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Post by ndiddy on Jan 26, 2020 4:54:42 GMT
I was looking on eBay for Turbo stuff and came across an adult slideshow Turbo CD called "Hawaiian Island Girls" (I attached photos from the listing), which was by a company named "Excite Software Corporation". I want to contact whoever ran Excite Software, as I'm sure they have an interesting story to tell. If you look at the IPL header, the game title is listed as "SAMPLE PROGRAM", so it looks like they had access to some sample code. Did NEC or TTI give them some help? Perhaps. Whatever the case, I think the story of how these games got made would be very interesting.
However, I can't seem to track down anything even mentioning Excite Software or their titles except for Turbo CD release lists and a single Usenet post from another person trying to find them, with the added clue that they may be located in Texas. I did a search on the Texas Secretary of State website and didn't find them there. If anyone has any research tips or Excite Software trivia, I'm all ears.
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Post by dshadoff on Jan 26, 2020 15:03:17 GMT
There was speculation back in the day, that these were created as a side project by a rogue individual working within a licensed company. Perhaps a US-based company, based on the packaging not having any Japanese language; however, all original copies of these were discovered in Japan and none in the USA, indicating that Japan was the only targeted market in the first place for this 'rogue'.
In 1997, I saw these marked between 100 and 500 yen, so they were likely never sold at the list pricing, but they were indeed sold.
I'm kind of interested in how the Games Express and Hacker International stuff was put together, as they were actual games with more than 30 seconds' worth of usage value.
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Post by ndiddy on Jan 26, 2020 17:02:59 GMT
"Side project" makes a lot of sense. It also explains the lack of business registration/contact information if it wasn't a real company. The copy on eBay has a US price sticker. Maybe Excite sent all their CDs that didn't sell to Japan? Here's some information on Hacker International: magweasel.com/2010/06/29/hacker-internationals-head-speaks/ It looks like their devs
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