You know what, I can't believe that this is going to be my first post in the HG101 forums. Blame shyness and such, but now I have a reason to post, I guess. Prepare for a huge post.
Anyway, I have made a, how you say,
shocking discovery on the Yun Sung arcade game "Shocking"/"쇼킹" (no pun intended), among other things.
It all started innocently enough when I was browsing a blog called
Lunatic Obscurity, which as you can guess, is all about obscure games. I was flipping through pages and looking at the pretty pictures when I came across
this post about a Compile DiscStation disc. When I saw one of the pictures, I thought to myself "Hey, aren't one of these screenshots familia---" and then it struck me that I have indeed played a game similar to this on MAME. As it turned out, Shocking was simply an arcade port/ripoff/remake/unofficial English/Korean translation of an earlier Japanese PC game (albeit with lower resolution graphics), and all this time I thought I was playing something semi-orignal (though albeit with a few stolen graphics/music, per the 90s Korean tradition). And then I discovered some more stuff about the other mentioned game, "Bomber Through Gogo! ~Jump Hero Gaiden 2~", and it all goes downhill from there. All within the first few hours of 2015, to boot.
Shocking's base game is a Compile (of
Puyo Puyo/
Madou Monogatari/
Aleste/etc. fame) developed PC game called
Gensei Kai Shingeki, or 幻世快進劇, which was released in 1996, approximately one year (perhaps even less than that) before
Shocking. I have no idea what the Japanese title means, and Google Translate is being a pain in translating it probably due to its all-kanji nature. In both games, you control a wolf as you go through single screens of mazes, slashing your sword through slimes, monsters, and pots. The PC game got a release under Compile's DiscStation series, though
if this Amazon Japan listing is to be believed, it got a stand-alone release too. Although Compile and Yun Sung both gave different stories to their respective games. Compile gave us
this mini-manga comic for backstory. The "you are a human turned into a wolf" story seems to be an invention of Yun Sung, as you are pretty much already an anthro wolf before, throughout, and after the entire game in Compile's version. Also of note that the Korean and English versions of
Shocking differ in that the Korean version's player sprite is a human, while the English version's player sprite is the wolf that is so similar to
Gensei Kai Shingeki's playable character.
Now, the other mentioned game,
Bomber Through Gogo! ~Jump Hero Gaiden 2~, also developed by Compile in 1996, not only got ripped off once, but
TWICE by Korean arcade developers. Once by the aforementioned Yun Sung, another by Limenko. Yun Sung's version of the game is called
Bomb Kick/"봄킥" (released in 1998), and Limenko's version is called
Dynamite Bomber (released in 2000). All games seem to share the same basic game mechanics of bombing and kicking, as well as the single-screen gimmick seen in such games as
Bubble Bobble and
Snow Bros.
Lunatic Obscurity's blog mentions something about both up-button jumping and three selectable characters--one of which is infinite-flying--in
Jump Hero Gaiden 2. All games share the trait of selecting between three characters, including said infinite-jumping character (case in point with the "flying" characters,
JHG2: Linda,
Bomb Kick: Jeny (sic),
Dynamite Bomber: Dan). The "press up to jump" mechanic is present in
Dynamite Bomber, though it also offers the option to jump with a button too; in
Bomb Kick, however, you can only jump with a button.
I knew that both Yun Sung and Limenko have a track record of ripping off lots of games (though Limenko seems to have made less games (a
Bubble Bobble clone and a
Knights of Valour clone (that also seems to rip off Disney's
Mulan) is currently emulatable in MAME along with the aforementioned
Dynamite Bomber), as well as being the official Korean distributor for Banpresto's arcade game
Bang Bang Ball, albeit renamed
Battle Bubble and with backgrounds changed for whatever reason). However, most of the games they (mostly Yun Sung) targeted were arcade games that achieved worldwide or at least semi-worldwide popularity, like
Donkey Kong,
Tetris,
Puzzle Bobble,
Puyo Puyo, nonograms (known by Nintendo versions as
Picross), "find the difference"-type games, even
Gals Panic, et cetera. Never would I have thought that they would also target games that were virtually unknown in the west and even Japan itself.
Relevant links:
Gensei Kai Shingeki:
Nico Nico Douga playthrough of the game by ろじろじ(rojiroji)
Amazon Japan listing of the game
Arcade-History's entry on Yun Sung's Shocking
YouTube playthrough of Shocking by edusword, for comparisonBomber Through Gogo! ~Jump Hero Gaiden 2~:
Obscurevideogames Tumblr post of a screenshot from the game, initially mistaken for Puyo Puyo Sun due to the presence of Carbuncle, but later correctedArcade-History's entry on Yun Sung's Bomb Kick
Arcade-History's entry on Limenko's Dynamite BomberBoth:
Lunatic Obscurity's blog post on Compile's DiscStation 12
Japanese 2channel archived thread on the DiscStation series from about a decade ago, seems to mention Gensei Kai Shingeki as well as its respective arcade ripoff Shocking in posts 376-380, some of the users even remarking that Shocking is a "pachimono/パチモノ" or "pachimon/パチモン" (Japanese slang words equal to English "bootleg")Japanese Wikipedia article on DiscStation, mentions GenseiThis is all the info I can come up with. If there is anyone that can offer more info on all those games, I'd be happy to hear it.
What a way to start off the new year, am I right?
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