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Post by bkk on Mar 29, 2021 20:09:19 GMT
My serial number is G20301347 what is this worth? Sorry for the really late reply ... this looks like a Mega Drive serial ... certainly not an SMS one, so sorry, I can't help much apart from saying that it was manufactured in 1992. I have now got enough serials to estimate a lot of models ... see here for my estimates, and thanks to everybody that contributed. Unusual serials and model numbers are still welcome!
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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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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 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 bkk on Apr 25, 2017 12:11:34 GMT
Cool, I haven't seen one of those opened up before. Could you post a closer picture of Pat Riley please? It has the product code which isn't documented. Actually, could you also post a closer picture of Ultima IV, Gauntlet, Impossible Mission,and Summer Games too? Some probably had different codes for US than Europe (like Paperboy). Alex Kidd in Shinobi World screenshot is from a prototype version. Sorry for the late reply bro. I'm not ignoring you, I've taken the pics and will get them up soon. Having issues with PC (again/as usual), stuck using mobile at the moment. I'll put the pics in the Posters thread to keep everything on topic here Cool Israeli SMS manual (1987) with some pink sheet (I think it's a list of stores), and a Mega Drive manual, all in Hebrew. I have to scan these;
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Post by bkk on Mar 30, 2017 5:59:14 GMT
Cool, I haven't seen one of those opened up before. Could you post a closer picture of Pat Riley please? It has the product code which isn't documented. Actually, could you also post a closer picture of Ultima IV, Gauntlet, Impossible Mission,and Summer Games too? Some probably had different codes for US than Europe (like Paperboy).
Alex Kidd in Shinobi World screenshot is from a prototype version.
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Post by bkk on Feb 7, 2017 22:21:18 GMT
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Post by bkk on Feb 7, 2017 22:10:32 GMT
I don't have a picture of the back of that one, generally they're Sega of America/Tonka ones, but some are strangely PAL versions with both PAL and German manuals ... not sure why as the PAL manual already has German. Maybe they had a mix of PAL and US games and whoever added the German manuals and yellow sticker didn't know the difference.
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Post by bkk on Feb 7, 2017 21:19:00 GMT
For some reason Ariolasoft imported a lot of US games and gave them cheap black and white German instructions. They come with a yellow sticker on the front "with German instructions".
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Post by bkk on Feb 5, 2017 1:19:23 GMT
^Thanks 72nd model number discovery: 3005-24-D
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Post by bkk on Jan 30, 2017 19:14:31 GMT
Thanks Well, the "Comet Pack" sticker is the same design as the "Saturday Night at the Movies Pack" and "Unbelievable Value Pack", which were holiday 1993 bundles (Batman Returns was also included in "Saturday Night at the Movies Pack". Batman Returns had released earlier that year, so not too long before it was bundled. The question is if these games were just supplied seperately, or included in the box (surely they wouldn't fit in the hardware box if they also had software boxes). Here's the internals of a SMS II Shinobi pack (French). Note the cartridge came without the box;
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Post by bkk on Jan 29, 2017 19:36:14 GMT
UK "Comet Pack"; SMS II incl. Sonic + Batman Returns, Super Monaco GP II, and Streets of Rage.
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Post by bkk on Jan 23, 2017 20:46:05 GMT
Mostly German SMS stuff in Poland, if you're lucky you might find hardware with Hungarian/Polish/Russian instructions; Here's a Czech SMSII manual (I have a Casino Games with Czech manual, so some software got Czech manuals too) Czech catalogue; Hungarian SMSII manual; Russia even got it's own SMS model. Russian SMSII catalogue; Slovakian SMS release (1992); So whilst not massively popular, SMS did get released in the major former Warsaw Pact countries (Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
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Post by bkk on Jan 13, 2017 14:28:14 GMT
^Thanks 71st model number discovery: 3010-20
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Post by bkk on Jan 4, 2017 22:29:18 GMT
I wonder just how many of these were actually produced. For 5 to have turned up over the years that our small forum is aware of then there must have been quite a few to begin with. I hardly ever check eBay anymore but this thread has made me think maybe I should browse a little more often! These were samples supplied to distributors prior to release. They were used to demo to magazines, retailers etc. You can see "red Hang On" featured in many magazine articles from 1986/7. Mainly Ariolasoft in Germany, but also in France when it released a year later. The fact that they were still supplying these samples a year after the retail version of Hang On was available suggests that they manufactured quite a few. Probably dozens, maybe hundreds. These aren't the same ROMs as the final releases either, they generally feature prototype code.
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