Blog:Trans-Asian Tidbits

CRV 13:19, 24 July 2010 (UTC) [permalink] [comments]

More stuff courtesy of "Derboo." It looks like outsourcing to South Korea was more prevalent than I might have previously thought.

The Game Boy version of Capcom's The Little Mermaid was programmed by Sunmok Jang. He apparently did this for a company called Great. Jang (and Sanghun Lee [see earlier post]) came to Japan to work. Programming took three months from June 1992. Jang previously worked on Clover's MSX conversion of Altered Beast. (Interview with Jang mentioning The Little Mermaid)
When Taito needed to convert its Master System version of Bubble Bobble to the Game Gear, it turned to Open. Among the Game Gear staff were the Jung brothers, Chanyong and Chanil, formerly of Namu, a company that merged with Open in 1993. Namu started out as a team called MbitM, which was responsible for two Bubble Bobble knockoffs published by Zemina.
Return of Jelda for the MSX2, part of Carry Lab's Jelda series of 3D shooters, was done by Softmen.
The initial staff of Softmax was part of a team called KBM from 1990 to 1993. This team did "8-bit game software" outsourced from Japanese companies. The article "Derboo" got this information from mentions "Game Gear software" but no specific titles.

Not Korea-related, but I'll just throw it in here:

Some of The Adventures of Gilligan's Island for the NES, primarily developed by Human, appears to have been outsourced to another part of Asia. The "sub programmers" are "Sun Shu Fai" and "Koo Wai San."

For more Korean gaming history, check out "Derboo"'s feature on Hardcore Gaming 101.

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