ForneiaVtuber
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How did you end up learning about Beep and all of that Pandora's box?

Beep! Mega Drive being a magazine I have a weird fascination with is a strange story.

Several years ago when Nintendo released the NES Classic Edition mini console, I thought it was a neat device. Not as a device to play video games on like other people were looking at it, but as sort of a "thought exercise." The question in my mind was "how do you curate a selection of games that serve as a definitive representation of a platform's legacy?" And despite being very Sega-focused, especially in more recent years, I've always held that the NES is probably my all-time favorite platform, as it was the console I first started playing video games on and many of the defining games and genres that folks think about when it comes to video games either originated or were refined here (with the SNES I felt being an era of more refinement of the NES formula).

So here comes the NES Classic Edition and its selection of 30 titles. A significant portion of that library was Nintendo's first-party offerings, which made sense to me. I feel like it is a lot easier for people to grasp what the major first-party titles are for any given Nintendo platform due to both fan opinions and what games Nintendo constantly keeps in circulation (the methods as to how they keep them in circulation we can argue on whether they're actually GOOD or not, but still). The more interesting thing was the third-party titles: what got selected to be on the console, why did those titles get selected, and more importantly, what didn't get selected. For example, Super C was selected instead of Contra, and apparently the story behind that was because of an old clerical error on Konami's part back during the Wii Virtual Console days, which explained why the original Contra wasn't on that service.

There was something else I noticed with the NES Classic Edition: the Japanese equivalent for this mini console, the Nintendo Classic Mini: Family Computer, had a few different games swapped out. Presumably this was to accommodate for regional differences and tastes. A few titles between the two are exclusive to one region or another, so it kind of makes sense that they wouldn't want to put, say, a Japanese exclusive title on the western device, or vice versa. StarTropics never got a Japanese release, so it isn't on the Famicom mini; similarly, Tsuppari Ōzumō, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Atlantis no Nazo, and Final Fantasy III did not get a NA or EU release, so those aren't on the NES mini.

But then I noticed that there were some games that actually did get released in all (or at least most) regions back in the day, but for this device they were exclusive to one region's mini console or the other. For first-party titles, the Famicom mini got NES Open Tournament Golf, which did have a US release but is not included in the NES mini. Meanwhile, the NES mini's first-party exclusives included Kid Icarus, Donkey Kong Jr., and Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream, along with the previously mentioned StarTropics. As a result, there are actually more first-party titles on the NES Classic Edition than on the Famicom mini. This meant that the Famicom mini does have a bit more diversity with its third-party offerings. My theory is that they couldn't find adequate regional substitutions for certain third-party titles, so they just put in first-party titles as the substitutions. My other theory is that Nintendo probably determined that first-party Nintendo titles were far more popular in the west and decided to add more of them as a result. I have a minor theory about this that I'll bring up later.

As for third-party titles, it seemed like a few substitutions were performered that seem like a one-for-one with those companies. The most obvious was Final Fantasy III not getting an English-language release, so instead the NES mini got Final Fantasy, which makes sense. Less so was the Technos Japan games, now owned by Arc System Works, as Japan got both Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari and Downtown Nekketsu Koushinkyoku: Soreyuke Daiundoukai. Now the latter makes sense that it wouldn't appear on the NES mini as that didn't get localized at the time. However, Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari DID get localized in the US as River City Ransom. For some reason, the NES mini didn't get River City Ransom and instead got another Technos Japan title, Double Dragon II: The Revenge. My only theory as to why this was the case is because Double Dragon as an IP was more popular in the west during this time period, so I guess it makes sense. However, I feel like River City Ransom's cult status in the west would've made it a good fit to include in the NES mini; instead, it looks like River City Ransom was just substituted with Double Dragon II while the second Arc System Works game Downtown Nekketsu Koushinkyoku: Soreyuke Daiundoukai was substitued with a first-party Nintendo title.

I could go on and on about the curation process for the NES/Famicom mini, ranging from things like why there isn't a Dragon Quest game (specifically Dragon Quest III) on the Famicom mini, or why is Castlevania II: Simon's Quest on the NES mini but not on the Famicom mini and so on. And you might be asking "what does ANY of the past couple of paragraphs have to do with your Beep! Mega Drive fascination?" I'll get to it, don't worry.

Then the SNES Classic Edition comes out. It has some similar thought-provoking things I can go into deeply like with the NES mini, but for now, let's just say that, due to the smaller selection of games on the SNES mini, it does pose a slightly different thought-experiment of "how few games can you select that would still be representative of a platform?"

Okay, so both the NES and SNES mini consoles come out, they're alright, I think about the curation process of those libraries a bit, but because they are Nintendo platforms, I feel like the curation process for those is mostly a "solved" situation due to the very monocultural nature of Nintendo platforms (this actually changes in my mind soon enough). So eventually, Sega announces their own Genesis/Mega Drive Mini console. At first, I didn't think much about it. Sega of America and Sega of Europe have a rich history of releasing various Genesis compilations and licensing out their stuff to crappy hardware manufacturer atGames to make bad licensed mini consoles filled with the same random mishmash of first-party Genesis titles everyone has seen. And when looking at the western games list as they were unveiling the titles over time, it did kind of feel like that. It was a lot of the same titles we've seen over and over again on the various compilations, but now there's some third-party titles included. And some of them were heavy hitters, like Contra: Hard Corps and Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition, and even some neat choices like Mega Man: The Wily Wars and Monster World IV which had received an official English translation years ago on the Wii Virtual Console and later the 360/PS3's digital storefronts.

More importantly, I decided to take a peek at what the Japanese game list had. And as I was looking into it, there were two very important things I realized:

  1. Japan never did get the myriad of Mega Drive compilations or poorly-made atGames mini consoles that the western markets got saturated with
  2. The selection of games that Japan got were WAY DIFFERENT than what was previously on the Nintendo mini consoles.

For reference, out of the 30 games on the NES/Famicom mini, 8 of them were regional exclusive picks. Out of the 21 games on the SNES mini, only five were regional exclusive picks. Meanwhile, the Genesis Mini has 42 games. Out of those, 17 titles were regional exclusive picks between the western and the Japanese console libraries. That's almost half of the selection of games. I thought it was wild. And the games Japan got were far more interesting to me than the western list, because a lot of those titles I almost never heard about at the time. I feel like, on the Nintendo side of online retro game communities, even obscure Japanese titles get mentioned with some amount of regularity. I don't really see the same for Sega-centric ones outside of, like, Alien Soldier or Pulseman, which are first-party Sega titles. Here on the Mega Drive Mini, I was seeing titles like Assault Suit Leynos, Lord Monarch, Slap Fight MD, The Hybrid Front, Snow Bros., and Dyna Brothers 2, games I basically never hear about even within the few Sega-centric online communities (as an aside, the main one I vaguely recall is the Sega-16 message boards, and last time I wandered in there a year ago or so, it was like the three active posters left talking about how angry they were at Limited Run Games for going "woke" firing their bigoted social media manager, so you know, I'm fine not being a part of that community).

While I could perform the thought-experiments regarding the curation of the NES and SNES mini game selections rather simply in my head due to my experience with both platforms, the Genesis was different. As much as I liked Sega platforms, I unfortunately had little experience interacting with other Sega enthusiasts online, because a lot of retro game communities out there are very Nintendo-centric or a hivemind of old white Your Racist Uncle stereotypes that I didn't want anything to do with (sometimes the communities are a combination of both). And as a result, I wasn't as familiar with the grander Genesis/Mega Drive library as I would've liked. But it got me really thinking about the Japanese game list. Why did Sega of Japan select the specific games they did? As far as I was aware, the Mega Drive was essentially the third-place console, behind the PC Engine and the Famicom, and then later behind the Super Famicom.

There were some translated interviews from sources like (at)gosokkyu on Twitter and the like that mentioned some of this process. During those interviews, the subject of Beep! Mega Drive Magazine and Mega Drive Fan came up, and I decided to look those magazines up. It turns out that Sega Retro not only had information about both magazines, but also had SCANS of most of the magazines. So, I downloaded all I could and started browsing them. In particular, the Beep! Mega Drive reader rankings were the most interesting to me.

The closest comparison point I could make for those reader rankings was the Top 20/Top 10/Top whatever charts in Nintendo Power magazine, which were a monthly ranking of whatever the popular games were at the time. In the early issues of that magazine, it was mentioned that how the rankings were determined was some sort of metric that combined a reader-submitted popularity survey, what Nintendo of America employees liked, and then finally sales data from retailers. They didn't dive too deep into the exact math of how it worked, but it was about the only source you could get for contemporary opinions of Nintendo games in the US at the time.

Beep! Mega Drive's reader rankings, from what I could tell, had readers submit a survey of some sort where they assign a score from 1 to 10 to a game, and those scores are averaged out, with the final rankings for the month's issue based on those averages. One of the issues mentioned they needed a game to have a certain number of submissions before it could show up on the charts (20 or 25 I think). I'm also not sure if there were readers constantly submitting surveys or changing their scores retroactively or whatever the case may be. Regardless, this is about as good a source as I can find regarding contemporary Japanese Mega Drive game opinions. And coincidentally, several of the games that were selected for the Mega Drive Mini happened to be high-ranking titles (though some, like Mega Man: The Wily Wars and Castlevania: Bloodlines, seemed to be mostly selected because they're part of a popular franchise, as both of those games actually ranked kinda poorly on the reader rankings).

Outside of the reader rankings, I'm also just fascinated with these Japanese Mega Drive focused magazines because I always hear about how the Mega Drive just didn't do well in Japan, and yet here are these enthusiast magazines discussing the platform, as well as Sega's Japanese endeavors in general.

Now earlier I mentioned I had a "minor theory" about why Nintendo of America substituted in more first-party titles for the NES mini compared to the Famicom mini having more third-party titles, which also kind of ties into my saying that Nintendo platforms are "solved" when it comes to curation that I now somewhat reconsider. Well, it turns out that Beep! Mega Drive's publisher, SoftBank, also had similar magazines for basically every other platform in Japan. This includes their Super Famicom focused sister publication to Beep! Mega Drive, which was aptly named "The Super Famicom." Now I don't know if they had a Famicom equivalent back in the day, so I can't apply the reader ranking chart principle to this theory, but The Super Famicom DID have a reader ranking chart very similar to Beep!'s. And from the few issues of that magazine that are scanned and available online, it seems like fans in general rank third-party titles higher than most of Nintendo's first-party offerings, at least during the SFC era. The highest consistently ranking game seemed to be *Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo" as late as 1996, and that is within the top twenty at least, more closer to 10th place than anything else. Otherwise, the top of the charts I've seen include games like Lufia II, Dragon Quest VI, several different Koei strategy games, several different Human sports titles, and at least for a short period of time, I saw Tactics Ogre at a high spot but then it all of a sudden drops down to like the bottom 10% of the charts for some unknown reason. With that in mind, my minor theory is that maybe Nintendo's first-party offerings weren't as popular on the Famicom in Japan as they were in the US. I don't mean sales of games or anything like that, I mean more from an enthusiast standpoint, that maybe Nintendo of Japan was targeting a more Famicom enthusiast demographic. That's only a theory on my part.

ANYWAY, the tl;dr of this gigantic story of why I am kind of obsessed with Beep! Mega Drive magazine and all that sort of thing is because the Mega Drive Mini's Japanese games list broke me.


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