Talk:GDRI-010
A quick revisit of the compare below; I ran one between Metal Fangs and Ninja Burai Densetsu, and in addition to the previous hits (Jantei Monogatari, Wrestle War, Rent A Hero, Vermilion) it also kicked up that unreleased Street Fighter II Turbo beta. It isn't unused leftover data, breakpoints hit it in a debugger whenever PCM samples play, and that whole section of code looks basically identical to a section in Jantei Monogatari, while there's slightly different versions found in the other titles. I recall reading that Capcom had initially outsourced the conversion but weren't happy with the quality, canceling that version and bringing it in-house for Champion Edition -- I wonder if our mystery developer (or perhaps even Genki) were responsible here? --Dimitri (talk) 02:01, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
- Some names in the ROM: "T.NagawaS.MizutaniY.UmakosiA.Watanabe" CRV (talk) 04:29, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
Is there anything interesting in these quotes on Ninja Burai Densetsu? (page 99 of the PDF) [1] CRV (talk) 23:23, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
- Not particularly. The game's (unnamed) programmer is just talking about how he changed the secret code to get to the sound test, didn't tell his contact at Sega, then forgot what he changed it to. --Dimitri (talk) 00:52, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
I've been looking into Metal Fangs, and there are a few things I'd like to address:
- Given the timeframe, might Metal Fangs be a Genki game? Might "M.T" be Manabu Tamura (though he doesn't seem to turn up on Genki games that early)?
- Same goes for Ninja Burai Densetsu. If that had been by AM2, wouldn't there be something written about that? And wouldn't more people have worked on it? (Which brings me to my next point...)
- There are only two people credited on Ninja besides Hiro: "Bomber" and "Takuma." "Bomber Kim" (Tomoharu Kimura?) is credited on Accele Brid. "Takuma Sada" is credited on Redline F-1 Racer. Is that Hiroshi Hamagaki?
- Rent A Hero came up in the comparison below, but Kimura is not credited on it.
- Do we know for sure Kimura worked on Vermilion?
- I suspect Kimura left Sega in 1989 and worked somewhere else (GDRI-010?) between Sega and Genki. I think he is "Soul Duke." CRV (talk) 15:54, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
- Kimura definitely worked on Vermilion. Keiji Okayasu's comments in the liner notes for this album say the game's programmers were him and "Kimura (now at Genki)". My understanding is he left Sega before Rent A Hero started development. Most likely, there was code reused from Vermilon since Okayasu was a programmer on both games. --Dimitri (talk) 17:29, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Is it possible this company is connected to (or the same as) GDRI-007? For one, some of the names in the credits line up: an artist named "Ikeda" and someone named "H. Yamada", "H.M. Hammer" -> "Hamagaki"? For two, I scanned for shared data between FC Peepar Time and Putt Putt Golf, and while not much came up what was there also popped up in Go Go Bowling and Chuka Taisen (along with a few other Jaleco and Taito titles). Nothing particular solid yet, though... --Dimitri (talk) 08:01, 2 March 2017 (CET)
- I wonder if Funky George, or maybe Soul Duke, is JuNya Kobori. His profile says he worked on the Mega Drive. CRV (talk) 17:45, 2 March 2017 (CET)
- Found an old blog of his, though there's not a whole lot of information there either. This post from 2003 says at that point he'd been working in games for 18 years, worked at "numerous companies", and at that point was working for Paon. The last post for July 3rd here says he'd previously worked for VR-1 Japan (he's credited on Two-Tenkaku, so evidently when they were still Planning Office Wada). Most everything else there is talking about computer tech, music, or his cat. There is an old email address on one of the posts, wonder if it's still active... --Dimitri (talk) 19:58, 2 March 2017 (CET)
- Funky George is a programmer on Super Okuman Chouja Game, so I assume that's him. I tweeted Kobori years ago. I believe he commented on it, but he didn't actually answer the question. CRV (talk) 01:26, 3 March 2017 (CET)
- Found an old blog of his, though there's not a whole lot of information there either. This post from 2003 says at that point he'd been working in games for 18 years, worked at "numerous companies", and at that point was working for Paon. The last post for July 3rd here says he'd previously worked for VR-1 Japan (he's credited on Two-Tenkaku, so evidently when they were still Planning Office Wada). Most everything else there is talking about computer tech, music, or his cat. There is an old email address on one of the posts, wonder if it's still active... --Dimitri (talk) 19:58, 2 March 2017 (CET)
Disassembling random games to take a peek is fun... I was recently reminded of a similarity I found in a number of games that used a similar system for their main loop routines, involving arrays of data including a function pointer that get loaded in a special way in RAM and then run. I did a binary search for a portion of the common code and came up with this:
Jantei Monogatari (Japan).md: 00008930 Metal Fangs (Japan).md: 00000378 Ninja Burai Densetsu (Japan).md: 000029be Rent a Hero (Japan).md: 0000121c Sword of Vermilion (USA, Europe).md: 000010ac Vermilion (Japan).md: 00001018 Wrestle War (Japan) (Beta).md: 00000842 Wrestle War (Japan, Europe).md: 00000846
I don't know if you noticed this already in a code comparison but eh. Metal Fangs's credits are initials only and are plaintext in the ROM and I am looking for Jantei Monogatari's. I'm not sure if this says anything about GDRI-010; I'm putting it here because of Wrestle War's confirmation - Andlabs 10:51, 30 March 2012 (CDT)
- Well it doesn't have credits (apparently) :/ (set FFFFD0:0053 at startup to replace the intro cutscene with the ending cutscene) - Andlabs 11:00, 14 April 2012 (CDT)
Dynamite Dux (arcade) does the same thing! That game does credit a programmer "duke" as Assistant Programmer... is it our Soul Duke? (If you deinterleaved the ddux1 ROMs, which aren't encrypted, the code I looked for above starts at $4D2). The data structures and values aren't exactly the same, of course. While the screen mode function is the same, after that I can't see many code similarities... so I don't know if the programmer's style evoled or I'm not looking hard enough or this guy didn't work with the same people every time - Andlabs 00:35, 17 May 2012 (CDT)
- As old as these comments are, I'll just note here: the "duke" credited on AC Dynamite Dux is Tomoharu Kimura, who worked at Sega until he left to help start Genki in 1990. He also worked on Vermilion and (possibly) Metal Fangs before he left Sega. Rent A Hero and Ninja Burai Densetsu were largely by the same team after some people left (and all these games have sound by HIRO). No idea about Jantei Monogatari, but if Wrestle War is based on the arcade version's code, that may be why it appears there too as the high score list suggests internal Sega development.
- I suspect that "Soul Duke" is probably not the same person.--Dimitri (talk) 01:33, 16 January 2017 (CET)
