posted by taizou @ 2014-05-22 22:36:24
Dumps
Hey I'm back again! with some stuff! Quite a lot of stuff, as it happens. I've recently (... ish) dumped a bunch of
games released by a company called Guangzhou Li Cheng Industry & Trade Co (广州市骊城工
贸有限公司), also known as Xing Xing Technology (星星科技) or by their "Niutoude" custom
boot logo. Li Cheng's output consisted of re-released versions of unlicensed original games
from mostly Taiwanese developers, alongside Chinese translations of licensed games, but I'm
focusing on the unlicensed stuff for now.
Li Cheng releases of games are almost invariably hacked with a crappy new title screen,
and sometimes feature bugs which were not present in the original, so these are by no means
the "proper" or the best versions of the games, but their copy protection is way less
sophisticated so they're considerably easier to dump & emulate than the originals.
hhugboy supports Li Cheng's mapper so
raw dumps should all work properly on that emulator (though in a few cases they might not be
auto-detected and you will have to manually set the compatibility mode), but I've also
attempted to remove their protection to produce versions that will work in other emulators
as well. While their protection is fairly simplistic, it could be inserted at various points
in a game, so I've had to manually hack out each instance I could find; this means there
may be cases where I've missed one and the game will crash, so if you notice
something like this, please leave a comment or email me! There are also a few games which
don't seem to make use of this protection at all, but they still have wrong header
information to fool dumping hardware and emulators, so in those cases I've just fixed the
header and marked them as such.
I'm going to release 5 lots of 4 of these for now, in ID number order, so there's no
particular logic to the releases (any more so than there was a logic in Li Cheng's own
release schedule, anyway; games from the same developer would sometimes be clustered
together presumably because they acquired them at the same time). Today has a lot of
variations of already dumped games, but the next one is looking like it'll be all new
stuff.
Shuihu Shenshou 水浒神兽 (CBA010)
Vast Fame's Water Margin-based
monster-collecting RPG; presented here with the copyrights hacked out. Don't worry, they get
more interesting later on. It's a good game though! You should totally play it if you
haven't already. Cart provided by Qiezei!
raw: Shuihu Shenshou (Unlicensed, Chinese) (CBA010) [Raw Dump],zip
fixed (UPDATED 2014-06-01): Shuihu Shenshou (Unlicensed, Chinese) (CBA010) [Fixed-2].zip
Shuma Baolong - Shuijing Ban 数码暴龙-水晶版 (CBA011)
Another minor variation on a Vast Fame RPG. Also a good game which you should totally
play! This one needs "Unlicensed compatibility mode" setting to "Li Cheng" in hhugboy for
the raw dump to work properly. (incidentally the title given above is the one from the cart
label, which is missing the "3" from the title screen)
raw: Shuma Baolong - Shuijing Ban (Unlicensed, Chinese) (CBA011) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Shuma Baolong - Shuijing Ban (Unlicensed, Chinese) (CBA011) [Fixed].zip
Emo Cheng 2 - Fengyun Pian 恶魔城2-风云篇 (CBA033)
Emo Dao/Devil Island with a hacked title screen. The next one is something new I swear.
But this is a really good game and also isn't a Chinese-heavy RPG so you definitely
should play it. (This time the "2" is on the label but not the title screen... consistency
wasn't their strong point)
raw: Emo Cheng 2 - Fengyun Pian (Unlicensed, Chinese) (CBA033) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed (UPDATED 2014-06-01): Emo Cheng 2 - Fengyun Pian (Unlicensed, Chinese) (CBA033) [Fixed-2].zip
Mingzhu Koudai Guaishou 2 明珠口袋怪兽2 (CBA060)
whoa it's a new one! This game is probably better known (if it's known at all) as Digimon D-4, the title under which it
was originally released by SKOB. (The developers are unknown but it might have been done
in-house by SKOB themselves, or maybe they outsourced it to someone else.) Li Cheng's title
translates to "Pearl Pokemon 2", but that's actually no less appropriate than the original
name, because this is actually a Digimon/Pokemon crossover RPG; you can choose from a
selection of Pokemon and Digimon characters and battle it out against both kinds of -mon in
a somewhat interesting battle system involving Track & Field-style A-button bashing.
raw: Mingzhu Koudai Guaishou 2 (Unlicensed, Chinese) (CBA060) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed (UPDATED 2014-06-01): Mingzhu Koudai Guaishou 2 (Unlicensed, Chinese) (CBA060) [Fixed-2].zip
posted by taizou @ 2014-04-21 15:49:22
Dumps
Well the Game Boy is 25 years old today, and to celebrate... here's a hastily prepared release of a Harry Potter game! (yay?)
A Chinese version of this game (albeit not the original) has been dumped for quite a while now, but here I have the English version. This was dumped from a cart with no protection whatsoever, which looked absolutely 100% identical to a cart I'd previously tried to dump which did have protection. I actually only bought the second one because it came with a box; I thought I might as well at least try to dump it in case it turned out to be a different revision or something. and I'm glad I did! because I can now bring you:
Harry Potter II
For those of you not familiar with the dumped version, Harry Potter 3, this is a horizontal shoot-'em-up seemingly developed by Vast Fame, although for some reason they didn't use their own (usually excellent) music and instead "did a Sintax" and stole some from somewhere else. Fortunately they had better taste than Sintax, so they didn't just rip off GBC Lemmings again; they took the soundtrack from Parodius, which is pretty great in its own right, and fits the game well. Vast Fame even steals better than everyone else.
amusingly way back in 200-something I released my own translation patch for the Chinese version, so you now have two English versions to play with - mine wasn't perfect by any means, but, well, here's a comparison of the first couple of scenes in the intro (mine on the left):
(you can also see in those screenshots that the pictures were all cropped for the official version, seemingly due to the way the font was stored)
anyway, have fun:
download - Harry Potter II (Unlicensed, English).zip
(note that it's now named Harry Potter II rather than 2, based on the title on the box/cart; BBD's one is also known as "Harry Potter 2" so I'd like to distinguish them in case I ever dump that)
posted by taizou @ 2014-02-08 19:52:02
Site News
I've launched a new site today at supermulti.org - It's more or less going to be a blog covering Chinese/Taiwanese unlicensed & original gaming stuff like Handheld Underground was originally intended to be, only with a broader scope (ie not just handhelds) and probably without the ROM and emulation stuff (which I'll still do here, since that's all I've used it for in about a year anyway). have fun!
posted by taizou @ 2013-12-25 12:50:06
Dumps
merry sintaxmas everyone! sintax claus has six things for you this year - all but the first are variants of previously dumped games but some of them are fairly interesting I think. no cart pictures because i don't have access to them right now, sorry.
(oh and hopefully you know the drill by now but the raw dumps will only work in hhugboy or MESS, fixed versions are for all other emulators)
Mo Shou Shi Ji: Zhan Shen (魔獸世紀-戰神)
"World of Warcraft" or a fairly bad platform shooter thing. With an entirely new engine, unexpectedly. In the first level you can literally just hold down right and you pick up enough health items to cancel out the damage you take from enemies. Later levels add a bit more variety though, thankfully.
raw: Mo Shou Shi Ji - Zhan Shen (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Mo Shou Shi Ji - Zhan Shen (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
Feng Zhi Gou II (风之谷II)
This is more or less the engine from Final Fantaxy IX with a few tweaks and without the overworld. It's supposed to be based on MapleStory but I have it on good authority that it actually has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
(thanks to KingPepe for testing this one!)
raw: Feng Zhi Gou II (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Feng Zhi Gou II (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
2003 Shu Ma Bao Long: Ge Dou Ban (2003数码暴龙 格斗版)
well this one's my favourite. the engine from that Three Kingdoms beat 'em up with some loose Digimon theming applied. characters that are obviously just repurposed sprites from somewhere else, enemies that are often just dinosaurs and Sintax self-promotion in the backgrounds. what's not to like?
raw: 2003 Shu Ma Bao Long - Ge Dou Ban (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: 2003 Shu Ma Bao Long - Ge Dou Ban (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
Luo Ke Ying Xiong EXE5 (络克英雄EXE5) / Luo Ke Ren X5 (洛克人X5)
this is yet another variant on the Castlevania game, this time Mega Man-themed.
if I can go off on a tangent here: interestingly while it uses the usual Chinese name for Rockman (洛克人, luò kè rén) on the title screen, on the cart it has the name 络克英雄 (luò kè yīng xióng), which more or less translates to "Rock Hero", albeit with a different "luo" character. This is very close to the Chinese name for Vast Fame's Zook Hero series, 路克英雄 (lù kè yīng xióng); Sintax previously released a game called "洛克英雄传3" (luò kè yīng xióng chuán 3) or "Rock Hero Legend 3", which kind of serves as a semi-official-unofficial sequel to the two GBC Zook Hero games, and Vast Fame's own GBA follow-up was called "Zook Man ZX4" in Taiwan, so I guess this is supposed to be the next entry in the series?
anyway, thanks to Shazam for supplying the cart!
raw: Luo Ke Ying Xiong EXE5 (Luo Ke Ren X5) (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Luo Ke Ying Xiong EXE5 (Luo Ke Ren X5) (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
2003 Gu Huo Lang II (2003古惑狼II)
The previously dumped Crash Bandicoot game in Chinese, if you're into that sort of thing.
raw: 2003 Gu Huo Lang II (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: 2003 Gu Huo Lang II (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
Bing Yuan Li Xian Ji II (冰原歷險記II)
finally, this game is already dumped, but here's another variant. its better known as Ice Age 2, although the label just says "冰原歷險記" without the II.
raw: Bing Yuan Li Xian Ji II (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Bing Yuan Li Xian Ji II (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
posted by taizou @ 2013-08-04 17:54:58
Dumps
okay just a quick one - this is a hack of Adventure Island 2 & it was ripped from an 18 in 1 multicart dumped by RobGBA. i've had it myself for a while on a 19 in 1 but that cart died before i could dump it properly ):
download - Super Mario World 7 (Unlicensed) (Multicart Rip).zip
