Pony Canyon

[Graham Mitchell]

I just made a strange discovery thanks to a comment somebody made in another thread awhile ago.

Somebody told me that Pony Canyon developed the (gawdawful) NES port of Capcom's 1942. Now, that game had a particular pause tone that also appears in the NES port of Tiger-Heli, which really was ported by Pony Canyon (it says so on the title screen).

I know of yet another NES game that has the same pause tone--SNK's Ikari Warriors (the first one). Could that mean that they developed Ikari Warriors as well?

This might be old news, so lock the thread if it is, but I'd think I'd stimulate a discussion about this rather odd developer of some great (Lunar Pool) and questionable (Hydlide) games that showed up in the US.

Maybe this topic will stimulate NeoZeedEater to do a little research of his own! LOL

[Raccoon Lad]

All I know of Pony Canyon is that they've released game music CD's in Japan, and ported alot of Sega games to the MSX (including both Fantasy Zone and Fantasy Zone II)

Overall, they seemed to have done alot of business, but really nothing high grade. A competent, yet un-remarkable company.

[CRV]

If they use the same pause tone, then there's a good chance Pony Canyon was involved.

As for Pony Canyon themselves, they are the music/movie/home video/software division of the Japanese media conglomerate FCI. Most recently in the gaming world, they did the "Virtual View" series of "games" for the PS2 in Japan where you take photographs of Japanese models.

http://www.ponycanyon.co.jp/

FCI, or Fujisankei Communications International, is Japan's largest media conglomerate (and one of the world's largest), owning newspapers, publishers, TV networks, etc. You may have seen their logo at the end of "Iron Chef," but you may also remember their US office published games for the NES (including stuff developed by their Pony Canyon division).

http://www.fujisankei.com/en/home.html


This might be old news, so lock the thread if it is, but I'd think I'd stimulate a discussion about this rather odd developer of some great (Lunar Pool) and questionable (Hydlide) games that showed up in the US.

"Lunar Pool" was developed by Compile. I don't know about the NES port, but the Hydlide games were originally done by T&E Soft.

[Ikari Warrior]

I only remember that name from Ultima Exodus on the NES. I didn't know they ported other games for big names like Capcom as well.

[o2william]

All I know is that Pony Canyon programmed Super Pitfall for the NES, so I hate them.

Whether or not they've ever done anything to mitigate that hatred, I don't know. But it would take a lot to make up for that travesty.

[Melf]

They also ported Eye of the Beholder to Sega CD.

[GarrettCRW]

As for Pony Canyon themselves, they are the music/movie/home video/software division of the Japanese media conglomerate FCI.

That's odd, since FCI went to Nintendo for Doki Doki Panic (as opposed to Pony Canyon). Though I'm pretty sure that most US-released FCI titles were developed by Pony Canyon.

[Graham Mitchell]

I think Dr. Chaos is another one they did in the US. Does anybody know if Ultima Exodus released on the Famicom Disk System in Japan, or was it on a cart?

[GarrettCRW]

Ultima: Exodus was released in Japan on Oct. 9, 1987 as a cartidge-based game.

[Dr. Morbis]

I beleive that Pony Canyon was present behind the scenes (and frequently uncredited) for many early NES games, most of which are complete dogs, but some of which are considered classics.

I can't find any evidence to back this up, but I think Pony Canyon devoloped 1942, Commando, and Ghosts 'N Goblins for Capcom. Many of their early games have a certain 'feel' that involves choppy animation and a weird halting/vibration sort of scrolling and severe sprite wrap-around effect (Super Pitfall, G'n'G).

[Gamemaster_ca_2003]

I think they did the NES/FC Version of Ballblazer.

Also I did not know that they ported so many games to the NES/FC Platform.

[Gamemaster_ca_2003]

Double Post

[Graham Mitchell]

I beleive that Pony Canyon was present behind the scenes (and frequently uncredited) for many early NES games, most of which are complete dogs, but some of which are considered classics.

I can't find any evidence to back this up, but I think Pony Canyon devoloped 1942, Commando, and Ghosts 'N Goblins for Capcom. Many of their early games have a certain 'feel' that involves choppy animation and a weird halting/vibration sort of scrolling and severe sprite wrap-around effect (Super Pitfall, G'n'G).

I agree with you. If that's the case, you'd have to throw Trojan in with all those other Capcom games, because it suffers from some of the same stuff (especially the popping and clicking of the music and sound effects).

[BenJahrvi]

Did PonyCanyon develop Elevator Action for the NES?

[Graham Mitchell]

I haven't played it in awhile, but doesn't Elevator Action have that "Ikari Warriors/1942" pause tone? If it does, it most likely was developed by Pony Canyon. Those bastards. Why were they allowed to screw up so many good arcade games?

(although, Elevator Action really isn't too bad. It's reasonably close.)

[mcarocks2003]

Pony Canyon also used to make Japanese Anime in the 80's.

[Haoie]

Pony Canyon also used to make Japanese Anime in the 80's.

I still believe they do.

[Terminusvitae]

Resurrecting an old threat here, but it's better than making an entirely new one...

Ive never been able to completely reconcile all of Pony Canyon's efforts. It's difficult to imagine that the company that pulled off a brilliant re-imagining of Ultima 4 to fit the NES's abilities could then turn around and give us a complete and utter disaster with Ultima 5 (to the point that the final dungeon wasn't even in the programming, as we already know).

Alongside that, we have their lineup of NES AD&D games, which ranged from the clunky-and-ponderous Heroes of the Lance to the hideously bad Hillsfar. Nevertheless, we also get Pool of Radiance, which did a surprisingly good job of capturing the correct feel and making the mechanics fit with 2nd Edition's rules. Even more obscenely, the decent Dragons of Flame somehow never made it to the U.S., even though there were plenty of Dragonlance fans who would have been more than happy to give a sequel to HoL a chance.

Pony Canyon is an enigma, and their rousing success with Ultima 4 belies the fact that they gave us some truly terrible games for many years.

[Graham Mitchell]

Well, in another thread which I don't have time to dig up, some DP members did some serious research by dumping the ROMS for a lot of the games listed in this thread and trying to find coding similarities.

What I can remember is that the common thread behind all these NES abortions was a small development firm in Japan, I believe called "Micronics"...somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.

Does anybody remember the name of that thread? It went on for months, the myriad of things people were uncovering about this topic. I guess somebody determined that their loading protocols that they used in their NES cartridges were just shit-poor, and a result of lazy programming. This is why Ikari Warriors, Super Pitfall, etc. have such long dead time between levels.

Another interesting thing I remember is that we proved that Commando wasn't developed by the same people, as the coding looked entirely different.

Cool topic. Glad I thought of it 3 years ago ;)

[Gapporin]

...and ported alot of Sega games to the MSX (including both Fantasy Zone and Fantasy Zone II)

Pony Canyon has ported a lot of stuff to the MSX, actually. I think they had a contract with Activision to develop their games for the MSX, because they ported a lot of their titles to the Japanese computer (Beamrider, River Raid, Ghostbusters, etc.). I have the River Raid port and it's not bad. It has an actual title screen and the graphics are slightly improved, but the gameplay is still there.

Just like the NES, they also ported over Ultima I, II, III, and IV to the MSX as well. Another company they published games for was Compile (Zanac, Lunar Ball). They also developed a goodly amount of original games themselves, such as Alpha Roid. So to say that Pony Canyon had a fair stake in the MSX is a bit of an understatement. ;)

[CRV]

*I forgot about this particular Pony Canyon thread. This thread (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=70535) is more in-depth and, in a way, helped get my site GDRI (http://gdri.smspower.org/) off the ground.

*NES Ultima V was actually done by Origin.

*Pony Canyon didn't really do internal development beyond planning and production work. They usually contracted freelancers and companies including but not limited to:

Atelier Double (http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Atelier_Double)
Infinity (http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Infinity)
Marionette (http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Marionette)
"Micronics" (http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Micronics/Khaos)
Opera House (http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Miki_%26_Fujiwara_Production/Opera_House)


I have the River Raid port and it's not bad. It has an actual title screen and the graphics are slightly improved, but the gameplay is still there.

It's basically the Colecovision version. Same goes for some of those other games you named.

[rbudrick]

Wasn't there already a really long thread on Pony Canyon a while back?

-Rob

[CRV]

Wasn't there already a really long thread on Pony Canyon a while back?

I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about...


*I forgot about this particular Pony Canyon thread. This thread (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=70535) is more in-depth and, in a way, helped get my site GDRI (http://gdri.smspower.org/) off the ground.

[Yukio]

Resurrecting an old threat here, but it's better than making an entirely new one...

Ive never been able to completely reconcile all of Pony Canyon's efforts. It's difficult to imagine that the company that pulled off a brilliant re-imagining of Ultima 4 to fit the NES's abilities could then turn around and give us a complete and utter disaster with Ultima 5 (to the point that the final dungeon wasn't even in the programming, as we already know).

Alongside that, we have their lineup of NES AD&D games, which ranged from the clunky-and-ponderous Heroes of the Lance to the hideously bad Hillsfar. Nevertheless, we also get Pool of Radiance, which did a surprisingly good job of capturing the correct feel and making the mechanics fit with 2nd Edition's rules. Even more obscenely, the decent Dragons of Flame somehow never made it to the U.S., even though there were plenty of Dragonlance fans who would have been more than happy to give a sequel to HoL a chance.

Pony Canyon is an enigma, and their rousing success with Ultima 4 belies the fact that they gave us some truly terrible games for many years.

I think that their also released the Heroes of the Lance game for MSX2 ...

[Dee96]

Somebody told me that Pony Canyon developed the (gawdawful) NES port of Capcom's 1942. Now, that game had a particular pause tone that also appears in the NES port of Tiger-Heli, which really was ported by Pony Canyon (it says so on the title screen).
Pony Canyon ported David Crane's Pitfall! to the MSX, they did a good job.

[CRV]

Pony Canyon ported David Crane's Pitfall! to the MSX, they did a good job.

Pony Canyon just published it in Japan. It's basically the same as the ColecoVision version and was done by Robert Rutkowski.

[Graham Mitchell]

Pony Canyon ported David Crane's Pitfall! to the MSX, they did a good job.

Well, at the time I made that statement, as I mentioned, we believed that Pony Canyon themselves were developer. It was discovered thanks to our friends in this thread that this was not the case. PonyCanyon outsourced, and the developers responsible for the abortions I mentioned were called "Micronics" or something. Pony Canyon probably got a different team to do that MSX port. Either that or they were more capable with the MSX. Truth is, though, a lot of developers who were good with the MSX (Compile, for example) were also good with the Famicom.