Blog:Transformers: Mystery of Developer

CRV (talk) 05:49, 1 December 2016 (CET) [permalink]

The Transformers game Convoy no Nazo, or Mystery of Convoy, is one of the most high-profile examples of "kusoge" on the Famicom due to its high difficulty and other gameplay quirks. The mystery is supposed to be what happened to Optimus Prime, but the bigger mystery, and the one that remains unsolved, is who developed this infamous game. Unfortunately, there's some conflicting information:

• The company ISCO (pronounced as one word [isuko]) listed the game on its website [1], but could they have been referring to the Famicom Disk System game Transformers: The Headmasters? Note the similarities between it and the ISCO-planned Paris-Dakar Rally Special in these videos: [2] [3]

• Convoy no Nazo popped up slightly in a Tose code comparison.

• In a post written after Convoy no Nazo's release on Wii Virtual Console in Japan, a former game graphic designer alleged that the president of Locomotive was the game's programmer. Tose and Locomotive were based in Kyoto, so it's not inconceivable that he worked for Tose before starting Locomotive. (The sound designer on StarTropics allegedly once worked part-time at Tose. The US copyright registration for StarTropics credits Locomotive with music, so we can infer that said designer later worked for Locomotive.)

• A former Advance Communication employee rattled off "FC Transformers" in a tweet about the company, but neither Transformers game seems like an Advance Communication game, and Convoy no Nazo predates any of their other games.

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Post updated November 30, 2018