I was going through my box of Japanese and Korean Mega Drive carts and came across this pirate that I had never paid attention to before. Based on the title on the front of: Dreamlike Star III, I was thinking that maybe it was Phantasy Star III. However, the image is taken from the case art of Valis III. I popped it in and sure enough, it was Valis III. Not sure what the writing on the spine calls the game. though. I have half tempted to open it up to see how they did the board inside.
Nothing strange about that at all. The Chinese were always writing stupid English names on games. I had a Dick Tracy pirate cart like yours. It had a scan of the Japanese art work but was called cop killer. Seriously! I've had others over the years too. By the way the first Kanji in the Chinese title says Yume (Dream in Japanese) and the last Kanji says Hoshi (Star in Japanese) . Although Chinese and Japanese sound different some Kanji has the same meaning. That would also explain the odd English title.
Thanks for the information on the writing. I have no idea why they would call it that instead of the Valis III that it is, especially since they used that artwork.
Chinese bootleg, that's all there is to say They don't care really. It's not as if the Chinese pirates care about customer satisfaction.
All bootlegs are not shitty. The best that I know is from Taiwan and the name is Shui Hu: Feng Yun Zhuan.
I own that game but it's not a bootleg. That's an original game although it does use some official Mega Drive game assets.
Yes, indeed, I confused. I also own that game but it's a japanese reproduction, well made and boxed. Do you own the original taiwanese version from 1996 or another one?
No, I'm afraid mine is also a reproduction. I bought the PCB from China and made my own custom case and cartridge.
I did not do my reproduction myself but bought it straight from Japan. They did a great job and even made a manual for it.
Every time I play this I spot a new thing that has has been either lifted straight from another game or retraced and slightly altered. The 3 playable characters are stolen from Knights of the Round, as well are several of the enemies, backgrounds, and power ups. Death screams and some enemies are stolen from Streets of Rage 2, magic attack sprites stolen from Golden Axe and Forgotten Worlds, flaming body animation lifted straight from Street Fighter II, etc etc. The sound driver is stolen and what music that isn't stolen (like the Final Fantasy tune) is lifted straight from the developers previous games. While it plays great as a hack 'n slash and is an excellent entry in the MD library it seems like the more I play it the less of an "original" effort it becomes.
You are 100% right but as far as Chinese games go it's probably the most original you're going to get at least it's not just a simple sprite hack like most efforts. There was a Korean MD beat'em up that was in the works which was said by Samsung to be 100% original but you can clearly see just from looking at screen shots that it was a hack of bare knuckle / Streets of Rage. The game was never released n the end. Probably because they knew Sega would have sued the shit out of them.
