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Site Links Other Important Stuff Get an IPS Patcher Download COREDATA.FIX Information Professor SF/Game Doctor 6 Operation Menu (manual) Really Cool Related Sites EmuCult Retrogames Rips 'r us! Zophar's Domain Reader Survey #1 Results Should Nintendo be free to sell emulation products even though they claim emulation is illegal? 42% No 14% Nintendo has so much money it has lawyers who could get Ted Bundy an innocent verdict. Why bother? 14% Nintendo lies and backstabs and insults our intelligence constantly anyway. What's one more time? 14% I'm going to go to Redmond, Washington, and kill every one of the little lying @#$%s! 14% Nintendo's gonna take you to court for making this survey, you know. We'll have a new survey next issue. Stay tuned! Games We Need Please contact us if you have any of the following: Phantasy Star II- Nei's Adventure Gley Lancer Dead Dance Bare Knuckle Bare Knuckle II We got Rushing Beat Syura! A special arigato gozaimasu to Darkechilde for procuring this hard-to-find game for us. Thank you! Games We Just Want Really Bad Please contact us if you have any of the following as well! Annet Again (Mega CD) Earnest Evans (Mega CD) Ranma 1/2 Digital Comic (Mega CD) Link To Us! ...and we'll link to you, just let us know that you'd like us to. Feel free to use our spiffy logo belew. Easy Ways To Reach Us There are several ways you can reach us. Feel free to use whatever is most convenient for you! Netword: System Shock http://underworld.fortunecity.com /virtua/513 http://embark.to/SystemShock http://SystemShock.web.com Enjoy! Questions, comments, or suggestions? E-mail the webmaster Kitsune with them or visit #retrogamers on efnet and look for KitsuneSS :) Thank you for visiting. Please come again!

Welcome to System Shock! Welcome to issue 5, truth seeker! Well, this means I've lived long enough to do a whopping 5 issues. Woo-hoo! I'd like to thank lightning for not striking me so far, tsunamis for not crushing my city, and the many people who have failed to try to kill me. As always, I'd like to remind everyone that this is not a ROM image site. You must own a copy of the original game for our patches to work. :) You are Syndicate Lackey # to visit our humble but charming site. Thank you! Gryzor: The Hardcorps (Japan) vs. Contra Hardcorps (US) (Konami for the Mega Drive / Genesis) BANG! THUD! What was that, you ask? The sound of the player character in the US version of this game keeling over after one hit. The Japanese and American versions of this game are pretty similar for as far as I've played in the games, there is one major thing missing from the American version of the game which, in my opinion, makes the Japanese much, much better. Let's take a look. On the right is the US version, which you may be accustomed to. On the left is the Japanese version, with three little boxes under the lives counter. One guess what those are.... Yep! Hit Points! Perhaps in my prime I could have played through this game without taking a hit, but now I'm an old-timer and I like things to be at least remotely reasonable. It's a lot easier for me to believe you were supposed to be able to take at least a little bit of punishment before kissing the concrete. ;) I wish there were effective means of keeping the English text and also getting the hitpoint counter, because as far as I was able to tell, the text was pretty accurate. But that's life for now. Still, if you'd like to play the Japanese version, I've whipped up a patch which should let you run the game even on American hardware. So if you have a Double Pro Fighter X or some other Mega Drive / Genesis backup device, this should be perfectly useable. You can download it here. Kou Jaku Ou 2 vs. Mystic Defender (Sega for Mega Drive / Genesis) I really love the Japanese game. Its dark feeling, culture, and ambience are simply amazing for a first-generation game. However, the US game goofs with the names of the characters a bit, as well as the lead character's outfit (I like the robes, what can I say?) Some people may find it amusing that the first Kou Jaku Ou received similar treatment in this country and was released on the Master System as Spellcaster, which I rather enjoyed until I goofed up and lost my password some 90% of the way through the game. In essence, if Sega had kept with the program, Mystic Defender would have been Spellcaster 2. If you'd like to play the original Kou Jaku Ou 2 on your Mystic Defender game, change your hardware settings to Japanese and give it a run... it seems pretty much intact as far as I've been able to get in the game. But if you want to make sure, a total conversion IPS patch is available here. Metroid (U.S.) vs. Metroid (Japan) (Nintendo for the NES / Famicom Disk System) Hee hee hee hee! Ever lose your password? I hated it when that happened, and was eventually forced to memorize it. A pity. :) In Japan, Metroid was released for the Famicom Disk System, a attachment for the Famicom which unfortunately never saw the light of day in the US. The players who had this lovely version of Metroid never had to worry about losing their password. In fact, players of the Legend of Zelda games on NES and Famicom just might recognize the friendly layout of the following screen. On the plus side for those with the cartridge version of Metroid, we did not have to worry about load time from the disk or have an excessively expensive add-on to run it. On the down side again, the FDS provided additional sound channels as well, and the Japanese version does sound a bit better (the sound the doors make is really neat!). Once again on the plus for those with the US version, it seems to be far easier to play Samus without the armor in the US game. I breezed through the Japanese, got the ending that usually means success for us in the US, and ended up not only restarting the game, but doing so with none of the weapons and evergy tanks. Ouch! We're unclear as to whether a cartridge version exists in Japan, but we suspect that if it does, it will have save RAM such as Legend of Zelda does, since the original Zelda No Densetsu was an FDS game as well, but was also available on cartridge. We'll keep you posted on this interesting creature as we find out more. More Interesting Stuff Here's a difference in the way a favorite system of myself and many others was treated in Japan and the U.S.: The PC Engine Super CD / Turbo Duo! If you have a US TG-16, CD-ROM unit, and the Super CD2 card, odds are that you've played around trying to run a CD2 game without the card in and gotten some crap like this: Pretty dry, eh? Also in my opinion, not very encouraging. The above were taken from two American release games (the only ones I have, guys, Lords of Thunder and the pack-in 5 in 1 CD.) Now, this situation was treated a bit differently in Japan, where the user was encouraged a little more strongly to upgrade, shall we say. Check out the following: The above are from Image Fight II and Sylphia. I dunno... I find these messages a touch more inspiring for some reason. :) Creative, and yet tasty. Err... tasteful. One of the most famous and sought-after PC-Engine games of all time, Devil Castle Dracula X, (yes, I have an original, and no way in heck am I selling it ^_^) contains a mini-game which you can play on a CD-1 system! :) At the end of the mini-game, Maria comes out and jumps and frolicks about, and you see the message suggesting you upgrade to the CD2 for the full game. Pretty cool, eh? Coming Next Issue! Gryzor vs. Contra vs. Probotector! Instant Quick Conversion patches! Possibly a spiffy, neato contest! (If we're not too broke) ...and an improved layout with Frames available for use. Yippee skippy! Got an idea, suggestion, question, or comment? Please feel free to e-mail us!