super fantasy zone

All posts tagged super fantasy zone

Kacho Go!

Posted by Sega Dude on January 11, 2012
Posted in: Community. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

Retro Game Master is a Japanese web show featuring Shinya Arino as the Retro Game Master. I have no idea if he’s famous or known in any capacity in Japan other than for this show. If he’s not known it’s certainly changing. Arino, feel proud! The Sega Dude now knows you 🙂
The shows concept is simple. Watch Shinya Arino challenge a retro video game. Yup, that’s it. You or I could do this!… but Shinya Arino did. And he does it very well.
The shows are short, entertaining and you may find Shinya playing an old favorite of yours.

Shinya Arino

Retro Game Master Season 1
Sega Mega Drive Highlights

Episode 02: Super Fantasy Zone

Episode 03: Bonanza Brothers

Episode 09: Battle Golfer Yui

Episode 12: Golden Axe

I’ve linked to the Season 1 episodes where Shinya Arino is playing Sega games but be sure to check out the rest. I bet you’ll get a kick out of them all.

My understanding is this Season 1 is a small handful of episodes from Retro Game Master picked for an English speaking audience with English commentary and sub titles. If you haven’t heard of Retro Game Master then your in for some good retro fun.

Be sure to check out Battle Golfer Yui for some very rare insight into one of many Japanese games that to us non-Japanese speaking people would never otherwise get. This particular game is pretty crazy!

“People don’t tune into Japanese television show Retro Game Master to watch Shinya Arino whip through video games effortlessly. They tune in to watch him fail, and fail, and fail, and perhaps to finally, painfully succeed.”

New Additions

Posted by Sega Dude on August 11, 2011
Posted in: Collection New Additions, Games, Mega Drive (Japanese). Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments

Some great new addition to the collection have arrived from Japan.

$18 Valis The Legend of the Fantasm Soldier:  Excellent platform game. Good graphics and story deeper than most action games.
$10 FZ Axis: Very cool top down Mech Robot shoot’em up.
$9 King of the Monsters: Rampage set in Golden Axe style game play.
$10 Dragon Slayer Legend of Heroes: I don’t know… cool looking JRPG that I can’t play but still love having in the collection.
$8 Puyo Puyo 2: Probably my favorite puzzle game. This is actually a duplicate. I thought I was buying the Puyo Puyo RPG 😦
$12 Ys Wonders from Ys: I really liked Ys for the Sega Master System. It’s one of those games that can be easily over looked but it’s actual a good RPG. As for the Genesis Ys, I haven’t played it before but I’m looking forward to checking it out.
$10 Curse: There are tons of side scrolling shooters and Curse is one of them. It’s also one of those games with some great cover art for the collection.
$6 Blue Almanac: When I first discovered this game (recently) I wanted it because it was a SciFi RPG that I didn’t know of. And even more recently I wanted this because Super Fighter Team has translated this game into English and released it. My English copy has been shipped but has not yet arrived.
$34 Super Fantasy Zone: I really loved Fantasy Zone on the Sega Master System so I was willing to pay more for the Mega Drive remake. And I really love the mini cases the Sunsoft games come in.The grand total for this lot was $150 which includes $33 for shipping.

Mega Drive Tetris

Posted by Sega Dude on July 28, 2011
Posted in: Community, Games, Genesis (North America), Mega Drive (Japanese). Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , . 8 Comments

Once long ago I owned a copy of Tetris for the Mega Drive. The knock-off bootleg version. Then I traded it away long before I knew how rare it was. Well, that is, how rare the actual licensed version is. Knowing that I’d never end up with the licensed copy I really wanted to try and get my bootleg version back. Not so easy. Those few times it showed up on ebay it was listed for hundreds of dollars. Sometimes for just the cart.

Then recently I saw it listed for $350. I don’t know why but I made an offer for $100. Not nothing but far from the asking price. I got a counter offer asking $150. That was down a lot but I really honestly felt like I was at my limit. I replied explaining that $100 was all I wanted to do, including shipping. I got another reply stating that if it wasn’t sold after the up coming weekend that my offer of $100 would be accepted. I was pretty excited. At the same time I still feel a little crazy for spending $100 but this one game will be a place holder in my collection for the single rarest game for the Genesis/Mega Drive. I’m pretty sure I’m really happy with this 😛

A BIG Danke Schön to my fellow collector auf  Deutschland!

This is my new Bootleg Mega Drive Tetris. Not mint, but pretty good:

This is what Sega’s officially licensed copy of Tetris was going to look like for the Japanese Mega Drive. Sega ended up losing the license for Tetris on consoles so they had to destroy the copies they made.
The assumption is that some were spared and got out into the wild. Which is why this version of Tetris is so rare and why someone on ebay got a little crazy in the head. Signed Licensed Sega Mega Drive Tetris:

Wildly over priced eBay auction for Tetris:

While searching for pictures of the license version I came across some really well made custom case covers and labels that I might print up some time. I believe the person who posted them also created them. The following is a link for many more excellent covers:  http://www.box.net/shared/5qi65zpjbp

Tetris Case Cover Sleeve and cartridge lable:

With all of the recent hype for the originally licensed Tetris it really nailed home the idea that I’ll never have it. Which for me adds some extra value to my bootleg copy. For fun I even considered trying to Photoshop up a copy that looks like the licensed version but despite how simple the Tetris cover looks it’s really not that easy to reproduce (at least for me).

And from a poster that I enjoy following here’s a youtube video detailing the ‘what’s what’ of the licensed Mega Drive Tetris.

Mega Drive Tetris by Mega Drive Memories

Pick-Ups – It wont fit…

Posted by Sega Dude on July 26, 2011
Posted in: Collection New Additions, Games, Mega Drive (Japanese). Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I loved Fantasy Zone for the Master System. Back in the day I found it really hard but I loved it. And that is one of the reasons why I’m so pleased to add Super Fantasy Zone to the collection. An other reason is because it’s one of those few games that comes in a really cool small box. Not only do these Sunsoft games have the smallest cases but they also have the largest cartridges. This Super Fantasy zone cost me $34 (plus shipping). It’s a title that I was willing to pay extra for; beyond my typical $20 per game goal.
What I find funny is that I know exactly what these cases look like yet I didn’t notice that my Batman is in a normal cartridge and not the big fat one like Super Fantasy Zone. For a time I wondered if this one was a knock-off. But I’ve seen been told that it was common for some releases to receive changes for a particular region. This particular Batman is likely regionalized for Asia market and has a different plastic cartridge compared to the Japanese release.

Normally Japanese Mega Drive games will not fit in a Genesis. The Japanese Mega Drive carts are a little bigger and Sunsoft games are a lot bigger. Even though I had my Genesis modded to play Japanese Mega Drive games it is still not wide enough for these monster Sunsoft carts. I still have my original modded Genesis and I’m wondering how I use to play Batman because this Super Fantasy Zone cart does not fit at all and I remember having the same sized cart for my Batman. Anyways, speaking of modding my Genesis… when I first had this done I was told by a store called Video Connections that they had to carve the edges of the slot on the Genesis to make it a bit wider. This part was true. They also told me that  they had to do “a little technical work here and there”.  That part was a complete lie. So they took my $30 and off I went. It was many years later before I figured this out.