Down in the Dumps: Taito Edition

On June 4, 2025, Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation dumped 125 Taito prototype Famicom and MSX2 ROMs (mostly Famicom) live on stream. During and after the stream, others tried to examine and piece together these assorted ROM dumps. What did they find? Lots of prototypes of Bakushou!! Jinsei Gekijou (Taito's take on The Game of Life [Jinsei Game]) and Arkanoid 2. But there were still a couple of more interesting finds.

First was what turned out to be graphics data from a prototype of the action RPG Kagerou Densetsu. (No program data, unfortunately.) Kagerou Densetsu was published by a company called Pixel, the same company profiled on GDRI (I've checked before. They have the same address.), but it's been noted that Taito's name could be found in the final release. Was Taito going to publish it originally? They never announced it, but two different Taito logos appear in this prototype data.

The name Kagerou Densetsu and the Taito connection would suggest a relationship to The Legend of Kage, but a different title can be seen in this graphics data — Shinobi Densetsu: Ushinawareta Makimono (忍伝説 失われた巻物) (Shinobi Legend: The Lost Scrolls). A cursory search finds no evidence that Taito announced a game under this name.

By the way, Pixel was mostly a contract developer that previously published three original games for the MSX, but Kagerou Densetsu was developed by yet a different contractor called I.T.L, which did a lot of work for Taito.

Shinobi Densetsu graphics data (Image source)

Then we have what appears to be graphics data (again, no program data) for a seemingly unannounced, unreleased game. Taito announced a few Famicom games they never released, but this doesn't match up with any of them. This looks like some sort of sci-fi adventure, but there's no title; otherwise, it's a complete mystery. The second number font (see image below) was also used in the Hot-B published strategy game Takeda Shingen, developed by Nova (as confirmed by one of its co-founders in an interview), so it may have been developed by them.

Graphics data from a Famicom game with an unknown title (Image source)

Jaleco's Forgotten Football Game

In a world where one company has the NFL rights locked down, it's difficult to imagine a time when every big publisher, and medium-sized publisher, had their own (American) football game. Historians refer to this period as the 1990s. Among those companies, Jaleco, purveyors of Bases Loaded, brought to market a football game for the Super NES that has almost completely slipped through the cracks of gaming history. I don't think it was even heavily promoted or reviewed when it came out.

One reason Sterling Sharpe: End 2 End went unnoticed may have been bad timing. Sterling Sharpe was a wide receiver with the Green Bay Packers; his football career was cut short in 1994 due to a neck injury. The game was released in March 1995.

Jaleco once again brought in everyone's favorite second string development team, Tose, to assemble this festival of football fun. Did they deliver a touchdown?

More like a fumble. I generally stay away from football games, so I have no personal impressions, but reviews seem generally lukewarm at best. End 2 End lacks features like a season mode and real NFL teams and players. They would never release a game without actual players today, but it happened a lot back then.

Former Tose sound designer Shigemitsu Goto composed the peppy music:

FMT and AC STG Mysteries

There is perhaps no series more ubiquitous in the world of shooting games than Raiden. You can find Raiden games on the Atari Jaguar, PC, Nintendo Switch, and every PlayStation, and every once in a while they make a new one. It has endured through the years when other series have not. (Gradius arguably has greater brand recognition, but they haven't made a new game in years.)

And it all goes back to the original Raiden arcade game from 1990. Its success in Japan and North America ensured ports on numerous platforms, including this one for the FM Towns, a computer from Fujitsu that was only available in Japan.

I don't have much to say about the game itself except that it's a pretty good version of Raiden, and it has an arranged CD soundtrack. Naturally, there is some question as to who was involved in the development, hence this post.

FM Towns Raiden was published by KID, a fairly prolific developer in its day. But the name of another very prolific developer, Success, also appears on and in the game, and the game is listed on their website. So who was it?

Former KID sound designer Nobuyuki Shioda has talked about the programmer on Twitter in 2021. They were a University of Tokyo student who also programmed Isolated Warrior for the NES (Max Warrior for the Famicom in Japan). This student programmer went to an arcade, cleared Raiden on one coin, then came back and made what a magazine would call a "perfect port."

Back in 2004, the old KID Damashii website also mentioned this programmer, named "Taka," adding that they also worked on G.I. Joe. The name "Y. Takashina" appears in Raiden's main executable, in a text string.

The developer mysteries don't end there. Video of the unreleased arcade shooter Choujuuki Spriggan Powerd, apparently related to Compile's Spriggan games, has surfaced online.

The KID logo can be found on the board, which you can see here. That seems pretty clear-cut, right? And Nobuyuki Shioda recalled seeing it on "Yagawa's desk," presumably referring to shooter programmer Shinobu Yagawa, who once worked at KID. However, a former member of Compile has also claimed to have worked on this.

Former Super Robot Taisen Game Developer Now Bankrupt

On March 10, 2025, bankruptcy proceedings began for A.I, the Machida, Tokyo-based developer that developed, co-developed, or otherwise worked on over a dozen games and spinoffs in the long-running Super Robot Taisen franchise.

The news is not surprising: The company's Twitter account had not been updated since 2021. The last game the account touted developing was Full Metal Panic! Fight! Who Dares Wins for the PlayStation 4 in 2018. The company's website had not been updated since 2014.

A.I was incorporated on July 1990. It was founded by former members of arcade game developer Sanritsu including programmer Hiroyuki Arai and graphic designer Noriyoshi Innai, who may or may not have been the source of the company's name. Mr. Arai was the original president; his son Kenichi eventually took over operations.

Judging by comments, Japanese gamers may only know A.I from its involvement in the Super Robot Taisen series, but it also developed many games for Atlus and Hudson over the years like Bonk 3 (PC Genjin 3), Wario Blast (Bomberman GB), and Bomberman Hero.

The company's early history is somewhat hazy. The company was started in 1990, but the A.I website listed the PC Engine version of Kyuukyoku Tiger (Twin Cobra), which was released in 1989. The 1990 date may only be referring to when it was formally incorporated. In between leaving Sanritsu and establishing A.I, it seems the founding members worked as freelancers, which was apparently the case with the development of Wrath of the Black Manta (Ninja Cop Saizou).

The original Super Robot Taisen series developer Winkysoft preceded A.I in bankruptcy in February 2016. Meanwhile, SIMS remains the last known (game developer) offshoot of Sanritsu.

Opus No Longer With Us

After 34 years in business, game developer Opus declared bankruptcy on April 4, 2024, and the only news item online (as of this posting) was a summary on JC-NET, a news site that specializes in posting bankruptcy information. The reason given for the filing was COVID and the subsequent restrictions on operating hours, which led to a sales slump. A sad ending for such a company, in a year that has been tough for the game industry.

Opus was established on March 6, 1990, by Takayuki Suzuki, a former member of Goblin Sound, a sound team that frequently worked with companies like Seta, BPS, and NCS (Masaya brand). Early on, Opus was mostly a sound production company, like Goblin Sound before it, and continued to work with Seta, NCS, and others. With Suzuki handling executive duties, Masanao Akahori and Jun Enoki became Opus's two primary sound designers. But as time went on, the company became more and more involved with game development.

Opus began to make a name for itself as a developer during the PS1/N64 era. On the PlayStation, it developed the music games Depth (Fluid in Europe), Beat Planet Music, and Groove Jigoku V. Over on the Nintendo 64, it was responsible for the Fighters Destiny series of 3D fighting games (the first of which was developed with a company called Anchor).

Building on that experience, Opus went on to develop UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) games for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2. It also developed Wave Rally for the PlayStation 2, a racing game similar to Wave Race 64 that also featured the popular Kawasaki Jet Ski watercraft. During this period, Opus was moving into the field of middleware and development tools; Wave Rally made use of its GZwave "wave engine technology".

2009 marked the debut of Opus's original series for the PSP, Half-Minute Hero, which put a unique spin on the RPG genre by dividing the game into 30-second stages and incorporating an irreverent sense of humor. Versions of these games were also released for Xbox Live Arcade and Windows (Steam).

Opus spent its last years developing and touting its Machine Heads test automation tool and AI matching service. It also developed smartphone games and worked on various games for Square Enix and Bandai Namco, including Final Fantasy VII Remake, SaGa Scarlet Grace, Tales of Arise, and Ace Combat 7.

SD Gundam Rainbow Wars

You won't hear Hideo Kojima talk about it in a Kenji Eno documentary. It's the kind of game, one featuring licensed characters, that Eno seemed to hate making, to the point where he eventually stopped showing up for work. But he made this game; he's credited as the game designer, the only person in the credits to use his full name.

The game is SD Gundam Sangokushi Rainbow Tairiku Senki, an arcade run and gun developed for Banpresto by Kenji Eno's company EIM (as confirmed by the game's director, Takehiko Hoashi) Was Eno a fan of Contra? Because this is a Contra clone, from the weapons pickups to the tank you can drive that's straight out of Contra III, but set in the SD Gundam universe.

Despite the cutesiness of the game, it's still kinda tough. The stage design feels a little basic and bare-bones compared to Contra. Nevertheless, it's a very solidly constructed, competently made game and a fun diversion. Just don't expect, despite Eno's involvement, a subversive take on the genre.

A Word About the Tokyo Xtreme Racer Series

Genki has announced a brand new Tokyo Xtreme Racer game, the first non-mobile game entry in the series in almost 20 years. But the company has a long history in racing games, going all the way back to the Super Famicom and Super NES.

Genki developed several racing games for Nintendo's 16-bit machine, mostly motorcycle and F1-type racing games, but they also created the game that started the whole Shutokou Battle/Tokyo Xtreme Racer series, Shutokou Battle '94: Drift King. It features the "Drift King" himself (hence the title), professional race car driver Keiichi Tsuchiya, along with "car tuner" Masaaki Bandoh. A sequel followed in 1995.

The English Wikipedia article for the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series includes Wangan Dead Heat/Highway 2000 for the Sega Saturn; the Japanese Wikipedia article for the Shutokou Battle series does not. I do not count it as part of the series, despite the fact that it takes place on Tokyo highways.

So we move on to the next game for PlayStation, from 1996, simply titled Shutokou Battle in Japan and Tokyo Highway Battle overseas. This is where the series made the transition to 3D. Oddly, the game seems to have been mostly developed by another company called CAPS. Yet Genki developed two 3D racing games themselves that came out the year prior, Hang-On GP and the aforementioned Highway 2000. (And BTW, the Saturn version of Shutokou Battle was by Natsume's Osaka office, then a subsidiary called Osaka Natsume.)

This was followed later in the year by Shutokou Battle Gaiden: Super Technic Challenge: Drift King e no Michi, also developed by CAPS. Again, CAPS is not credited, technically (though their name is clearly written on the speedometer), but it is mostly the same team that worked on Tokyo Highway Battle. Genki is only credited with supervision here.

I don't know the full story or the circumstances behind it, but in May 1996, CAPS president Tsutomu Hagiwara headed up a new Genki subsidiary called Doda. Doda would carry on the development of racing games for Genki. CAPS, meanwhile, would make their own series of racing games called Option Tuning Car Battle. These never left Japan.

Doda developed the next game in the Shutokou Battle series, Shutokou Battle R, released for PlayStation in 1997. This marked the final appearances by Keiichi Tsuchiya and Masaaki Bandoh in the series.

The series found international success when it came to the Sega Dreamcast in 1999. While previous games were more conventional, lap-based racing games, Tokyo Xtreme Racer (Shutokou Battle in Japan, Tokyo Highway Challenge in Europe) added some grit and a degree of freedom to the proceedings. The player is now on their own to roam the highways and find rivals to challenge. Doda developed this and the sequel.

Genki acquired and dissolved Doda on May 31, 2000, less than a month before the sequel was released in Japan. More sequels and spin-offs followed, now developed in-house. Then for a long time, nothing happened other than a couple of mobile games.

In 2008, after poor sales, the original Genki became insolvent and was dissolved. (I don't know if they actually filed for bankruptcy.) The current entity known as Genki was actually spun off from the old one. I don't know if anybody from the old days is still kicking around, but the company has continued to work on the Wangan Midnight series and those mobile games, so that's something. We'll just have to wait and see how the new game turns out.

(This post leans very heavily on videos by Classic Gaming Player, so thanks to them.)