| | | Failed tie-in with KOF '99 on DC but gathering coins to spend on stars while moving around a game board turn-by-turn has unexpectedly proven addictive.
Some of the many minigames are good fun, some are just plain weird, some are boring, some give "button mashing" a bad name. Frequently luck-based with a bit of strategy and the occasional need for quick reactions. Certainly a lot of stuff here that cpuld keep you busy for a while, and it's got lots of interaction with cute SD KOF characters.
Still, I can't quite seem to get too excited about playing party games vs the CPU. I'd like to try linking this one up, even though two players doesn't generally make for much of a "party" game either. |
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| | | If you put BdP into a black & white Neo Geo Pocket, you get to play a unique minigame! Or actually it may in fact be based on a pretty much lost old SNK arcade game (this is according to Brandon Sheffield, who is in the midst of doing research for writing the museum part of the upcoming SNK 40th Anniversary Collection ( https://snk40th.com/ ); and maybe also this video of the Epoch Cassette Vision remake of that lost SNK game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yiyXj92WQ4 ).
Anyway, the b&w minigame you get in a NGP with BdP is called Yosaku, and in it you play a Japanese woodsman who has to chop down trees while avoiding wild boars (darn those boars!!), snakes, birds dropping things, and maybe other threats I haven't reached yet. It's hard but kind of fun in that really old-school way! I like the music, too. Here's some footage of it by someone else:
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| | | Me playing Yosaku, 10/15/18:
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Me playing the hidden black and white game you get if you put the Neo Geo Pocket Color color game cartridge of SNK's game "The King of Fighters: Battle de Paradise" in a black and white Neo Geo Pocket system!
The hidden game is called "Yosaku," which, according to a fellow I know who is researching early SNK stuff, Necrosoft Games (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY4e9nyxjQO8f9SNHrMZgLw/), started out as a now-almost-completely-lost arcade game, about a woodsman chopping trees while avoiding messy birds, snakes, and wild boars.
The arcade game was ported as a launch title, "Kikori no Yosaku," for the Epoch Cassette Vision; most of the Yosaku videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBfMUyFu7NNJiQcoDhn4FSA are of that version: for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1FpDeznk5g , which also shows the Cassette Vision console in action.
But one video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpR4J7yT0P4 is different, and may be of the original arcade game; it credits development to "OLCA Corporation," which is also mentioned about the original Yosaku game by various articles on Yosaku I found around the internet, for instance this tweet with screenshots and a flyer from a 1992 Mega Drive magazine preview article: https://twitter.com/VGDensetsu/status/962655953442295808
A comment by user curewindy3 on that video, replying to their own comment from several years earlier in which they'd thought it was some version of the Cassette Vision edition, says, "違いますよ これが元です アーケード版が出てから2年後にカセットビジョンに移植されたんです" which google translates as "It is wrong This is the original It was transplanted to cassette vision two years after the arcade version came out." (Kikori no Yosaku came out in 1981, so that would put the Yosaku arcade original debut at 1979.)
It appears "Olca" actually refers to "Orca Corporation," a small game development company that went bankrupt in 1984; later, some members formed a group called called Toa-KIKAKU Toaplan ("Project East Asia" in English), which came to be known as the developer Toaplan -- who did work for SNK early on. (Info from https://segaretro.org/Toaplan .)
This hidden NGP version of Yosaku, you'll note, has a little fun with the game's developer attribution--giving it at 0:39 as "SHINNIHON KIKAKU"; "Shin Nihon Kikaku," or "New Japan Project" in English, is what "SNK" stands for!--but it's also an echo of Toaplan's full original name : ).
Besides this video you're on now, there's only one other video of the hidden NGP version of Yosaku on YouTube as far as I know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lre8pw6JFU by Trevgauntlet; it's a reveal video rather than a full play attempt at the game. Which means...my video is the current (at the time I'm uploading this video, at least : P) YouTube WORLD RECORD Yosaku video by default! De-fault! De-fault! : D
I did happen to kind of figure out how to hit the main scourge of the woodsman, the rampaging wild boars, a little better in this attempt--previously, I had been swinging way too early; don't swing until you can feel their breath on you! : O So I did a lot better than I had previously, and wound up with 3280 points. : P
It's a fun little game!
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| | | Download added: 00_bdp.png (199822 bytes)
"Play"
KOF: BdP
Your avatar hops around a board triggering King of Fighters-themed button mash minigames, most of which aren't very fun. (There's a pretty fun hidden game if you put the cart in a b&w NGP, haven't done that yet, need to use an older emulator.) |
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Me playing Yosaku, the hidden black and white game you get if you put the Neo Geo Pocket Color color game cartridge of SNK's game "The King of Fighters: Battle de Paradise" in a black and white Neo Geo Pocket system! Here I'm using the old emulator NeoPop, running in Windows, to achieve the same effect.
So I absent-mindedly deleted the first recording I made of the game this evening without really noticing, then thought I had forgotten to record it (I did check my computer's Recycle Bin but the video file was so small I thought it was just some short audio check I'd run earlier--forgetting this game records very efficiently! '['), so recorded another session of it, trying to match my new, apparently lost 5430 high score--and failed, getting only 5400. ; ) Then I found the session I'd absentmindedly deleted, so here they both are, bolted together back to back and not repetitive at all. *cough*
Well but I did keep figuring out stuff, particularly about the boars: their timing is consistent, so if I follow my pattern and am prepared at the right time, I'll be ready for the boar attack. Now I just gotta get better at not missing it. = oo
Oh! Between my last Yosaku outing, in 2018, and now, there's been an informative wiki page made about this hidden b&w game in the Japan-only Neo Geo Pocket Color game The King of Fighters: Battle de Paradise--when you stick the color cartridge in a black and white Neo Geo Pocket system, you get a screen saying--in Japanese--that you should put the cart in a color system, not a monochrome system--but push a button, and you get this hidden black and white minigame!
The newfangled wiki article about it:
https://snk.fandom.com/wiki/Yosaku
(I had forgotten my dates, it was '79 for the arcade version, and '81 for the Epoch Cassette Vision version.) Apparently the arcade game was based on a "popular song 'Yosaku' by Saburo Kitajima,"
(non-embeddable version w/ English translated text: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx2FN49yIsk )
even including the melody in the arcade game. And the Epoch Cassette Vision console version made in '81 was an unlicensed version!
Oh hah the wiki article actually cites a copy and paste--to an old NGP message board I host ^_^--of the speculation I made in the description of my previous Yosaku video, about Yosaku's arcade title screen "OLCA CORPORATION" being a reference to Orca, a Toaplan predecessor; Orca evolved into "Toa-Kikaku Toaplan" ("Far East Project") from Orca and did some work for SNK. Hm wait what did they do?
Okay well all I can find is one game, "Jong Oh" https://toaplan.fandom.com/wiki/Jong_Oh (or Jongo says Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toaplan ), a 1984 arcade mahjong game, developed by Toaplan and published apparently by SNK.
SNK's full name is Shin Nihon Kikaku ("New Japan Project"), and they don't usually spell it out anymore but they did on the Yo-Sa-Ku title screen on NGP, I think as a call-back to Orca and Toa-Kikaku Toaplan and the original arcade Yosaku game.
Jeremy Parish has an extensive video about the Epoch Cassette Vision (biggest Japanese console before Famicom, the video says) bootleg of Yosaku: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdUDvoGFp8s ("Kikori no Yosaku," which translates roughly as "Woodcutter Yosaku," according to https://forums.lostmediawiki.com/thread/12047/yosaku-lost-arcade-game , which also talks about yet another unlicensed console version, for the Sharp X68000, and later remakes/bootlegs--among which you could count this hidden NGP minigame, I suppose! But there's also like this Famicom Mario romhack https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7071/ version trying to re-create an earlier romhack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-MmxaVdJE ). |
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| | | | The obvious thing I was missing here--was reminded of this https://paleface.net/z/sngp/messages/27060.html by Brandon Sheffield, who wrote the Yosaku entry in SNK 40th Anniversary Collection (see entry 1780), and who I've already mentioned once on this page--was that the new wiki entry, and MobyGames https://www.mobygames.com/game/169210/yosaku/ and Arcade Flyers https://flyers.arcade-museum.com/videogames/show/2669 , credit development and publishing of 1979 arcade Yosaku to SNK; the flyer backs this up, at least the publishing aspect. But if SNK developed it, why put the "OLCA CORPORATION" development credit on the title screen? |
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| | | That one video showing what appears to be original 1979 arcade Yosaku
was posted by @higenekodo, which is also the name of a used game store in Nagoya https://www.higenekodo.jp/ . The video title Google translates "[Document video] Yosaku," and description under the video as "Arcade version "Yosaku" Both the board and the manufacturer's description are made by Orca, but details are unknown."
A comment on the video by user @elsolo4587 two years ago translates as
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This is the actual AC version of Yosaku (YOSAKU GAME) that Yoichi Shibuya talked about in a magazine a long time ago.
It's true that the name Orca Corporation is included in a game that was supposed to have been developed by New Japan Kikaku (later SNK).
As he said, the details are unknown (probably forever), but Orca also produced many dead copy boards, so there is no doubt that this is one of the company's many pirated works.
It is miraculous that it was able to survive until today without being discarded due to its obsolete nature, and I believe that it is a valuable document that can fill in the blanks in the history of Japanese games that will be evaluated further in the future, so please cherish it. please
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A reply from four years ago by @Xenon-lz5cz to another comment says (translated):
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This is probably a copy of Orca.
I only know the cassette vision version.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosaku_(game)
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It should be noted that "Yosaku" was developed by New Japan Kikaku, but the base of Yosaku owned by Yoichi Shibuya of the "BEEP! Mega Drive" editorial department has "YOSAKU GAME" on the title screen and "Orca Corporation". There was a copyright notation that read, and even Shibuya was wondering about it.
"
A comment by @Mokkon says (translated) "At that time, it seems that a large number of dead copies were made by Shinogi by people in the same field.Is this one of them?"
Apparently the original board is rare. Another user in the comments (translated) claims they also have an "original board." Several users in English comments from 1 and 2 years ago are asking if there's a MAME ROM, and there's a subthread in English from 2 years ago about it being undumped. That lostmediawiki thread calls Yosaku a "lost arcade game." The fifth oldest comment, from 6 years ago--the video was posted in 2015--in Japanese, asks for the game files.
The SNK fandom wiki says Yosaku was "the first action game" published by SNK (after they'd partnered with Taito and done some Breakout and Space Invaders clones). |
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| | | | That Japanese Wikipedia Yosaku page no longer exists. = o |
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| | | | In that "OLCA" video, apparently dangerous little brown things drop constantly from the tree branches, too! = o |
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