Got a few more cartridges for Famicom. Here there are the pictures of them, and a brief info about each of them. ;)
As you can see, besides a few cartridges, I also got a few labels, which I will write about down below. :)
Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle
It's a regular Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle for NES. It even has the copyrights and the title left unchanged. No idea, why they used Birthday Blowout label for this one... Haven't tested if it works on Famicom, I've only tested it on my crappy Famulator Famiclone, where it worked fine with no problem.
It works fine with no problem. I played through a few stages, and nothing went wrong during the gameplay progress.
Castlevania
Ok, this is a regular Castlevania, as it was on NES, but this cartridge itself is kind of interesting for a few things:
1) First of all, that label for Castlevania... Originally there was Jackir's Dragon 5 label on it, but thankfully, the seller also sold me the Castlevania label, so I could actually stick it on, so it wouldn't look messed up.
I ripped out the label of Jackir's Dragon 5. It looked like this (sorry for bad lightning):
Yeah... That label, as far as I know, was used for Spartan X2 Famicom game on pirate carts, but it doesn't match up with Castlevania at all... As I mentioned earlier, the original pirate label for Castlevania was actually included earlier, so that's quite cool.
2) There is an interesting Dendy sticker on the back, that looks similar to the ones, used on Steepler Ltd. carts. But that one is actually white, and the Dendy stickers used on those cartridges by Steepler Ltd. were yellow.
Also, the font for "Dendy" word is a bit different. But other than that, I kind of like that label on the back, and it was a nice little surprise. And, the seller actually included another such label, which I later sticked on another catrtridge I got from him. And, quite interestingly, that seller said that he has more of these "Dendy" labels, so if I want, I may actually get more of them, if I buy more cartridges from him. :)
Well, here's the photo from my mini DVD player about the title screen from this copy of Castlevania.
Yes, it even got the copyright stuff at the beginning of the game, along with Konami logo and stuff.
This game is not really that common find on pirate carts, so I am actually glad to have it on a singlecart like this. Afterall, this is one of my favourite NES games, which, even though I have never played in my childhood on a console, I played a lot on emulator, and practised enough to be able to beat it without much of the problem. ;)
This game is also known as "Devil Town" on pirate carts, but to my knowledge, all the copyright stuff is removed from the game there.
Doki! Doki! Yuuenchi
Yes, it's actually Doki! Doki! Yuuenchi for Famicom. I have no idea, why it's called Disneyland Adventures here, let alone why they used the label that they usually use for Adventures in the Magic Kingdom for NES. But I don't think I am going to actually replace this label with the original label, as I don't think that this label is as terrible as the one pirates use for newer pirate carts, like GameCard or NewGame or whatever...
I decided to put that "Dendy" sticker I got separately on the back of this cartridge. :)
Here's how it looks like when you play it on a console.
The copyrights are even left in the actual game, but the bottom of the screen seems to be glitchy, I don't know why...
Nigel Mansell's World Championship Challenge Racing
Exactly the same game as you would expect on NES, but in a form on pirate cart. ;)
I got it for my friend, SuperBrain1997, who is interested in Famiclone stuff, and those TV GAME CARTRIDGES. His YouTube channel is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperBrain1997
Well, that's about it for the stuff I recently got in my collection. Thanks for reading! (C) SomeRussianMarioDude Productions (2014)
Ohai guys! I am back here to actually extend my original review of 400-in-1 Real Game Famicom multicart I posted in February 2014.
I have noticed that my review got over one thousand views, which I am really gladful for. Thank you for reading my review! I am glad that it turned out to be quite useful to a lot of people!
Now, there are some confusions I have noticed after I posted the review on my blog, and after that some people re-posted it to emu-land.net website, some Spanish gaming forum, and after me posting it on Famicom World forum, so I will try my best to answer these questions here ;)
Q: What does "NiceCode" mean? You labeled the last 100 or so games with "NiceCode". A: Well, NiceCode is basically a Chinese company that produced a number of crappy plug and play systems, based of the NES, called DreamGear. Most of the games they produced were rubbish. They suffered from dull gameplay, mediocre graphics, and awful music (in most of them). The games they produced were like "Action-52-wanna-be" ones, and if you are familiar with Action 52 multicart for NES by Active Enterprises, you may already know what to expect here, but I consider NiceCode games to be much worse. PirateGamingHeavy made a let's play marathon of these games, so you can check that video out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrqYriDkYp8
Q: Does this multicart work on a real hardware (Famicom, NES with a converter, etc.)? A: As it turned out, not all of these 400-in-1 multicarts work perfectly on Famicom. My multicart works fine on any system I tried. I tried it on a real Famicom, and on a couple of Famiclone systems, and everything worked without any glitches. Mine looks like this:
But some versions of this multicart have the glitchy lines across the screen, that can be seen on this picture (played on NES with a converter):
And the PCB of that version of 400-in-1 Real Game multicart looked like this:
It looks completely different, although both of these use OneBus station (CHR and PRG ROM data are stored on one chip). If you happen to have exactly the same 400-in-1 Real Game multicart as here, there is a mod you can do to fix it.
See where the sliced part is on the board? You have to cut the trade, located above D3 on the picture, and after that all the games start working fine on any hardware you want. (pictures aren't mine, they are made by KittyFae, DDCecil from Famicom World forums) But, yeah... Apparently I was lucky when I got my 400-in-1 Real Game multicart, as it worked fine with no graphical glitches whatsoever. Maybe it was just a different version/revision/release of this multicart, or something... God knows why...
The picture is a bit blurry, but you should be able to see that the multicart works with no glitches (took this photo in February 2014 btw)
I think that it's not worth mentioning that this multicart works fine on Famiclones, since this multicart was pretty much designed for Famicom clone systems, that run on NOaC. Most of the Famiclones I have, that are from 1990s, use NOaC, but it's much more accurate than the one used in clone systems, produced after 2000s, like Polystation, Famulator, Funstation 3, other clones like that.
Q: Is there any ROM dump on this multicart? A: To my knowledge, there's no ROM dump of 400-in-1 Real Game multicart yet, so if you want to see what it looks like, it would be the best to look up the videos on YouTube on this multicart, or check out my original review of this mulitcart. But, from the games 1 to 245, it's pretty much the same as 245-in-1 Real Game multicart, aside from a few duplicates on that one, the ROM dump on which exists on the net. Look up Cah4e3's website to find it. ;)
Q: Where can I buy this awesome multicart? A: Try alliexpress.com, but pay attention to the prices. Some people may just overexaggerate the price, just because it has almost 400 games with virtually no repeats, while the others may sell it for the affordable price, that's almost the same as buying the regular bootleg cart in the flea market (something a bit less than 15 USD). Also on before mentioned Famicom World forums, you can probably find this multicart for sale. http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=10871.0 It may be sold in other places, just look up for the exactly the same label, and the list of games (translated from Chinese to English), to make sure that this is exactly that multicart that you are looking for.
Well, I hope that I was able to address some questions about this multicart.
There exist some multicarts, like 198-in-1 Real Game, and other "extensive" multicarts, but I am not entirely sure, if I am actually going to get more of these in the future to make reviews of. We will see.
Thanks for reading! See you later!
So, since I have already added the music videos here from official Famicom games, here come the music videos from unlicensed games or Famicom multicarts ;)
9999999-in-1 KD-6037-B [Famicom] .mp3:(not available) My comment: I got this multicart along with Simba's Famiclone, that was shaped like original Famicom, but it was grey and dark grey. That Famiclone was pretty much a piece of shit, because it had a bad DPCM sound, which made the music in some games, like Kyatto Ninden Teyandee completely screwed up. Also, the video quality was pretty meh. Thankfully later I got better Famiclones from 1990s and a real Famicom, which are much better than Simba's Famiclone, if you ask me ;)
This multicart is nothing special, there are only about less than 10 games included, and the other "games" are just repeats. I decided to make a music video of this multicart just for fun, and it's in fact my first Videogame Music video I've uploaded on my YouTube channel! So it's not really perfect as you might guess...
My comment: This multicart is a good-old classic from our childhood! :D
The music that plays in the menu is the 8-bit cover of Unchained Melody, the original version of which is pretty good in its own right!
I'd say that every person who owned Dendy Famiclone or any other Famiclone in Eastern European countries back in 1990s, had this multicart in any form. Of course, it only has less than 10 games, and other games are repeats, but the music in this multicart is simply one of the most nostalgic tunes, as well as the backgronuds that are used for each page of the menu may simply make up for not having too much games here, as it's advertised on the label.
I have about 3 or 4 cartridges at the moment which have this same multicart, but the number of repeats vary from one multicart to another... But the list of games is the same for the most part. Battle City (or Tank 1990), Duck Hunt and Wild Gunman are included on all of them, but there are also other games included on them, such as Tetris by Tengen, Super Mario Bros., Dr.Mario, Galaxian, Lunar Ball, Dr. Mario. It's not bad for the first Famiclone cartridge that would come bundled with your Famiclone, but I simply wish there would be more games included...
My comment: At first you'll ask: "Is there any need to make a music video about this game? Everybody knows it!".
But, what you probably don't know is that there was a pirated version: LB35 TV GAME CARTRIDGE CASSETTE, which is Mario game, but without any copyrights, with the different title screen, level select cheat right from the beginning. During the progress of screwing around in the game, the pirates managed to screw up two soundtracks. Those are the underwater theme and the theme when you save a Toad or Princess. Just listen to them! That's some serious shit going on there!
In fact this version could be found on practically any multicart you can think of, including these extensive multicarts, like 150-in-1 Real Game or 245-in-1 Real Game. And we had this game on singlecart by Steepler Ltd., who distributed video game consoles in our country!
My comment: "ANOTHER. FUCKING. MULTICART." - MrNorbert1994. ;)
It's another one of those multicarts that came bundled with many Famiclones in 1990s.
The music is "Can you feel the love tonight?" in 8bit. I kind of like it to be honest with you ;)
The backgrounds are taken from the SuperGame port of The Lion King for Famicom.
Super 190-in-1 (Supervision) [Famicom] .mp3:(not available)
My comment: Nothing much to say :/
It was just a user requested video, and I feel that I forgot to add one more soundtrack here from the multicart, therefore this video is a piece of rubbish.
The music is from Booby Kids for Famicom, but some of it was used here as well ;)
As far as I can tell, this multicart has 100 early original NES/FC games, and the rest are the hacks of them.
2-in-1 YH208 [Famicom] .mp3:(not available)
My comment: Some random music I can't identify.
The multicart has Aladdin from Hummer Team (sadly the mapper hack, which ommits most of the music and doesn't have the animated backgrounds), and Batman Returns.
Block Force [Famicom]
(C) 1990 RCM Group Music: Hwang Shinwei
My comment: The unlicensed game by RCM group.
It's a complete ripoff of Quarth, but it plays pretty good imo.
I've never had Quarth in my childhood, so this was my version of "Quarth" I've played a lot back then...
The music is used in many other games by RCM, like Magic Jewelry, 3D Block, etc..
My comment: I quite liked the music in these "cheap-ass motherfucking pieces of crap" multicarts, so I decided to make one video about them ;)
One of the soundtracks is one of Beethoven's Symphonies, which is rendered very well for 8-bit Nintendo Famicom hardware. But I don't know what the other soundtracks are. If you know them, please, let me know that in the comment section down below.
My comment: The main OST of one of the first unlicensed games ever released for Famicom. The first unlicensed game was Super Maruo, which was some sort of 8-bit porn. It's really rare and expensive to find it on the actual cartridge. I think that Duck is also not very common to find on a single cartridge for the decent price, but you can find it on any sorts of multicarts like 245-in-1 Real Game, or 400-in-1 Real Game.
The game itself is just a rip-off of Penguin Land. The original game wasn't that great, so as this rip-off...
Mainly, because this game is really difficult, and if you screw up once, you have to start the level all over again...
Fire Dragon [Famicom]
(C) GamTec Music: ???
.mp3:(not available)
My comment: This is pretty much a Snake clone, but a really bad one. First of all, the music is really irritating, and the fact that this game exists on the NES... is just weird. On mobile phones, this wasn't a bad idea to have this game, to spend some quick time playing it, but it's certainly a bad idea to have it on NES, given the fact that there are far better puzzle games, than this one.
Also, if you desperately need a good Snake clone for Nintendo, Nibbles could be a good one. Considering the fact that it's a homebrew, it's decent enough. There also exists Greedy, a Snake clone by NiceCode, which can be found on their DreamGear plug and play systems, and 400-in-1 Real Game multicart I covered on this blog, but that one managed to be worse, because the music is even more terrible, and the graphics seem to be done, like it is not NES, but some other system which is much older than NES...
I also recorded the music in PAL speed with PAL NES sound pitch, just to annoy people, who hate playing NES games in PAL speed. :P
My comment: It's fairly decent Sokoban clone, and very simple one, although it's not like one of the greatest games ever made, but it's playable, and the music is good, even though there are only three soundtracks in the actual game. You might actually enjoy playing through this one for a few minutes.
It was released on a rare Caltron 6-in-1 multicart for NES, and rare Asder 20-in-1 for Famicom, where the copyrights are changed to Asder, instead of Caltron. But I have this game on 400-in-1 Real Game in a form of two hacks: one of them being a color palette hack, where it's completely screwed up and everything is grey and pink, but it's called Porter there, no name change; another one being a hack, where the music is changed as well, but it sounds much worse if you ask me, also you play there as a bug or something, the hack is called Shifter.
Super Aladdin [Famicom]
(C) SuperGame Music: Victor Chen
My comment: Here we get a pretty good port of Aladdin from Mega Drive. Thanks to Doommaster1994 who could find out the information about who composed the music to these SuperGame ports, and it turned out that Victor Chen is the one who made these awesome conversions to 8-bit Famicom hardware.
One problem here is that the title screen can't be heard in full when you play the actual game, because the music gets interrupted by the demo sequence. Other than that, thankfully there exist .nsf files on the net, that let you listen to the music in full.
Also, I'd say that this is the best port of Mega Drive Aladdin game. There exists one by NMS Software, that was official one for NES, which was only released in Europe, but it was pretty bad, as the graphics were pretty bad for 1995 release (there were barely any colors), the music wasn't quite as good, the gameplay was slow and buggy (the controls were delayed). But there exists also the worse port, by whatever company it's called, named Aladdin 2, which is just an abomonation, and one of the worst games I've ever played! The graphics, music, gameplay, everything about the game was done so badly, that I'd better just play Exed Exes, or Zunou Senkan Garu instead...
Thankfully, SuperGame did a very good job at their port, but the only thing that is really disappointing is that the game ends at Rugrid level, cutting down the other half of the game entirely... This is the only thing I consider to be terrible in that port. Everything else is made very well in it.
My comment: Well, this port from SNES is mediocre imo. The music is just as earrapy as the one in Exed Exes or Zunou Senkan Garu, but it's much more melodic than in those two games, if you ask me. The graphics weren't converted very well, the color palette is pretty poor in this port.
As for the gameplay itself, just like with some backports, there are many levels cutted down here, and most of them are way too easy to beat. You only get Anything But Tangerunes, Granny Chair, Puppy Love, Udderly Abducted, and the first, and the last two levels are separated into two rounds. Pretty short and cutted down, isn't it? But in Earthworm Jim 4 version of this port, you also get Lorenzen's Soil, but that's not saying much. If you want to look up for a decent port of Earthworm Jim 2, look up the one by SuperGame. Their port is far better imo. ;)
Super Lion King [Famicom]
(C) SuperGame Music: Victor Chen
My comment: Another game from SuperGame pirate company. This time, it's Super Lion King, a pretty good port of Lion King from Mega Drive. There also exists the one by Dark Technologies, which was official port to NES, made in 1995, and that one was absolutely terrible, but it was ported from Gameboy, just like Aladdin by NMS Software, so there's no wonder why the graphics aren't really good, as well as the music and the gameplay is slow and laggy.
This one has some stages ommited from original game, but other than that, there is nothing too major missing in it. The gameplay is simple, the controls are responsive (although if you hold Turbo A at some spot with walls and such, your character may start flying through these obstacles. This glitch can be performed at the end of Hakuna Matata stage, near the log part, with which you can just simply skip that part and "fly" to the top), the graphics are pretty good, and colorful, the music is very well composed as well.
And just like with Super Aladdin, if you play the actual game, you can't listen to the title screen music in full, as the demo interrupts it in the middle.
Also, one interesting thing about the game, is that there exist the original pirate part of this game, and the other one, which is just a mapper hack. What's that? Well, I'll try my best to explain.
The original pirate port has the SuperGame logo running for like 5 seconds, and also has Bug Toss level, just like in original Mega Drive game. In mapper hacked version, SuperGame logo only runs for 1-2 seconds, and there's no Bug Toss level... Funnily enough, I've never came across the mapper hacked version on any pirate cart with Super Game's Lion King. My pirate copy from childhood had the Bug Toss level, and the recent copy I got for collection also has that bonus level. So, at the moment I have two copies of the original version of Super Game's Lion King. O_O
I wish I was that lucky with Hummer Team's Aladdin...
Earthworm Jim 3 [Famicom]
(C) 1997 Hummer Team, KaSheng Music: Alex Yeu
My comment: A fairly decent port of Earthworm Jim from Mega Drive/SNES. The gameplay is pretty good, there are something like 3 stages, separated into two rounds, the controls are pretty good. The graphics are also very nice. The music is pretty cool, I like it ;)
Although what was kind of surprising about this game, is that there were many unused soundtracks in it. They could also be heard in Donkey Kong Country 4 by Hummer Team, as well as Super Mario World by Hummer Team for Famicom. Maybe they did it to fill up the space of the game, or they wanted to use some of these soundtracks in the actual game, but figured out that they wouldn't need that much soundtracks in the game. I don't know... It will be a mystery to me, why they left so many unused soundtracks in-game... :/
Also, if you are wondering why I played the music in PAL speed, it's because:
1) I can't stand this music in NTSC speed!! It sounds way too fast to me!! >_>
2) That's how you'd play this game on good-old Dendy consoles! ^_^
My comment: It's not known for sure who made this game, as well as who wrote this soundtrack. But I think that you might be familiar with this game, if you are familiar with Famicom piracy. ;)
I have this game both in original form and in Super Popo's Adventure form, both on these extensive multicarts I covered on my blog.
The game is not exactly that great. It's a crappy platformer, starring Pikachu. The problem I have with this game is that the levels are way too long, and there are no any checkpoints, so if you die once, you start the level all over again. Also the controls aren't 100% perfect. If you hold the A button, that makes you run, as opposed to B, like in any other videogame, and don't hold the D-pad, you might just run and fall into the pit.
The music is pretty good, in my opinion. The graphics... well, the backgrounds are stolen from Athena and Adventure Island 2 for NES/Famicom, as well as some level bosses are clearly stolen from the latter game, which originally were Master Higgins' dino-friends. But the actual sprite work of Pikachu is pretty decent.
Overall, the game is mediocre, but the music is probably the only best thing about it...
That was it for all the soundtrack videos I made so far!
When I'll make some more of these, I'll post them on my blog as well.
Thank you for reading this post. See you later! (C) SomeRussianMarioDude Productions (2014)
UPDATE (12/08/2014): Added the .mp3 download links to Zunou Senkan Garu, Ninja Hattori-kun, Exed Exes, Shin Jinrui - The New Type, Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru, Doraemon: Giga Zombie no Gyakushuu
Here it is something new I am going to add to my blog: videogame music posts...
You might think that it is a bit pointless to post these videos about videogame music, but I think the opposite. You see, there are some great NES/Famicom games I like and a lot of them have some pretty good music, that deserves to have a video about.
There are already some people on YouTube, who make these kids of videos, like MrNorbert1994, grad1u5, WiiGuy309, etc..
But I don't think that it's going to hurt in any way, if I decide to make some myself ;)
So, in this post I will post some videogame music videos I made for official NES/Famicom games first, as well as give you the short info about a game itself.
Now, of course, I made the music videos to pirated games first, but they will be posted later.
Another reason, why I decided to make these kinds of post on my blog, is because weebly.com is not really a great website, as it feels a bit limited with features and options if you have a free account.
Of course, I am not going to get rid of my weebly.com website yet, but I honestly feel that blogspot feels a bit better, even though this one is just a blog website.
So, without delaying you, I present you all the "Videogame Music (Official)" videos I have made so far. Besides just these videos, I also provide the download links to some of these soundtracks in .mp3.
My comment: This is my first music video I made for official Famicom game, and it's not really that great compared to my newer videos, for the few reasons.
1) I didn't use NSFLive program, and .nsf files of random videogames, to have a much better music quality overall.
2) I didn't make these fade-out effects play properly, as well as the duration of them. In my recent videos I make fade-out effect play for 5 seconds, as well as put 1 second break between tracks.
My comment: Well, the quality of the music has definitely improved since the last time, as I have finally started using NSFLive (thank you, MrNorbert1994 for the suggestion), but the fade-out effects are still not properly playing. The music video of this game was an interesting experience to me, as practically nobody made one at the time this video was uploaded on YouTube, and from what I have noticed recently, this is by far my most popular "Videogame Music [Official]" video yet, as it already got a bit more than 1000 views! And from what I have noticed, it has been mostly watched in Japan (どうもありがとう!)
As for the game itself, it's a very dull and boring half-Arkanoid clone, half-platformer, as you are pretty much forced to play Arkanoid levels to get the specific letter to spell out the word for the password. I was able to beat it once, but it was really, really intense, as there were a lot of enemies that were trying to kill me, making me lose so many lives and continues. And once I tried re-playing this game for the playthrough, I completely failed at level 4, and gave up. Unless you really have to play all Adventure Island games ever made, I'd suggest that you should skip this one, and just listen to this awesome music, composed by Kunimoto Takeaki!
高橋名人の冒険島Ⅳ (Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima IV)
Famicom / ファミコン
(C) 1994 Hudson Soft Music: ???
My comment: Well, this is by far my most favourite Adventure Island game on Famicom. It's not your standard platformer, where you go from Point A to Point B, and get random fruits to update your vitality bar, and dodge enemies that will be getting on your way. This is more like Metroid style of gameplay. Feel free to laugh and facepalm at me, but I never really bothered with playing original Metroid for NES. But I played this game quite a lot in summer 2013, and loved it. The first AI game I played was obviously the first Adventure Island, which was hard as fuck (I was able to get only to level 7-4, and that's it! and still I can't get any further these days X_X). The next game in the series was Adventure Island 3, which was pretty good, and my version has 2 of each items to be able to choose right at the beginning of the game, which made the game a bit easier. After that I played Adventure Island 2 and 4, and both of these parts are my most favourite ones in Adventure Island series for NES/Famicom. The last game from this series I played was Bug-tte Honey I wrote about above.
In case with the music, you can see my crappy attempt at making the intro sequence, right before the title screen theme, but other than that, I think everything else turned out very well.
Also, I should point out, that nobody else made the music video of this game at that time I uploaded this video. Only later, MrNorbert1994 decided to make the Adventure Island music marathon video, where he included the music from all the games of Adventure Island series. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpEsZP8Bvac
The quality of the music is much and much better if you ask me. As I said earlier, he also makes the music videos from other games, so feel free to subscribe to him, if you enjoy these kinds of videos ;)
My comment: Well, this might be the longest comment of mine on the music video I post here, as I have quite a lot of things to say about this game and this music video and such.
First things first, I took a really long break in making these videos, about 8 months in total, but I decided that I might as well just continue my work on these "Videogame Music [Official]" videos.
So, what this game is, is basically a game, made by Hudson Soft in 1986, based off Doraemon anime from 1979. I watched that anime a bit with English subtitles and liked it. This anime was never broadcast in my country back in 1990s, when 8-bit Dendy Famiclones as well as 16-bit Mega Drive clones were really popular among the young audience. The only thing we could learn about Doraemon was either by this game, usually named as "Small Dindong" or "Din Do Happy" as it's known on Whirlwind Manu Famicom pirate singlecarts, or by the Mega Drive game, which was basically a platformer, starring Doraemon himself.
If you are wondering, if we could actually play Giga Zombie no Gyakushuu on Famiclone cartridges, then I highly doubt that. I mean, if you can recall, the games like Zelda or Metroid barely got any releases on these pirate carts, because of one simple reason: the copying process of save battery was way too expensive for pirates to produce, and Giga Zobmie no Gyakushuu turns out to be one of them.
Also, it's all in Japanese, so for any non-Japanese people, this game would have been just impossible to play on a cartridge, but if you recall some other Japanese games, like Kyatto Ninden Teyandee or Duck Tales 2 (Famicom), Chip to Dale no Daisakusen (Famicom), Bucky O'Hare (Famicom), River City Ransom (Famicom), pirates actually released them on their pirate carts, and they were all in Japanese, and it was just a guess work to be able to understand what's going on... But yeah... I think that the fact that this game had a save battery function was the only reason, why this game is either too rare on pirate carts, or completely non-existent. (Well, there was SD Gundam 4: New Type Story, which also had a save battery function and it was released on bootlegs, but whatever...)
And, yes, I know that there was originally a manga of Doraemon, before the anime, but it still wasn't released in my country back in these days... And, of course, there was 1973 anime, the tapes(?) of which were terribly damaged by the fire, and only a few of them were able to be survived and uploaded on the internet on different video sharing websites. As far as I have heard, it wasn't quite as good as 1979 one, but it's still historically important, I suppose. :)
Despite the actual anime series, there were some Summer Specials, Autumn Specials, Spring Specials, Winter Specials, as well as some movies, which is, indeed, really cool. And overall, Doraemon is a very widely recognisable anime character, as well as a prevalent part of culture in Japan.
In fact, Doraemon manga series, as well as anime series were created by Fujiko Fujio, who also created Parman, Obake no Q-tarou, Ninja Hattori Kun mangas and anime series, etc..
Yeah, now as for actual game itself, I got it on official Famicom cart for my collection last year. I first saw this game at "Kinamania Live" livestreams, where Coulthard was playing this game, and it seemed quite interesting to me, that I decided to give it a try.
What this game is, it's basically an action adventures, combined with shooter, and what you have to do, is to save four kids in Doraemon crew, playing as him.
The first level is a city, where you basically have to get every power-up to upgrade yourself, so the later levels will be far easier to play than usual. I personally have problems with the "Cemetory" part of level 1, as I always get my ass kicked by every possible enemy, now matter how hard I try killing all of them or dodging their bullets.
Thankfully, apparently, you keep your weapons, even if you die on level 1.
The boss is simple for the most part, just find the good pattern, where his bullets don't hit you and just spam your weapon. Once you killed him, here you go, you saved Nobita.
The next level is the shooter stage, kind of like Gradius, Life Force, Final Mission, except not as good. Mostly because you have no weapons here to power yourself up, as well as Doraemon's favourite food, dorayaki, rarely appears here to upgrade the health. Here you have to save Gian and Suneo, two classmates of Nobita, who love making fun out of him. And, you can actually save one of these guys right in the middle of the level, and one will join you and help killing enemies. The bosses are not any particularly different: the first is way too easy, just get to one spot and shoot at him; the second one is a bit harder as it makes circles in mid-air, but once you find a spot where you can easily destroy its bullets, and spam your weapon at him, it shouldn't be too difficult; the third one is kind of like the same as the second one to me.
The hardest part is just be able to kill every enemy on your way, and dodge their bullets, while getting as less hit as possible.
The last level (yes, there are only 3 levels here, are you surprised?) is the underwater level, where you have to collect random objects to open up new areas, as well as open chests, kill different enemies and such. This is where I am at the moment, as I am still on my way to figure out where to go and what to do, even though there is a map for this level which will help you to navigate through it.
The hardest part here is to make sure that random ghosts wouldn't steal your objects, as well as not get too much hit from the enemies and bosses. Here, you have to save Shizuka, the girl, which Nobita really loves, according to the anime.
Once you save everyone, and beat all of the levels, you have beaten the game.
Yes, this actually turned out as the overview, didn't it? :P
Well, I figured that some of you may be not really familiar with this game, so I might actually try writing to you, what this game actually is.
This game is somewhat difficult, but there's something about these early Hudson Soft games that still keep me want to play them, no matter how rubbish I am at them. :)
This could be said to Shin Jinrui - The New Type: I suck at this game, but I play it sometimes just to see how far I can get to it. The furthest I was able to get to is Level 4-2, in case you are wondering. ;)
What I liked about Doraemon game, is the music, and there weren't really much videos about it on the net, so I decided to make one just for fun.
I also made the music video for Doraemon: Giga Zombie no Gyakushuu, but I will write about it, when we get to it. :P
Zanac
NES / Nintendo Entertainment System
(C) 1987 Pony Inc. Music: Miyamoto (Miyamo Shant)
My comment: As you might have noticed, this is the music for NES game this time around, not jsut the Famicom game. Well, technically, this game was released in Japan, but only on FDS, and the music was high-pitched there for some reason. But since I've played the pirate version of NES release in my childhood, I decided to make a music video about that one. This is a regular vertical scrolling shooter, and a pretty damn awesome one at that. I was once able to get to area 10 or 11, but didn't manage to beat this game, sadly. But, still, sometimes I replay this game, just to see how far I can get this time around. :)
Also, sometimes, I turn this game on just to listen to this awesome music, composed by Miyamo Shant.
In my opinion, this is one of the games that you must definitely try out for NES, if you have never played it!
Bump'n'Jump / バギー・ポッパー (Buggy Popper)
NES / ファミコン (Famicom)
(C) 1986 Data East Music: ???
My comment: Well, it's just a decent and quite enjoyable clone of Road Fighter with a pretty good music. You can bump into the cars without spinning out on the road and crash into the side of the road, unless you jerk around with the D-pad. Also, as the title for North American release would apply, you can jump with your car just fine, which is helpful to avoid certain boundaries, as well as destroy some enemies. As I said, pretty good game, that you can try out both in NES format and in Famicom format, depending on what system you have :P
My comment: Well, if I wanted to say my opinion in short about this game, I'd say that it's a "kusoge", rubbish shooter.
But let me tell you why I think that this game is an awful piece of rubbish.
What you can notice immediately about the game is that it was some of the worst music ever composed in video game history.
The second thing that you'll notice about it once you start playing it is that it has also confusing and somewhat terrible graphics. But, what is the most important thing about any video game is the gameplay, of course... And is it good here?
OF COURSE NOT!!
The biggest problem is that the turbo buttons don't work here.. SERIOUSLY, DB-FUCKING-SOFT, WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU FUCKING THINKING WITH THIS!!! X_X
Some people might say that I enjoy bootleg Famiclones way too much that I actually got used to using turbo buttons for shooting, but... really... Come on! Aren't these shooter games a bit easier to play if you have a power of turbo? ;)
Take for example some space shooters, like Gyrodine, Zanac, 1942, Gradius, Life Force. You can actually use turbo buttons there just fine, but here you can't do this at all...
Also, as it says on the label of the cartridge, apparently it's RPG. Seriously?? I THOUGHT THAT IT'S JUST A NOT VERY GOOD VERTICAL SPACE SHOOTER AFTER ALL...
Practically nobody made the music video of this game, but I was masohictic enough to make one, so you can suffer the pain I had to go through, when I was making this video... >_>
My comment: Remember I told you earlier about Fujiko Fujio's greatest work, known as Doraemon, as well as he created Ninja Hattori Kun manga and anime series? Well, here is the game, based of the manga series. And actually I had this game as a child! And I had it on a pirate multicart, 21-in-1, which had Super Mario, Soccer, Circus Charlie, and this game, rebranded as Ninja 3 for no apparent reason. Basically, you just play as Kanzo Hattori, who's looking for his master to complete his training. On your way, there'll random small ninja guys, that you can kill with shourekens. Also, the big ones drop the power-up, which you can use on your way. With power-ups, you can run faster, become invisible and such, which is pretty awesome.
The graphics are pretty standard for 1986 release. The gameplay is simple and fun, although the controls aren't exactly that great, and sometimes when you try jumping over the river to another platform, you might end up falling into the river instead. But, what I loved the most about this game, is the music, especially the Main OST, that plays through the levels. That soundtrack is simply one of the best and most nostalgic ones ever! The game itself might be not exactly great, but the music, composed by Kunimoto Takeaki, is simply the best thing about it. Since these years, I got this game on three more cartridges, one of them being official one, as that 21-in-1 started wearing off and the game started glitching up very badly, and I play this game sometimes just to see how far I can get in it.
Definitely check it out! :)
My comment: One of the worst Famicom games I've ever played! In my opinion, it's just as bad as Zunou Senkan Garu, but it has a few other different problems, which I will point out below.
1) The music is equally as bad as in that other game. Seriously, if you listen to the music from both of these games for like a straight hour, you are likely to get completely insane and mental, The composer of this game must have been on drugs when he made this music sound like that. X_X
2) The graphics are really bland. Just grey color, and that's it. Couldn't they just add more colors in order not to make the backgrounds look like shit?? I understand that NES color pallette isn't that rich, but I think that they still could add a bit more colors to make the game look better.
3) The gameplay is really really slow, dull and glitchy, which definitely makes this game not fun to play at all.
Now, I should mention that this is an arcade port, done by Micronics, which are known for making really terrible ports from arcades to Famicom. Besides this game, they also ported 1942, Onyanko Town, Geimos, and DAT INFAMOUS MAKAIMURA, AKA. GHOSTS AND GOBLINS. All these ports suffer from the following problems:
1) Slow gameplay
2) Mediocre graphics
3) Awful and earrapy music
But I'd say that the games I listed above are much better than Exed Exes, and if we are speaking about arcade ports, the original Exed Exes was actually quite decent. The graphics and music weren't great, but not too bad. The gameplay was fast and challenging. But the Famicom version is a complete opposite to all of this :/
And yes, I said that this is not #1 worst game of all time. I'd say that Xiao Ma Li for Famicom is simply the worst game ever, and I think you can guess why. If not, then check out my post of "If I was a pirate... #1: Small Mario".
Adventures of Dino Riki / 新人類 THE NEW TYPE (Shin Jinrui: The New Type)
NES / ファミコン (Famicom)
(C) 1987 Rix Soft, Hudson Soft Music: Kunimoto Takeaki
My comment: Yes, the music video of this game has already been on YouTube, but I liked the music in this one noneless, so I made one myself ;)
Basically, it's some weird shooter, starring the caveman boy. Just shoot down everything that gets on your way and that's it. Pretty fun and difficult game, but not too frustrating. If you are playing Hudson Soft games, like this one, or Doraemon, get yourself equipped with turbo controller, because you'll have to shoot a lot, and you can't hold a regular button to shoot everything automatically, you'd have to mash them instead. The furthest I was able to get in this game is Level 4-2 on a real console, because, as you know, I prefer playing these games on a real console, if I have them on an actual cartridge. ;)
And, yes, Kunimoto Takeaki made a great job with the soundtrack with this game as well... But, as I said, my most favourite and most nostalgic soundtrack is in Ninja Hattori-kun, but I must say, that he made a lot of great soundtracks to these Hudson Soft games. :)
My comment: This game is also known as Yo! Noid in the West, but I liked the Japanese version better, even though I had the North American version on a pirate cart as a child, so I decided to make a music video about that version instead. ;)
Most of the soundtracks are the same as in Yo! Noid, but there are quite a few of these soundtracks, which are different. Also I know that one person really wanted the music video of this game, so I thought that it's going to be a good idea to make one. :)
Also, some tracks are repeated, and labeled as (ver.1) and (ver.2). I did it this way, because, although they are almost the same, they start at a bit different point, and they are still the level themes. I decided not to leave them off. Simply use the timelines in the description of the actual video to skip them, if you don't feel like listening to all of them.
ドラえもん ギガゾンビの逆襲 (Doraemon - Giga Zombie no Gyakushuu)
My comment: Remember I said that I made the music video of Doraemon: Giga Zombie no Gyakushuu earlier? Well, here it is, the game, based off the Doraemon anime once again, just like any other Doraemon games that came out after it. ;)
But this one is so much different compared to original Hudson Soft game, because this is an RPG (aka. Role-Playing game). The problem is that I am rubbish at RPGs, and I don't know how to play them.
As for this game, since Doraemon was originally from Japan, this game was also released only in Japan, which means that everything in it is in Japanese, which is somewhat confusing to those people who don't know this language. But, there exists an English translation ROM of this game on the net, which was made at the end of 1990s, so you can actually download it and play on emulator, or play it on some flashcart you have for NES, like PowerPak or EverDrive N8 ;)
Even the English translated ROM doesn't help much to me.
But, what I was really happy about is that there was a GameFAQs.com FAQ for this game, as well as an LP, which I usually don't bother with, but here I had to rely on it, just to get an idea for the proper soundtrack order, as I put them in that order where you can hear it in the game for the first time. :P
And there actually was a music video on this game, but the music sounded somewhat screwed up, as apparently it was played of VirtuaNES emulator, and not of NSFLive, like I do with my music videos, as well as the tracks weren't in the same order as I put them in my videos.
But, why I decided to make a music video about this game, and had to go through this all hassle, and spend like the whole night on it?? Well, from playing this game a little bit, I just liked the music in it a lot, so I just really wanted to make a music video of it. And since I made it and uploaded it on YouTube, I feel myself somewhat proud that I managed to do it. :)
And I like my music video of this game so much, that I sometimes just open it up and listen to the music from it. Of course, if I had no problems with RPG game genre, and I knew Japanese, I'd definitely give this game a try on a real console (or on Famiclone).
So, that's about it for all the "Videogame Music [Official]" videos I have made so far. I will post the videos about the music from pirated multicarts or pirated games later. ;)
Yes, as you guessed that, I am making a post of my recent pickups for Famicom. ;)
This is going to be a little bit special one, as I am also going to bring a little overview of one cartridge, which I got specially for my friend.
So, without any delaying, let's get started.
I won these cartridges at one auction for really cheap price (something like less than 4 USD for one cart ;)).
Buggy Popper (aka. Bump'n'Jump)
Challenger
Kero Kero Keroppi no Daibouken
Shin Jinrui - The New Type (aka. Adventures of Dino Riki)
Yoshi no Tamago (aka. Mario & Yoshi)
Nothing really much to say about these cartridges, other than a few things that you probably might not be aware of:
In Shin Jinrui - The New Type, you can control a little caveman boy both with the first player controller and the second player controller. This "easter egg" or whatever it can be called is pretty cool, and I wasn't really aware of it, until I found it on my own, although I think that every NES/Famicom games already knows about it, so I am just a noob :P Anyway, I think this was done, so two players could play this game, without the need to pass the controller over to another person, so both of them may use their own conrtollers, so if one player dies, the second player just uses his controller to continue playing the game. This works with other Hudson Soft games, like Doraemon, Championship Lode Runner, Milon's Secret Castle, Bomberman, Felix the Cat, etc..
If you play Challenger for Famicom on a PAL Famiclone, the train on the first level will run much faster than it should. It must be some sort of bug with the game data, but this happens only if you play this game on PAL Famiclone. It works without any bugs on NTSC machines.
I also got 10 empty cartridge cases to save my naked PCBs from wearing off completely.
By the time I made this photo, I already saved four of them.
So, I'll just quickly show you the cartridges that have the labels on them ;)
Not including Nigel Mansell's World Championship Challenge, I made the labels for these cartridges myself.
So, since I was able to save some PCBs from wearing off completely, I'll list what games were actually included of them (that you see of this photo already with the cartridge case and custom labels).
Nigel Mansell's World Championship Challenge
2-in-1 Felix vs Jerry (Tiny Toon Adventures hack), Darkwing Duck 2 (Super Contra hack)
8-in-1
Rockin' Kats
Top Gun Second Mission
Hunt for Red October
Snake Rattle'n'Roll
Palamedes
Battle Tank
Top Gun Second Mission (repeat)
Hunt for Red October (repeat)
12-in-1 "Hwang Shinwei"
Magic Jewelry (sadly, it doesn't work on this cartridge)
Tetris [Tengen]
Chinese Chess [TXC Corp.]
Dr. Mario
Taiwan Mahjon 16 [Sachen?]
Gomoku Narabe Renji
Block Force [RCM]
Hayauchi Super Igo
Arkanoid (more extra lives)
Flipull
Super Mario (hacked title screen to read "2", level select option to start on any level from world 1, two glitchy soundtracks)
Tank 1990 (Battle City hack)
The last two were actually pretty heavy, once I insterted the PCBs of them into the cartridges, as they are actually built on EPROM chips technology, as opposed to glob-top technology, which is much cheaper.
Now I will show you these "TSK DANDYK" cartridge cases more closely to you ;)
The front side.
The back side.
Inside the cartridge case.
To my knowledge, these TSK DANDYK cartridges originally came from Omsk, the Russian city, back in 1990s, when Dendy was really popular in my country. These cartridge cases, apparently, are still being produced today. The plastic case is not close to the one used in official Famicom carts, but it's good enough, if you want to have some not so expensive cartridge cases to save some of your old naked PCBs for Famicom ;)
Sadly, not all of my PCBs could be inserted into this cartridge case, and some of them are held with some round plastic tabs, as opposed to the ones from the left and right sides, as it can be seen from the right side of the cartridge case on the picture above. :)
Now, here comes something special...
The front side.
The back side.
The top.
This is a reproduction cartridge of Akumajou Densetsu for Famicom... but IN ENGLISH!!
It was assembled by mr-volk user from GBX.ru forums (Большое спасибо за данный картридж, mr-volk!), who also makes reproductions carts of Famicom Contra, Crysis Force, and to my knowledge, Gimmick as well.
As you can see, this cartridge looks like other Konami VRC6 games they released after Akumajou Densetsu, like Mouryou Senki Madara (1990) or Esper Dream II (1992). Also Lagrange Point, which used VRC7 sound hardware, has the same cartridge shell as here.
So, let's compare this cartridge to the official copy of Akumajou Densetsu.
So, we can already see some differences, which I am going to list down below:
1) The cartridge shells are of different height. The reproduction one is a bit bigger than the original one.
2) The front labels are a bit different. On the reproduction cartridge it says "Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse", but the label itself is taken from the original artwork. The Konami copyright and the ID number of the cartridge are presented on the label though... I don't think that end labels being different are worth mentioning here...
3) The back labels are different. Even though I don't really know Japanese that well, I can tell that the original game that used to be on that reproduction cartridge was some Konami VRC6 game that supported save battery. I have almost the same label on my Hoshi no Kirby cartridge. To think about it, it's quite funny.
But as for the save battery, the seller told me that it was removed from here, as Akumajou Densetsu doesn't support saving, but password system.
Video Game System Liko KL-235 + original Akumajou Densetsu & Dendy Junior 2 + reproduction cartridge.
Well... since I haven't posted a video about it, I also decided to make a video of this reproduction cartridge, running on Dendy Junior 2 Famiclone. The video will be posted below, when it's going to be uploaded on YouTube...
Yes, the English translated ROM by Vice 1.0 is included on that cartridge, to my knowledge.
Actually I played that translated version on emulator a long while ago, and it was translated very well, so that's really cool to see that translation on this cartridge ;)
Here's the video demonstration of this reproduction cartridge, running on Dendy Junior 2 Famiclone:
And, in case you are wondering, VRC6 soundchip in the actual cartridge works just like it should. There's no problems with it. I tested this cartridge on numerous Famicom consoles I have, including Famiclones, and I get the same result as with original Akumajou Densetsu cartridge: works fine! ;)
I got this cartridge just for my friend. I might actually try getting another reproduction cartridge like this in the future, but I have a feeling that I got used to the original Japanese version, as well as got used to the original Nintendo font. I don't know... I might get it in the future for myself, if I ever decide to do so...
So, that's it for now. Hope you enjoyed reading this.