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Spirou [Proto] (GG)
Post Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 6:24 pm
Christmas is not there yet, but SMS Power already has an unusual gift for you all!
Not everyday we stumble on a genuine unreleased game prototype (remember Dinobasher, Pat Riley Basketball, Yogi-Bear, or the excellent Pac-In-Time, etc.), so we are always pleased to be able to uncover another one and release it to the community. Games are meant to be played, so wherever they are, developments teams who put hard work into something may be glad that their game finally got somewhere into the hands of gamers.

Spirou for the Game Gear, developped in 1996 as a late title for the system, was pretty much complete and never made it to the market. In the very same vein as Tintin au Tibet, developed by Bit Managers, published by Infogrames, and probably sharing the same game engine, Spirou is a platformer game based on a popular Belgian comic serie. The exact state of this prototype is unknown, but it is very playable and seems pretty much complete (confirmation, someone to play the game to finish?) and we don't know for what reason its commercial release was cancelled. The game is a pretty straight forward 2D platformer, feature decent, not stunning graphics & animation, and interesting music. Gameplay wise, it has this unfortunate taste of late european plateformers with average enemy patterns and level design. It has the merit of running very smoothly which is not the case of all western games of this era. Go play!
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Post Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 11:54 pm
Last edited by Maxim on Mon Nov 19, 2007 10:25 am; edited 2 times in total
Spirou at Wikipedia - not as famous as Tintin in English-speaking countries... but "unlike Tintin, Spirou is actually seen doing some reporting in some of his adventures" :)

The ROM features an large amount of the original source embedded with the code - this is not unusual, software tools of the 80s and 90s would often use uninitialised memory, but the quantity is unusual.

Looking at some of the source, we can see it was used for both the Game Gear and Game Boy versions - see these comparison screenshots:



So why was the Game Boy version released? Who knows...
well, the hugely bigger market might have helped...
spirou-comparison.png (16.44 KB)
Spirou Game Gear/Game Boy comparison
spirou-comparison.png

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Post Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 12:10 am
Passwords are stored at location 0xf7dc in ROM:

031
240
321
304
421
132

(all are how many times to press button 2 for each picture). However, it only seems possible to get to a few levels from here - the password code may not be complete.
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Post Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 2:47 pm
Nice comparison, the games looks identical. Is there any way to compare asm of the two games ? the GG and GB use a Z80, it could be really close.
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Post Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 5:40 pm
That's my point - the sections of source code stored in the ROM show it's almost identical, containing sections like:
   IF   GB
   xref   PAL_PAS
   xor   a
   stal   SGB_FlagMarkers
   ld   hl,PAL_PAS
   SGB   SetPalette
   ENDIF
   if   GG
   callx   SetPalSt
   endif

where they needed to be different. It's interesting if they really avoided using the CPU instructions not common to both systems. I get the impression they built almost identical games from a common source + data base.
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Post Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 10:09 pm
Hmm, really interesting concept actually.
Also looks like an ok platformer, thanks again Bock.
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Post Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 3:37 am
I just finished playing the game and it's pretty solid. There are some immortal enemies though...

I fooled around with the passwords and got 201, which brought me to a jungle-level:

Boss:


Forced sidescrolling part:

A waterlevel with some humorous animations:

After that followed a part where you kill a robot that for some reason turns into a candy which you'll later use as a bomb...


The last level:

After you destroy the machine of DOOM, a timer starts and you'll have to run back through the level and exit through a door before the cave blows up.
After that you'll fight Cyanida, in a kinda Alex Kidd in Shinobi World-ish battle.

She'll run back and forth and shoot blue flames at you.

The End:

Credits:


[Admin: Added images as attachments]
spirouprotogg03uh0.png (2.2 KB)
Jungle-level
spirouprotogg03uh0.png
spirouprotogg12ut6.png (2.63 KB)
Boss
spirouprotogg12ut6.png
spirouprotogg13yc5.png (1.87 KB)
Forced sidescrolling part
spirouprotogg13yc5.png
spirouprotogg17tp9.png (1.13 KB)
A waterlevel with some humorous animations
spirouprotogg17tp9.png
spirouprotogg18xn5.png (1.92 KB)
robot that for some reason turns into a candy which you'll later use as a bomb
spirouprotogg18xn5.png
spirouprotogg30bu0.png (1.65 KB)
The last level
spirouprotogg30bu0.png
spirouprotogg32mj0.png (1.6 KB)
Cyanida
spirouprotogg32mj0.png
theendzg2.png (3.91 KB)
The End
theendzg2.png
spirouprotoggcreditshu5.png (1.54 KB)
Credits
spirouprotoggcreditshu5.png

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Post Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:19 pm
Wow, another "Umeåbo" here on the forums, who could have thought? :) Welcome
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Post Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2007 9:19 am
Thank you :)
Merry Christmas :D
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Post Posted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:58 am
Just chiming in to say that I've joined the "We Beat Spirou" club. That game wasn't bad!
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Spirou Proto GG
Post Posted: Sun Oct 22, 2017 3:13 am
Tintin and Spirou game gear games are so enjoyable, and similar my two favorite comics!
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