikipedia as saying the localization was 100% complete (the EGM article does not say that at all).

[Sik]

One of the people who worked there mentioned it was practically complete.

Also apparently Sega Retro has more info on this:
http://segaretro.org/Star%20Cruiser

EDIT: also wait, localizing in 1994? Huh yeaaaah, it'd have been completely trashed by Doom and Star Fox >_>;

EDIT 2: "100% complete" OK it does seem like EGM said it (bottom left)
http://segaretro.org/index.php?title...9.pdf&page=190

[goldenband]

Not that I remember, unless maybe it had some in the ending? (I never made it that far)

My memory was "no", but just in case I checked YouTube: nope, not a word of it! The ending is just a credit roll, in English no less.

I know that Star Cruiser was fully translated (swearing included!) and ready for release but they decided not to at last minute as they were afraid it'd be a flop (and apparently reviewers were trashing the game as well).

Ouch! I'd love to see that proto, flawed though it might be -- here's hoping it surfaces someday.

[Crom]

EDIT 2: "100% complete" OK it does seem like EGM said it (bottom left)
http://segaretro.org/index.php?title...9.pdf&page=190

Right, that's what I was referring to. 100% just means the game itself was complete and doesn't necessarily mean the localization was complete. The game was obviously complete since it came out 4 years before that in Japan.

Anyway, I was just wondering if there was anything more concrete than that.

[Sik]

It could be 100% complete for the localization though.

[Bones Justice]

I've now played through quite a lot of F1 Circus and so far the translation looks mostly complete. There seems to be a mistake in the way that "Practice" should probably have been labelled as "Qualifying", and "Mission" should probably be "Transmission" but so far I haven't encountered any Japanese text. There also seems to be some Engrish in the names of drivers and teams, but that might just be their way of avoiding license problems.

I wanted to play the game for a while, its quite fun, but pretty damn hard too.



*EDIT:
Having played more of it I'm now pretty sure that most of what I thought was Engrish is actually an attempt to avoid licensing issues, there is still strange text like "you failed to qualifying" though.

I have this game and used to play it quite a bit. It's fun but it's also very difficult, as you said. Very unforgiving, I have wrecked many an F1 car in this game! But I really like the graphics, if only it had hills. It's also very difficult because you can drive faster than you can see ahead, kind of like over-driving your headlights at night. The MD version of this game is the only one that I know of that includes the distance vision window, which at least makes it playable. I used to have another one of these overhead F1 racers that didn't have that and I gave it up, unplayable.

It has a fair amount of English already. Just from memory, I believe "mission" and "practice" are in English on the Japanese version. It's more the in-between races stuff that is in Japanese. I think you are right, most of the mispellings are intentional to avoid licensing - the logos are similar to the real thing but not quite right, either (I think the Ferrari horse had wings, for example). Even so, I would love to play this game in full English/Engrish. How do I do that?

[The Jackal]

Drx released a second batch last Friday, just seen his post on Sega Retro, so thought I post it here as well:

Back again for another continuation of the Final ROM Archive releases, part 2! This time we have a ton of goodies (more than last week!).

Prototypes:

• Thunder Force III Prototype (Aug 1, 1990) (one of my favorite games)
• Star Odyssey Localization Prototype (Jan 16, 1992)
• Sorcer Kingdom Prototype (Nov 8, 1991)
• Street Smart Prototype (Jun 29, 1990)
• Final Blow Revision Prototype (Jan 16, 1990)
• Gain Ground Prototype (Jul 27, 1990)
• Master of Monsters Prototype (Apr 26, 1991)
• Twin Hawk Prototype (Apr 6, 1990)
• Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf Revision Prototype (Mar 22, 1990)
• Beast Wrestler Localization Prototype (Sep 13, 1991)
• Budokan - The Martial Spirit Revision Prototype (Sep 25, 1990)
• David Robinson's Supreme Court Localization Prototype (Apr 15, 1992)
• John Madden Football Revision Prototype (Nov 7, 1990)
• Jurassic Park PAL Revision Prototype (Jun 14, 1993)
• Mystic Defender Localization Prototype (Sep 14, 1989)
• Pebble Beach Golf Links Revision Prototype (Feb 14, 1994)
• Sol-Deace Revision Prototype (Feb 3, 1992)
• Target Earth Localization Prototype (Feb 16, 1990)
• Valis Localization Prototype (Oct 25, 1991)
• Vapor Trail Localization Prototype (May 26, 1991)
• Ys III: Wanderers from Ys Localization Prototype (Aug 28, 1991)

Alternate finals:

• Ariel the Little Mermaid (Oct 10, 1992 build)
• Barney's Hide & Seek Game (Sep 18, 1993 build)
• Chakan - The Forever Man (Oct 6, 1992 build)
• Exile (Dec 13, 1991 build)
• F-22 Interceptor (Sep 17, 1991 build)
• Jurassic Park (May 26, 1993 build)
• Landstalker (Jul 13, 1993 build)
• NFL Football '94 (Nov 4, 1993 build)
• Slaughter Sport (Sep 27, 1991 build)
• Steel Empire (Mar 13, 1992 build)

Grab it all here.

Original link here, again - full credit goes to Sega Retro.

[LinkueiBR]

Drx released a second batch last Friday, just seen his post on Sega Retro, so thought I post it here as well:



Original link here, again - full credit goes to Sega Retro.

AMAZING!!!

[Gogogadget]

Jesse Ventura of all people endorsed a game in 1992? Hmm okay.

Looking forward to checking out some of these.

[LinkueiBR]

Wow! IMO, this prototype of Street Smart looks better and more faithfull to the original Arcade than the released one!
This prototype have darker color palettes and runs on the low resolution (256x224) like the original arcade game different than the released version that have brighter color and runs on the 320x224 mode.

ARCADE-/-GEN PROTO-/-GEN FINAL

[The Jackal]

Drx released more a little while ago. Again, full credit goes to him and the Sega Retro forums:

Back again for another continuation of the Final ROM Archive releases, part 3. We have a couple of cool things for this week. The majority of the releases for this week are prototypes, some for very obscure Japanese games.



Prototypes:

• Advanced Daisenryaku - Deutsch Dengeki Sakusen prototype (Mar 7, 1991)
• Darwin 4081 prototype (Feb 21, 1990)
• Double Dragon II - The Revenge prototype (Oct 18, 1991)
• Dynamite Duke prototype (Jun 21, 1990)
• Ninja Burai Densetsu prototype (May 28, 1991)
• Same! Same! Same! prototype (Jul 30, 1990)
• Technocop prototype (Sep 12, 1990)
• The Terminator prototype (Apr 15, 1992)
• Traysia localization prototype (Jan 22, 1992)
• Two Crude Dudes prototype (Nov 24, 1991)
• Warsong localization prototype (Oct 1, 1991)
• Whip Rush prototype (Jan 29, 1990)
• Wonder Boy V - Monster World III prototype (Jul 25, 1991)

Alternate builds:

• Dungeons & Dragons - Warriors of the Eternal Sun (Apr 28, 1992 build)
• Super Hang-On (Aug 18, 1989 build)

All available here.

Played The Terminator April 15th 1992 proto up to the final level. Differences I could tell:

- Enemies spawn far more frequently. It's almost impossible now, unless you play carefully to get through a stage. The final version also suffers from stupid spawn rates, but nowhere this bad.
- The thugs in levels 2, 3 and 4 throw molotov cocktails at an insane rate and have an increased range. Coupled this with the botched spawn rate in this proto, you're going to be pulling your hair out dealing with them.

[GelmiR]

I played most of the Grant levels of the Jurassic Park protos. Some minor stuff I noticed:

Jurassic Park (May 26, 1993 build):
- Region locked (NTSC only)
- Unable to complete Pump Station as Grant, can't make the jump from the Brach head to the pipe

Jurassic Park (Jun 14, 1993 prototype):
- No region lock
- Pump Station level Brach jump fixed
- Screen is often messed up at the bottom (not sure how to describe it)