littlemathletics

In 1996, Sega officially pulled the plug on their 16 bit console, known as the Mega Drive in European and Japanese markets, and as the Genesis in the American market. The machine had been a success, in general terms. During the 8 bit era, Sega had been at a distinct disadvantage to Nintendo holding less than 10% of the worldwide market. This had all changed by 1992, when, thanks primarily to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise (and in particular Sonic 2) their market had grown to 65% of the worldwise console market.

This would all change again within only a few years though – Nintendo fought back with games like Donkey Kong Country and, combined with the failures of Mega Drive add-ons Mega CD and the 32X, had pushed Sega’s market share back to 35%. This, and the recent release of their next-generation Saturn console, prompted the company to officially cease support for the ailing Mega Drive. The final game available commercially in the American market was released in 1998.

However, August of 2005 saw the following reported in Tips and Tricks magazine:

“…a brand new cartridge for the Sega Genesis system: Beggar Prince is a newly-translated version of a role-playing game called Xin Qi Gai Wang Zi…”

For the first time in over eight years, the Mega Drive would see the release of an actually cartridge based game. Super Fighter Team, a San Diego based company known previously for their work bringing Taiwanese company C&E Inc.’s game Super Fighter to a western audience as a freeware game for PC. In continuing their business partnership with C&E, Super Fighter Team picked up the rights to Beggar Prince, a role playing game C&E had released for the Mega Drive in 1996.

"Beggar Prince first caught my eye because of how intricate and beautiful it is. Many role-playing games have been produced in Taiwan for the Sega Megadrive, but few of them are as fun to play as Beggar Prince,” says Brandon Cobb, president of Super Fighter Team. ” We were very lucky to secure the legal rights to Beggar Prince from our business partner, C&E Inc., with the purpose in mind to release the game much to the surprise and interest of Sega fans worldwide.”

The game was officially released for sale through www.beggarprince.com as of the 31st of December 2005. “Super Fighter Team is handling distribution directly through our website,” Explains Brandon. “Wholesalers are welcome to step up and offer their interests,and some have done just that. We especially appreciate the efforts made in Europe by some distributors, to secure bulk orders for customers who are more comfortable ordering off a website in their own country.”

littlemathletics spoke to Brandon and lead translator Yu-Chen Shih just after this.

Why, at this point, release a game for the Mega Drive?

The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive needs more games; new games. While the market for a current-generation handheld edition of Beggar Prince would of course be much larger, that’s not our focus. We didn’t secure the rights to the game in order to become rich; it was a labor of love to both share this great game with a Western audience and to bring one of the best 16-bit gaming machines back into the limelight, if only for a short while.

Do you feel that the Mega Drive was cut off before it reached it’s full potential?

I think every game system is cut off before it reaches its potential. Surely doesn’t mean, though, that things have to end right there. There are a lot of exciting things going on in the “homebrew” communities as well as inside the professional businesses overseas that still produce new Sega Mega Drive games to this very day. The key to success is proper focus and the right creative outlet for these things.

How do you go about the physical production of a Mega Drive game so long after the console’s day?

For production, it’s a matter of finding a factory that still produces these things – and that isn’t a simple process. Not only that, but if you value your customers you’ll find a factory that does things right – makes a good, sharp product rather than a cheap imitation. I talked with several factories before I finally found the right one, that could deliver exactly what we had been looking for: high-quality with strong resemblance to the mainstream Sega product of yesteryear.

How do you feel the reception to the game has been so far?

People seem to care about what we’re doing; that’s great. Hardcore Gamer published that very nice feature in their October, 2005 issue: and everyone who thumbed through the issue to read up on Xbox and PS2 games was greeted by a title coming out exclusively for the Sega Genesis. That, to me, speaks volumes.

What are your thoughts on the state of the games industry at this point in time? Would you say that it’s a case of disinterest on your part that’s lead you to work with so-called “retro” systems?

I’m very impressed with the mobile phones from Nokia which run on the Symbian (series 60) operating system. They allow for some very nice, new games to be developed, which greatly surpass what quality is available when limited only to Java-based games. We’re now seeing a few such games, such as Sky Force by Infinite Dreams, that are comparable (or actually better, in my opinion) to comparable Gameboy Advance titles.

Along with the games, the Symbian platform adds some amazing features to what would otherwise be an ordinary phone, such as superior connectivity, ease and flexibility of managing calls and messages and so on. Unfortunately, these phones haven’t caught on largely in the United States, most likely because they offer so much freedom of choice and operation that the average mobile phone owner becomes confused. Instead, people pick up highly inferior products such as the Motorola Razr, which is a real shame considering how much better of an overall phone (as well as gaming platform) the Nokia models are.

We are developing a game for the Series 60 Symbian platform right now, called Super Fighter Block Battle. It’s a very fun, highly addictive action-puzzle game that I designed.

As more mainstream gaming is concerned, I tend to become less and less interested as time goes by. I don’t find much (if any) entertainment in the newer titles, on the newer systems, aside from a few simpler games played along with my nephew on his Nintendo GameCube. With higher and higher development budgets, companies now tend to clone each other’s products more and more, losing the value of high-quality innovation that the “old school” classics built their legend upon.
We rarely even have actual soundtracks in new games, these days. Just license a rap artist or have someone lazily churn out ambience, is all.

Would you say that you are more interested in consoles like the forthcoming Ninetndo Revolution that embrace their past instead of pushing past it?

I think it’s a great thing to see Nintendo embrace their past history and provide current-gen gamers with a taste of what once was, so in that regard I find it interesting, yes. I would certainly love to see my nephew play more of the games that his uncle “cut his teeth on”.

How did you orginally come into contact with the game?

As a dusty, mislabled ROM image on the internet that had been abusively hacked by pirates. After the proper copyright graphics were restored from the battered file (showing that C&E, Inc. was the creator), I got very excited and immediately contacted C&E about the game.

Is there more C&E product that you’d like to see released?

There’s an as-of-yet unreleased game, American Crisis, that C&E produced for the NES (to be sold under the American Video Entertainment label). That would be interesting for NES fans.

So the relationship with C&E Inc. is one you can see continuing?

Definitely. They’re all lovely people.

Do you think the graphics of the game are a selling point?

Sure they are, certainly – and I don’t mind that. It shows people what the system was capable of, that had not always been shown before. It’s something that could only be done when you put people behind the machine that had some real desire to exploit its graphical abilities.

What is the structure of the company itself like?

[Laughs] You could call my work with Super Fighter Team a full time job, as it takes up so many hours of my week – but it is by no means my primary job. The company, at this time, just doesn’t generate a viable income. As it is, with Beggar Prince, the profit from overall sales will be very small. We’re charging a very fair price (USD$40.00) for the game, which doesn’t mean much in the line of profit after you consider costs for research, translation, programming, testing, production, etc. – but a low cost like that is our way of showing everyone that we’re serious about delivering quality at a reasonable price.

As for how many others work with me – that’s based on a per-project basis, as each game we work on requires a different amount of people to fill specific tasks. The Beggar Prince team, for example, consisted of around six people: myself, two translators, three programmers. In addition to our own staff, we have business partners who assist with certain tasks, as well as contract employees.

I have setup a makeshift office for myself, within my personal residence, but apart from that there is no office space. Such a thing would be wasteful as money is concerned for a few reasons: For one, most of our employees are overseas.

What additional work was needed on Super Fighter Team’s part to ready the game for a western audience?

Quite a bit. Let’s just say, the game didn’t always enjoy having English text used in place of its original Chinese. That, and the original game had some bugs in it that, though rare to appear, were annoying. It wasn’t easy to fix them, but it was accomplished in due time and the game is now running smoother than ever before.

How hard is it going to be to break even on a project like this?

I think, when all is said and done, I’ll have just enough money left over from sales in order to…buy a copy of this game. [Laughs]

I see people charging $45 – $50 for newly-made games on systems such as the Intellivision. Not to say it isn’t necessarily worth that cost, but we’re talking about a very small game for a very old system that comes, maybe, with a paper box and a paper instruction card. Not only that, but the program, art and design staff for a game like this most usually consists of one or two people, not a staff of translators, programmers, debuggers and et cetera.

With Beggar Prince, I wanted to ensure the highest quality for everyone – that means, just like in the heyday of Sega doing big-budget releases, we’re going to do a plastic clam-shell case, traditional instruction manual, etc. Thing is, it’s 2006, not 1992, so people won’t swallow a RPG price from the old days – say $70 or $80 – which was typical at the time. Considering all that went into this game’s development and production, the price tag for the final product should be either $50 or $60. Why just $40, then? So everyone who wants a copy of the game can get one, and enjoy it.

Breaking even? Yes, that should happen. Actual profits? Maybe we’ll have enough left over, after all is said and done, to buy a couple of tacos.

Finally, where does Super Fighter Team go from here?

Hopefully, into more households across the world. Only time will tell.