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From Hong Kong retrospective: Upholding the provincial Chinese tradition | Game Boy Works #078

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From High Score Girl by OSHIKIRI Rensuke

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Sega Saturn Soul Hackers: Extra Dungeon Disc Dump and Save Data

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The Sega Saturn Soul Hackers: Extra Dungeon disc is one of those ephemeral trinkets from 90s Atlus history that isn’t widely discussed in great detail. Part of that is circumstantial; only 1000 of these discs were ever given out by Atlus, making tracking one down in the wild extremely difficult (I’ve only seen one ever in person in the years I’ve trawled through Japanese game stores) and limiting the amount of information that’s on it even on the Japanese Internet. Part of it also has to do with the fact that the content on it was by and large brought over to the PS1 and 3DS ports of Soul Hackers and made accessible as post-game content by way of the Extra Game mode. Compound these issues with the fact that, so far as I could tell, there wasn’t a preexisting dump of this disc circulating around publicly online and you had a relic that could well have remained in obscurity if left alone, which I personally think would be a shame, as it’s a neat little thing in its own right.

That’s why I did some detective work and managed to acquire one of these discs for myself and now I’ve dumped it so that you, the readers, can experience the origins of this side content for yourself. Though similar to the Extra Dungeon that you’ll find in those later PS1 and 3DS version, it’s not entirely identical. Here’s an excerpt from the readme I’ve included in the dump that discusses these differences in detail (at least when it comes to the ones I could find and verify):

-Unlike the PS1 and 3DS versions of Soul Hackers, Extra Dungeon on the Saturn actually lets you play through it without having to beat the game. In fact, all you need is a save where you have your COMP and isn’t currently inside a Vision Quest. I tested this myself and the game will in fact let you proceed as soon as you’re done with the first Vision Quest. This isn’t particularly advisable, though; the demons and bosses you fight inside are still designed for late to post-game level characters. I’ve alleviated this problem for those who don’t have a Saturn save file on hand with a hacked one of my own, which I’ll discuss how to use a little further down. -In terms of the actual content, there are minor differences here and there between this original version and the one used in later ports. Most notably, the only final boss present is Kyouji from the first Devil Summoner, unlike the gauntlet that sees you facing Raidou and company in the 3DS game. The layouts of the individual mini-dungeons that you visit also seem to be potentially different from the ones employed in the PS1 and 3DS version. At the very least, I can confirm that the final mini-dungeon where you have to navigate through a door puzzle before fighting Kyouji does in fact have its doors laid out a little differently than those later versions, meaning any maps or FAQs you might consult for that room in English are useless unless they’re updated to accommodate this version specifically, which is understandably unlikely.

And there could well be even more to unearth! I just don’t know because I’m not the biggest Soul Hackers expert, as much as I otherwise like that game, so any input from the game’s superfans would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway, as mentioned, to play this disc, you need to have a save file on hand that meets the requirements of that first bullet point. I’ve included a hacked one designed for use with the Saturn emulator SSF in the archive linked above alongside the actual dump of the game. It has the protagonist and an Agi-type Nemissa at max level with maxed out stats, the best equipment, and 10 of every item. While there are no demons included, I can confirm that this already way more than enough to beat this content. Consult the readme for more specific directions about how to copy it over if you need it. And while I haven’t tested the game in other major emulators or on real hardware, I figure it should run just fine if you have other preferences for how you play Saturn games.

I think that’s just about it for me. As usual, while you’re free to repost this dump elsewhere, a credit to me, PepsimanGB, would be appreciated, along with a link to the Atlus Atlas (http://www.atlusatlas.com), my Atlus blog where I’m officially hosting it. This archive may be updated in the future to include scans of the printed media that originally came with this disc, but seeing as I have yet to acquire any of it yet, you should simply find the disc dump and the save data.

Have fun with this disc! It’s been a journey getting my hands on this hand given how rare it is, but being able to make this happen has made it all worth it!

-Pepsi

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I’m 37 years too late for this ship yet here I am

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Hi, yes this is @Personasama on my personal tumblr.

I made all the Skullgirls story modes. More specifically, implemented them ingame/timed them/added fx/animated them using our tools and scripted everything. The actual art assets and written dialogue were by our other talented crew.

The story mode files are all full of my curses and blood and tears because our tools were a nightmare and not intended for a cinematic story mode. 

They’re all littered in my comments for when I was bugfixing or figuring out why things were broken constantly or why there was inconsistent playback or behavior, many of which I never found out why and just ended up having to make ultra specific custom animations to get around the awkward hiccups. There were heaps of times when I was straight up going mad because of the incomprehensibleness and the harsh time constraints they needed to be completed, and I would unleash it in the comments intended for no one to see except maybe Brady or Vince who would come in and do a polish and music/sfx pass respectively. But then, an overeager fan datamined the files and found the scripts and started posting them publicly on wiki. I got in trouble after that and had to clean up everything after characters’ story modes were completed but I still left in weird nonsense like this for that one fan to find.

He somehow missed some of my other incomprehensible mysterious comments I left just for him though. I guess a shrugging Maya is a lot more obvious though. 

You can see the source of shrugging Maya on @artistblack and my Shin Megami Tensei tumblr: dailymegaten.tumblr.com 

Also relevant: http://modokiblack.tumblr.com/post/144136596929/skullivan-fun-fact-elizas-story-mode-text

Related to secret dev commentary, I also always left a hidden/unused image in each DLC character’s story mode art files that were full of doodles that I drew while we were animating that specific character. Most of them are posted on wikis but some are strangely missing. Try to find them all!

Fun fact: Eliza’s Story Mode text data for Skullgirls contains commentary that’s literally just an ASCII picture of Maya Amano from Persona 2

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My very own Pokemon legend is about to unfold!

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Sega VMU (Visual Memory Unit)

Publication number USD410500 S Publication type Grant Application number US 29/095,939 Publication date Jun 1, 1999 Filing date Nov 2, 1998 Priority date May 7, 1998 Inventors Kenichi Toma, Akitoshi Oikawa Original Assignee Sega Enterprises, Ltd. Export Citation BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan

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Sega Dreamcast

Publication number USD412940 S Publication type Grant Application number US 29/095,947 Publication date Aug 17, 1999 Filing date Nov 2, 1998 Priority date May 14, 1998 Inventors Katsumi Kato, Akitoshi Oikawa Original Assignee Sega Enterprises, Ltd. Export Citation BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan

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doctorbutler:

The music will make you ears bleed, lol

I wanted to share the joy of the opening + other screens in English (with US units). I’m not the best at Korean but here we go:

Took me a while to realize some value probably got messed up and the info started too soon, making each character wrong until it got to the brilliant BLOOD TYPE: A, BLOOD TYPE: A, BLOOD TYPE: A, BLOOD TYPE: A. For the most part, I think the info listed here is actually the same as the character info from SNES SFII’s attract mode. If anything, at least the birthdays are accurate; I checked a few days ago to find out it was Blanka’s 50th birthday yesterday! 

Also, Valentines is Ken’s birthday. Happy 51st birthday, Ken!

So this is weird to me: all the ingame is really formal Korean. It’s using polite phrasing, which isn’t something I’d expect from a game where redrawn Terry Bogard gets beaten by a giant green electric man. I may just be reading too much into this though.

More importantly, all the art assets have massive artifacting, as if they were captured from photographs and then digitally reinserted into this game. It’s really obvious in how the character sprites, the backgrounds, and the character portraits are all different resolution from each other and have various degrees of artifacting. The only exception is Terry who was obviously custom drawn just for this game.

Also, everyone’s lose dialogue is exactly the same. 

Another visual error: check out how Bison’s skin highlight color is black. Definitely some kinda palette mistake.

Anyway, hooray for bootleg Korean Street Fighter!

Remember when Terry was in Street Fighter 2?

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I’d use her body

colon is too good for this world

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“Senpai isn’t senpai without glasses!”

From the Lunar Legend Tsukihime manga by Sasaki Shounen

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From Level 5′s new cross media series: The Snack World

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From Level 5′s new cross media series: The Snack World

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Bug dog

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Next Taken Movie

My dad is the president of Hollywood and gave me a sneak peek of the next Taken movie: pic.twitter.com/KDF1MIKxBe

— Persona (@personasama) January 21, 2015

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And there you have the Master Ball’s only appearance in the entire anime everyone, not even fulfilling it’s one purpose..