10-01-2023, 06:56 AM
Thanks ever so much!
Have been a bit busy with more game pruning so less rips than I would like, some were so close but an issue or two put them on the back burner. Now for some Pick and Mix.
Spectrum
City Connection
The backstory of this game is fascinating. A few Portuguese (as in Portugal, not Brazil making it more rarer in terms of gaming) developers worked on this out of passion. The game was sent to magazines and even appeared on TV, the people who played it loved the game, even going as far as saying that it's better than the arcade original (err... not quite). Considering the state of arcade ports on home computers, it is a miracle that not only that it exists but it is also a quality conversion. Due to the gaming scene over there at the time it didn't get a proper release and ended up being cancelled as the programmers were unable to find a way of contacting Jaleco. This game was considered lost for 34 years outside of a savestate... snapshot of the 48k version that was recovered from an Amiga floppy. A demo tape was found that contained the full 128k version and someone hacked that version to remove its restrictions (demo text, one life only), think of those PSN/XBLA games where you download a demo but contains the full game that just needs an unlock key.
There are two versions of the game, 48k and 128k. The former isn't properly preserved but is missing content while the 128k version has all 12 levels, music, speech, more animations and various extra touches including an animated title screen. Not too often you get that treatment as it's usually just to load all the levels and add music, even then some games were so large that it couldn't do the former. To clarify, the 128k version is the one that got ripped because that's the full intended game.
Oh and you don't get to play as the blue haired Clarice in this version rather like the US/PAL NES version. Yet it cannot decide between a man (intro and death animations) or a woman (stage clear). The stage clear portraits are cancelled due to unable to find the lip/eye animations and one line from her neck.
Frontline
Commando clone but then again when this came out, you would have most likely already had Commando at home in some form. Yet the level design is open so at least there's a change and still more faithful than Duet as in Elite's attempted sequel. As mentioned on the sheets, both the player and the soldier enemy use the same graphics.
Cop-Out
Taking a small break from the Spectrum because the backlog contains something really time consuming, the only hint is Sonny Chiba was the star of a movie of a similar name.
Amstrad
Run The Gauntlet
Beach Volley
Another done the Spectrum version, do the Amstrad version. That last sprite is unused and is all that remains from it.
Manhattan 95
An early Ubisoft game that's pretty much an unlicensed take on Escape from New York (the French name for that film is New York 1997 so the English game title counterpart would be Escape from Manhattan). Yes, Ubisoft started on the Amstrad and it is an exclusive. Weirdly only CPC Power has mentioned this game and why this is forgotten, not even the likes of Wikipedia or MobyGames have documented it and you would think considering the company is still around today. Plus there was evidence that it was released with box art, screenshots, French reviews, adverts including some in English. The English version also happens to be very rare while the French release is more common, the disk version took until 2021 to be found and even then it was on Side 2.
Mange Cailloux
Ubisoft made a Pengo clone that's literally called Eat Stones, a bit strange considering at the time they were more into adventure/tennis/original ideas/releasing compilations or like now focusing on open world series e.g. Assassin's Creed, Far Cry or the yearly Just Dance. The penguin was actually ripped on August 2022 (after Alpha Jet but before Gilligan's Gold) but the "Bonhomme Bleu" (Snobees) and the blocks just needed to be sorted out. They were still sorting out after they were ripped.
Pro Tennis Simulator
"You can not be serious!" For a long time I thought the graphics were compressed, thankfully they were not (Spectrum format with the shadow mask converted to 4 colour Mode 1) but two of the columns are either black or garbage. This is actually the basis of the NES game that was included in the Quattro Sports pack including the player graphics weirdly enough (coding would be based off the C64 version). When ripping the sheet, one of the sprites was corrupted and thought what to do... Turns out that the file that I had for the past 5 years was a cracked version to remove the copy protection and the original tape release has only been dumped in January 2023. Meaning yes, I had to look at a code sheet and type the letter on the position it told me before booting up the game. Also the cracked version doctored the loading screen calling it just "Tennis Simulator" so the picture on CPC Power is also wrong (the rip on tSR is from the tape so it's correct on here). Took nearly 12 hours to do the sheet...
I don't tend to have much luck with tennis games. Match Point either has layer problems (Amstrad CPC) or split between upper body and legs with a lot more of the former with I don't know if there's some compression wedged in between (Spectrum). Even looked at the QL version (yep, tSR was going to get its first Sinclair QL rip, one of the VERY FEW games on the computer along with the scrapped Bandersnatch) where I can somewhat rip the sprites even though some poses are cut off however the format that it was ripped on wouldn't boot up on an emulator. Pro Tennis runs on a framebuffer only loading one pose at a time. Great Courts/Pro Tennis Tour/whatever Ubisoft decides to call the game is either compressed (Amstrad CPC), only shows the sprites on screen (GX4000) or only loads the required on screen sprites cleanly in a savestate while the rest of it is a jumbled mess (C64). Centre Court also got dropped due to sprite alignment issues and that the game is... crap.
The original plan was to save Fres Fighter II Turbo as a surprise but looking at the graphics viewer; the shadow masks are half missing and many of the sprites have a non-existent bitplane. A shame since it had a nice art style...
Virtual Boy
Golf / T&E Virtual Golf
A Virtual Boy rip! Just thought of ripping something inspired by this thread and this is highly likely going to be my only one. Weirdly ripping this game is like ripping a Spectrum game just by the shadow mask unlike most other VB games.
Commodore 64
Grand Prix Master
Outside of the catchy Jeroen Tel music that was reused in some other Dinamic games (I guess they did what Codemasters did for David Whittaker for the Amstrad, make a couple of songs and jingles that were reused in other games), this is a technical disaster compared to the other versions on the grounds that it only shows half a screen. Yep and there's no 2 player mode to justify this. Yet the packaging shows the game being full screen, these are most likely mockups...
Punkt Punkt Punkt
Starting getting towards the really obscure stuff... German version of Match Game/Blankety Blank and AFAIK one of the very few games, if not the only non-mobile/PC game based on the game show. The C64 was huge in Germany, even Aldi (I don't know which Aldi, there are two in Germany unlike most of the world) infamously sold them for a short time.
(I only ripped it because it had a short catchy theme tune.)
Hat Trick
A long time ago ripped the Atari 7800 version and now the C64 version, that for some reason Capcom published even though it was a Bally Sente game. It was fairly quickly despite having the rips done at (yawn...) 3AM and finished the sheet the next morning. Only the original arcade left for a proper Hat Trick.
Pole Position 2
Weirdly the player car does not use sprites! Nope. The only sprites that are loaded in the game are the road signs, the clouds, the Atari plane, the start sign, an explosion and the rival. The car is part of the background and is pretty tricky to rip. So in case you wonder why the game doesn't play very smoothly...
Cannot find any reliable sources on who did the C64 version apart from Mindscape published it. It's also an issue regarding the palette because a) unknown developer means unknown original palette, I assumed that it's NTSC as Mindscape at the time was more of an US publisher b) whether the game actually got a release outside the US to add the PAL palette (there was a pirated Italian release on tape so that's enough to justify its inclusion).
Spelunker
Milk Race / Ten Speed
The 3 main versions have been ripped now! There's only the Atari 8-bit version left since the MSX version is a Speccy port. Also this was the only version that came out in the US with some minor changes (changing the map from the UK to the USA, the name to Ten Speed, changing from 12 to 10 gears, changing the milk bottles to cola?) and from what I've gathered, the route is fictional even though it is similar to the TransAmerica Bicycle Trial. Plus the US version is broken with the music playing too fast, the title/loading screen only pops up after a Game Over, usually only allowing about 20 seconds of gameplay and goes back to either the control select or the title/loading screen but the UK original is still fairly buggy with the same issue popping up. The two "bad bugs" is the timer bug that causes a Game Over by random and the spawning of bikes and the Range Rover seems random so you'll often crash into them, even just as you got back up.
Had it not been for the bugs, this would have been the best version of the game but is also missing a song compared to the Amstrad version. Surprised that no one has converted it to the SID chip like Banzai had been doing for various David Whittaker and Tim Follin songs.
Karate Champ
It's been a quite a while since I last ripped from a fighting game that wasn't Yie Ar Kung Fu, one of the many genres that can no longer play outside of an extremely limited selection and only rip them if all the poses are there in a savestate or on the tape/disk/ROM. So much so that brought back the credit tag. Just because it is the most likely genre for stolen sheets to pop up, an issue that tSR had whether people stole them from another site or using MUGEN rips so a rip of a rip that might have issues depending on how it was done. Fighting game rips do take more effort and why any fighting game rip that someone did themselves is pleasing to see on here.
For some technical info, there are over 360 24x21 sprite pieces to go through and for an early C64 game, that's a lot just for one character. A pose is made between 4 to 6 sprites. There were a few duplicates though...
Another part of gaming history since it's considered one of the first fighting games and the first popular one, more so since this was based on the arcade Player vs Player version. This was actually one of the best selling C64 games in the US but elsewhere, it had been obsolete as Way of the Exploding Fist and International Karate were released very shortly after. These took the Karate Champ formula and expanded on it. Yie Ar Kung Fu was also popular too. Actually I'm not sure if Karate Champ was sold full price outside of the US, all I can find is the budget Americana release and in compilations so I'm guessing that US Gold who got the rights from Data East didn't have much confidence, more so that there weren't any Spectrum or Amstrad ports.
Will I rip from Way of the Exploding Fist, International Karate or IK+? Extremely unlikely (and a strong nope for the Spectrum/Amstrad versions) but you never know...
Have been a bit busy with more game pruning so less rips than I would like, some were so close but an issue or two put them on the back burner. Now for some Pick and Mix.
Spectrum
City Connection
Clarice Car
Vehicles
Cat
The backstory of this game is fascinating. A few Portuguese (as in Portugal, not Brazil making it more rarer in terms of gaming) developers worked on this out of passion. The game was sent to magazines and even appeared on TV, the people who played it loved the game, even going as far as saying that it's better than the arcade original (err... not quite). Considering the state of arcade ports on home computers, it is a miracle that not only that it exists but it is also a quality conversion. Due to the gaming scene over there at the time it didn't get a proper release and ended up being cancelled as the programmers were unable to find a way of contacting Jaleco. This game was considered lost for 34 years outside of a savestate... snapshot of the 48k version that was recovered from an Amiga floppy. A demo tape was found that contained the full 128k version and someone hacked that version to remove its restrictions (demo text, one life only), think of those PSN/XBLA games where you download a demo but contains the full game that just needs an unlock key.
There are two versions of the game, 48k and 128k. The former isn't properly preserved but is missing content while the 128k version has all 12 levels, music, speech, more animations and various extra touches including an animated title screen. Not too often you get that treatment as it's usually just to load all the levels and add music, even then some games were so large that it couldn't do the former. To clarify, the 128k version is the one that got ripped because that's the full intended game.
Oh and you don't get to play as the blue haired Clarice in this version rather like the US/PAL NES version. Yet it cannot decide between a man (intro and death animations) or a woman (stage clear). The stage clear portraits are cancelled due to unable to find the lip/eye animations and one line from her neck.
Frontline
Player
Enemies
Commando clone but then again when this came out, you would have most likely already had Commando at home in some form. Yet the level design is open so at least there's a change and still more faithful than Duet as in Elite's attempted sequel. As mentioned on the sheets, both the player and the soldier enemy use the same graphics.
Cop-Out
Cop
Taking a small break from the Spectrum because the backlog contains something really time consuming, the only hint is Sonny Chiba was the star of a movie of a similar name.
Amstrad
Run The Gauntlet
Hovercraft
Speedboat
Jet Ski
Inflatable
Quad
Buggy / Meteor
Supercat
The Hill
Explosions
Beach Volley
Players
Another done the Spectrum version, do the Amstrad version. That last sprite is unused and is all that remains from it.
Manhattan 95
Snail Lispken
Enemies
Cars
President, Saveloy & Cabby
An early Ubisoft game that's pretty much an unlicensed take on Escape from New York (the French name for that film is New York 1997 so the English game title counterpart would be Escape from Manhattan). Yes, Ubisoft started on the Amstrad and it is an exclusive. Weirdly only CPC Power has mentioned this game and why this is forgotten, not even the likes of Wikipedia or MobyGames have documented it and you would think considering the company is still around today. Plus there was evidence that it was released with box art, screenshots, French reviews, adverts including some in English. The English version also happens to be very rare while the French release is more common, the disk version took until 2021 to be found and even then it was on Side 2.
Mange Cailloux
Penguin
Bonhomme Bleu
Blocks
Ubisoft made a Pengo clone that's literally called Eat Stones, a bit strange considering at the time they were more into adventure/tennis/original ideas/releasing compilations or like now focusing on open world series e.g. Assassin's Creed, Far Cry or the yearly Just Dance. The penguin was actually ripped on August 2022 (after Alpha Jet but before Gilligan's Gold) but the "Bonhomme Bleu" (Snobees) and the blocks just needed to be sorted out. They were still sorting out after they were ripped.
Pro Tennis Simulator
Player
"You can not be serious!" For a long time I thought the graphics were compressed, thankfully they were not (Spectrum format with the shadow mask converted to 4 colour Mode 1) but two of the columns are either black or garbage. This is actually the basis of the NES game that was included in the Quattro Sports pack including the player graphics weirdly enough (coding would be based off the C64 version). When ripping the sheet, one of the sprites was corrupted and thought what to do... Turns out that the file that I had for the past 5 years was a cracked version to remove the copy protection and the original tape release has only been dumped in January 2023. Meaning yes, I had to look at a code sheet and type the letter on the position it told me before booting up the game. Also the cracked version doctored the loading screen calling it just "Tennis Simulator" so the picture on CPC Power is also wrong (the rip on tSR is from the tape so it's correct on here). Took nearly 12 hours to do the sheet...
I don't tend to have much luck with tennis games. Match Point either has layer problems (Amstrad CPC) or split between upper body and legs with a lot more of the former with I don't know if there's some compression wedged in between (Spectrum). Even looked at the QL version (yep, tSR was going to get its first Sinclair QL rip, one of the VERY FEW games on the computer along with the scrapped Bandersnatch) where I can somewhat rip the sprites even though some poses are cut off however the format that it was ripped on wouldn't boot up on an emulator. Pro Tennis runs on a framebuffer only loading one pose at a time. Great Courts/Pro Tennis Tour/whatever Ubisoft decides to call the game is either compressed (Amstrad CPC), only shows the sprites on screen (GX4000) or only loads the required on screen sprites cleanly in a savestate while the rest of it is a jumbled mess (C64). Centre Court also got dropped due to sprite alignment issues and that the game is... crap.
The original plan was to save Fres Fighter II Turbo as a surprise but looking at the graphics viewer; the shadow masks are half missing and many of the sprites have a non-existent bitplane. A shame since it had a nice art style...
Virtual Boy
Golf / T&E Virtual Golf
Golfer
A Virtual Boy rip! Just thought of ripping something inspired by this thread and this is highly likely going to be my only one. Weirdly ripping this game is like ripping a Spectrum game just by the shadow mask unlike most other VB games.
Commodore 64
Grand Prix Master
Rider
Outside of the catchy Jeroen Tel music that was reused in some other Dinamic games (I guess they did what Codemasters did for David Whittaker for the Amstrad, make a couple of songs and jingles that were reused in other games), this is a technical disaster compared to the other versions on the grounds that it only shows half a screen. Yep and there's no 2 player mode to justify this. Yet the packaging shows the game being full screen, these are most likely mockups...
Punkt Punkt Punkt
Mike Krüger
Starting getting towards the really obscure stuff... German version of Match Game/Blankety Blank and AFAIK one of the very few games, if not the only non-mobile/PC game based on the game show. The C64 was huge in Germany, even Aldi (I don't know which Aldi, there are two in Germany unlike most of the world) infamously sold them for a short time.
(I only ripped it because it had a short catchy theme tune.)
Hat Trick
Players
A long time ago ripped the Atari 7800 version and now the C64 version, that for some reason Capcom published even though it was a Bally Sente game. It was fairly quickly despite having the rips done at (yawn...) 3AM and finished the sheet the next morning. Only the original arcade left for a proper Hat Trick.
Pole Position 2
Rival
Weirdly the player car does not use sprites! Nope. The only sprites that are loaded in the game are the road signs, the clouds, the Atari plane, the start sign, an explosion and the rival. The car is part of the background and is pretty tricky to rip. So in case you wonder why the game doesn't play very smoothly...
Cannot find any reliable sources on who did the C64 version apart from Mindscape published it. It's also an issue regarding the palette because a) unknown developer means unknown original palette, I assumed that it's NTSC as Mindscape at the time was more of an US publisher b) whether the game actually got a release outside the US to add the PAL palette (there was a pirated Italian release on tape so that's enough to justify its inclusion).
Spelunker
Spelunker
Milk Race / Ten Speed
Cyclist
The 3 main versions have been ripped now! There's only the Atari 8-bit version left since the MSX version is a Speccy port. Also this was the only version that came out in the US with some minor changes (changing the map from the UK to the USA, the name to Ten Speed, changing from 12 to 10 gears, changing the milk bottles to cola?) and from what I've gathered, the route is fictional even though it is similar to the TransAmerica Bicycle Trial. Plus the US version is broken with the music playing too fast, the title/loading screen only pops up after a Game Over, usually only allowing about 20 seconds of gameplay and goes back to either the control select or the title/loading screen but the UK original is still fairly buggy with the same issue popping up. The two "bad bugs" is the timer bug that causes a Game Over by random and the spawning of bikes and the Range Rover seems random so you'll often crash into them, even just as you got back up.
Had it not been for the bugs, this would have been the best version of the game but is also missing a song compared to the Amstrad version. Surprised that no one has converted it to the SID chip like Banzai had been doing for various David Whittaker and Tim Follin songs.
Karate Champ
Fighter
It's been a quite a while since I last ripped from a fighting game that wasn't Yie Ar Kung Fu, one of the many genres that can no longer play outside of an extremely limited selection and only rip them if all the poses are there in a savestate or on the tape/disk/ROM. So much so that brought back the credit tag. Just because it is the most likely genre for stolen sheets to pop up, an issue that tSR had whether people stole them from another site or using MUGEN rips so a rip of a rip that might have issues depending on how it was done. Fighting game rips do take more effort and why any fighting game rip that someone did themselves is pleasing to see on here.
For some technical info, there are over 360 24x21 sprite pieces to go through and for an early C64 game, that's a lot just for one character. A pose is made between 4 to 6 sprites. There were a few duplicates though...
Another part of gaming history since it's considered one of the first fighting games and the first popular one, more so since this was based on the arcade Player vs Player version. This was actually one of the best selling C64 games in the US but elsewhere, it had been obsolete as Way of the Exploding Fist and International Karate were released very shortly after. These took the Karate Champ formula and expanded on it. Yie Ar Kung Fu was also popular too. Actually I'm not sure if Karate Champ was sold full price outside of the US, all I can find is the budget Americana release and in compilations so I'm guessing that US Gold who got the rights from Data East didn't have much confidence, more so that there weren't any Spectrum or Amstrad ports.
Will I rip from Way of the Exploding Fist, International Karate or IK+? Extremely unlikely (and a strong nope for the Spectrum/Amstrad versions) but you never know...