Dragon's Lair Fans - Arcade Lifestyle
General Chat => All the rest => Topic started by: Little_Rabbit on August 19, 2013, 02:35:09 PM
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Hi Guys !
I've been reading your posts for quite a long time but stayed aside until now :).
Strange enough, I'm a collector of video game consoles, micro computers and arcade machines. My favorite period is the early eighties :-*.
I'm especially fond of machines and stuff from ATARI. I love Namco games too, with PACMAN being of course the best of the best ! :) I grew up with an ATARI VCS, and then an ATARI 800 XL on which I learned everything about video games of that era :). I ended up working in the French video game industry for a while, but that was quite a long time ago.
I Live in France (Nantes), and my collection is for now sadly stored in various locations where I can't actually take care of it. Hopefully, the building of my future house is really close now, so I'm expecting my first gaming room in a few months/years/decades ;) !
Some of you might know me from another arcade forum : Gamoover (http://www.gamoover.net/Forums/index.php);).
I'm pretty happy to join your community.
See you,
Little Rabbit
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Hello and welcome ;D
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Welcome in the lair Little_Rabbit :spaceace:
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Hi there and Welcome !
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Welcome, good to have you!
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Hello Little Rabbit,
enjoy the forum :).
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Welcome here!!
As always, pictures is always appreciated... If you can get to the games ;)
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Welcome to the house of fun!
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First of all: A big welcome!
When you say you worked in the French game industry, do you mean local games, or a French multinational?
If you're willing/able to answer ofcourse 8)
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Finally! ;) Welcome to this board, Little Rabbit :)
Hey, now that you are a registered member, you'll have access to our famous 'business area' ...enjoy! 8)
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Welcome and enjoy this awesome board :spaceace:
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Welcome, welcome petit lapin ;D
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Hi !
Thanks a lot for your warm welcome and your very kind words !
As always, pictures is always appreciated... If you can get to the games ;)
To get to the games is currently pretty difficult because they are not stored where I live, but I have many pictures of the various road trips I conducted to get them. So I should be able to post a few pictures in a near future ;). I hope you like old cabinets and defective PCBs :D. I can at least already give you a short list :
- Video Pinball (ATARI Europe French version : "Flipper Video")
- Pole Position (sitdown cabinet)
- Space Invaders (upright from Midway)
- Super Breakout (upright US cab)
- Rally X (NSM cocktail table)
- Pacman (upright Midway)
- Galaxian (upright Midway, not mine, to my little brother ;) )
- Rolling Thunder (upright ATARI, not mine, to my little brother ;) )
- Quadra Pong (a strange round cocktail table version from ATARI Europe)
- Robotron 2084 (Williams upright US cab)
- GTI Club Rally Côte d'Azur (twin cab)
- Super Bug (upright ATARI Europe cab)
- Pole Position 1 (upright cab, not mine, to my little brother ;) )
- Pole Position 2 (upright cab)
- Asterock (upright SIDAM cab, no pcb)
- Race Drivin' (sitdown cab)
- Xevious (ATARI upright cab)
- Pacman (Midway cocktail table - very poor condition)
- Roadblaster (ATARI upright cab)
- Ace Driver (Namco twin cab, very poor condition)
- Space Invaders part II (Italian version with Taito PCB, from "Racing Team")
- Time Pilot (ATARI Europe upright cab)
- and a few generic uprigth cabs and coktail tables ;)
And to calm your possible enthousiasm, almost nothing is working, so yes, I'm gonna be pretty busy the next decades to repair all that stuff !
When you say you worked in the French game industry, do you mean local games, or a French multinational?
If you're willing/able to answer ofcourse 8)
Not in French multinationals, only small independant development studios. To name them, it was at Delphine Software and later at Carapace (which is not as famous as the first one ;)). I used to be a programmer, lead programmer and later, mainly worked as a technical producer (making the interface between the development studio and the publishers).
Finally! ;) Welcome to this board, Little Rabbit :)
Hey, now that you are a registered member, you'll have access to our famous 'business area' ...enjoy! 8)
Thanks DarthNuno ! Yes, I realized that yesterday, and to be honnest, I already had a peek at one post that AsPic forwarded me ;).
See you!
Little Rabbit
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Hello,
Nice list, +1 french collector here :)
Bienvenue Petit Lapin !
Franck
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Welcome here Little Rabbit
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Not in French multinationals, only small independant development studios. To name them, it was at Delphine Software and later at Carapace (which is not as famous as the first one ;)). I used to be a programmer, lead programmer and later, mainly worked as a technical producer (making the interface between the development studio and the publishers).
There was a nice article about Flashback in last month's RetroGamer Mag.
Were you part of that adventure too?
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Hi,
Nice list, +1 french collector here :)
Bienvenue Petit Lapin !
Thanks atarimania :-* ! I'm pretty honored you appreciate my list :D !
There was a nice article about Flashback in last month's RetroGamer Mag.
Were you part of that adventure too?
Yes, I've heard about that article, but I didn't get a chance to read it yet.
Yep, I was part of the adventure :). Actually, it was my first project at DSI. I was initially hired to solve a little hardware issue they had during the development of the native version of Flashback on Megadrive. The game was in an already pretty advanced stage, and their test cartridges were becoming too small. I had to extand the memory size of the cartridge. After that, they offered me a full time job to port the game on PC. It had to be done mostly in assemby language, and I never seriously programmed a PC before :? (I was more on the 68000 side ;)). But the challenge was very interesting, and we could already feel the game was going to be fantastic !
Very good memories from that period ;).
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I bow in respect!!!!
One of my favourite game BITD.
The article mentioned the extended memory size of the cartridge indeed.
If the legend is true, Paul Cuisset showed the game to Sega and they were surprised because Delphine had created their own 24 mega-bits cartridge (which didn't exist at that time, only 16 existed).
It was quite a gamble and it paid off because as Sega liked the game, they agreed to produce that special cartridge.
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Hi,
The article mentioned the extended memory size of the cartridge indeed.
If the legend is true, Paul Cuisset showed the game to Sega and they were surprised because Delphine had created their own 24 mega-bits cartridge (which didn't exist at that time, only 16 existed).
Yes that's true :). I do not remember the exact figures but we developped that special test cartridge because it didn't exist.
In fact I first modified an existing SEGA test cartridge. As a coincidence, I recently moved my collection of consoles, micro computers and old stuff back where I live. And preparing the parcels, I found those cartridges that I didn't even recall I had some copies !
As a worldwide exclusivity, I'm proud to present to the Dragon's Lair Fans audience their unique pictures ;D !
(http://gamoovernet.pixhotel.fr/pics_gamoovernet690px/20130821181724-Little_Rabbit-20130821-175420-s.jpg) (http://gamoovernet.pixhotel.fr/pics/20130821181724-Little_Rabbit-20130821-175420-s.jpg)
This is the original SEGA cartridge. As far as the silk screen printing shows, it would be an 8 megabits sized cartridge.
(http://gamoovernet.pixhotel.fr/pics_gamoovernet690px/20130821181745-Little_Rabbit-20130821-175438-s.jpg) (http://gamoovernet.pixhotel.fr/pics/20130821181745-Little_Rabbit-20130821-175438-s.jpg)
On the back we can see the modification I did to expand its capacity.
And now, here is the cartridge I developped during my early days at Delphine :
(http://gamoovernet.pixhotel.fr/pics_gamoovernet690px/20130821181659-Little_Rabbit-20130821-174946-s.jpg) (http://gamoovernet.pixhotel.fr/pics/20130821181659-Little_Rabbit-20130821-174946-s.jpg)
(http://gamoovernet.pixhotel.fr/pics_gamoovernet690px/20130821181610-Little_Rabbit-20130821-174908-s.jpg) (http://gamoovernet.pixhotel.fr/pics/20130821181610-Little_Rabbit-20130821-174908-s.jpg)
This one is a 16 or 32 megabits cartridge.
(http://gamoovernet.pixhotel.fr/pics_gamoovernet690px/20130821181633-Little_Rabbit-20130821-174929-s.jpg) (http://gamoovernet.pixhotel.fr/pics/20130821181633-Little_Rabbit-20130821-174929-s.jpg)
As you can see, I even have a blank PCB without its components ! :D
We manufactured a small serie (in fact we ask a PCB company to burn the pcbs, and I assembled the components by myself ;) ).
The funny things is even years later, we sold a few copies of this cartridge to Japanese companies ! ;D
(as far as I remember, it was Funsoft : we were in contact with them because they did the adaptation of Flashback for the Japanese market !).
It was quite a gamble and it paid off because as Sega liked the game, they agreed to produce that special cartridge.
I do not remember precisely, but I would say that the test cartridge didn't exist, and that's why we built it by ourselves. Regarding the final consumer cartridge, I believe this size already existed for other games (it was just a question of manufacturing cost ;) ). But that's true that SEGA was impressed that a small French company made their own test cartridge :).
See you
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Very serious stuff here, many thanks for sharing this! :-* :-* :-*
I didn't know all your 'professional background' in the video game industry so far... very very interesting! :)
:spaceace: :spaceace: :spaceace:
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Many thanks for the detailed pictures and explanations!
So nice that you kept these things, a real piece of gaming history imho.
:spaceace: :spaceace: :spaceace:
I was a seller in a video game store in Belgium when Flasback was released and I remember that I just had to play it for 1 minute to get the people excited enough to buy it.
The extra memory in the cartridge always impressed them too.
And at the end of the day I was calling my boss to tell him: "guess what, I'm out of flashback, again!".
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I was a seller in a video game store in Belgium
if you ever are in need for a job... let me know. ;)
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;D
Thanks! Unbeatable commuting time ;)
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welcome here little_rabbit ! flash back megadrive is a really a fond memory ! great to see another megadrive "specialist" on this board ;)