Sega NetMerc

[S N K]

One of my members on my older gaming forums who's currently living in japan posted a picture of a very rare piece of hardware from the model 1 days so I thought it'd be neat to share this with some folks here.

http://31.media.tumblr.com/33156d4b1...y76o1_1280.jpg

I asked him some questions about it so he shared with me some info on it.

To keep it simple, you know I am a collector and I have been concentrating on arcade stuff mainly for years now and in particular, deluxe arcade stuff that requires special controllers like steering wheels, analog sticks, etc. My wife builds me arcade controllers while I design them so generally, I can play everything at home on my setup of 3 CRT RGB monitors.

One of my goals is to own all Sega Model 1/2/3 games that aren't sports (baseball, soccer) and I came across the story about this game on system16.com

Later on, I happened to find one not fully working machine in New Zealand on a domestic auction site where you have to be from NZ or Australia to even register to bid. Luckily, I have a good friend who just moved back to Australia and is into arcade stuff so he helped me query the seller and eventually buy the item. I was able to convince the seller to part out the machine and send me the pieces that I wanted for sacks of money as there is no way I could get that machine from there to here for any reasonable amount and I just do not have the space for it. The main goal was to just preserve the data for MAME.

The HMD on this set has a crack in one of the eye units so I set about finding the original developers and fortunately found one of them working in Iceland on the EVE titles. He told me how he originally worked on the title at Sega in Japan and whole bunch of awesome backstory. Anyhow, he offered to help me repair it so will be sending to him soon.

Some interesting backstory is that Sega was looking into VR development way back in the 90's. You may remember the Genesis VR set but that was developed by another company which had a falling out with Sega. Sega contacted Virtuality for consulting services when they started looking at 3D with Model 1 and it ended up with 5 or so British guys sitting in Sega's HQ helping legends like Yu Suzuki formulate the arcade games we call classics today. They apparently had a consumer level VR prototype ready that was codenamed Dreamcast at the time but it obviously went nowhere.

Figured some folks here might find this lil piece of hardware interesting seeing as it's from a bygone era. I usually knew all about Sega Model1/2 arcade games but somehow I never knew this thing existed. There's a picture of it here just to get idea of how fucking big this thing was..

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=712

The guy who has this unit now has been contacted by a few folks of Sega of Japan in the past who have before expressed interest in some of the rare hardware he has seeing as just like Square Enix *Kingdom Hearts* they have problems keeping their code for their older games stored away.

[Brill Weave]

First I've ever seen of it and I've been a Sega fan from the start. That's pretty interesting.

[S N K]

First I've ever seen of it and I've been a Sega fan from the start. That's pretty interesting.

I had a talk with him earlier today about this but he's getting read to ship the HMD unit to one of the devs who made this thing. From what I've learned so far system16 saying that there were 70 working units might not actually be true and it maybe be closer to less then 20 or even less then that seeing as this was finished when the Model 2 boards *Virtua Fighter 2 was the 1st on it I think* came out. I'll post some more info about this as it comes to light. His main goal will probably be to dump the game but I have a feeling after that's done, He'll give it back to Sega for whatever it cost him to get it from New Zeland to Tokyo.

He mentioned this also..

I know some very senior guys at Sega (including the CEO) and when they have come over to my place, they have commented before that they may request to borrow some stuff from me as they don't have copies back at the office archives which are poorly maintained.

Honestly, I could establish an arcade museum with the rare stuff that I have but there is no way it would pay for itself. lol

I knew he had a scary setup so I asked him for a recent pic of what he's got...

I am actually redoing my in house retro environment/library room at the moment - will take pics once it is done but I keep 99% of my arcade stuff in a secured external storage area.

This is a WIP shot from a week ago.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/6cbec676a...y76o1_1280.jpg

Here is a low res picture of Netmerc.

http://www.wailee.com/sys/lpic/SegaNetmerc.jpg

We've spoken to each other off and on over the years so I'm really trying to see if he'd be willing to pick some brains over there about some info about the Master System/Genesis era of hardware as well.

[Brill Weave]

God damn. That's impressive. Tell him to tell them to translate and port over the last two parts of Shining Force III and he'll make it a deal. Not at all self serving.

[S N K]

God damn. That's impressive. Tell him to tell them to translate and port over the last two parts of Shining Force III and he'll make it a deal. Not at all self serving.

Fuck just translating it. The story for Shining Force III was so good, they should totally remaster it with a modern up to date graphics engine and port the thing to either PS3 or Xbox 360. I actually have a copy of the Shining Force III Premium Disc around here somewhere. It was a JP Mailbox onry bullshit add-on scenario where you could take your characters from all three games and pit them into battles vs some of the game's major bosses.

Here's a picture of it.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sega-Saturn-...item43be975e7e

I was lucky to get this from one of my old high school buddies who moved to Japan at the time. I contacted him and asked him to do the hookup to aquire that thing. The thing about Shining Force III it wasn't so much as Sega's work but Camalot's as well who also did Shining the Holy Ark for Sega Saturn also so yeah the ball would be in their court so to speak. The more I think about it now, I would be content with a port to the 3DS or Vita even. Hell I'm still fucking waiting on Dragon Warrior VII for 3DS since it's still being worked on for a U.S. release. I kinda have a slight bit of hope for Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force and the popular Shining Force II games coming out again since the game gear version of Shining Force is on the Nintendo Eshop now even tho most people would have preferred the polished version of it known as Shining Force CD for the Sega CD system.

[Brill Weave]

Why must you taunt me? I thought we were cool. But seriously there would be so many people in the states that would buy the last two parts I can't help but think it would be profitable. I mean just release the shit on PSN and Xbox as downloads. I'd get it the first day without even a second's hesitation.

[S N K]

Why must you taunt me? I thought we were cool. But seriously there would be so many people in the states that would buy the last two parts I can't help but think it would be profitable. I mean just release the shit on PSN and Xbox as downloads. I'd get it the first day without even a second's hesitation.

There's an ISO hack which has the last two chapters translated along with the Premium Disc..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJGA9jgulH8

[Kohan]

What immediately stood out to me about the blurb in the first post was the surprise regarding SEGA's VR ventures. Saying that they were only interested in the '90s made me feel like they'd forgotten about SegaScope 3-D. I don't believe someone with that kind of collection and experience wouldn't be aware of it, though, so I presume they're deliberately separating the two.

[S N K]

What immediately stood out to me about the blurb in the first post was the surprise regarding SEGA's VR ventures. Saying that they were only interested in the '90s made me feel like they'd forgotten about SegaScope 3-D. I don't believe someone with that kind of collection and experience wouldn't be aware of it, though, so I presume they're deliberately separating the two.

Yeah I'm pretty sure he knows of the thing like I do. The Sega Scope 3-D imo was pretty much along the same idea but I think the whole Model 1 cab with Netmerc was more closer to home with what they wanted in a more immersive type of game. It's hard to really know what Sega was really pushing for in the end since back then the internet was in it's infancy & gaming mags was the only real source of media information you could get on games like this. I'm hoping to see some more information about this unit and I'd love to see it running as well since it'll be dumped to mame soon enough.

[Kohan]

Yeah I'm pretty sure he knows of the thing like I do. The Sega Scope 3-D imo was pretty much along the same idea but I think the whole Model 1 cab with Netmerc was more closer to home with what they wanted in a more immersive type of game. It's hard to really know what Sega was really pushing for in the end since back then the internet was in it's infancy & gaming mags was the only real source of media information you could get on games like this. I'm hoping to see some more information about this unit and I'd love to see it running as well since it'll be dumped to mame soon enough.

While I don't know specifically what was going on in SEGA's offices, I can say that they weren't the only company who co-created these types of games with Virtuality. Namco did it too, for example, with "Pac-Man VR." All of these machines, to the best of my knowledge, were similar in a lot of ways—obviously not all necessarily using SEGA's proprietary board, but mechanically and what not. Pac-Man was more aesthetically pleasing, and wasn't designed to look like something in the game, but was basically the same thing otherwise.

On top of that, they're not even the first home console manufacturer who designed stereoscopic glasses. Nintendo did it before them.

Considering, there could be some imaginative, future-based thinking there—or they could have just had the general thought that a lot of other people did, that being: "this is the future of entertainment," only realizing after some investments that the technology wasn't ready for it.

[S N K]

While I don't know specifically what was going on in SEGA's offices, I can say that they weren't the only company who co-created these types of games with Virtuality. Namco did it too, for example, with "Pac-Man VR." All of these machines, to the best of my knowledge, were similar in a lot of ways—obviously not all necessarily using SEGA's proprietary board, but mechanically and what not. Pac-Man was more aesthetically pleasing, and wasn't designed to look like something in the game, but was basically the same thing otherwise.

On top of that, they're not even the first home console manufacturer who designed stereoscopic glasses. Nintendo did it before them.

Considering, there could be some imaginative, future-based thinking there—or they could have just had the general thought that a lot of other people did, that being: "this is the future of entertainment," only realizing after some investments that the technology wasn't ready for it.

I asked your question to him about the Sega Scope. He really didn't have too much to say about it..

I can't really comment on what they were thinking in the 80's with the glasses but it's clear that Yu Suzuki always had a vision of simulating fast speed movement in gaming.

Once I meet the SOJ retro expert, I will have a go at all of these topics.

Also he posted this yesterday which was from someone else asking about him something.

Ninja Ryukenden 2 on Neo Geo MVS was location tested in Japan around the summer of '94 during the height of the fighter boom so it performed poorly. Feedback cited that it was also too difficult. The game style is like the original arcade title with 3 selectable characters. I had drinks with someone who worked at Tecmo during this time, once drunk, it was revealed to me that they have the data backed up on a PC-98 somewhere and that I should be able to get access to it in the future.

I've been able to acquire other rare stuff like this Fighting Vipers 2 version, only 1 exists in the world, and would make Zero-chan *guy we both know* cry to know that I have it & saved it for posterity.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/239988d39...y76o1_1280.jpg