I desperately wanted more info on this, and I thought to myself, the ASSEMbler community is one of only a few that might have such information. I distinctly remember reading, years ago, that one of the R&D guys at Sega (possibly Hideki Sato), was a huge fan of Super Mario Brothers on the Famicom. And so he set about creating an adapter to play Famicom games on the Mega Drive (Genesis), which worked in much the same way as the SMS Powerbase converter. Apparently it went as far as being able to run SMB perfectly, but there were major technical difficulties getting any other games to work. So much so, that Sega scrapped the project. This would have made perfect business sense of course, since if your new system can play all the games on Japan's most popular system (the Famicom), you'll automatically win the entire market. But for the life of me, I honestly cannot remember where I read this info. I don't know if it was online, in a magazine, in a history book, or where. Heck, it could have even been in Game Over by David Sheff. Sadly, I haven't the time or energy to read every single medium that contains text, in my household. Does anyone, have ANY info on this, at all? It's driving me nuts, and I really want (in fact need), a source for where this info, or maybe even rumour, came from.
I remember reading somewhere that Yuji Naka had coded a Famicom emulator for the MD, if that helps...
That.... could be it! Good lord! I may have made a mistake, and in fact it was Yuji who coded an emulator for it. Sources? Extra info? Do you recal where you read this?
Quick bit of googling brings this up - I believe it was actually one of the first things I posted on this site! http://www.the-nextlevel.com/features/interviews/yuji-naka/ About 2/3 of the way down - under the heading "Miscellaneous"
Yeah, you're definitely thinking of Yuji Naka. It was an emulator, so not like the SMS hardware addon (which used hardware already in the Megadrive), although I'd imagine a hardware solution was possible (Famicom on a chip sort of thing). He's mentioned it in a couple of interviews: (source) (source) So if these are to be believed, it was purely for personal amusement, and certainly not any grand Sega scheme. Releasing a software or hardware addon that could play Famicom games would have been risky in terms of legality anyway, I would have thought. I don't think it was in Game Over, Sheff really didn't talk about Naka at all in that book as far as I remember. EDIT: Steadster beat me to it
Yup, that's was it. Thanks guys, you saved me a lot of hassle, time, and stress. Consider yourselves not only friends for life, but I have O Negative blood, so if we're ever in a war together, you two chaps get first choice for a transfusion. Many thanks again.
I also have O- blood, So I will stay incredibly close to you! (O- can give to all types but only receive O-)
One of the original sources of those quotes was the MegaDrive Collector's article in Edge about 3 years ago.
A little OT here, but I'm pretty sure that sort of thing was legal at the time, making a hardware converter to play your competitor's games on your machine. Coleco and Matell had one for 2600 games. Which is not to say it wouldn't have lead to a lawsuit anyway.
It did. Atari sued Coleco for $350 million, but it was settled out of court when Coleco paid up a pretty large sum.
