GBX超进化数码暴龙钻石中文版星星科技

东方情圣

THE RETURN OF LI CHENG 2015 (PT1)
posted by taizou
Got a few more dumps of Li Cheng releases of various games today - including a couple hopefully people will find interesting.
It's kind of a shame that I can only bring you these bad title hacks instead of the original releases of the games, but.. maybe someday!

Chao Jinhua Shuma Baolong - Zuanshi Ban (超進化 数码暴龙－钻石版) (CBA012)   
Okay so this first one is just Digimon D3 again. Please try to contain your excitement.

Taikong Zhanshi - Jingdian Ban (太空战士经典版) (CBA063)   
Now here's something new, and something that could have been great in the right hands - an attempted port of the Mega Drive game Barver Battle Saga: Taikong Zhanshi. Sadly this port is garbage, and I don't say that lightly.
It's developed by the same "Tian Cai Xiao Zi" team as a bunch of other dubious RPGs, but even by their standards it's a bit of a mess. AFAIK there was also a version published by Sintax with different graphics, which I don't have to hand right now, but I really hope it looks better than this version.
Oh and the music (all three tracks of it) seems to be stolen, bizarrely, from "Pocket Voice 2.0", a voice recorder cartridge by Bung; but one of the tracks was also used in ROM intros by the release group Paradox (where it's credited to "Blackbox"), so its true origins remain mysterious for now..

Xin Shediao Yingxiong Chuan (新射雕英雄传) (CBA090)   
Another Tian Cai Xiao Zi game, based on the novel Legend of the Condor Heroes. This one is much better made than the previous, but it does suffer from a very unfortunate bug which causes the music (stolen from Telefang this time) to mess up horribly when the text printing sound effect plays. This has been confirmed to happen on the real cart - it may have been introduced by the Li Cheng release though.
Interestingly, not only does this game open with a Sintax logo (several TCXZ games were originally released by Sintax in China) but I received it in the original Sintax box (bearing the same title without the "Xin"), despite the cart inside being 100% Li Cheng. I'm not sure if this is evidence of cooperation between the two companies though - or if it was just a case of the seller mixing and matching the box and cart for the same game.

Xin Guangming Yu Hei'an 2 - Zhushen De Yichan (光明與黑暗2-諸神的遺產) (CBA095)   
..And here's another Tian Cai Xiao Zi RPG, falling somewhere in between the previous two in terms of production values (and thankfully without the sound bug). Allegedly it's based on Sega's Shining series somehow, but I'm not particularly familiar with those games so I have no idea if it's ripping off any particular entry.

Tezhong Budui (特种部队) / Teshu Budui 2001 (特殊部队2001) (CBA100)   
Just Metal Slug 2001 - which has been dumped for a long-ass time - with a different title screen. Still, it's a fun enough game, for what it is. Li Cheng didn't bother protecting this one at all, so even the raw dump works fine in any emulator - my fix just tweaks the header to remove the SRAM it never uses.
Incidentally the title on the box/cart differs slightly from the one on the title screen, hence the two titles here. both of them roughly translate to "Special Forces" though.

Taikong Zhanshi DX3 - Zuizhong Huanxian (太空战士DX3-最终幻想) (CBA145)   
this is an interesting one! It's a (bad) title hack of a game originally known as "Final Fantaxy IX", a heavily FF9-based beat 'em up/RPG hybrid. The original version was released by "TD Software", but it seems to have been developed by the same team (possibly BBD) behind Sintax's early stuff. and much like their other early beat 'em ups, it's very well-made if a bit repetitive.

Tezhong Budui 2 - Jidi (特种部队2-基地) / Teshu Budui 2 - Jidi (特殊部队2-基地) (CBA146)   
and now: the game better known as Terrifying 911, aka Too Soon: the video game. originally released (and developed?) by Hitek, on the market at least by June 2002, using actual footage of an attack that killed thousands less than a year previous. bad taste? i'll say.
but underneath all that, there's a surprisingly faithful port of Metal Slug 1. Compared to other unlicensed Metal Slug games it's in a whole different league - just about everything is here, the original levels, weapon upgrades, bosses, prisoners to rescue, and even the Metal Slug itself have been retained.
And yet this was (as far as I know) Hitek's only action game - the rest of their output on the Game Boy consisted mostly of RPGs, strategy games, board games and the like. I believe it was also their only game released in English, but this is the Chinese version (and naturally a shoddy title hack thereof).

[finally, just to note that I am aware my previous fixed version of of Gangdan Wuyu 2 crashes after level 2 and may have other issues - I'm looking into it!]
2015-09-20  http://hhug.me/?post=58