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Post by segamasterdude on Mar 13, 2021 18:07:35 GMT
Dinobasher which was unreleased will work on any sms because it works with the sega mapper. Was it modified to do that? No, perhaps codemasters had learnt their lesson or as it was a prototype it hadn't been programmed for their in house pcb.
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Post by flatapex on Mar 13, 2021 23:25:20 GMT
Was it modified to do that? No, perhaps codemasters had learnt their lesson or as it was a prototype it hadn't been programmed for their in house pcb. Turns out that codemasters outsourced development for most/all ms games to other software houses. I’ll compile a full list of who made what on behalf of them, as an example even the md micro machines games except the first were outsourced and then published by codemasters Was interested to see what the story was as it seemed wildly inconsistent
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Post by Sinistral on Mar 14, 2021 18:20:43 GMT
The only models that work started production in late 89, from what I can tell that 90 on every pal model had the updated vdp (5246) Vdp 5246 is also used on model 2s So, the grail item is a model 1 that plays these games. There are only 3 bios versions that are any use: 2.4 which is hang on and safari hunt (and includes snail maze) 3.4 which is hang on but no safari hunt Alex Kidd version So we talked about production date and this can be found to a point in the serial number, the board is a VA3 which is thought to have entered production circa September 89 The second number of the serial number needs to be 0 for 1990, 1 for 1991 or if you like gambling 9 for 89 Hope this sheds some light on what will work and what will not. I had seen that thread at SMSpower from years ago, but didn't know if it was the same since he seemed to be talking about running them as roms on an everdrive. So sounds like the serial will determine what systems can/can't play the Codemaster's titles. Just wondering if this has been reliably confirmed that anything from 1990 or beyond can play these games? I never was aware there was a difference in the graphics chips until this point. It's also interesting Phil has a Missile defence system that plays these games, just seem to be a lot of conflicting information on the subject.
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Post by Sinistral on Mar 14, 2021 18:47:30 GMT
Hi Playgen! long time no speak, hope you are doing good these days! It's interesting you manged to get it to work with Hangon/Safari Hunt model, no such luck for me! I'm good thanks, still around but not much spare time any more! All my SMS games are in storage boxes, and haven't been played in a few years. I didn't have to do anything special. I used to buy consoles cheaply and mod them to sell back in the day. Every one with Hang on and Safari hunt built in I had would just play the Codemasters as normal. Only in 50hz though. I guess you could probably work it out from console serial numbers as to which ones are the later ones with the updated chip. That's a shame that collection is packed away Only recently took mine out of storage too, the start of lock down meant WFH became the normal. My wife lasted a whole week of working in the same room as me, before banishing me to "play room" . So I gutted out the room and now I have an office/gaming room. Kids were too old for a play-room now anyway, so we all get to benefit from the games room now. Just wish I hadn't sold off all those rare titles back in the day, got next to nothing for them either at the time, but life's priorities change with age I guess! I'm sure the collection will come back out someday, just as mine did
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Post by flatapex on Mar 14, 2021 21:09:30 GMT
The only models that work started production in late 89, from what I can tell that 90 on every pal model had the updated vdp (5246) Vdp 5246 is also used on model 2s So, the grail item is a model 1 that plays these games. There are only 3 bios versions that are any use: 2.4 which is hang on and safari hunt (and includes snail maze) 3.4 which is hang on but no safari hunt Alex Kidd version So we talked about production date and this can be found to a point in the serial number, the board is a VA3 which is thought to have entered production circa September 89 The second number of the serial number needs to be 0 for 1990, 1 for 1991 or if you like gambling 9 for 89 Hope this sheds some light on what will work and what will not. I had seen that thread at SMSpower from years ago, but didn't know if it was the same since he seemed to be talking about running them as roms on an everdrive. So sounds like the serial will determine what systems can/can't play the Codemaster's titles. Just wondering if this has been reliably confirmed that anything from 1990 or beyond can play these games? I never was aware there was a difference in the graphics chips until this point. It's also interesting Phil has a Missile defence system that plays these games, just seem to be a lot of conflicting information on the subject. The difference is in the programming, so the rom requires exactly the same as the cart. I’ve gone off the board builds on sms power, the problem we have is that we need more cross referencing but it’s hopefully a good start. There is also some interesting info hopefully in the works to look into why we have this problem in the first place and some possible reasoning behind cancelling games like Dinobasher
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Post by bkk on Mar 28, 2021 19:36:10 GMT
Codemasters reverse engineered SMS and tried to release without a license. After Sega threatened legal action they came to an agreement (similar to EA on the Mega Drive). They probably would have just bought new SMSs to reverse engineer so weren't aware of the earlier VDPs which had been out of production for 3-4 years by then.
SMS sold a bit over 6 million in PAL regions. ~360k from 1986-1988 and a further ~290k in 1989 (many of which would have used the SMS II VDP). So probably <10% of PAL consoles were incompatible with Codemasters games, and as those were the oldest consoles many of those may have already been out of use by 1993.
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Post by flatapex on Mar 29, 2021 0:10:46 GMT
Codemasters reverse engineered SMS and tried to release without a license. After Sega threatened legal action they came to an agreement (similar to EA on the Mega Drive). They probably would have just bought new SMSs to reverse engineer so weren't aware of the earlier VDPs which had been out of production for 3-4 years by then. SMS sold a bit over 6 million in PAL regions. ~360k from 1986-1988 and a further ~290k in 1989 (many of which would have used the SMS II VDP). So probably <10% of PAL consoles were incompatible with Codemasters games, and as those were the oldest consoles many of those may have already been out of use by 1993. Add to this that many software houses used by codemasters were much smaller, likely didn’t have an sms lying around (they did a lot of Amiga stuff around then) so likely went wherever they could get one and likely used model 2’s as the model 1 was not available new then They likely thought sega wouldn’t upgrade the hardware because, let’s face it, why would they?
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Post by bkk on Mar 29, 2021 19:21:40 GMT
My assumption was that external Codemasters devs would have used Codemasters "Dev Systems", but interested to hear about any info on external development for Codemasters SMS games. There's only 3/4 Codemasters games for SMS, but significantly more when including GG. All of this (apart from Codemasters doing an EA) is just speculation on my part, so happy to be educated or corrected on any of my assumptions!
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Post by bkk on Mar 29, 2021 19:38:35 GMT
And something I just thought of ... One of the things that EA hated about console licensing was being restricted in the number of games that they could release (along with having to pay them for manufacturing). The deal they struck with Sega let them release unlimited games, and manufacture them all themselves. This was basically the deal that Codemasters got in 1993. Sega's argument prior to that was that they had to limit the number of titles to control quality and avoid another crash as had happened to the Atari 2600 etc. Yet if you look at the UK Mega Drive charts in the mid-90s, they are dominated by EA and Codemasters (excluding Sega), and the quality was super high! In fact, putting all of the responsibility onto them meant that they had to release quality games, and couldn't just throw @&^% at the wall and see what stuck.
So whilst they may not have made much profit from EA and Codemasters (more in the UK for the latter) I'm sure that they both sold a tonne of consoles for Sega. I was always into gaming, but by the time that I turned 16 ~1993-4-5 my friends would come around with FIFA/Brian Laras, get stoned and it was cool! Micro Machines 4-player was super fun. Pete Sampras with the J-cart was awesome! I remember beating that on 1 player ... my friend said it was impossible (I thought so too at the time) ... it was a cheating CPU game ... but still made you want to beat it. So yeah, these were the games that non-gamers bought, and pushed Mega Drive into the mainstream.
Edit; 1993 to 4 - 5 that time lasted a bit longer than I Recall now!
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