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From Game Developer Research Institute
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- - - - - UNDER CONSTRUCTION - - - - -

As mentioned on: Insert Credit

Game Developer Research Institute (GDRI), officially established on August 26, 2006, is dedicated to finding out more information about the companies and the people that developed video games. Our specialty is researching contract developers that worked for larger publishers, but usually weren't given proper credit.

History

In 2005, future GDRI founder CRV noticed the words "PROGRAMMED BY SIMS CO., LTD." shortly after booting up George Foreman's KO Boxing for the Sega Master System. He posted his findings on SMS Power, jumpstarting a whole investigative thread discovering many other games developed by SIMS. The success of this investigation led to more of them, including ones of Aicom and games published by Pony Canyon, both of which led to some grueling discussion.

As more development companies became uncovered and more people became interested in helping, it no longer seemed practical to post only on message boards. CRV felt there should be one source for all of this information. SIT Developer Table, a Japanese site with listings for a wide variety of game companies, provided the inspiration, but he wanted something more dynamic. The solution he found was in the form of a wiki.

CRV asked for web space from Omar Cornut, the webmaster of SMS Power, which he was soon given. In August 2006, the wiki software was installed and work began immediately.

Today, we have over 100 company entries and over a dozen interviews. Thanks to our small group of contributors, we are always growing and learning new things.

Research Methods

The following are the primary ways GDRI tries to determine the developer (company) of a game:

Actual mentions

An "actual mention" is when a company name is actually mentioned in or on the game. Sometimes, a game or game package will say upfront it was developed/programmed by a certain company.

Other times, the mention is not-so-forthcoming. It might say "Produced by Company" or "Designed by Company." And other times still, the company might just be mentioned in the copyright notice. In these cases, we might need to infer that the company is the developer. Hopefully, there will be other evidence to back up that initial inference.

Examples of "actual mentions:" 1 2 3 4

Code comparisons

Thanks to a program developed especially for GDRI, we can perform code comparisons. This program can look at two different files and show what is shared between them. For our purposes, we can compare two ROMs for games we know to be by the same developer and see what code is shared between the two. From there, we can search for this shared data in other ROMs. If there's a significant amount of shared code in these other ROMs, there is a good possibility that these were programmed by the developer of the two games we originally compared.

Sometimes, this is not particularly helpful if there is a lot of generic code used or there are drastically different programming teams. Other times, this can be a powerful tool (especially if it can be backed up by other evidence).

The aforementioned program is not available for download yet, as it is not in a distributable state.

NOTE: GDRI does not condone software piracy.

E-mail

Sometimes, GDRI is able to make contact with former staffers who are willing to help and share info with us. Consult our In Their Words section for some of the replies we've received so far.

If you are a former staffer with one of the developers covered on GDRI and want to help us, please contact us at smsgenny at vgrebirth dot org.

以前ゲームの開発に関わった方なら、どうぞご連絡ください。日本語、他国語問いません。

Online resources

Company websites are great resources for information, especially if the company is open about the games it worked on in the past (thus eliminating a lot of legwork for us).

Failing that, a great resource is SIT Developer Table, a Japanese site that was the inspiration for GDRI. There, you'll find works lists for a multitude of game companies. If we're interested enough in a company listed, we might be inspired to do some of our own research.

Information can also be culled from Wikipedia articles or message boards and discussion forums such as 2ch.

ROM text

You never know what you will find when you open up a ROM (which is as easy as opening it in Microsoft Notepad). One might find the name of the developer, names of staffers, or other "secret" text strings not otherwise accessible by playing the game.

Take, for example, the following text string found in the Master System Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ROM:

MS SONIC¥THE¥HEDGEHOG.2 Ver1.00 1992/09/05 SEGA /Aspect Co.,Ltd

Shared credits

GDRI scours the Internet, ROMs, and other sources to find game credits. We might even play through an entire game just to get them. When we've gathered enough credits from various games, we can compare them, see what is shared between them, and hopefully come to some sort of conclusion.

As we mentioned before, credits can be found in the ROMs. Usually, these are the same credits that can be seen by finishing the game. This is not to be confused with ROM text (described above), which is typically not meant to be seen by the general public.

Print

Books, magazines, and other publications can also contain useful information.

Finding out what methods were used

Most of our entries will feature one of the following "configurations" to display what methods were used in determining our game lists.

Configuration 1

The most common of the two configurations is essentially a straightfoward list at the top of the page like this:

Research Methods: Code comparisons, e-mail, online resources (see links), shared credits

If you need a reminder of what each "research method" involves, just click on Research Methods to be taken to this page.

Configuration 2

This configuration is more specific and more time-consuming to put together, so it will only be used with a few smaller developers. Instead of one general list, each game will have listed the methods used to figure out the developer. For example:

  • Sonic Labyrinth (under SIMS) (JP/US Publisher: Sega)
[Shared credits] [ROM text]

If a method listed has a link, you can click it to find out more. In the case of "[Shared credits]," you will be taken to a page containing the game's credits. Relevant staffers will be linked. Click the link and you can see other games that person has worked on.

Reading game lists

Platform

  • Game Name (role) (Publishers)
Other companies involved in development
Black means the company was the primary developer (or co-developer)
Gray means the company provided support development (ex: EIM doing only music/sound on Casino Kid II)
Red means we are unsure of the extent to which the company was involved

Contributors

CRV
Founder, administrator of GDRI.

Dimitri
Performs code comparisons and translates credits.

Idrougge
Contributes to entries and tries to contact Japanese game developers.

Others: Hydr0x, Jonny2x4, Kaminari, Manjimaru, NeoZeedeater

Contacting us

Any questions, comments, or other feedback can be sent via e-mail to smsgenny at vgrebirth.org.

You can often find us on IRC: popn.cjb.net #project2612