Post by extremewreck2000 on Apr 1, 2022 6:19:38 GMT
Thanks to some insane searching & digging deep down some wild rabbit holes on the internet, I was able to find a copy of a possibly bootleg PC game from some guys in who-knows-where in the US. I had to go through multiple months of website hunting to find who to contact as to who could possibly posses a copy of this game.
So... the first thing I did was to go through the internet & look up "bootleg Sailor Moon PC game". Digging through the pages with verbatim on & going to what was IIRC the first page, I was able to find a webpage that talked about bootleg Sailor Moon stuff in general that can be seen here. Within that page, there was a section about bootleg games in particular, when I stumbled upon the page, that they said something about a blog page they found on MySpace that apparently was about someone who supposedly used to play a Sailor Moon PC platformer of sorts. The game was reportedly a 2D platformer that played sort of like that bootleg Mulan Sega Genesis game(footage here) alongside graphics that look to have been traced from the anime, but with some obvious MS Paint influence to it with the coloring, several lines & the choppy animation. Plus, the voice acting in it was apparently very obviously done by a bunch of teenage boys who had no prior experience in voice acting ever, but sounded like they were trying to sound like women.
Unfortunately, they couldn't find anything else on whether or not this legendary mysterious game even existed outside of a single, now deleted post on some MS-DOS forum site, suggesting that it was presumably an MS-DOS game of sorts. And even then, it reportedly said mostly the same thing in different wording, but also said that there was some kind of hidden Asteroids clone you can access through pushing random keys on the keyboard in the 1st cutscene after the title screen as well as a debug menu you can access by doing the same thing. Not much interesting there.
However though, through some crazy searching(by going further than just the 1st page. Like we're talking up to the 20s), I eventually got to page 27, in which I found a wild page that was all about undumped MS-DOS games & within that list was a game called Sailor Moon: The Ultimate Adventure, with the description of the game saying "a rumored game from the late 1990s that reportedly circulated on a CD of its own in very limited quantities for $10, this game is largely unknown to even hardcore moonies out there due to its relative obscurity. Might've been a bootleg of sorts or some weird hoax, but nobody truly knows."
This got me intrigued, making me wonder where I could possibly find interesting piece of bootleg history. Looking through these pages on verbatim wasn't enough. I had to go through specific time frames as to when this game could've been talked about. So I decided to make it so that my search could mainly be about stuff from before 2007 & around page 6, I found something especially intriguing.
According to this site known as weirdgamesfrombeyond.com, this game's graphics were reportedly drawn by a guy named James Loppel Barras, & he reportedly also planned on making a game called Omega Rampage: Savage Nights, which would've been a mix between R-Type & the Sega Genesis game Tinhead. How that would've played out is beyond me. While I wasn't able to get in contact with James, I was able to get in contact with the other person who reportedly worked on the game: Henry Klurkivan, the programmer! The site didn't really elaborate on him too much, saying that they had no idea what else he had done, but through some quick Googling, I found out that he had a YouTube account that dated back to November 25th, 2009. He hasn't uploaded a video since 2013, but he does keep updating his playlists every so often, which let me know that he'd still be a good source on finding this absolute hilarity.
I sent him a comment on the video "Elmo Goes To Brazilian Prison For Wire Tripping" saying if he had the game in his possession. I waited for 4 whole months before getting a reply from him which was a link to an old site that had several games that could be downloaded. All of them were MS-DOS games & it took me a while to get to it. However, after about 15 or so pages, I finally found it! Woohoo! Yeah, talk about some wild searching!
So... about the game: Well, it is hilariously bad I'd tell you. The gameplay & controls are fine really, kind of decent, but the rest is so absolutely wild. You have some music that I swear was taken from random tracker composers, obviously traced art that have know been MS-Paintified, voice acting that is straight up a bunch of teenage boys doing a charmingly poor job at imitating the DiC/Optimum/Cloverway voices, a funny nonsensical plot that makes no sense, weird digitized sprites that are basically the developers in hilariously crappy costumes, a stereotypical Native American arrow inside a skeleton for the logo of the name of the specific group of developers "Mark Mind Software", a plot that is just over the top & tries desperately to take itself seriously despite the absolute ridiculousness of it, just... everything about it is so freakin' cheesy & insane that I can't help but love it!
Here is the link to the very page on that MS-DOS site where you can download it, shortened for your convenience:
shorturl.at/bfBFR
Here's the link to play it on your browser through the Internet Archive & DOSBox, also shortened for your convenience:
shorturl.at/dyJXZ
Enjoy this incredible piece of history that has finally been preserved!
So... the first thing I did was to go through the internet & look up "bootleg Sailor Moon PC game". Digging through the pages with verbatim on & going to what was IIRC the first page, I was able to find a webpage that talked about bootleg Sailor Moon stuff in general that can be seen here. Within that page, there was a section about bootleg games in particular, when I stumbled upon the page, that they said something about a blog page they found on MySpace that apparently was about someone who supposedly used to play a Sailor Moon PC platformer of sorts. The game was reportedly a 2D platformer that played sort of like that bootleg Mulan Sega Genesis game(footage here) alongside graphics that look to have been traced from the anime, but with some obvious MS Paint influence to it with the coloring, several lines & the choppy animation. Plus, the voice acting in it was apparently very obviously done by a bunch of teenage boys who had no prior experience in voice acting ever, but sounded like they were trying to sound like women.
Unfortunately, they couldn't find anything else on whether or not this legendary mysterious game even existed outside of a single, now deleted post on some MS-DOS forum site, suggesting that it was presumably an MS-DOS game of sorts. And even then, it reportedly said mostly the same thing in different wording, but also said that there was some kind of hidden Asteroids clone you can access through pushing random keys on the keyboard in the 1st cutscene after the title screen as well as a debug menu you can access by doing the same thing. Not much interesting there.
However though, through some crazy searching(by going further than just the 1st page. Like we're talking up to the 20s), I eventually got to page 27, in which I found a wild page that was all about undumped MS-DOS games & within that list was a game called Sailor Moon: The Ultimate Adventure, with the description of the game saying "a rumored game from the late 1990s that reportedly circulated on a CD of its own in very limited quantities for $10, this game is largely unknown to even hardcore moonies out there due to its relative obscurity. Might've been a bootleg of sorts or some weird hoax, but nobody truly knows."
This got me intrigued, making me wonder where I could possibly find interesting piece of bootleg history. Looking through these pages on verbatim wasn't enough. I had to go through specific time frames as to when this game could've been talked about. So I decided to make it so that my search could mainly be about stuff from before 2007 & around page 6, I found something especially intriguing.
According to this site known as weirdgamesfrombeyond.com, this game's graphics were reportedly drawn by a guy named James Loppel Barras, & he reportedly also planned on making a game called Omega Rampage: Savage Nights, which would've been a mix between R-Type & the Sega Genesis game Tinhead. How that would've played out is beyond me. While I wasn't able to get in contact with James, I was able to get in contact with the other person who reportedly worked on the game: Henry Klurkivan, the programmer! The site didn't really elaborate on him too much, saying that they had no idea what else he had done, but through some quick Googling, I found out that he had a YouTube account that dated back to November 25th, 2009. He hasn't uploaded a video since 2013, but he does keep updating his playlists every so often, which let me know that he'd still be a good source on finding this absolute hilarity.
I sent him a comment on the video "Elmo Goes To Brazilian Prison For Wire Tripping" saying if he had the game in his possession. I waited for 4 whole months before getting a reply from him which was a link to an old site that had several games that could be downloaded. All of them were MS-DOS games & it took me a while to get to it. However, after about 15 or so pages, I finally found it! Woohoo! Yeah, talk about some wild searching!
So... about the game: Well, it is hilariously bad I'd tell you. The gameplay & controls are fine really, kind of decent, but the rest is so absolutely wild. You have some music that I swear was taken from random tracker composers, obviously traced art that have know been MS-Paintified, voice acting that is straight up a bunch of teenage boys doing a charmingly poor job at imitating the DiC/Optimum/Cloverway voices, a funny nonsensical plot that makes no sense, weird digitized sprites that are basically the developers in hilariously crappy costumes, a stereotypical Native American arrow inside a skeleton for the logo of the name of the specific group of developers "Mark Mind Software", a plot that is just over the top & tries desperately to take itself seriously despite the absolute ridiculousness of it, just... everything about it is so freakin' cheesy & insane that I can't help but love it!
Here is the link to the very page on that MS-DOS site where you can download it, shortened for your convenience:
shorturl.at/bfBFR
Here's the link to play it on your browser through the Internet Archive & DOSBox, also shortened for your convenience:
shorturl.at/dyJXZ
Enjoy this incredible piece of history that has finally been preserved!
