This is the SEGA Developer Technical Support CD from June 16th, 1995. This disc was used for the development of Sega Saturn games. Many Saturn tools, documentation, and files are included for a wide range of things such as programming, graphics, and sound.
Screenshots
This is a prototype of Dennis the Menace by Ocean Software. The differences within this build are currently unknown. The EPROMS have inconsistent reads with different checksums on each attempt. If you happen to know the game well and know the differences between the retail release and this prototype, please let us know!
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System
File: DennisTheMenace.FFFF.sfc
BitSize: 8 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 1048576
CRC32: 1032241C
MD5: B0950B9DE6A1C5A700A02B362EABB556
SHA1: 123B5CA07D5DB51081C8277E58876DD94BBF9CC1
SHA256: 56126F40B9A677040A34E1B78178E0029BEAD0AAFFF1BC3FBAACEEE854A5ACCA
----| Detection Data |---------------------------------------------
ROM Type: LoROM
Cartridge Type: Normal
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
New Maker Code: N/A
Serial: N/A
SFX SRAM Size: 0x60
Title: DENNIS THE MENACE
Map Type: 0x31 (FastROM-120ns; HiROM-64KB Banks)
ROM Type: 0x00 (ROM)
ROM Size: 0x0A (8 Mbit; Ok)
SRAM Size: 0x00 (None)
Country: 0x01 (USA)
Old Maker Code: 0x67 (Ocean)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Inverse Checksum: 0xFFFF (Bad; 0x6358)
Checksum: 0x0000 (Bad; 0x9CA7)
Board / Cartridge Images
This is a prototype of Cutthroat Island by LJN. This build is almost completely identical to the final European release except for differences on the name screen.
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System
File: CutthroatIslandW.sfc
BitSize: 16 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 2097152
CRC32: B7C20C18
MD5: 5247FA439644B3CC93FC4154A10DABE7
SHA1: F2ADA790586905C2B33EDA6339AB67C1E2DFF89B
SHA256: 0B3F68686447A9B5B68CEFCF0395A2BA934A78BC19AB30D7AAB0E8F7C47BBEBC
----| Detection Data |---------------------------------------------
ROM Type: LoROM
Cartridge Type: Normal
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
New Maker Code: 56 (LJN LTD.)
Serial: AC8P (Europe)
SFX SRAM Size: 0x00
Title: CUTTHROAT ISLAND(
Map Type: 0x30 (FastROM-120ns; LoROM-32KB Banks)
ROM Type: 0x00 (ROM)
ROM Size: 0x0B (16 Mbit; Ok)
SRAM Size: 0x00 (None)
Country: 0x02 (Europe)
Old Maker Code: 0x33 (N/A)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Inverse Checksum: 0xEB5A (Bad; 0xEA3F)
Checksum: 0x14A5 (Bad; 0x15C0)
Board / Cartridge Images
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Adventures of Jack Sparrow” is for the original Xbox and is more of an anomaly. It is theorized that this is a build of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”, this version appears to be even earlier than the GameCube build. The file name of 04_07_05 seems to imply April 7, 2005, but the game concept shown here is different from what the GameCube build has to offer; instead of a fixed camera with linear stages, this build has a free movement camera and you’re not given any linear path to traverse.
Besides a couple of test rooms, only one textured level titled “Fort Prototype” is available, and it doesn’t seem to be anything in the GameCube build. If this really is an earlier concept for what became “At World’s End,” it may be possible this is actually a whole year prior and the date is meant to be read as July 5, 2004. Whatever the case, it’s a rare look at a stage of development that up to now was unknown.
Special Thanks
Massive thanks to GamingLegend64 for sending this in for release!
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
It’s no secret that a good majority of prototypes are very bare bones in what they have to offer. In today’s case, we’ve got a prototype of the skulls and crossbones variety; a build of Eurocom’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” for the Nintendo GameCube. This generously came to us through way of GamingLegend64! For those who don’t know, this game was never released on GameCube, however, it later made an appearence on the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, and many more systems.
Dated April 5, 2004, this build seems to very much be mid-way through development. At this point the game is simply titled Pirates of the Caribbean with no subtitle. Booting up the game shows a splash screen that tells us this is a PSP and PlayStation 2 title, possibly a hint at what their original development platforms were. This is made even more painfully obvious when prompts for the Triangle button on a PS2 pad show up near NPCs in-game.
All levels from the final game are available in various states of completion, albeit some under different names. One level titled “Cannibal Isle” later became “Isla de Pelegostos” while another titled “Hell” was changed to “Davy Jone’s Locker.” Perhaps the work of Nintendo censorship is behind this?
Starting a new game takes you to Tortuga, the fifth level in the game, leaving the first level only accessible through the level select option at the title. This level, like a couple of the others, seems pretty far along, but your character freezes up when freeing prisoners from their cells, so not much can be explored. Speaking of freezing, the Z button lets you switch your character model at any time, but on some levels this seems to crash the game.
Further exploration shows that while some levels are untextured in parts and generally incomplete, most layouts seem to be established at this point. Some have a preliminary cutscene transition to secondary areas, while others are pretty barren with scarse enemies and don’t allow you to explore more than a linear path before hitting a dead end. Other differences include different camera angles, as well as a couple of levels taking place at different times of the day.
Other features include a Test Level option (complete with a “Jackanisms” test room that brings to mind something out of a David Lynch film) and some early bonus games.
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Nintendo GameCube
File: Pirates Port-Apr 5,2004.gcm
BitSize: 10 Gbit
Size (Bytes): 1459978240
CRC32: F1EEF03F
MD5: 1D3608F19A16F0D9D1F4296104D7E13C
SHA1: 80F0FC50A2602F1281CF84AA2D44CF330DCF50B3
SHA256: 3D49FA4E6E4322C2BA95B10C2A9E389B3CCAED1D6FC842C4779736156DA78839
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
Game Title: Gamex
Game Serial: GXPE (USA)
Maker Code: 78 (THQ / Play THQ)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Disc Id: 1
Cartridge Images
High quality scans of tickets and other materials sent to attendees of Nintendo’s SpaceWorld ‘95 event.
Screenshots
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
Yet another Nintendo GameCube Gekkan demo disc appears! This demo is from October 2004, and features some very interesting demos for us to try out. Said disc was dumped by user MisterSheep, and generously given to us for a release. Let’s check out what this disc has to offer.
The materials on the disc are as follows: WarioWare Twisted, Mario Tennis GC, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Kururin Squash!, F-Zero Climax, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Pokemon Emerald, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Vattroller X, and a Nintendo DS Commercial.
Not all of these are playable games, however. Some only consist of various videos and screenshots.
Another thing to note is that some of the demos have earlier content than the final version which was released. For example, in Mario Tennis GC, the sound effects for the power moves are missing. There are likely many more differences in all of these games, however we need your help to find them. If you find any differences, please let us know. We would love to hear from you!
Along with the release, the disc has also been added to redump. The entire packaging and disc itself has also been scanned and can be found below.
Special Thanks: MisterSheep for generously obtaining the disc to make this release possible.
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Nintendo GameCube
File: D86J01.iso
BitSize: 10 Gbit
Size (Bytes): 1459978240
CRC32: CE786E78
MD5: 822C5914284629CA903A07A3687EDFEC
SHA1: 9949DF0C4B5AE45BB311B385E4B744078E1E35CE
SHA256: D5331BF2580E90BAA6EF9FA58A092A94604267098631A70831556274D8523BA3
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
Game Title: Interactive Multi Game Disc October 2004 For JPN.
Game Serial: D86J (Japan)
Maker Code: 01 (Nintendo)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Disc Id: 1
Disc / Packaging Scans
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
While many unreleased games never get to see the light of day beyond blurry screenshots in old magazines of days past, Cooly Skunk (released in the US under the title Punky Skunk) is one of the few games that holds the unique distinction of having been cancelled several times before ultimately ending up released on a completely different platform than it started off on. Initially released on November 1, 1996 in Japan for the original PlayStation, Cooly Skunk was, for lack of a better term, a relative stinker that didn’t generate much buzz around release. Even the game’s lack of a real instruction manual, which instead was a simple two-page sheet of paper, hints at a troubled development that was perhaps rushed out the door sooner than it could be given the proper care that all the years of work behind it deserved.
History
Originally, development of Cooly Skunk began as a completely different project at the behest of publisher BPS of Tetris fame, who were looking to enter into the market for games oriented towards a younger audience. Developer Ukiyotei took on the project hoping to make a mascot character for BPS, but these plans fell through once BPS decided to change its direction, leaving Ukiyotei with a finished game but no publisher.
A little digging reveals that this initial completed project was most likely “Metamoru Kid Guumin”, an unreleased SFC title previewed back in 1994 as being a BPS published platformer. One look and it doesn’t take long to see some similarities in graphics style; the bottom left shot in the magazine preview below in particular shows the hero rolling through a set of enemies that look awfully similar to the mice in Cooly Skunk. The penguin and monkey transformations could possibly be what also carried over to Cooly’s snowboarding and pogostick mechanics, respectively.
As game director Kenshi Naruse remarked in an interview about the game’s development, development on this first title started with the intent on creating something similar to the Sony/Epic title “Sky Blazer”, another Ukiyotei developed title, this time for a younger crowd. Similarities start cropping up when comparing this game with Cooly Skunk as well.
Not wanting to completely abandon the work they put in, the project was then proposed to an unknown publisher called Visit, who suggested that the engine made in their first attempt at the game could be repurposed for a new project. At this point, Mr. Naruse saw a shift in the gaming market. As he explains, “the PlayStation had been released in Japan, but the SNES was still going strong in the US, so the project’s focus shifted to the North American market.”
With a new target market in mind, development pushed forward on a new game with a new character for the US market.
“The design of the main character Cooly and his fart attack were both at the order of Visit. They told us this incorporated the opinions of North American buyers.”
Unfortunately, even though this second iteration of the game also reached completion, the release of the PlayStation in the West had such a sharp effect on the market that the SNES was no longer viable for profits, with even buyers who were on-board with retailing the game backing out. This forced yet again the cancellation of what was apparently another finished product.
From here Ukiyotei took it upon themselves to learn the PlayStation hardware, using assets from the Cooly Skunk project as they figured their way around making another 2D platformer for the new and unfamiliar system. Naruse saw this as a golden opportunity. As he explains, “we contacted Visit and asked if they would be OK with us making it on the PlayStation again. They were fine with us using the Cooly character again, but only on the condition that stuff such as the backgrounds matched what the PlayStation was capable of.”
Rediscovered 24 years later
Fast forward to late 2019, a BS-X “8M” cartridge for the Satellaview modem peripheral labeled as “Cooly Skunk” was found to be sitting in a display case at the retro game store “Super Potato”, located in Akihabara, Toyko for a mere 54,980 yen (about $500 USD). Until this point, there was little public knowledge that the game had ever been broadcast over Nintendo’s Satellaview service in Japan, but some searching on various Japanese webpages reveals that it had in fact at one time been broadcast in the form of a playable demo (and also as one of only 2 known broadcast titles which had a cancelled retail release). Judging by the 1996 date on the game’s title screen and the overall completeness of the game itself, it can be assumed that this broadcast was a showing of all that Visit had accomplished on the title at the time of its cancellation as a SNES title, possibly before plans to put it on the PlayStation had even been made.
Compared to the PlayStation version, the game is far simpler in level design, with most levels being a straight left-to-right affair, whereas the PlayStation version expanded the depth of levels and gave you more to explore. A lot of character graphics appear to have made it over verbatim to the retail game, but there are many level themes and graphics that are only seen in this version. All music tracks are also the same as the PlayStation version, albeit earlier renditions using the SNES soundfont.
Special Thanks
The game was secured by user billscat-socks and a fundraiser was put together that successfully reached our goal to cover the costs of the cartridge within only one hour! We would like to thank the following people for their extremely generous donations: VZ_Blade, NijiMarii, robotortis, UHAVEBETRAYEDME, LittleToonCat, LeakyComet, bandzicoot, GaucheArtist, buffalo_weeks, bmichelmd, John, mossmouth, Kelsey Lewin, RetroRomper, Frank Cifaldi, Carnivol, OKeijiDragon and Cauterize. Also massive thanks to sanmaiwashi for helping us to preserve and dump the game. Without help from everyone, the preservation of Cooly Skunk would never have been possible.
Surprisingly, although you can only play through the game’s first three worlds before being thrown back to the title screen, some minor hacking reveals the rest of the whole game to be in here as well, including the final boss and end credits. You can find a link to this here.
This is a prototype of King of the Monsters 2 by Takara. The differences within this build are currently unknown. If you happen to know the game well and know the differences between the retail release and this prototype, please let us know!
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System
File: KingOfTheMonsters2.sfc
BitSize: 16 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 2097152
CRC32: 0F4F464B
MD5: 4A1012A7338E303D0B7CF5092FB82341
SHA1: 3FE26DE39D4409AD65F4DD869CA41F869C05B584
SHA256: B143F7D8F0B823422A2FCB3F13CCD8687B7A654C74B1BE165B998F169BAC6DA8
----| Detection Data |---------------------------------------------
ROM Type: HiROM
Cartridge Type: Normal
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
New Maker Code: N/A
Serial: N/A
SFX SRAM Size: 0x08
Title: KING OF THE MONSTERS2
Map Type: 0x31 (FastROM-120ns; HiROM-64KB Banks)
ROM Type: 0x00 (ROM)
ROM Size: 0x0B (16 Mbit; Ok)
SRAM Size: 0x00 (None)
Country: 0x01 (USA)
Old Maker Code: 0xA7 (Takara)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Inverse Checksum: 0xC2F7 (Ok)
Checksum: 0x3D08 (Ok)
Board / Cartridge Images
This is a prototype of Jigsaw Party by Hori Electric. Build dates titled as “LINK” and “ROMW” are found at 0xFF00 in the ROM, this prototype’s ROMW build date predates the final version by six days.
[LINK]Fri Mar 25 09:10:40 1994
[ROMW]Fri Mar 25 09:28:05 1994
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System
File: JigsawParty.sfc
BitSize: 8 Mbit
Size (Bytes): 1048576
CRC32: F3F2AC30
MD5: 3F54273940292E55C4B07317C4694C68
SHA1: E992BA74C48E5AC41479BC786F82F948FB871CE4
SHA256: 9F7C861CF2CC2FE5094977EFBF26D3E1098B7FCF00294C34F8FEAE12F68ABBF6
----| Detection Data |---------------------------------------------
ROM Type: HiROM
Cartridge Type: Normal
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
New Maker Code: N/A
Serial: N/A
SFX SRAM Size: 0xC0
Title: JIGSAW PARTY
Map Type: 0x31 (FastROM-120ns; HiROM-64KB Banks)
ROM Type: 0x00 (ROM)
ROM Size: 0x0A (8 Mbit; Ok)
SRAM Size: 0x00 (None)
Country: 0x00 (Japan)
Old Maker Code: 0xA1 (Hori)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Inverse Checksum: 0xF760 (Ok)
Checksum: 0x089F (Ok)
Board / Cartridge Images
Installation manual for a Nintendo 64 kiosk unit used across various stores within Japan.
Screenshots
High quality scan of concept art for the Nintendo 64’s Millennium 2000 Controller. The art would end up being used in an advertisement featured in Nintnedo Power magazine.
Screenshots
Origin
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
“From Vision to Reality Immersion”
The infamous “Shark Demo” has resurfaced. This specific demo was shown at Nintendo and SGI’s Project Reality announcement booth at CES, 1994. It was shown alongside many more tech demos which include one for racing, one for flying, and one which was a city populated by Nintendo’s main characters. Being from 1994, these demos weren’t running on finalized Nintendo Ultra 64 hardware. Instead they’re running on a high-end SGI Onyx workstation.
The Onyx served as a development kit for Nintendo 64 software during 1994 to 1995 and would cost anywhere from 100,000-250,000 USD at the time. These were used as game simulator platforms up until Nintendo decided to move to the much cheaper and less powerful SGI Indy, whose specs much more closely resemble the final Nintendo 64 (the Indy was much more affordable in comparison to the Onyx, going for about 5,000 USD).
The demo itself features a Shark named Baz, which can be controlled to move anywhere within the ocean. Whilst exploring you will come across two other sharks (appropriately named Chaz and Shaz), sunken ships, schools of fish, and old forgotten ruins. The player is able to select from a wide range of options in a menu below the game screen. It’s possible to change the time of day, the amount of fog, the camera style, and much more.
Information The shark demo is running on IRIS Performer (now known as OpenGL Performer). It is a software toolkit for 3D rendering, developed by SGI. If you have ever used Linux or Windows, you may have heard of it at one point or another as versions were produced for both platforms.
The music heard in the background of the Project Reality preview video showing off the demo is “Other Worlds” by Haim Cotton.
You can see the Shark demo in action through the following link. The demo is compatible with all SGI’s graphics architectures that support hardware texture mapping (SGI IMPACT, SGI O2 and SGI VPro) and IRIX 6.5. However, you may need to fool the inst command using ‘-m GFXBOARD=MGRAS’ and ‘set rulesoverride true’. The demo will fail if you use the XFS file system on your workstation due to an error in old IRIS Performer libraries. Mount (read-write) an EFS volume to /mnt (or any other mounting point) and use ‘export PFTMPDIR=/mnt’.
The shark demo also is not the only demo present on the discs. There are many more such as Mekton and an SGI Performer Town demo.
Mekton is the most complete game featured on the disc, and probably the most impressive. It’s a simple platformer that features a robot. Interestingly, this game is actually multiplayer!
Yes, this is the infamous demo featuring the various Nintendo characters which was shown in various magazines. Except, this time around, the characters are missing. This seems to indicate that the demo was later edited by Nintendo to include the other characters.
Another interesting game of note is a game called “Certain Impact”. This game was actually created by the same team behind Pilotwings 64. The version on this disc seems to have some differences to the other versions which have already been found. Interestingly this one has it’s resolution lowered. The game content itself consists of the player flying a plane over a town. Many different camera angles can also be taken.
Special Thanks: Diagon Swarm for their help in capturing footage of the demos for us.
This is a prototype of Freestyle Street Soccer by Acclaim Entertainment. The date of the build is labelled as Nov 24, 2003 18:19:43 within the data, only a small amount of changes can be noted in comparison to the final US release.
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Nintendo GameCube
File: Freestyle Street Soccer.iso
BitSize: 10 Gbit
Size (Bytes): 1449197568
CRC32: 39983142
MD5: D83E8E90A4391420480A36A4D3C1EA8F
SHA1: D471734055C545771C8EA0F336C307368B313503
SHA256: E314DF33C15A306095C04EC488C1496069376F761642BB66333534BEBAB9AA70
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
Game Title: Freestyle Street Soccer
Game Serial: GUVE (USA)
Maker Code: 51 (Acclaim Entertainment)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Disc Id: 1
Disc Images
This is a prototype of Whirl Tour by Papaya Studio. It was built on September 14th, 2002, which can be seen within the disc image file. This date predates the final release of the game by a few months. Some debug information is also printed to the upper left portion of the screen during gameplay.
Screenshots
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Nintendo GameCube
File: Whirl Tour.iso
BitSize: 10 Gbit
Size (Bytes): 1459978240
CRC32: BA231146
MD5: C7531BBE6090CCE16C50ECCB4761B64C
SHA1: AE53E4BA63603C08D5F4980C67451DE6B5EE1ED6
SHA256: 7F8E785F2E41D2B1D7D3D650CE3DFD97983BDE18495A148BF43C61E84951720B
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
Game Title: Whirl Tour
Game Serial: GWUE (USA)
Maker Code: 7D (Sierra Entertainment / Vivendi Games / Universal Interactive Studios)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Disc Id: 1