California Games (Sega Master System)

California Games
Also known as: Jogos de Verão (BR 1989), Game Box Série Esportes Radicais (BR 1996) Developer: Sega Publishers: Tonka (US), Sega (EU), Tec Toy (BR) Platform: Sega Master System Released in US: May 1989 Released in EU: 1990 Released in BR: 1989 (Jogos de Verão), June 1996 (Esportes Radicais) This game has regional differences.

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The original classic collection of totally radical sports, now available for your Master System! (Unless you bought the budget version in Brazil, where it's a bare-bones collection of two kinda-radical sports...)

Unused FM Soundtrack

To do: Rip the soundtrack.

Like other Master System games, the game contains a full FM soundtrack, taking advantage of the YM2413 FM chip included in the FM-unit add-on and later units of the Master System which had it built in... which were only ever released in Japan, a territory the game was never released in. Whoops. As such, this soundtrack goes competely unheard unless played on a Japanese system (which would be impossible normally as the cartridges wouldn't fit) or if the system is modded to support FM sound.

Regional Differences

There are at least four versions of California Games for the Master System: the US version, the European version, and two versions in Brazil released a whopping seven years apart.

US/Brazil (1989)/Europe	Brazil (1996)

The Brazilian re-release was given a more generic title (translating to "Game Box: Radical Sports") and has no animation.

US/Brazil (1989)/Europe	Brazil (1996)

The '96 Brazilian version removes "Compete In Some Events", and for a very good reason:

US/Brazil (1989)/Europe	Brazil (1996)

Game Box (which removes any Epyx branding from the packaging) is extremely reduced, featuring only two of the six events from the original, rendering "Some Events" mode irrelevant.

• There is no player creation: players are always named "PLAY1" (or whatever their player number is), and teams are assigned - Player 1 always plays for Maxx-Out, Player 2 for Costa Del Mar, Player 3 for Kawasaki, and so on. As a result, with eight players max, the ninth Ray-D-O Baxgear is unused entirely in this version.
• There are no trophy award screens.
• The ROM is exactly the same size as California Games and Jogos de Verão, but the second half of the tilesheet has been replaced by one-colour tiles, with the BMX tiles moved over top of the Half Pipe tiles.

To do: Does any of the music or code still exist for the other events? They wouldn't be playable without the tile data, of course.

• The Surfing demo in Game Box seems to have been edited, as the player goes to the base of the wave earlier and stays there longer, then successfully shoots the curl for a few seconds before going off the bottom of the screen. The BMX demo is unchanged.
• The attract mode demos for the four missing events were removed for obvious reasons.
• The flashing Sega logo that appeared after a demo ended (but not when one was interrupted) is no longer present.