RetroMadrid: Spanish Retro Games event with a prototype taste

Last March, we had the chance to visit a well known retro games event who every year, called RetroMadrid, located in, as the event name says, Madrid, the capital of Spain. The event has a long story, starting back in 1995 as a MSX fans meeting, and it has evolved since then into the biggest retro games event in Spain, adopting in 2008 the name of RetroMadrid, and now one of the biggest of all Europe.

This year we had lots of interesting shows there, from the usual exhibition of old consoles and 8-bit computers like Spectrum or MSX, to concerts of chiptune music, stands where you could buy retro games and merchandise, talks from well known celebrities of the retro scene , and much more. And well, you must be asking yourselves Yeah, we love retro games, and this is cool but why is a retro games event, located as far away as Spain no less, part of one of TSSZ|News feature articles?

It was really interesting for any Sega lover, since there were a few interesting games for SEGA systems, along with a huge collection of retro consoles including SEGA ones like SC 3000 (one that, as the owner of the shown collection told me, surprised a lot) to Kazunori Yamauchi, of Gran Turismo series fame, who attended the same exposition a few years before, the SG-1000 ( both models), Wondermega, the Mega Modem, Master System (the big first model and the more cheap and reduced second model, the most known one in Europe), Mark III, lots of Game Gear models in different colors, Nomad, of course, the good ole’ Mega Drive model one and two, with their pertinent Mega CD add-ons, the more reduced and USA only Genesis 3,32x add on, a Mega Jet, Saturn, and last, but not least, Dreamcast.

The collection, coming from ASUPIVA, a Spanish non governmental organization centered in expanding computer, videogames and internet culture to the masses, is one of the biggest retro and actual consoles collection in the world, not only of SEGA consoles, but off all systems and brands. Being able to get access to to a Magnavox Odyssey or a Phillips Scuba (a very rare VR helmet console) is something anyone who is interested, even just a bit, in gaming should experience, since it’s part of how we have come to today games, a live history class.

But there were also games. Proto games, no less.

First of all, I had the chance to play there to an almost final beta of Sturmwind, a recently released Shump for Dreamcast. When I played it, it wasn’t released, and it didn’t even had a release date, but in the two and a half months it have passed since then the game was released, a few  days ago, on April 24th. The game was developed independently by Duranik, German developers, and is a good arcade shoot’em up game. I recorded with my cell phone some footage of the beta version I played, that you can see here.

That was a good game, but maybe not what you might be expecting when I talked about beta stuff. There is some of that too, all of them coming from the Sega Saturno Stand, a Spanish website dedicated to the Saturn scene and beta games researching. They have released some SEGA unreleased beta stuff before, like the Virtua Hamster beta for 32x or Lobo beta for Megadrive .

Below, you’ll see a pretty unknown Saturn game that not many people have heard about. You might remember Clockwork Knight, the Saturn series in where you controlled a toy soldier called Sir Tongara de Pepperouchau III, Pepper for short, in a 2D sidescrolling adventure with prerendered graphics, developed by Sega’s AM7 team. You might also know its sequel, also for Sega Saturn, Clockwork Knight 2. But did you know there was a third one? It wasn’t released.

Clockwork Knight 3: Penguin Wars was the third installment of the series, who was cancelled very early on it’s development cycle. The game has been shown before, but the beta is currently unreleased and not widely distributed, so is quite rare to find footage of it.

The game is not your regular Clockwork Knight game. In fact, it’s not even a platformer: it’s a Bomberman-esque game little to do with the regular Clockwork Knight series, where you controlled a little Pepper who could kick pencil-shaped walls and plant some sort of mine bombs. Maybe this is why it was cancelled when its development started not long ago. It featured 4 player multiplayer, so it was going to be one of the few games who used the multi-tap accessory.

Also coming from Sega Saturno, I had the chance to try a beta of Tomb Raider. Contrary to general knowledge, Tomb Raider was developed first for Sega Saturn, then ported to Sony Playstation, so this is a real beta of the game and not a beta of the Saturn port.

The beta wasn’t radically different to the final game, at least, the level shown to me was pretty much the same as the level present on the final game, only small details and items locations differ. If you die, the game crashes and never bring you back to the title screen or give you another try; you have to restart the console to try again. Such a tragic real-life analogy.

But that doesn’t mean the beta is almost the final game. Talking later with Ryo Suzuki, Sega Saturno‘s webmaster, he told me that, in fact, there were some levels on that beta that got cut in the final game, along with differences at the gym/Lara’s Mansion, and a mode where you can record demo plays that was also removed.  As far as I know, this is an early beta that is already known to the public, but it has not been released either. You can watch the footage I recorded, down below.

Next, also thanks to Sega Saturno, is not a beta game, but a beta translation.  I had the chance to see and try the English translation of Policenauts, Saturn version. The game wasn’t released in the west, not on Saturn or Playstation, but a few years ago some fans completed a fan translation to English of the Playstation version of the game. Now, Sega fans can play the game in English and Spanish! Sega Saturno is translating the Saturn version into English, and then into Spanish, using the Playstation English patch as a base. The translation is still unfinished, but it should be released later this year, in both languages.

The beta I played still has some issues, such as the voice narration, but as I was told by Ryo Suzuki, that issue was already sorted out in a later beta that, sadly, he didn’t bring with himself to the event. You can see the footage I recorded of it, down below.

Last, but not least, we have Sonic Jump for Saturn. No, don’t let your hype run wild, Sonic Jump was not a cancelled Saturn game later released as a cellphone game. This is a homebrew version, developed by FacundoARG from Sega Saturno, of the first Sonic Jump from the old Java cell phone game to Sega Saturn. There isn’t much to say, except that porting a cellphone game to the Saturn all by yourself is an extraordinary feat. This homebrew project has been shown before, but the current beta is a lot more finished, and you could only see it at the event. There is no estimated release date yet for it. I couldn’t record it myself, because when I was there the copy they were using had issues and it crashed at the menu, but later in the day they burnt another beta with this issue fixed, and Youtube User McCunyao had the chance to record it. You can see his video down below.

There was much more there, like a Spanish fan-translation of House of the Dead for Saturn also from Sega Saturno, and lots more of games not related with SEGA, but that goes off our spectrum and is another story for another day. For now, enjoy all the above Sega proto games and translations.