The last Mega Drive game ever released in North America, in 1998 and strangely enough it's also one of the smallest, only 42k in size despite using a 4 megabit ROM. That's right, only 8% of the ROM is actually used. What a waste.
The last Mega Drive game ever released in North America, in 1998 and strangely enough it's also one of the smallest, only 42k in size despite usi...
>port of a nearly 20 year old game
>waaa waaaaaaa why is it so small????
That's the 90s 3D frogger reboot
no it's not. it's literally just Frogger and could be confused for a 1985 Famicom game.
One of these gentlemen may be thinking of the PS1 game, which has a beloved sequel: Frogger 2 Swampy Nuts. I always found the gamecube era redesign of frogger to be genuinely hideous, but maybe the games are good.
Had a good PC port too, one of the only video games my parents ever bought me.
By all accounts the Genesis 3 was a financial success for Majesco; the audience for low-cost games was definitely there. People are poor man.
with what software?
pretty sure the 6th gen frogger games are literally just mediocre western mascot platformers. some kid probably liked them though.
Are those PS1 games good? Worth a try?
One of the best budget titles to ever exist
Thanks! Will check.
In fact Frogger on Genesis came out the year AFTER the PS1 reboot. Just stands as a testament to how long the Genesis' lifespan was
>Just stands as a testament to how long the Genesis' lifespan was
A decade. But big deal, the NES/FC was getting games into 1993-94 a decade after it launched.
It's pretty genius though. Open up Microsoft Note pad and write a couple of paragraphs and it's already 42kb. Imagine being able to sell that text file for $19.99. Smart move.
Was it any good? Last Genesis game I bought new was Vectorman 2 which was meh. They definitely could have floated the console another year of two in my opinion. Lots of poor gays like myself still playing 4th gen well into 2000.
It is Mame on a cart.
Like a 1:1 Frogger port? Worth $20 then for sure.
The dev said he reverse engineered the game by downloading the arcade rom. May not necessarily be MAME, but emulation helped in its development
Is this game actually running on the main CPU or is it using the Z80? the arcade game was Z80 code so it would be pretty simple to convert it.
> Although the Genesis has a complete Z80 system, it seemed impractical to port the arcade's Z80 code to run on the Genesis Z80 because of the specific screen-mapped display functions it used.
I did, however, locate the music and graphics data in the arcade image ROMs. The graphics were converted with a utility I wrote. The music sequence data was loaded directly into the Genesis version, and I wrote a sequencer in Genesis 68000 code to play it.
The game logic was controlled by a new program I wrote in 68000 assembly language. I was able to match the action by studying the video tapes and duplicating the positions, speeds, and sequences of all the sprites. Sometimes I was able to match motions of objects and rows by carefully timing them with a stop watch. Some functions were divined by studying the disassembled Z80 code from the arcade game. The sound of the frog jumping was duplicated by recording on tape the arcade sound, slowing the tape to half speed, figuring out the musical notes, then locating the sound chip register settings that played those notes.
I only had enough skill to play the first five or 10 levels of arcade Frogger, so I had to invent the patterns of the higher levels.
http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Blog:Frogger_(Genesis)
>Although the Genesis has a complete Z80 system, it seemed impractical to port the arcade's Z80 code to run on the Genesis Z80 because of the specific screen-mapped display functions it used.
This portion of the code could be converted for the MD but it would require significantly more time and effort that were probably not available.
idk i'm not versed in the MD's architecture
Then stay out of the conversation
You can run any code you like off the Z80, the only thing you can't do is access the main CPU RAM as the Z80 can't see it so your code will have to run out of the APU RAM.
if you're using the legacy Master System modes the cartridge ROM maps into the Z80's address space and replaces part of the APU RAM. but of course it can also be used to operate the normal MD VDP modes. so it would be certainly possible to run the game off the Z80, the programmer just found it more convenient to use the main CPU especially as he was probably under time constraints to finish it.
>They definitely could have floated the console another year of two in my opinion.
holy shit this might be the worst possible take on SEGA I have ever read here.
How were they supposed to float it? More add-ons?
They already made the Sega Genesis Nomad
>How were they supposed to float it? More add-ons?
Not asking for add ons but some actually decent games passed '95 would have been nice. They kept Monster World IV and Alien Soldier out of NA for God's sake. SNES was still putting out bangers so not Genesis?
SOJ hated the Mega Drive and wanted to be done with it.
such a simple game concept but so fun
Frogger had some weird history because although it was originally a Konami game, Sega owned the North American distribution rights thus this MD port could be made without asking them at all. It may also explain the absence of the game on Nintendo systems.
Frogger didn't get a NES port because the arcade game wasn't that popular in Japan and Sega owned the North American distribution rights.
Interesting curiosity, there is a Frogger and Arcade Advanced plug n plays that seem to be nes-on-a-chip hardware and as such, actually contains a "nes version" of Frogger made for it.(i even recall it using some Contra nes sfx) The Advance collection also has nes versions of Time Pilot and Scramble, in addition to original nes/fami versions of Yie Ar Kung Fu, Gyruss and Rush n Attack.
>only 8% of the ROM is actually used.
Aren't modern games a lot worse? You have re-releases of old games and indie games on disc at times where the storage capacity can be several dozen GB of data. Lets say those Ninja Turtles Collection games recently. All of them added up don't even take a single GB I'm sure.
Thanks for the trivia though OP.
LOZ used 128k ROM. The actual game is only about 64k though and the ROM is half empty.
weird how they let the mega drive have a proper death in america but they axed the saturn and Dreamcast completely while they continued to get games for years in japan.
>anon comes to the Earth shattering discovery that the MD was popular in America and not Japan while the Saturn was popular in Japan but not America
That’s because the Saturn sucked ass and had no games
The Saturn had 1,028 games. N64 had 388.
And the Saturn still lost to the absolute worst tendie console. What a piece of shit the Saturn was. Dreamcast is infinitely better
So why was this made, exactly? Was it one of those "if you don't release anything for this IP for x years you will lose the rights to it" situation?
70/80 nostalgia led to a golden age arcade revival in the late 90s. Frogger, Centipede, Pac-Man, NAMCO Museum, Midway Arcade Hits were all released
As
says, it was a part of the first major wave of public retro game nostalgia on a large scale. Tons of 80s arcade packages and tons of modern reimaginings. This game uses the same exact cover art as the Frogger 3D sequel that came out at this time and was the first real start to these 3D versions that followed it. Snes got a Frogger at same time as this which tried to be a fancy 16bit remake while this version just tried to copy the arcade original as close as possible (which resulted in a better version then snes). This was also published by Magesco who had the rights to produce the Genesis 3 and Core model Game Gears as budget hardware in the late 90s, so this would have been a cheap product to produce with a now newly re popularized ip to sell for it.