Welcome to System Shock!
Greetings and welcome, my friend, to issue 4.
First thing this issue, I'd like to thank a few key players in the scene today. Ken Arromdee for the wealth of hardware and game information he has provided the console and emulation scene with, Zoop for MEKA and his overwhelming tenacity in tracking down all those SMS and SG-1000 games, and the ever-popular Zophar, without whom our lives might be a lot less interesting. Arigato gozaimasu! :)
Also, a friendly reminder to ROM-hounds and any roving legal authorities (including wannabes like the IDSA) that this is not a ROM image site, and all of our operations are strictly legal. So PLLLLLLLLLLLLLT!
Now, without further ado, let's get crackin'!
You are truth seeker
to visit our humble but charming site. Thank you!
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Double Target vs. Quartet (Sega for the SG-1000 / Master System) |
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Okay, call me an old timer, but I really love this game, and it's great to be able to play the untainted original. Though the arcade was tough, this one is much more so, so if I'm gonna take 50,000 tries to play through it, I want to have it right. :)
Take Mary for example. She's the lead character in this version of Double Target, though she was goofed up pretty badly in the American Quartet. Let's examine the differences.
 
 
The Mary on the left is cute, OK? I could hang out with her without fear of, say, her ripping my throat out with her teeth. She's the original. The American one on the right kinda reminds me of one of the zombies from Phantasy Star. She also looks like she could use some stress-management therapy.
If you play the American Quartet and pause as you're rematerializing after falling into a hole, you can see how sloppy a job Sega of America did as Mary still has her Japanese hairstyle as she rematerializes. Jeez, you guys... if you're going to screw something up, at least screw it up right.
On another note, Edger, the large bald man with the shades, was completely unchanged.
I was not able to successfully make a Quartet to Double Target patch since the US version is twice the filesize! So I have improvised. Download COREDATA.FIX and apply the Double Target fix patch to it. Then rename the patched COREDATA.FIX to whatever filename you need it to be in order to run. This will assemble a file very similar to a true ROM Image of Double Target. Of course, you should only download this if you own an original Double Target or Quartet.
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Fist of the North Star vs. Last Battle (Sega for Mega Drive / Genesis) |
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Most visitors to this site will probably aready be familiar with the name Fist of the North Star (Hokuto No Ken). The long-running television series was chopped and edited down to a 90-minute movie in the U.S. by Streamline, and though it might not be a thorough overview of the story, at least it let those of us who couldn't get the original episodes get to know the characters.
The story of Fist of the North Star for Mega Drive takes place several years after the "movie" and Bat and Lin have grown up. It begins with Kenshiro going off to defeat Falco and then continues the story, with a few liberties taken, from there. Rather like his actual attacks, Kenshiro's punches and kicks cause a rather saucy mess most of the time (and of course, he gets a brand new jacket every chapter... how does he do that?)
Last Battle is about a roving white boy named Aarzak, who goes off to beat up another white boy named Duke. I liked Duke. I thought he was a much cooler leader of G.I. Joe than Flint ever dreamed of being. Oh, wrong Duke? Sorry. Anyway, Aarzak's attacks cause people to fly backward really fast. Except the bosses. The bosses have been made strange, funkadelic colors, and they don't so much bleed when they blow up... it's more like all the mustard or paint or whatever they've eaten that day comes spraying out of their pores. Let's take a look at the first boss being beaten.
 
As you can see, the original guy on the left was nice and healthy until Kenshiro showed up, whereas the Last Battle character on the right seems to have consumed too much FD&C Yellow No. 5, or maybe just waited too long to go to the bathroom.
 Anyway, the game is chock full of goofy colors and silly edits in the US version, and it's actually kind of entertaining to beat the tooty-fruity juicy crap out of big green bosses and huge orange meanies. But if you'd like to play the real game, you can get the fixer patch here.
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