some Sega Genesis prototypes for d/l

[stonic]

These are prototypes of Atari alumni Alan Murphy's that I archived several years ago. He was the graphics artist for Taz-Mania. I'm not sure what involvement he had with the Sega Channel carts. I don't know how different they are from the released versions, or if all of the Channel carts were even released, but hopefully some Genesis experts will chime in. Here's what I have:

Sega Channel 01
Sega Channel 02
Sega Channel Game Guide
Taz-Mania


Sega Genesis prototypes

[Kiddo]

Can you post any screenshots of the cartridges these were dumped from? 01 and 02, from a first glance, look like they predate the previous "Sega Channel Demo #4" cartridge. The "Game Guide" ROM, meanwhile, appears to go along with the Demo #4 cart based on it's logo, but... yeah. This is interesting/peculiar.

I'm really hoping I can find the demo cart I remember playing "the Punisher" on, someday.

(I'll edit this post with stuff I find of interest as I check through these.)


The most notable thing about these earlier SC protos is this old logo. It was replaced with a proto-Sega Pat design by Demo 4.


Hehehe... "Stimulation". Someone's mind was in the gutter...





Ahh, nothing like memories of Windows 3.1 to have in place of actual "news"!

The 02 dump does not appear to look very different from the 01 cart.
The Game Guide, however, boots into this;


Hey, that's Demo 4 Sega Pat up there!




NOTE: I wouldn't be surprised if any of these are phone sex hotlines now.


Wait... what RPG used the Mega Mouse?

EDIT: Oh, nearly forgot some context!

http://www.segaretro.org/Sega_Channel

This Sega Retro article's probably the best place to figure out what's been "archived" in terms of Sega Channel content. The "Demo 6" cart is still undumped, as are the Japanese BIOs. IIRC, both the US BIOs (TI and SA) should be in the no-intro sets, as is the Demo 4 ROM.

[Devhackr]

Thank you for your release. It is very much appriciated by those of us who collect digital versions of prototype/unreleased games

[stonic]

I could, but wouldn't be better to check them out with a Genesis emulator like Gens (http://www.gens.me/)?

[Kiddo]

An emulator is not even remotely the same as a cartridge scan. XP (And besides, if you couldn't tell from the screenshots, I already did that.)

The cartridge scan is to compare it to the previously-known Sega Channel demos going around. For comparison, Gamesniped still has a screenshot of the Demo 6 cartridge;


It'd help us know whether these are from the same source.

Also, here's a video of Sega Channel Demo 4 which was dumped; (it's cartidge was verysimilar to the Demo 6 one, other than the date and number);

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed1uijmJvLo

ALSO: A few quotes from Sonic Retro forums with further analysis

Neat! The Taz-Mania proto doesn't seem too different right off the bat, though.

By the way, the SEGA Channel protos are mentioning The Magical Quest again, so that's not a one-time mistake anymore. There's also mention of the Jim Power game for the Genesis, which didn't get released, yet a prototype of it exists... I'd say it's very possible that this game was once in production before it was scrapped for its sequel, The Great Circus Mystery.

This is in reference to how "The Magical Quest" is referenced in Demo 4.

Yay! More Sega Channel prototypes! These are earlier than the one we got before. Oddly, in these protos the icons on the bottom for game info work, while in the one with the musiic they don't. Also gotta love the filler text in "News and info". I'll check it out more tommorow as I don't really have too much time today, gotta go to sleep :P

Also, it seems like Sega Channel 01 and Sega Channel 02 roms are the same.

[stonic]

Your request was confusing, since you asked for screenshots when what you really wanted was photos Here's the only photos I have.

[Kiddo]

Your request was confusing, since you asked for screenshots when what you really wanted was photos Here's the only photos I have.

Apologies if my language choice is poor; that tends to be a typical problem I have. Anyway, the pictures. I was kinda hoping to see some of 1 and 2 as well, but taking what I got...

Wow, that's interesting! the "Game Guide" is labeled number #37 and has the same date as Demo #6 and #4. Does that mean there are at least this many demo cartridges - each of them with possible differences from each other - circulating around?

[stonic]

IIRC the other prototypes were pcbs and the EPROMS didn't have labels on them. I simply labeled them "01" and "02".

[Kiddo]

Alright, thanks for the info. I'm assuming that they pre-date the "Demo cartridge" Sega Channel stuff, then.

EDIT: Adding some more quotes from Sonic Retro forums.

I was interested to see, if the ROMs contain songs not in Demo 4, so I loaded them into M1. (M1 has generic support for the GEMS driver.)
While editing m1.xml I noticed that 01 and 02 have the same checksum, btw.

Interestingly the Game Guide ROM actually has music. It's the exactly same music as in Demo 4 (with the same buggy loop in track 11), but any tracks past 16 are corrupted.
Demo 01/02 don't play anything. (but that doesn't mean they don't have music, as the Taz Mania beta doesn't work in M1, too)

01 and 02 are byte per byte identical. I wonder if the guy who posted them made a mistake when dumping and renaming the ROM contents.

I think it's probable that the two PCBs simply have identical ROM data, myself. (Especially if it also turns out that Demo #6 is the same as Demo #4 for example.)