Upon review, some of SEGA’s available ROMs were a mixture of different builds that were not identical to the released equivalent. In the process of gathering the ROMs for this website’s relaunch, a discovery was made. The other four CDs were comprised of the Sega Mega Drive “Final ROM Archive”. The ROMs that were archived on four of the CDs were made available in 2008. Once again, the purpose of this backup is unknown. The archive consists of a disorganized collection of various Sega Picodrive, Sega Game Gear, and Sega Mega Drive prototype ROMs. The purpose of either of these backups besides archival is currently unknown.įinally, another attempt was made internally to create an easily accessible backup of various builds that were available as-is on the BBS in 1996. A second attempt occurred sometime in late 1995 or early 1996 to archive the rest of the available ROMs and bug databases made for the Sega Picodrive, Sega 32X, and Sega Game Gear titles. The archive consists of prototype ROM backups for Sega Mega Drive and Sega Game Gear titles. The archive consisted of a backup of most of the available in development versions of games that were uploaded to the BBS as far back as late 1992. Sometime in 1995, another attempt was made internally to create an easily accessible backup of various builds for internal SEGA projects for the purpose of quality assurance. A few hundred uncompressed ROMs were collected and burned on four CD-R’s for the purpose of archival. Sometime in April of 1994, an attempt was made internally to create an easily accessible backup of all the available final SEGA Mega Drive ROMs SEGA had on file that existed up until that point for the purpose of distributing on SEGA Channel. SEGA would continue to utilize the data that had survived from the BBS for various other projects, such as SEGA Channel, compilations, and reissued releases. SEGA continued to utilize the BBS until sometime after the Sega Saturn’s life cycle in America. Important files from past projects would be archived separately for other purposes. Once the department that acquired the ROM was finished with a given build, they would wipe any data burned on EPROMs by exposing them to strong UV light for several minutes so that they could be reused the next day (that’s the E part of EPROM, which stands for erasable programmable read-only memory).ĭue to storage limitations, the servers were purged of unimportant files frequently so that new files could be uploaded for more ongoing projects. The ROM files were compressed (often passworded) and uploaded during various moments of a game’s production by the producer or product manager and then downloaded by employees of other departments to be burned on EPROMs for play testing, media, and evaluation. The BBS was designed to handle only a small amount of users at the same time with transfer speeds as slow as 2400 bit/s to 9600 bit/s (only to be updated to Cable/DSL like speeds in the mid 90s). The BBS was also utilized for sending progress reports, internal memos, software bug databases, and other miscellaneous files. SEGA implemented their BBS for the purpose of distributing ROM files for quality assurance, testing, evaluation, and manufacturing. A BBS is consisted of a network of computers running software that allows certain users to “dial into” the server remotely so that they can send messages and files (or in other words, a precursor to the World Wide Web). Communication problems, either due to internal politics or the lack of the ability to communicate quickly overseas, were also fairly common between America and Japan.Ĭertain branches of SEGA utilized their own BBS (Bulletin Board System) to help remedy some of these problems. In SEGA’s case, the company also had the disadvantage of being a relatively small company - both financial and in their employee quota. In the late 80s and early 90s, it was notoriously difficult for video game companies to create and manage backups of their software due to the technological limitations and cost of storage and long distance distribution.
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