Company Profile ~ Sintax

Well this is something I've overlooked for a while, considering this company has been responsible for several of the dumps released here so far, and probably several more to come - the most insanely prolific company ever - yes it's SINTAX!

Sintax Technology Co., Ltd (新特奇科技有限公司) was originally founded in Taichung, Taiwan, around the mid-90s, engaging in various obscure activities including but not limited to educational software and a sex education VCD called "Eden of Sensibility". All of this, I know nothing about. What I do know is that around 2001-2, they set up shop in the Xinhui District of Jiangmen, China, and began cranking out Game Boy titles at a pretty ridiculous rate, based on pretty much every popular game and movie they could think of - Pokemon, Digimon, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Spiderman, Lilo & Stitch and many many more all got the Sintax treatment at some point (though Mario notably escaped un-Sintaxed, perhaps out of a wariness of Nintendo).

Sintax operated under a few aliases at various points in its life, like "Benco Technology", "Jump Technology" and "Saturn Technology", but this trickery was often undermined by the fact that most (though not all) of their games either came in their own unique style of cart with their logo embossed on it, or started up with a spinning Sintax logo regardless of the name on the label.

Most of their earlier games also carried a "COPYRIGHT © DESIGN BY BBD" notice on the title screen; BBD had previously released a few Game Boy games under its own name (Harry Potter, Metal Slug 2001, Mark of the Wolves among others) which were later re-released by Sintax, and presumably they developed those early Sintax games too. BBD itself has proved to be a pretty elusive company, and I have no idea exactly how they were connected to Sintax, or even if they were actually the same company - I'm sure Gamtec was involved, though.

The games made with BBD were mostly fairly decent, with (usually) good graphics and reasonably-fun gameplay, although unlike Vast Fame they didn't bother composing any of their own music, instead stealing it wholesale from various licensed GB titles. At some point it seems that Sintax then broke their ties with BBD, and continued making games (like this one) in-house; most of the later ones weren't really up to the same level of quality, but some can still be quite fun, if short.

One thing I also discovered recently (which I won't cover in too much detail just yet, there's probably a whole other blog post in it) is that Sintax at some point released a few RPGs developed by the same people as the "Shi Mian Mai Fu" series, but I don't know what the connection is - did Sintax publish another company's games, or was Sintax behind them all along?

As I mentioned, Sintax was extremely prolific, releasing over 100 games all told, but to say they were 100 unique games is pushing it a bit; they had a tendency to take the same engine from one of their previous releases, change the graphics, storyline and (if you were lucky) level layouts, and call it a new game. So maybe 50 or less unique ones? It's still a lot, anyway. It's probably worth mentioning that Sintax released their games fairly consistently in English too, at least for the first year or two of their existence, and even (so I've heard) one or two in Spanish and German. But these are generally much harder to find than the Chinese versions, unfortunately. :(

There's also a series of GBA games which were apparently developed by Sintax, even though their name isn't on any of them; supposedly the first (a Digimon platformer ported from a SNES game) was developed with assistance from Vast Fame, while Sintax made the rest on their own, (naturally) recycling the same engine for each.

After about 2006 Sintax got out of the game business, focusing instead on car stereos and MP4 players and the like, and seemingly those two divisions split at some point; the car stereo side became Honye (possibly still in business, but possibly not) while the MP4 side used the name "Penking" for a while but still operated as Sintax, releasing a sort of obscure Dingoo-esque device around 2009 as "Sintax Digital" (image at right from lightake, who once sold it, if you couldn't tell). This, I guess, was their last-ditch attempt to save the company, because they don't seem to have done anything else since then; it's quite hard to tell in China sometimes, but I think that was the end of Sintax. Still, they've left behind quite a legacy.

new dump! Donkey Kong 5

Why hello, I'm RobGBA! Just an introduction for myself, in case you're wondering who I am and why I'm here. I'm a member of the Pirated Game Central, and have interests in obscure games for the Game Boy. So with my small and progressing collection, I'll be posting my working dumps over here!

Hey look, it's an Engrish Jreasure from the lovely pirates at Sintax! Donkey Kong 5! You know, the one where Mr. Kong has a journey around time and space?

This one's on the same engine as Digimom, but this is actually an earlier release. Not really much difference, apart from sprites and such.

Thanks to taizou for fixing the ROM! Enjoy:

raw: Donkey Kong 5 - The Journey of Over Time and Space (Unlicensed, English) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Donkey Kong 5 - The Journey of Over Time and Space (Unlicensed, English) [Fixed].zip

"mostly harmless - if obscure - fun"

Came across something interesting in an issue of the UK's (excellent) N64 Magazine recently - all the way back in August 1999 they dedicated a two-page feature to bootleg Game Boy stuff, pretty unprecedented for the time. they even gave it a...slightly familiar name, almost like a knockoff version of this very site (...except theirs was 13 years earlier):

(the quality isn't the best, sorry - I didn't have access to a scanner when I found this, so I just had to photograph it, but it's readable at least)

With it being 1999, unlicensed development hadn't really got into full swing, so all they had to cover were hacks and multicarts and the like; they seemingly didn't realise Mario 4 was a hack at all (which is fair enough, given the obscurity of the source game, Crayon Shin-Chan 4) and although they hint at Sonic 6 being based on some unnamed "poor game", they don't recognise it as Speedy Gonzales, and they really lay into it. Poor Speedy :(

They also cover Monster Go! Go! Go!, which they do identify as a Smurfs hack (the colour version of Smurfs being a fairly recent release at that point), but they don't provide any screenshots - my hunch is that they played Mario 4 and Sonic 6 through ROMs they downloaded from the internet, but Monster Go Go Go probably wasn't dumped at that point, so I'd guess they either actually obtained a copy (possible) or just nicked the boxart from a website and wrote up something based on the site's description (likely).

Amusingly, given their likely ROM-based Mario and Sonic shenanigans, they then proceed to get on their soapbox about the GB X-Changer (because playing pirated roms on your computer is just fine, but if you put them on a cartridge you have CROSSED A LINE SIR), and then there's a bit about some crap old multicart that someone on staff no doubt picked up on holiday, and that's your lot!

new dump! Spiderman 3

hey it's that guy! the one who's a spider! in a game by Sintax, called 蜘蛛侠3-电影版 (Zhi Zhu Xia 3 - Dian Ying Ban), or "Spiderman 3: Movie Version". the actual movie called Spiderman 3 would not be released for a good 3-4 years, so once again Sintax were way ahead of their time on this one.

It also has some of the most inappropriate music ever committed to game, so surely it's worth checking out on that basis if nothing else.

the same caveats re: fixage apply as with the Digimom Sapphhhiii dump, namely that the fixed version is 4mb instead of 2mb, and no I don't know how to get it working at its proper size. also thanks once again to Qiezei for the cart!

raw: Zhi Zhu Xia III - Dian Ying Ban (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Zhi Zhu Xia III - Dian Ying Ban (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip

new dump! Xin Feng Shen Bang

well! THIS was unexpected. But sometimes things happen and then suddenly you have a new Vast Fame game to play with. it's called Xin Feng Shen Bang (新封神榜), it's sort of a modern retelling of the 16th century Chinese novel Feng Shen Bang in RPG form, and it seems pretty excellent. but it's also in Chinese so I can't really tell what's going on.

this dump was taken from this 12 in 1, so if you want to see cart pictures or anything they're all on the aforelinked wiki page.

as per usual with these dumps i'm posting an untouched and a fixed version, but the only difference is in the header, allowing the game to save in emulators. The header actually doesn't matter to a real Game Boy - it was (apparently) originally intended for internal use in Nintendo's factories, so unlicensed developers didn't have to bother with such things. but emulators always assume a correctly set header too, so here we are. Maybe there's an unfulfilled need for a new Game Boy ROM format that actually contains this info outside of the game data.. maybe. anyway, roms!

raw: Xin Feng Shen Bang (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Xin Feng Shen Bang (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip) [Header Fix].zip

ugh my filenames are getting pretty long and unwieldy now arent they D:

Also, on the subject of Vast Fame games and headers and such - my dump of Shi Kong Xing Shou from the same 12 in 1 from ages ago has a few problems with saving (which seem to vary depending on the emu you're using), and I *think* this is because the save size in the header was set incorrectly; I mean I don't actually know these things for sure but it seems to be the case (hey, I'm learning). so I'm also posting a fixed version of that for your enjoyment here. And the original, even though it's unchanged, because, hey, consistency.

raw: Shi Kong Xing Shou (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Shi Kong Xing Shou (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip) [Header Fix].zip