Japan only so far, but also hilarious.
So…what is this for?
It’s at the end of the video. It’s a Mega Drive 2 and Mega CD Mini. Essentially a sequel to the original Mega Drive Mini, but with component shortages being what they are, right now it looks like it’s Japan only. They want to make more mini consoles, but chip shortages are making that impossible.
Hah yeah I wrote that before seeing the end of the video. Hope they make it here.
What a terrible idea to go with the horrible 2nd console’s design though. As an objet, I don’t want that on my shelf!
Back when I was a kid, my family took a couple of vacations to visit family that lived in Taiwan. I was probably like 12 years old or so. One of the things that we did was go to a local resort town on Sun Moon Lake, where we just sort of did a touristy thing. Since it was a pretty small and pretty touristy town, there were a couple of streets with night time markets, some various souvenir shops open late, lots of restaurants with plastic stools and tables outside where you get dinner and drinks.
My brother and I, being underage, but old enough to more or less take care of ourselves in this environment, we’re free to wander around the tourist quarter while my parents drank and talked to my uncle’s and grandparents and whatever. I was a kid so I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on.
In addition to various bars and street vendors and things, this being the early 90s, there were also some crummy smoke filled arcades. Well, smoke-ish filled. In my memory, some didn’t really have walls, just like shutters that pulled down when they closed, because they were basically in the same kind of open air spaces that the restaurants were located in.
These being low budget Taiwanese arcades, they had a very random smattering of different games, mostly in Chinese or direct Japanese imports. Once such game I’ve about posted before, an obscure fighting game based on a classic Chinese fantasy novel called Outlaws of the Lost Dynasty / Dark Legend.
However, me being 12 or so, and these being seedy arcades, I also recall some relatively…less savory arcade games that stuck in my memory. One such game was Mitchell Corporation’s Lady Killer, a weird little sorta Dig Dug-y thing where you’re a scuba diver and you flip over tiles to uncover pixel-y naked ladies. I found it on MAME a little while ago, and it’s a kind of fun little arcade action game.
In my memory in the same section as Lady Killer, there was also a game that I would remembered basically as “Bonanza Bros, but also with naked pixel ladies”, which as far as I can tell, are not featured in any version of Bonanza Bros. I assumed that I was conflating some things, or maybe just that it was some kind of weird Taiwan only ROM hack of some sort that has never been seen in English speaking countries.
However, today, some company announced that they’re going to remaster Pipi And Bibi, an obscure arcade game by Toaplan that…kinda looks like Bonanza Bros, but also has sexy ladies in it.
This is unquestionably what I remember seeing as a kid. It’s not exactly seared into my memory, but it definitely ticks all the boxes (there’s even a little enemy with sunglasses who could easily have been mistaken for a Bonanza Bro in my mind).
On vacation today and been having a good time…
The DMG looks damn good outside. Still waiting for my Analogue Pocket, but OG hardware is amazing over 30 years later (game is not quite there yet…).
Cool! How’s the battery save backup on that cart tho? 😂
Working perfectly! I picked it up a month or so ago. It had three saves on it. :)
the heck?! those batteries were not made to last 30 years. Impressive… I wonder if a previous owner replaced it
I recently looked at the process for changing batteries on NES carts and it involves soldering. Yuck.
It’s possible it was replaced but I have many, many carts with original batteries working just fine. It’s such a small charge needed for these saves that it holds on for a very long time.
Also, lots of people replace batteries these days and more. It’s an entire cottage industry.
Anyway, I have always been an original hardware guy and it really is astounding sometimes how good even the rudimentary past can be even today. Timeless gameplay does hold up.
I wouldn’t expect a battery to last 30 years if it were sitting in a drawer. They drain to zero over time even if they’re not being used! Whoever engineered these things needs to get an award.
This is absolutely nuts. Just located cheat that lets you play as the other boxers in a multiplayer mode in Super Punch-Out!! on SNES.
This is what happens when a game isn’t released in Japan! Silly Nintendo.
Are you interested in the sequel:
Are they really releasing another machine? Would have been cool if you could download the second collection into the current mini console.
Yeah, I think so too. Or even just give us a rom dump and let us play these damned games wherever we want.
That’s a good point. Having to swap out machines depending on the game you want to play seems… terrible?
I have it preordered and I’m glad I did it before the whole list was announced. It’s going to be the only legal way to play Crusader of Centy for less than $700.