Battle of the Ports - City Connection (シティコネクション) Show 498 - 60fps 

To be fair, bank switching is something previous consoles (notably the Atari 2600) made substantial use of long before the Famicom.

@@diebesgrab I did specifically mean on the Famicom/NES rather than all time, though I can see how it reads otherwise. I'll move a word :p

You are alive! Hope you’re doing fine man.

@Larry How are you doing ?

Core claim the game had a few inspirations. They named Rainbow Islands and Rodland. With the game's plot being conceived before the team decided on a car protagonist; Robert Toon, CarVup's designer & programmer, stated that the team decided on an automotive aesthetic because "people can associate with cars and, because it has no brakes, it's easy to explain why it doesn't stop moving". Terry Lloyd, CarVup's graphic artist, said that he wanted to have cartoon visuals without making them 'too simplistic'

Says the one who supports KF and ED no doubt questioning that you're a transphobic turd

Says the one that supports Kiwis and ED

Yep, you are absolutely correct👍

Alternatively, you may have heard it in some version or other of Parodius.

Nice. I wasn't aware of that one.

I like this game, it's an even way better clone in my opinion.

No problem! Glad I could introduce you to a new version.

It is a great shame.

It sure is.

Lol, good times indeed. I wonder if kids these days have such experiences.

One of the many mysteries of the NES.

It's pretty good and rather cute.

It's worth at least playing once for sure.

Do you know how it is different from the version I showed?

@@RetroCore It has an intro, music, some speech and more graphics

It is funny how a company know as City Connection bough up Jaleco.

To be fair, the farther away a 1980s game is from its point of authorship, the harder it can be to get permission. Companies failing outright with no remaining presence but their software media, or being absorbed by bigger entities and forgotten except as historical artifacts, is one hurdle. Another is a lack of developer crediting, along with people dying from old age, health issues, or accidents, and ownership rights languishing in the shuffle. It also can't be forgotten that the actual programmer isn't guaranteed to be the rights holder, so the person with the most expertise relevant to the game port doesn't get to make the call - some younger company lacky with no motivation or appreciation for a game but its fiscal value does, and I don't think that's really much better than just doing the work and begging forgiveness if a problem comes up. And of course, there were all the contemporary clones of games that mushroomed up quickly after the original came out. The Pong TV games, Space Invaders, Pac Man, and Galaga knockoffs, and so on. Homebrew developers at least have a 'fair use' defense to hide behind today, compared to the actual software market back then being a lot of clones with the edges sanded down. Sometimes because a game never got an official port on a platform, other times because a developer was banking their better/different version would be a winner while being legally distinct enough to stave off small lawsuits. Finally, piracy is preservation after enough time passes, and it could be argued that there would be no meaningful retro gaming scene today without it. Way more people can and will put a ROM image in an emulator than will ever acquire legitimate hardware and software, keeping old titles in the cultural memory, and being able to study ROM dumps against development documentation probably helped get that Mega Drive port made more than Jaleco's blessing.

​@@martianhighminder4539 Although those points make sense for **some** games, they do not apply to most of the recent Amiga "ports" which all have very clear ownership. Bomb Jack, Rygal, Xevious I & II and others all have very easily accessible licensing terms for anyone willing to spend more than a few hours searching for them. The existence of clones at the time is little excuse as well, especially because most of the games "ported" recently already got officially licensed ports on other platforms back then: even then they did not get cloned. And nowadays the information on license holders is much easier to find than back then. Your last point about "piracy is preservation after enough time passes" is off topic here. Those games which are ported are already ROM dumped and available in dozens if not hundreds of formats on many computers and consoles so it seems quite outlandish to claim that making a pirate port of Rygar to the A1200 is a form of preservation of a game which is already extremely well preserved and available commercially nowadays. What are we preserving them from exactly? They are already available everywhere in so many compilations and formats that the emulator excuse is fairly weak. The fact that "many people" use emulators and pirate ROMs is not an argument, it's an convenience excuse. The fact that my neighbor breaks the law is not an excuse for me to do the same. Finally you mention "Jaleco's blessing" but that was not a blessing but a full fledged contract they got and with it the right to use the original ROM content. He got off his ass and signed a full fledged contract, that's what got him forward and helped him bring the game back to life on the MegaDrive.

Yeah, I was really in two minds about including the PlayStation and GBA versions.

A company called Advance Software were supposed to be doing an official C64 conversion, but they disspeared without a trace.

I know I did at first 😅

Yep, 100% licensed. Fully legit.

You and me both!

More like 4 months ago. It's quite new.

Back then Jaleco were a Nintendo only company. Even in the days of the 16 bit system. They only moved to Sega once the Saturn was released. There quite a few Jaleco games on the Saturn and a few on the Dreamcast as well.

@@RetroCore That's definitely true. I wonder they made a homebrew port of Rod Land and Earth Defense Force for the Mega Drive.

Ah, they were the days. Going to a store with money you'd earned or received as a present to buy a game. I miss those days.

Didn't know that. I thought the Jazz was a 90s car.

You know, you may be right.

It's choppy because it's doing true parallax scrolling. Notice how the entire background scrolls across

A lot of games we thought looked good back in the day look worse now. Truth is thag they always looked bad but back then there wasn't much better so we never noticed.

Back in the day this would have been a favourite of mine but I never recall seeing it.

I wonder if they were paid first then did a runner?

​@@RetroCoreI would assume they might have had initial funding to begin work, then further payments based on a milestone system? But you never know with the industry..

This is a port of the spectrum but running faster

This is way more fun than flick 😉👍

@@RetroCoreI'll have to give it a try and see. I used to play "Flicky" at my local arcade for hours back in the day. Never saw "City Connection" in the arcade though.

Thanks! Much appreciated.

You are right. It was using tiles rather than sprites.

Ah, this is way more enjoyable than flicky.

Lol, did thag one a long time ago but I can see why you thought that.

Indeed 👍

Jelaco were always a half arsed company so I guess in their eyes this was acceptable quality.

Thanks for watching. I think you'll enjoy the Mega Drive version.

It's worth trying at least once.

Hope you enjoy the show.

You're absolutely right 👍

That said and despite the limitations of the 1985 NES port, that version was quite enjoyable... maybe there was a lot more nostalgia in Japan for the FamiCom version which is weird to us... I could imagine if Sega had managed to buy a license for an MD conversion back in late 80s that it could have been a smash hit...

Ah, you are right. It's tiles not sprites.

Quite possibly just a side effect of poor emulation.

Yeah, Jaleco have always been a lower tier company. They did have a few reasonable attempts at making A-tier games but they're far and few between.

@@RetroCoreThe arcade version of this was one of their highlights for sure.

Yeah, the MSX version wasn't much fun. Especially when the cars aren't we're you expect them to be when the screen flips.

Maybe there was an Amstrad CPC although a speccy port which is at least is playable

Yep, it's a heavily inspired game 😅

Looks to me like a very good homebrew made in perhaps Portugal judging by the names?

@@fnjesusfreak Yes, a freelance job back in '88 presented to Ocean, who refused due to a policy of arcade conversions being done only in-house...

​@@ViegasSilvaHow short-sighted. It's a better port than a lot of the ones they did. Shame the coders couldn't have changed it a little bit and punted it to other houses.

Yeah, the GBA version is very poor. I guess on a small GBA screen the flickering wouldn't be as noticeable.

It one of those games that people either love or hate.

@@RetroCore In terms of Jaleco games I’m more into Operation Logic Bomb and the Japanese version of The Peacekeepers.

what? *says in a """""""""flood"""""""""*