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Led Storm: Rally 2011

 
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Johnny Undaunted



Joined: 08 Sep 2003
Posts: 306

PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2013 8:25 am    Post subject: Led Storm: Rally 2011 Reply with quote

Does anyone knows what the deal with Led Storm: Rally 2011? According to Akira Nishitani, it was an earlier version of an overhead racing game by Capcom titled Mad Gear (which is where the enemy gang from Final Fight got their name from) that performed poorly during location test and was revamped based on the feedback they got. A U.S. version of the Rally 2011 edition is actually emulated by MAME, but it seems to be a prototype due to how buggy it is. However, it seems the home computer ports that were released in Europe are based on the Rally 2011 edition rather than the finalized Mad Gear edition.

To add further confusion, there's actually two localized versions of Mad Gear made for the overseas arcade market. One with the Mad Gear title and another one simply titled Led Storm (dropping the "Rally 2011" subtitle).

References:
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5412
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=6276
https://twitter.com/nin_arika/status/405879598266585088


Last edited by Johnny Undaunted on Sun Dec 08, 2013 3:40 am; edited 1 time in total
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mrdomino



Joined: 16 Aug 2005
Posts: 167

PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2013 2:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

theres some talk of the C64 version and its relationship to the various arcade versions here:
http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=47597&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=25
Quote:
There was a LED Storm Rally arcade at one of the computer shows I attended in the late 80s, it was there along with a bunch of other machines that had either been converted or were gonna be converted at the time - Bubble Bobble, Bionic Commando, Spy Hunter, Empire Strikes Back (in a full converted cab with proper ESB decals and marquee), Ghouls 'n Ghosts... there were probably others but those I recall.

I think I'd already played the LED Storm conversion by that point, so it was likely to be summer or autumn 1989. So as far as I knew then, what I played was what had been put on the C64.

possibly Rally 2011 may have had some distribution in Europe? Or maybe Capcom provided Software Creations (who handled the ports) with a Rally 2011 board when they were still intending to release that version, and Software Creations used that as the basis of the ports and later brought it to the show that guy attended.

(it actually wouldn't be the first time material from an early version of a Capcom arcade game has shown up in European ports - the original title for the overseas version of Ghosts 'n Goblins was "Ghost 'n Goblins", and that name can still be seen on the packaging of a few home computer ports and even Capcom's own European release of the NES version)
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Johnny Undaunted



Joined: 08 Sep 2003
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2013 6:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The weird thing about that is that C+VG (a UK publication) reviewed the game under the Mad Gear title, which leads me to believe the game was released under that title over there.

Quote:
(it actually wouldn't be the first time material from an early version of a Capcom arcade game has shown up in European ports - the original title for the overseas version of Ghosts 'n Goblins was "Ghost 'n Goblins", and that name can still be seen on the packaging of a few home computer ports and even Capcom's own European release of the NES version)


Early Capcom could be really inconsistent when it came to spelling certain titles in singular or pluralized forms. International flyers for Avengers (Hissatsu Buraiken) and Bionic Commando (Top Secret) had their titles spelled as "Avenger" (singular) and "Bionic Commandos" (plural) respectively.
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=3032
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5888
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Tongueman



Joined: 27 Feb 2004
Posts: 631
Location: Japan

PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2013 2:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ahh, that explains a lot. I always thought UK mags couldn't get names straight, like "Galaxians" and "Commandos"...
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KingMike



Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 898

PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2013 5:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

On the NES, they changed the EU title to "Ghost'n Goblins".
But while they could bother to change the copyright text from "Capcom USA" and "Nintendo of America" to "Capcom" and "Nintendo", they couldn't update the title logo to change "GHOSTS" to "GHOST". :P
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Johnny Undaunted



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PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2013 8:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I doubt it was meant to be a legitimate name change, considering all they did was changed "Ghosts" to "Ghost". :P Most likely whoever localized Capcom's NES games to Europe only had access to outdated art assets with the unused singular title.

This is off-topic, but since we're on the subject of Capcom's European releases, but the European cover art of the original Mega Man was actually pretty good (it was drawn by one of Capcom's Japanese illustrators). Why couldn't that had been the US cover too?


Last edited by Johnny Undaunted on Mon Dec 09, 2013 12:17 am; edited 1 time in total
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ICEknight



Joined: 15 Dec 2003
Posts: 569

PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2013 9:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I hadn't given it much thought until now, but it's starting to make so much sense how everybody I knew back then used to call the game "Ghost 'n Goblins"...

Also, I've always known "LED Storm" as such, without the "Rally 2011" (which is news to me).
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mrdomino



Joined: 16 Aug 2005
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2013 10:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Johnny Undaunted wrote:
This is off-topic, but since we're on the subject of Capcom's European releases, but the European cover art of the original Mega Man was actually pretty good (it was actually drawn by one of Capcom's Japanese illustrators). Why couldn't that had been the US cover too?

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the US cover art was a huge rush job done at the last possible minute, and Capcom were fully aware it was awful, but they had no time to replace it so they just had to run with it. The European version came out a year later so I guess they had the Japanese artist draw a replacement in the intervening period.
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Nosuch



Joined: 01 Dec 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Basically, yeah. I think the artist for the US version only had something like six hours to knock out a cover, according to an interview I watched once that was in the Mega Man Anniversary Collection.

I also wonder who that artist was, incidentally. Wonder what else they may have worked on...
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Ichiban Crush
Vaporware Detective Extraordinaire
Vaporware Detective Extraordinaire


Joined: 04 Nov 2003
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

About all I know regarding "WHY!?" in regards to the MM1 US box art is that the artist played the game for like 5 minutes and was like "Yo, I got this!"
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Tongueman



Joined: 27 Feb 2004
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 12:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, two questions:

1) If you have only 6 hours, why not just use the original Japanese artwork? It's all obviously done on matte BGs and cels, so FC->NES aspect ratio and composition are not a problem.

2) A game is months in the pipeline, which begs the question: how could a licensee such as Capcom, having its game's delivery date to Nintendo set weeks/months in advance, not also have same weeks/months to prepare the box, instruction booklet, and artwork?
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mrdomino



Joined: 16 Aug 2005
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tongueman wrote:
1) If you have only 6 hours, why not just use the original Japanese artwork? It's all obviously done on matte BGs and cels, so FC->NES aspect ratio and composition are not a problem.

all that would have been in Japan, though, and Capcom USA wouldn't have had access to it at such short notice. The artist for the US Mega Man 2 cover said he was shown the game running and nothing else, and even the art director didn't know Mega Man wasn't supposed to have a gun, so maybe Japanese art assets weren't so easy to come by in the US office at that point.

Tongueman wrote:
2) A game is months in the pipeline, which begs the question: how could a licensee such as Capcom, having its game's delivery date to Nintendo set weeks/months in advance, not also have same weeks/months to prepare the box, instruction booklet, and artwork?

yeah that is a good question - it's possible the "6 hour" claim is just an internet rumour that gained some traction (iirc the guy that said that in the Anniversary Collection video wasn't a Capcom employee).

but I guess they might have had a deal with another artist who pulled out at the last minute, or maybe they really were planning to use the Japanese art but did some focus testing and found American audiences were turned off by the cartoony style..

or maybe none of that is true and someone really spent a long time on that art and everyone at Capcom was convinced it was amazing. I dunno. the 80s were weird.
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Johnny Undaunted



Joined: 08 Sep 2003
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 10, 2013 12:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
all that would have been in Japan, though, and Capcom USA wouldn't have had access to it at such short notice. The artist for the US Mega Man 2 cover said he was shown the game running and nothing else, and even the art director didn't know Mega Man wasn't supposed to have a gun, so maybe Japanese art assets weren't so easy to come by in the US office at that point.


Well the English manuals for Mega Man 1 and 2 does have the same concept art that appears in the Japanese ones as well. Perhaps they didn't have any clear artwork of Mega Man with his arm cannon at the time the US cover was commissioned.

On topic, I found a Youtube video from 2008 of someone playing an actual Rally 2011 PCB. It seems to be running fine, so maybe the buggyness on MAME is just a bad ROM dump or lousy emulation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDLmYuR7gPQ
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Johnny Undaunted



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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 11:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Looks like the Rally 2011 version of LED Storm is finally emulated correctly on MAME. Looks the previous dumps of the PCB were indeed missing graphic data.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJW9B7vp-eE
http://shoutime.tumblr.com/post/132794319933/rally-2011-led-storm-the-original-version-of-mad
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