California Games (Sega Master System)

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

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#

This page or section needs more audio. There's a whole lotta words here, but not enough audio. Please fix this. Specifically: 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/BR (1989)/EU	BR (1996)

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

US/BR (1989)/EU	BR (1996)

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

US/BR (1989)/Europe	BR (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• The ROM is exactly the same size as California Games and Jogos de Verão, but the second half of the tilesheet has been replaced by one-colour tiles, with the BMX tiles moved over top of the Half Pipe tiles.

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: 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.

References#