If I didn't know what the actual NES Galaga looked like, I could be fooled into thinking SEGA-Galaga was the NES version. That type-face for the score display looks identical to much of the UI in early NES and Famicom releases and unlike much (if not all) of the SG-1000 games we've seen thus far.
I'm taking my first real deep dive into SG-1000 games on the Mega SG, thanks to this miniseries. Even though they are mostly sub-par to today's standards, they are still rather interesting to play. Sega-Galaga was one of the first ones I tried out of curiosity, and I remember suddenly coming to the realization of how easy this port was... just as the speed kicked in on Level 10.
@@JeremyParish Let's not make sweeping statements. Every game is different, and on top of that people lile different things. Games like Persona where your first hour or two is mostly cutscenes? People like those.
I think there's good and bad in small and long games. Yesteryear only let us have short games, while today offers either extremely casual experiences or games that can require multiple work weeks. It's refreshing when I'm grinding away at a game full of unlockables and carrots on the ends of strings to learn about an old, short game.
Eagarly awaiting the next episode, Mr. Parish. Having watched the entirety of the Virtual Boy Works (Folks, if you're reading this, it isn't a long series, go watch it) hearing you mention that the SG1000 has a set of Heavenly Kings fills me with a nice excitement.
Interesting. Flipper seems to have been inspired by early Apple II virtual pinball games like Raster Blaster and its successor the Pinball Construction Set. Or, at least, it's got a nearly identical look-and-feel, aside from minor hardware differences. I'd be shocked if someone at Sega hadn't played them.
I'm hoping you continue to bring out more books in the future as well. I think you are my favorite gaming historian to watch right now and I can read the books in your voice in my head as well, so it's a very similar experience.
Apparently Marie Antoinette and her brother played the machine that would soon be known as pinball. It's really interesting to see how far back video games go in a way. Apparently when showing it to the Austrian emperor, they suspected that it could be used for gambling (why arcades aren't a thing in Norway anymore), so if the inventor won it wasn't gambling, if he lost he'd be executed. I don't know how true this is as I read about it in a SAS in-flight magazine, but if it is do I wonder where this ancient pinball machine is today!
A quick glance at Sega Retro and Wikipedia reveals a missed opportunity for this video. "The hardware used for Head On would later be cloned and used for an arcade game by Denki Onkyo named Heiankyo Alien."... "Taito Corporation produced a version with a light-blue background that recycled many sound effects from Head On."
I've already covered the connections between Head On and Heiankyo Alien in the Power Racer episode, so it didn't really seem to bear mentioning again. Running jokes are fine, but it's easy to run them into the ground.
Apparently there was an earlier port of Galaga to the even-more-obscure-than-the-computers-that-you-mentioned Sord M5. It was sold under the title "Galax", but it was licensed by Namco in 1982. Of course, it's really easy to miss that. I wouldn't have noticed it except I was trying to remember if the Casio port was one of the ports Namco did for this era of arcade games to an all ASCII system (it wasn't; the Sharp MZ-700 was the system Namco released ASCII versions of their games on).
Keyword for Flipper is console, as a new publisher in North America had in its 1983 launch lineup for the early computer gaming scene a Pinball Construction Set. Even stranger is ten years later this team up of Bill Budge (Developer) and EA (Yes, THAT EA) would remake it for the Genesis as Virtual Pinball.
Yes, I made a deliberate word choice there. I’ve covered the history of computer pinball games in other pinball-related videos and am making an effort not to relitigate the same exact talking points of history each time I cover a given genre.
if you press one of the action buttons in pacar, you double your speed. so those later levels arent impossible as they make the enemies as fast as you can be. later levels are still much harder though, as the pace of the game increases with the higher speeds.
the jamma thing came about because japan just started a law like the eu CE sticker and said law required you sell a "complete product" so JAMMA cabs had to have a game inside to be complete and get certified and therefor be sold
the long-awaited SG1K debut of future Super NES NSO hall-of-famer: Jaleco Are you excited? I sure am. EDIT: I hope my sarcastic undertone has been noticed.
The Mark II joypad looks like it has a hole where you could place in an actual joystick (unless that just so happens to be a very long screw hole). Did Sega ever release a joystick useable with the joypad?
Yes, I believe the little stick shipped in the box. I have one that will be seen in an upcoming episode. The Master System pad also had one of these. All the kids I know who owned Master System lost the little add-on stick, though...
Pinball Construction Set is from 1982. There were a number of other computer pinball games out there at the time too, David's Midnight Magic being one of the biggest titles. Whether Sega had any idea about these games over in Japan is a good question though. Different regions had very different home computer markets back in those days.
Bumper Bash for the Atari 2600 proooobably beat Sega Flipper to the punch. Bit hard to be certain when there aren't proper release dates for either, but they were both 1983 releases.
OK, but I'm gonna guess not a lot of kids in Japan played Bumper Bash, and this series is ultimately about exploring what was available to consumers in Japan.
@@JeremyParish Yeah, definitely. These two games would've been developed completely independently of each other and neither company probably even knew of the other's game for at least several years afterwards.
I think the most interesting thing about this SG-1000 series (and I suppose the console itself) to me is the way it bridges the gap in my mind between the 2600 and the NES. Obviously in the six years between the launch of the 2600 in 77 and the FamiCom in 83 technology would have advanced, but it's easy to think "well the crash happened in 83, and the 2600 was hugely dominant at the time, so they would have been contemporaries, right?" And in the west we really do tend to think of the evolution of (home console) video games as leaping directly from the 2600 to the NES. But it always struck me as SUCH a leap; excepting a small number of the very best games on the system, the huge majority of 2600 titles are barely playable (especially by today's standards) with sluggish controls, awful sound, and "graphics" that barely qualify for the term. How did we go from there directly to the FamiCom's multicolored sprites, scrolling backgrounds, fantastic music, and crisp gameplay? It always struck me as odd. And the answer is we didn't. Even though it debuted the same year as the NES, the SG-1000 really seems to act as the missing link I've always sensed must be there but had never actually seen for myself. It's particularly fascinating how the software mirrors the hardware in this way as well; so many of these titles are JUST on the cusp of greatness, SO CLOSE to redefining their respective genres if they could just go a little farther.... but they never quite seem to get there. Ah, well. Don't worry, 1983. The revolution is just around the corner.
Home video game technology didn't jump directly from the Atari 2600 to the NES in North America. There were other consoles in the early 1980s, including the Intellivision, the Atari 5200, the ColecoVision, and the Vectrex. Home computers such as the Commodore 64 were also used for gaming.
@@Ginormousaurus It's clear you only read the first sentence of my post and MAYBE skimmed the rest before commenting, considering I addressed all of those points in the second and third sentences.
@@ValkyrieTiara I read and re-read your entire post before commenting. You didn't make it clear that you were familiar with the other home video game consoles from the early 1980s. For example, you wrote, "...the SG-1000 really seems to act as the missing link I've always sensed must be there but had never actually seen for myself." I lived through that era of video games and I wanted to share what my generation witnessed as the technology evolved.
Jeremy, your content is splendid. Out of curiosity, now that you're being so comprehensive in your coverage of this era, do you have intentions of going back to cover the Famicom-only releases that were elided from NES Works? Have you considered a workshop full of Multiplicity-style clones?
Famicom Pinball blows Sega Flipper so hard out of the water it's not even funny. That game's from early 1984 though, we're still in '83 here, before the Famicom library consisted of much more than home ports of Nintendo's own arcade games. Sega's lineup here measures up pretty fine with what Nintendo had to compete with for the time being.
All amusement companies have found themselves in a pickle. From amusement titans to Sega to your local Dave & Busters. So when you have a chance to sanely go out, go visit your local arcade & game shoppe. And I mean _local,_ because they need the help more than chain stores.
To activate the potion in Pop Flamer you just have to push against it for like... 10 seconds or so. Yes, it's an obnoxiously long time and makes it pretty difficult to use at all, and completely worthless for saving your hide in a pinch. The game played much better in the arcades btw, the SG-1000 port is atrocious.
@@JeremyParish It's something else, isn't it? :D If you only saw the effect in the SG-1000 port, check out how it looks in the arcade version. It's even crazier there.
I keep telling everyone! The Black Box games were good and significant! You can't just look at Super Mario Bros. and think, "Well, the rest sure were some hot trash"
@@JeremyParish Yeah, I'm realizing even the generic sports titles like Tennis/Baseball/Golf were practically genre-defining games that laid the standards for years to come. I think golf games are _still_ using the general swing mechanics introduced in... Golf. (Maybe Golf is one of Nintendo's most influential games of all time!)
@@rabiroden It absolutely is. It's incredibly understated just how innovative that game was due to it being the oldest golf game most people have played.
They had one chance to call it SEGALAGA and they blew it...
Hi Chaz
Radio Sega Galaga, Radio Segoo Goolaga, or Lady Sega Galaga
BOOMSEGALAGA! He’s on fire!
I know it wasn’t mentioned here, but I want to thank Jeremy for enlightening me to the majesty of Heiankyo Alien
Interesting juxaposition of the Woman's Lib pinball with the can-can styled High Kick.
The ’70s, man! Shit was wild.
Me: "aw yeah here come JALECO on a Sega console!"
Me partway into the video: "oh no"
Between Galaga and Pacar, this system's game offerings are starting to become more compelling. I can see how it would gain a following.
Pacar is one of the best reasons to buy an SG-1000 even today. Really fun and completely exclusive game that you just can't get on any other system.
Games aside I appreciate the fact you dress nicely for every video, your fashion sense is on point.
If I didn't know what the actual NES Galaga looked like, I could be fooled into thinking SEGA-Galaga was the NES version.
That type-face for the score display looks identical to much of the UI in early NES and Famicom releases and unlike much (if not all) of the SG-1000 games we've seen thus far.
It's the Press Start font. I think Namco was the first one to use it in their arcade games like Gee Bee back in the late 1970s
@@chaseman94 It was a pretty standard font shared by multiple companies.
@@chaseman94Atari invented it and debuted it back in 1973.
This channel has worked 7 days without a Heiankyo alien reference.
Always nice to see Destro in a video. Also shows that Namco cast a big shadow in the 1980s with games like Mappy, Pac-Man, and Galaga.
ok i really want to have a WOMAN-LIB pinball machine now
I'm taking my first real deep dive into SG-1000 games on the Mega SG, thanks to this miniseries. Even though they are mostly sub-par to today's standards, they are still rather interesting to play. Sega-Galaga was one of the first ones I tried out of curiosity, and I remember suddenly coming to the realization of how easy this port was... just as the speed kicked in on Level 10.
Yeah, I had the same experience: "Wow, I can't believe how easy this port ioooOOOH MY GOD"
The music in Pop Flamer is absolutely mind numbing. It would drive me crazy to play it for more than 2 minutes.
Ah, the days of being able to see everything a game had to offer in the span of minutes instead of hours.
@@carlcouture1023 Yes, modern game bad, old game good hahahahaha
Modern games don't even let you play for like the first hour
@@JeremyParish Let's not make sweeping statements. Every game is different, and on top of that people lile different things.
Games like Persona where your first hour or two is mostly cutscenes? People like those.
I worked as a custodian in college, so I can ONLY make sweeping statements. Well, and mopping statements, I guess
I think there's good and bad in small and long games. Yesteryear only let us have short games, while today offers either extremely casual experiences or games that can require multiple work weeks. It's refreshing when I'm grinding away at a game full of unlockables and carrots on the ends of strings to learn about an old, short game.
Man, I really like pinball. Didn't know Sega made pinball tables.
Now you know.
Eagarly awaiting the next episode, Mr. Parish. Having watched the entirety of the Virtual Boy Works (Folks, if you're reading this, it isn't a long series, go watch it) hearing you mention that the SG1000 has a set of Heavenly Kings fills me with a nice excitement.
>Mentions comic book chrome
>Calls the layout "All new, all different"
I see what you did there, Chris Claremont would be proud.
Interesting. Flipper seems to have been inspired by early Apple II virtual pinball games like Raster Blaster and its successor the Pinball Construction Set. Or, at least, it's got a nearly identical look-and-feel, aside from minor hardware differences. I'd be shocked if someone at Sega hadn't played them.
I'm hoping you continue to bring out more books in the future as well. I think you are my favorite gaming historian to watch right now and I can read the books in your voice in my head as well, so it's a very similar experience.
Thanks! You can look forward to an SG-1000 book next year for certain.
@@JeremyParish Excellent! I know very little about this system, so I look forward to it.
Apparently Marie Antoinette and her brother played the machine that would soon be known as pinball. It's really interesting to see how far back video games go in a way.
Apparently when showing it to the Austrian emperor, they suspected that it could be used for gambling (why arcades aren't a thing in Norway anymore), so if the inventor won it wasn't gambling, if he lost he'd be executed. I don't know how true this is as I read about it in a SAS in-flight magazine, but if it is do I wonder where this ancient pinball machine is today!
Seems like using the name "Segalaga" was a missed opportunity.
I'm also really glad to hear the FFIV music again.
I was just getting ready to comment on the failure to name Sega-Galaga "Segalaga".
@@SlyBeast Great minds, I guess. At least on your part.
Also, great picture. I really liked Clown.
"In-CAR-nate."
That's the content I'm here for.
A quick glance at Sega Retro and Wikipedia reveals a missed opportunity for this video. "The hardware used for Head On would later be cloned and used for an arcade game by Denki Onkyo named Heiankyo Alien."... "Taito Corporation produced a version with a light-blue background that recycled many sound effects from Head On."
I've already covered the connections between Head On and Heiankyo Alien in the Power Racer episode, so it didn't really seem to bear mentioning again. Running jokes are fine, but it's easy to run them into the ground.
@@JeremyParish True enough. I'm just fascinated by how large a shadow was cast by that game.
Yeah! That's why it became a running joke in the first place. Everywhere you look, there's its legacy... looming....
Watch to the very end to get a bonus taste of "Battle with the Four Fiends"!
A number of pinball tables did have flippers midway up the board, though I can't think of any that were miniature like that.
Yes, but I was specifically looking for antecedents in Sega's pinball lineup.
Apparently there was an earlier port of Galaga to the even-more-obscure-than-the-computers-that-you-mentioned Sord M5. It was sold under the title "Galax", but it was licensed by Namco in 1982.
Of course, it's really easy to miss that. I wouldn't have noticed it except I was trying to remember if the Casio port was one of the ports Namco did for this era of arcade games to an all ASCII system (it wasn't; the Sharp MZ-700 was the system Namco released ASCII versions of their games on).
I mentioned both the Sord version and the fact that it was sold under the name Galax...
@@JeremyParish Sorry. My brain must have blocked it when I went, "Was that the crazy version I saw that was just mentioned?"
Sega-Galaga is more of a port of Galax than of Galaga, really. As Jeremy mentions in the video, they play near identically.
Keyword for Flipper is console, as a new publisher in North America had in its 1983 launch lineup for the early computer gaming scene a Pinball Construction Set. Even stranger is ten years later this team up of Bill Budge (Developer) and EA (Yes, THAT EA) would remake it for the Genesis as Virtual Pinball.
Yes, I made a deliberate word choice there. I’ve covered the history of computer pinball games in other pinball-related videos and am making an effort not to relitigate the same exact talking points of history each time I cover a given genre.
if you press one of the action buttons in pacar, you double your speed. so those later levels arent impossible as they make the enemies as fast as you can be. later levels are still much harder though, as the pace of the game increases with the higher speeds.
the jamma thing came about because japan just started a law like the eu CE sticker and said law required you sell a "complete product" so JAMMA cabs had to have a game inside to be complete and get certified and therefor be sold
12/10 for the gag at the start...the comedy store beckons Jeremy!
Better that than the jerk store
the long-awaited SG1K debut of future Super NES NSO hall-of-famer: Jaleco
Are you excited? I sure am.
EDIT: I hope my sarcastic undertone has been noticed.
You shouldn't be! It's not a promising start.
you gotta start somewhere…
Sweet Krabappel quote.
The Mark II joypad looks like it has a hole where you could place in an actual joystick (unless that just so happens to be a very long screw hole). Did Sega ever release a joystick useable with the joypad?
Yes, I believe the little stick shipped in the box. I have one that will be seen in an upcoming episode. The Master System pad also had one of these. All the kids I know who owned Master System lost the little add-on stick, though...
They weren't kidding when I was told the SG-1000 had a really subpar sound chip.
That Sega-Galaga cover art ❤️
Yay, Pinball.
I would like to once again point out that Battle Course 1 in Super Mario Kart also appears to have been inspired by Head On
8:12 that's one toasty frog (groan)
Great job, love your videos
Don't know if the dates line up but Sega Flipper has sort of a Pinball Construction look to it which is kind of neat.
Pinball Construction Set is from 1982. There were a number of other computer pinball games out there at the time too, David's Midnight Magic being one of the biggest titles. Whether Sega had any idea about these games over in Japan is a good question though. Different regions had very different home computer markets back in those days.
And now I want a side series off this side series covering Sega pinball tables, especially that Woman-Lib table. Maybe in the 2030’s.
Pinball's not my thing, sorry.
So...I'm not the only one who had to stop and google the Woman-Lib pinball machine, right?
Bumper Bash for the Atari 2600 proooobably beat Sega Flipper to the punch. Bit hard to be certain when there aren't proper release dates for either, but they were both 1983 releases.
OK, but I'm gonna guess not a lot of kids in Japan played Bumper Bash, and this series is ultimately about exploring what was available to consumers in Japan.
@@JeremyParish Yeah, definitely. These two games would've been developed completely independently of each other and neither company probably even knew of the other's game for at least several years afterwards.
I think the most interesting thing about this SG-1000 series (and I suppose the console itself) to me is the way it bridges the gap in my mind between the 2600 and the NES. Obviously in the six years between the launch of the 2600 in 77 and the FamiCom in 83 technology would have advanced, but it's easy to think "well the crash happened in 83, and the 2600 was hugely dominant at the time, so they would have been contemporaries, right?" And in the west we really do tend to think of the evolution of (home console) video games as leaping directly from the 2600 to the NES. But it always struck me as SUCH a leap; excepting a small number of the very best games on the system, the huge majority of 2600 titles are barely playable (especially by today's standards) with sluggish controls, awful sound, and "graphics" that barely qualify for the term. How did we go from there directly to the FamiCom's multicolored sprites, scrolling backgrounds, fantastic music, and crisp gameplay? It always struck me as odd.
And the answer is we didn't. Even though it debuted the same year as the NES, the SG-1000 really seems to act as the missing link I've always sensed must be there but had never actually seen for myself. It's particularly fascinating how the software mirrors the hardware in this way as well; so many of these titles are JUST on the cusp of greatness, SO CLOSE to redefining their respective genres if they could just go a little farther.... but they never quite seem to get there. Ah, well. Don't worry, 1983. The revolution is just around the corner.
Yep, SG-1000 is basically “ColecoVision, but Japan,” which perfectly describes the 2600/NES midpoint you’re talking about.
Home video game technology didn't jump directly from the Atari 2600 to the NES in North America. There were other consoles in the early 1980s, including the Intellivision, the Atari 5200, the ColecoVision, and the Vectrex. Home computers such as the Commodore 64 were also used for gaming.
@@carlcouture1023 The "crash" itself was also a strictly North American thing.
@@Ginormousaurus It's clear you only read the first sentence of my post and MAYBE skimmed the rest before commenting, considering I addressed all of those points in the second and third sentences.
@@ValkyrieTiara I read and re-read your entire post before commenting. You didn't make it clear that you were familiar with the other home video game consoles from the early 1980s. For example, you wrote, "...the SG-1000 really seems to act as the missing link I've always sensed must be there but had never actually seen for myself." I lived through that era of video games and I wanted to share what my generation witnessed as the technology evolved.
Vectrex Spinball came out the same year--not sure when. It may have beaten this to the punch for realistic table design. But not sure.
Errata: Atari pinball is straight up pinball, no Breakoutisms
Jeremy, your content is splendid. Out of curiosity, now that you're being so comprehensive in your coverage of this era, do you have intentions of going back to cover the Famicom-only releases that were elided from NES Works? Have you considered a workshop full of Multiplicity-style clones?
Only Patreon subscribers know the answer to this mystery. (For the next two weeks, anyway.)
I should play Sega flipper. 😀👍🎮
What do you think is better, SEGA Flipper or NES Pinball?
Easily NES Pinball. Iwata (working for HAL Labs) just knew how to create simple, fun games.
Famicom Pinball blows Sega Flipper so hard out of the water it's not even funny. That game's from early 1984 though, we're still in '83 here, before the Famicom library consisted of much more than home ports of Nintendo's own arcade games. Sega's lineup here measures up pretty fine with what Nintendo had to compete with for the time being.
Thanks for the answer y'all. I never played SEGA flipper, so I was unsure which had the better physics.
Pinball for NES was ghost developed by HAL, and HAL + pinball = awesome, always.
Why doesn't this channel have 500 000 subscribers instead of 50 000 ?
I may be a nerd, but I am nowhere angry enough
@@JeremyParish We love you just the way you are. Please don't change.
arcades
SG-1000 games played on SMS looks weird.
Yeah it’s pretty grody
Is Sega still an arcade powerhouse? didn't they announce they're bailing out of the business just a few weeks ago?
All amusement companies have found themselves in a pickle. From amusement titans to Sega to your local Dave & Busters. So when you have a chance to sanely go out, go visit your local arcade & game shoppe. And I mean _local,_ because they need the help more than chain stores.
Which RUclips VGM covers channel is going to do a remix of the Pop Flamer music first? It’s just so melodic!
It's like there's a clown with an accordion trapped inside your ear, playing music until you die
@@JeremyParish Well that’s some genuine nightmare fuel.
To activate the potion in Pop Flamer you just have to push against it for like... 10 seconds or so. Yes, it's an obnoxiously long time and makes it pretty difficult to use at all, and completely worthless for saving your hide in a pinch.
The game played much better in the arcades btw, the SG-1000 port is atrocious.
Yeah, I actually figured this out a few days ago, and wow is that power-up effect nightmarish. I’ll be including a clip in an upcoming episode.
@@JeremyParish It's something else, isn't it? :D
If you only saw the effect in the SG-1000 port, check out how it looks in the arcade version. It's even crazier there.
wait was that a women's lib pinball table?
....i want it
A pinball table titled: Woman Lib.
Weird flex Japan, but okay.
This miniseries made me realize Nintendo's early black box titles were way more influential than anyone has really noticed
I keep telling everyone! The Black Box games were good and significant! You can't just look at Super Mario Bros. and think, "Well, the rest sure were some hot trash"
@@JeremyParish Yeah, I'm realizing even the generic sports titles like Tennis/Baseball/Golf were practically genre-defining games that laid the standards for years to come. I think golf games are _still_ using the general swing mechanics introduced in... Golf. (Maybe Golf is one of Nintendo's most influential games of all time!)
@@rabiroden It absolutely is. It's incredibly understated just how innovative that game was due to it being the oldest golf game most people have played.
Sega you can't go out because your roots are showing. Dye em black. Black no 1