Am I a cart dreaming I am worth playing?

Greetings all, this is zombie Derrick, back and kicking after more hours logged in the Hell House.

You may remember last time, when I fucking died playing through Union Bond’s Titanic so you didn’t have to. That game was one of the worst experiences of my former life. Since I stepped into the shadows of the Hell House, things had been pretty easy.

Then I found Chrono Trigger.

Mind you, I am not talking about the overrated-but-I-played-it-twelve-times-anyway Super Famicom game. Nor am I talking about the script-so-dry-I-thought-Sky-Render-wrote-it “retanslation” project.

No, I am talking about something much more sinister: Chrono Trigger on the Famicom.

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Cao Cao, bin Laden and the Beijing Olympics

That’s what I’m calling my new arrangement of “Beijing Welcomes You,” that damn Olympic theme song everyone on the Chinese Internet is remixing. It will be a sitar and erhu duet with tons of nasty double-sharp notes.

Well, not quite. A kickass idea, but I can’t play anything with strings — even a piano.

So what do Cao Cao, bin Laden and the Beijing Olympics have in common? They all appear in Shenzhen Nanjing Technology’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms: The Legend of Cao Cao. You may remember Shenzhen Nanjing Technology as the company that made Final Fantasy VII for the Famicom, another disaster through which I suffered for your entertainment.

Thankfully, this game was much less shitty.

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Know your Famiclone carts: Waixing

Next up, we have the infamous Dragon Quest VIII, a game which has little to do with dragons, quests, Dragon Quest or the number VIII. The game was published by Waixing Science & Technology, one of the first Chinese mainland development and publishing houses for original Famicom games.

When Waixing began, it was famous for its attention to detail and the quality of its packaging. Unfortunately, I do not have an early sample of its games. My only sample of a Waixing cart is Dragon Quest VII and admittedly late addition to the company’s lineup, and one released at a time when it was going very, very downhill.

Waixing Science & Technology still exists, but it is mainly a factory which makes cartridges and systems for other developers. I speculate that it makes Nanjing Technology’s cartridges, and it has been in cooperation with SUBOR, the first and most successful Famicom clone developer, for the last several years. It currently produces SUBOR’s game systems and multi-carts.

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Know your Famiclone carts: Nanjing

So I’ve released photos of what the Final Fantasy VII cart looks like and its dimensions, but what about other Made-in-China Famicom games?

While I have yet to track down any Mars Technology games or C&E games new in box, I have obtained games from Waixing Science & Technology and Nanjing Technology, a major player in the Famicom scene of the 1990s and the current top company.

Read on for samples and full details of carts and packaging, lots of photos and measurements for any spiring pirates eager to reproduce false packaging for fun and profit on eBay.

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You thought FF7 was a hoax?

Despite my article being reported on by Kotaku, Joystiq.com, insertcredit and a slew of other credible media, some people still insist Final Fantasy VII is a hoax. Some people honestly believe that the ROM does not exist, I fakes over 100 screen shots of the game in action and wrote several thousand words about nothing.

Well, guess what: you’re wrong, and here is proof.

Behold, readers, I present you with complete box shots and shots of the manual. Why not scans? Well, someone would certainly point out that I know my way around QuarkXpress and could have easily faked them, and also because I am poor and cannot afford a scanner.

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Prepare yourself, for tonight we board IN HELL!

Recognizing shit is hardly a challenge. Everyone would agree that movies like Manos: The Hands of Fate and Troll 2 are some of the foulest butt nuggets to ever hit the silver screen. However, things get murky once you ask Which shit smells the worst?

The world of shitty games has several notable contenders. Atari’s E.T. was famously recalled from every Toys-R-Us following unprecedented post-Christmas season returns. Gamers universally hailed Bubsy 3D as one of the worst PlayStation titles and the worst entry in the most vapid, commercial-driven series in history. The Atari Jaguar was awash in forrible titles like White Men Can’t Jump.

Titanic 1912, the RPG, made me cry blood, pluck my arm hairs, contemplate suicide and mumble incoherently in my cubicle as I held the fast-forward key. I longed for something less painful, like being waterboarded by a burly CIA agent. And therein lies Titanic’s genius: I am planning to contact Nanjing Technology about the rights to sell an Arabic translation to the US government.

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Struggling with a very mythical pirate

The book Creation of the Gods, also known as Fengshen Bang (封神榜) or Fengshen Yanyi, was the first Chinese story I really fell in love with, much to the dismay of everyone I have ever talked to about the topic.

I should have liked Dream of the Red Chamber, Journey to the West or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. While I do enjoy Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I was just never as crazy about it as I was, and still am, about Creation — which has all the continuity and imagination of a fever dream.

So whenever I stumble on a new video game based on the story, well, happy times abound. And so it was with this new Famicom dump of Fengshen Bang. Not to be confused with C&E’s same-titled RPG, this installment is a fighting game.

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And you thought FF7 was big?

My write up on Final Fantasy VII for the Famicom seems to have made multiple loops around the Internet, slamming the server with 20GB of incoming traffic in three days. Well played, Anonymous. I’ll see your 20GB of traffic and raise you a Chrono Trigger.

ROM dumping group SKY LEAGUE has posted screen shots of what appears to be Chrono Trigger, now on the Famicom home entertainment system and branded “时空之轮.”

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From polygons to pixels: Final Fantasy VII

It was a very troubling time: 1997. The Super Nintendo had perished, the Sega Genesis was on its third revision with little new to offer and gamers were flocking to the banner of Sony, then a newcomer on the video game scene with its PlayStation console.

Gone were the blocks of the Atari 2600. Gone were the pixels of the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System. Gone were the vibrant colors of the Super Nintendo.

Polygons were all the rage, and every game had to have them. For myself, as well as many other gamers, Final Fantasy VII (FF7) was our first immersion into the world of what would end up being the RPGs of the next decade. Some loved it, some hated it. I loved it and hated it.

Over the years, pictures would turn up showing off Final Fantasy games that were finally terminated, such as the 8-bit version of Final Fantasy IV. Aside from a few fluff ports of old titles to new hardware, the series would never really go back to its roots no matter how much anyone wanted it to.

Until now.

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Considering a job change?

According to the ICC Commercial Crime Services reports in 2004 and 2005, there are openings for piracy in many parts of the world.

Maps on the site indicate a deficiency of pirate activity in all areas of North America. Piracy in the Mediterranean sea, especially in areas around Tripoli, is also shockingly low. There are also openings in South Africa and in the East China Sea.

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