As a game developer myself, I cannot tell you how hard and time consuming it is to make games for a console. I worked on 2 games. Both took 3 years to make. That's 3 years just for a single game. So if you are going to make a gaming console and be successful then you not only have to produce the hardware, but support the hardware by getting great developers onboard and your console may not take off right away because you have to give developers time to make great games.
I'm friends with a Nintendo 3ds, wiiU, switch indie game developer and his first game took about 3 years to make...and a further 3 years to fix with update patches after release. I know EXACTLY what you mean, it's so unbelievably tough and many times, esp early on it nearly broke him. In that time tho he's released an impressive amount of games including the FINAL game on 3ds eShop which just released on March 9th, literally just weeks until eShop closes for good. If you are interested check out the "silver falls" game series. It had an extremely rough start but has since been fully redeemed and is some of the best and most impressive eShop exclusive indie games on 3ds. The final game is fantastic, Silver falls Gaiden DDD and Ruby River, it's a two in one game. One is a battle RPG with a clever combat system, the other, Ruby river is a first for 3ds, an actual open world survival horror building and crafting game. You can build cool structures, fight monsters, ECT and it's NOT Minecraft ripoff format. It's truly impressive and works great.
Also that Sango Fighter game also was released on MSDos PCs as well and there was an illegal English translation version of it and the Super Acan version is a port of the PC version which made it super weird in terms of functionality.
First thank you for sharing about this console, I grown up in Taiwan and I never had the chance to see this console. However I did played the game 'Africa' that you have mentioned with questionable characters. I would like to clarify that game was actually quite a successful title on the PC version. The creativity of Taiwanese back then has a preference of 'parody' joke characters using similar sounding names, similar to how Taiwanese kids like to makeup nicknames for each other (which might not make sense to non Mandarin speakers). It was light hearted and entertaining to the Taiwanese gamers back then without invoking history. For example, the Chinese version of Madonna in game has a similar sounding words that literally means "Girl that pays the bill". Hitler is "Suck special" I think back then the Taiwanese developers have a stronger presence on the PC market, in fact, a golden era for the Mandarin games that inspired many modern art, music and designs later on, even inspired many creators from mainland China till this day. There were even some series in my opinion that rivals Final Fantasy and Shining Force with original story without plagiarism (in some aspect better) at that time. I hope that you can make a video about those Mandarin game history one day.
This. A video on the history of Taiwanese games would be nice, expecially if one consult people who can read traditional characters AND speak Taiwanese variety.
I've said it before, but I'm sure you have a time machine which you use to insert obscure consoles into the past, so you can cover them. It's the only explanation for how you can keep finding more consoles every time I convince myself I have seen them all. Keep it up.
It's a shame when the more original attempts in areas known for bootleg fail, though this video certainly does a good job of showing why. Regardless of the quality of the Super A'Can games, it certainly had a good variety from the looks of it. 14:24 - That was a perfect reaction to there mere suggestion that a company looked to the 32X and thought it would be a good idea to copy it.
thanks for bring this console to our attention. I'm Taiwanese and even I had never heard of this. Not sure what they were thinking with such an ambitious plan but kudos for trying, it must have been a pretty interesting story despite the failure.
I've been living in Japan for 34 freaking years and never had I known I was in SE Asia! That was really eye-opening. Joking aside really cool piece of lost media. A'Can mini when?
Neither Japan or Taiwan is in South East Asia. Also the map at 3:12 does not point to Singapore at all. It's located at the tip of the Malay Peninsula and the map shows it pointing to the Island of Borneo.
Well done. Never heard of this one. This system might have done better if in addition to original software, it would play Mega Drive games. Would not be a stretch since the hardware shared chips with the Mega Drive.
It shared a Motorola 68k like many systems of the time did. It doesn't have the Z80 that the MD has. The Neo Geo also uses a 68k, so do you think the Genesis can run those games? There is more to a console than the CPU, chief.
In terms of aesthetics I don't like how the case is all square but all the controllers and add-ons where rounded, choose a style motif & stick with it. I checked the specs and it was more powerful than the mega-drive. Where the company failed is software, no platform specific hits. They should have started their own in-house software development team with good graphic and sound artists to give it a chance.
For that generation (4th), anything released after 1992 would have been too late. Assuming you were successful, it would have been extremely short lived. By the time you really started gaining momentum the Saturn would have been released, soon followed by the PS1. You'd be crushed in no time flat. They very likely knew they were doomed when they released this in late 95, but they had put all that work into it and probably wanted to at least give it a shot. They may have been thinking that just MAYBE they'd win the lottery and it would somehow work. I would love to see those RPG's it had get translated, but they will no doubt be very, very low priority and it could take at least another 2 decades to see that start to happen I think.
more games were developed but never released for this console. I even tried emailing the company who owns super a can for more information/interview, but no response.
13:10 “There you are playing your World War II shooter, and all of a sudden, you’re a Nazi. You didn’t ask for this, you didn’t choose this, but there it is, and it’s treated no differently than playing a British soldier.” - Extra Credits
Imagine the alternate world where the Acan actually released the "I Can't Believe it's not a 32X," thing and was the dominant video game company for years to come.
I haven't watched this video yet, but from what I've seen of the Super A'Can, its graphical features are nearly identical to the Super NES / Famicom, with its background scaling, color blending and windowing effects, not to mention per scanline updates a la HDMA. The sampled audio is somewhat similar, but I'll get back to that later. The reason that this feature set is so suspiciously similar is that UMC, the semiconductor manufacturer that produced the Super A'Can, had been swiping technology from Ricoh, who was the main chip supplier to Nintendo for the NES/Famicom as well as the SNES. Some time in the 80's, Ricoh began working with UMC, either to have an extra line of chip production or by licensing out semiconductor designs. UMC ended up getting a hold of the chip designs for the NES/Famicom, in this case, the custom 6502 with sound generation and the Picture Processing Unit. The result of this was a flood of Famiclones and bootleg systems, many of which catered to the needs of countries that Nintendo didn't officially market in. UMC would eventually get their hands on the SNES IC designs that Ricoh had. This didn't stop with Nintendo. When Capcom was designing the CP System arcade board (otherwise known as CPS1) the decision was made to use custom ICs for generating sprites and background tiles respectively, and the contract chip fabricator they reached out to was none other than Ricoh. In 1991, a certain game was released on that hardware that set arcades on fire, and an update was released the next year, that being Street Fighter II Champion Edition. Some gamers who lived in that time might remember playing the game with bizarre features, such as fireballs that moved up and down, vastly increased walking speed, special moves that can be performed in the air, etc. This is of course because those games were bootlegs with modified ROMs, which were sold under names like "Rainbow Edition" and the like. The fact that Capcom USA required operators to buy whole new cabinets for SFII Champion Edition rather than upgrade their existing Street Fighter II cabs with new PCBs no doubt contributed to the proliferation of these bootlegs. That and they were naturally less expensive. The CPS1 board featured two custom ICs and every other chip was off-the-shelf. The bootlegs instead used UMC chips - designs they had acquired indirectly from Capcom through their relationship with Ricoh. While Capcom's previous hit game for the hardware, Final Fight, had seen a degree of bootlegging, the massive success of Street Fighter II led to UMC pumping out more CPS1 compatible ICs to meet unprecedented demand. In response to this, Capcom would design their next arcade board, CP System 2 (CPS2), with a comprehensive encryption scheme for the ROMs. That brings us back to the Super A'Can, where UMC used the chip designs from Ricoh clients to build a game system. Now, the SNES/SFC's sound chips, a CPU and a digital signal processor, were not manufactured by Ricoh, but by Sony. So what was the source of the Super A'Can's sound hardware? In 1989, Fujitsu released the FM Towns computer, which featured a Yamaha 2612 for FM synthesis (same one used in the Mega Drive / Genesis) and a Ricoh RF5c68 (which would later be used in the Sega CD as well as Sega's System 18 and System 32 arcade boards). This chip features 8 PCM channels just like the S-SMP of similar vintage in the SNES. It would make perfect sense for the Super A'Can's sound chip to be based on the RF5c68, but it does raise the question of why Nintendo ended up working with Sony for the SNES sound hardware. Anyway, I've typed enough, the simple answer is that UMC was unscrupulous and Ricoh didn't protect the intellectual properties of their clients.
I agree that adding DVD functionality would’ve been a feather in the Dreamcast’s cap, but I don’t know if it really would’ve made a difference in the long run. The Dreamcast wasn’t released in 2000 or 2001 like its contemporaries: it was released in 1998. There was no guarantee at that point in time that DVD functionality would even really be a selling point (especially not if it drastically increased the price), as the format war between VCD and DVD was not fully settled. The first DVD players had only just arrived in Japan in 1996, and hadn’t even made it to Australia and New Zealand yet. Let’s also not forget that it was the PS2 (and to a lesser extent, the original XBox) that helped cement DVDs. It may have had a head-start on the competition, but I don’t have quite the imagination to see a world where people bought a Dreamcast to primarily use as a DVD player in the same way that they did with the offerings from Sony and Microsoft. Those companies have much broader insight into consumer electronics, and correspondingly larger brand equity. Adults with zero interest in gaming would buy a PS2 or XBox just to watch DVDs, and let their kids or grandkids play games on it. Having DVD functionality certainly wouldn’t have left the Dreamcast looking so dated when the competition arrived, but I don’t know if it would’ve been enough. Sony had already gobbled up so much of their market share, and Microsoft still might’ve been able to bump Sega out in its weakened state.
DVD would've expand the lifespand of the dreamcast. I wish sega would've managed the Saturn well so the dreamcast will be released later and more powerful than the ps2
Sounds like this console was too little too late. The add one would have gone some way to addressing the lack of power, but as we now know (and admittedly didn't then), people who buy consoles don't generally buy potentially expensive add ons just so they can play one or two games , and developers will not develop for those peripherals because they can get greater sales for the base console. This happened with the 32X, and more recently, the Kinect.. Assuming the base console was successful, developers would be more likely to develop for the base console, after all, that would mean their game would run both on base and expanded consoles. Thanks to increases in storage and downloading, it *is* feasible to build in proper support for expansions, and just disable it if it's not needed, but that wasn't practical with cartridges, which is why you can get games with enhancements for the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles that run on the PS4 and Xbox One.. Funtech didn't have that advantage. They didn't have a successful base console to fall back to, so an add on that probably moved the purchase price of the console near to that of the Playstation or Saturn (both of which had some success, even if the Saturn wasn't the massive hit the PS was). Given that choice most punters would have gone for the Sony or Sega console, which was also more powerful.
When I was a kid I remember seeing a large amount of products that were made in Taiwan.Over the years I stopped seeing products that were made in Taiwan. I can not tell you the last time I saw a product with that label
Sounds like SEGA, releasing the SG-1000 II, jumping the gun and releasing any new hardware way too soon without properly fleshing them out instead of being patient and relying on the quality of their games.
Interesting to see another company try to dive into the gaming market. Competing with Sega and Nintendo, bold. But the library was lacking. Arrived late, and close to the PlayStation, Saturn, and N64. At least they tried. Oh no not the 32X clone!! No it cannot be!! Ahhhhhh!
Hey, better color palette than Genesis. I reckon this was a failure of software development, not hardware. Looks like it could have been pretty capable in the right hands.
I bet that even if the super a can was released in 1991,it still wouldn’t had sold well due it’s high price and lack of games,but also because everybody wanted mario or sonic,so i don’t think it would,ve make much sense.
what did you do different with your videos this time?. did you green screen your room in behind you?. it looks funky. your like very orange and kinda stand out off the background lol. i mean your still as stunning as always. but the lighting and background look kinds funky lol?. did you have to do some retakes or something ?.
I strongly criticize this video for being nothing but a direct plagarism of the Top Hat A'Can video. I'm aware of the marital ties between the two, but I still invite all of you to watch the two videos back to back. Specifically, watch this video from the 3:57 mark and then the THGM version at 2:32. As you will see, *this video is nothing more than a shot-by-shot remake of the original video, while contributing nothing new to the viewer.* Is the need to pump out content that bad that one must resort to a shot-by-shot remake of a video from three years ago? I say to you, this is plagarism through and through of the shadiest variety.
Firstly, I wrote the Super A'can video in the first place for the Top Hat Gaming Man channel. Secondly, who said we can't produce much more polished re-writes and edits of our content from years ago, to entertain broader audiences with. It would be very wasteful for us to put all that work in to just have the TH-cam algorithm bury it. So we will always update our old work as and when appropriate. It's incredibly rude for you to tell my audience I have contributed nothing new here when the ENTIRE EDIT is BRAND NEW, the script was a REWRITE. There is NOTHING shady about drastically improving my own older work and introducing it to brand new audiences. What a ridiculous and pathetic thing to even have an issue with. Some people online are total weirdos.
@@LadyDecade I see absolutely nothing in this video that remotely constitutes BRAND NEW. If you shuffle images around, or change the wording of certain sentences, that doesn't make it new. If I take the US constitution and rewrite the first few lines to say "We the population of the country, in order to better unite ourselves...", it's still the exact same content. You've added nothing to the experience. Worse, many people here are praising "this new research" that has been rehashed from three years prior. There are no new breakthrough's here. It's being presented as brand new, and that is shady. You know very well that the original video is one of TWO video's that really go in depth on the subject of A'can. When added to the popularity of the other channel, there's really not that big a concern of the algorithm burying the original video. This is just self-plagiarism for the sake of putting out content. I believe that is the real rudeness. What's even the point of having the same video twice? How does it contribute anything positive towards research on the subject. Remaking the same video is only slightly less shady than uploading other bands songs as a lyric video.
Monopoly Adventures in Africa... with Adolf Hitler. 😳 I thought I saw him when you started showing the game but I thought I was seeing things. Then when you pointed it out my brain just froze and what's worse reminded me of one of those long/story type jokes about Hitler living in South America that I heard ages ago that I had forgotten I even knew. So I got twice the Hitler from this. Not what I was expecting would happen from a video about a Taiwanese game console.
Perhaps the people working on the Super A'Can should've started _much_ earlier, or gotten help from wherever; hiring people with experience making consoles who aren't locked into the big companies.
Yeah, when Funtech decided to design their own 16-bit console after the 16-bit generation started over THREE YEARS AGO, they were already too damn late in the console cycle. This thing needed to be at least equivalent to a NeoGeo to survive the Saturn/PS1 it launched against.
Interesting stuff. You'd think when developing this they would have had their ear to the ground and found out that the 32bit era was about to kick off. It's not like Sega and Sony were being quiet about it.
It’s interesting that the super A can was released on 26 october 1995 but discontinued on april 1996,i rememver my first love in october 9 1995 till januari 23 1996,then after 3 month’s off i did got again for in love with that same gilr on april 25 till may 7 1996,those were those exciting and not so exciting school days of my live,and with that said,that super A can system will have a special place in my hearth because of the time frame it was released and discontinued, And let’s face it,the super a can should,ve the supernintendo instead because it does have builtin sprite zoom in and a much faster processor.
Agreed. IMO, the PS2 was so successful because it was, by far, the cheapest DVD player. If the Dreamcast had that ability AND Sega was smart enough to promote it (by packing in an IR remote, for example), they would also have cannibalized sales of stand-alone DVD players.
You seem to forget that the PS2 was also more powerful than the Dreamcast and Sony could make the DVD player components themselves, Sega would have had to buy them in from Sony or a third party and the end result of that would have been a more expensive console. You also seem to forget Ps1 backwards compatibility was a big selling point for people wanting to upgrade. I like the Dreamcast and believe it to have been a unique console, unfortunately I would still have collected my PS2 on day of release and passed on the Dreamcast, sorry probably not a popular view point but a sensible one nonetheless 😔
@@andrewsearson9802 When Sony announced the PS2 specs, I was hoping Sony had upset Philips enough for them to counter with their own console by partnering with Sega, for example. I was disappointed by their lack of tactical awareness as they ceded the complete low-end DVD-player market to Sony. If you had a PS2, why would you consider buying a more expensive standalone Philips DVD player as well? And if you already had a PS2 to play DVDs, why would you (or your parents) buy an additional Sega or Nintendo game system? I did consider buying a PS2 simply to play DVDs, but settled on a DVD drive for my PC, which cost about the same, but played on a better monitor than my TV. As features go, I think the PS2 was fine without backwards compatibility as the DVD player was the killer app for the initial sales ramp. But I see no way to prove or disprove this assertion.
i would like to see you dig into the colecovision, not that it was overly obscure, but dig into what generation it should REALLY be part of. as it is widely considered as a 2nd gen but really is a 3rd gen console
If there is one lesson to be learned from A'Can, is that the timing of releasing a console is important as well: By the time A'Can was out, it wasn't facing SNES or Megadrive anymore, but far more (for the time) powerful consoles like the PS1 or the Saturn. The lack of a "killer game" made matters worse. Anyway, this was an interesting slice of gaming history.
Your husband reviewed this console 3 years ago. You two haven't done the Atari Jaguar yet because you did not have a Jaguar GameDrive. Are you any closer to getting one? I know they are hard to procure. Keep up the great reviews!
As a game developer myself, I cannot tell you how hard and time consuming it is to make games for a console. I worked on 2 games. Both took 3 years to make. That's 3 years just for a single game. So if you are going to make a gaming console and be successful then you not only have to produce the hardware, but support the hardware by getting great developers onboard and your console may not take off right away because you have to give developers time to make great games.
You're a single person. Typically console games have teams of people that work on them.
I'm friends with a Nintendo 3ds, wiiU, switch indie game developer and his first game took about 3 years to make...and a further 3 years to fix with update patches after release. I know EXACTLY what you mean, it's so unbelievably tough and many times, esp early on it nearly broke him. In that time tho he's released an impressive amount of games including the FINAL game on 3ds eShop which just released on March 9th, literally just weeks until eShop closes for good. If you are interested check out the "silver falls" game series. It had an extremely rough start but has since been fully redeemed and is some of the best and most impressive eShop exclusive indie games on 3ds. The final game is fantastic, Silver falls Gaiden DDD and Ruby River, it's a two in one game. One is a battle RPG with a clever combat system, the other, Ruby river is a first for 3ds, an actual open world survival horror building and crafting game. You can build cool structures, fight monsters, ECT and it's NOT Minecraft ripoff format. It's truly impressive and works great.
Intellivision amico comes to mind as a recent example
More like "Super A'Can't", am I right?
Respect.
Also that Sango Fighter game also was released on MSDos PCs as well and there was an illegal English translation version of it and the Super Acan version is a port of the PC version which made it super weird in terms of functionality.
First thank you for sharing about this console, I grown up in Taiwan and I never had the chance to see this console. However I did played the game 'Africa' that you have mentioned with questionable characters. I would like to clarify that game was actually quite a successful title on the PC version. The creativity of Taiwanese back then has a preference of 'parody' joke characters using similar sounding names, similar to how Taiwanese kids like to makeup nicknames for each other (which might not make sense to non Mandarin speakers). It was light hearted and entertaining to the Taiwanese gamers back then without invoking history.
For example, the Chinese version of Madonna in game has a similar sounding words that literally means "Girl that pays the bill". Hitler is "Suck special"
I think back then the Taiwanese developers have a stronger presence on the PC market, in fact, a golden era for the Mandarin games that inspired many modern art, music and designs later on, even inspired many creators from mainland China till this day. There were even some series in my opinion that rivals Final Fantasy and Shining Force with original story without plagiarism (in some aspect better) at that time. I hope that you can make a video about those Mandarin game history one day.
This. A video on the history of Taiwanese games would be nice, expecially if one consult people who can read traditional characters AND speak Taiwanese variety.
Man, I've never heard of this. You're always pulling out these obscure gems.
Lol Tommy Talarico... Also great video, I had not known of this system. Your videos are a necessity of gracious viewing.
you're killing it with your vocalizations, very entertaining! Thanks again for the many laughs along with informative content xD
I've said it before, but I'm sure you have a time machine which you use to insert obscure consoles into the past, so you can cover them. It's the only explanation for how you can keep finding more consoles every time I convince myself I have seen them all. Keep it up.
Wow, I first heard of this console about 10 years ago from Gamester81's collection, takes me back...
I had never heard of this system. Cool video. Thanks.
It's a shame when the more original attempts in areas known for bootleg fail, though this video certainly does a good job of showing why. Regardless of the quality of the Super A'Can games, it certainly had a good variety from the looks of it.
14:24 - That was a perfect reaction to there mere suggestion that a company looked to the 32X and thought it would be a good idea to copy it.
thanks for bring this console to our attention. I'm Taiwanese and even I had never heard of this. Not sure what they were thinking with such an ambitious plan but kudos for trying, it must have been a pretty interesting story despite the failure.
Very cool! Thanks for this awesomely informative video. I love learning new things
Missed the stream, but loved the video. Much better audio and colourgrade than the last upload👍
Very cool video. Superb piece of gaming history :) greetings from Poland :)
I've been living in Japan for 34 freaking years and never had I known I was in SE Asia! That was really eye-opening.
Joking aside really cool piece of lost media. A'Can mini when?
I was about to comment on the same error!
Kudos for using X-men vs Street Fighter soundtrack in the background!
It's hella funny you said Sega Dreamcast and DVD player I was thinking the exact same thing
Neither Japan or Taiwan is in South East Asia.
Also the map at 3:12 does not point to Singapore at all. It's located at the tip of the Malay Peninsula and the map shows it pointing to the Island of Borneo.
This was a real good one. I would see why turbo graft 16 and turbo garft hand held fail. No has ever made video I know of for that no where.
Well done. Never heard of this one. This system might have done better if in addition to original software, it would play Mega Drive games. Would not be a stretch since the hardware shared chips with the Mega Drive.
Not sure Sega would approve of that :S
It shared a Motorola 68k like many systems of the time did. It doesn't have the Z80 that the MD has. The Neo Geo also uses a 68k, so do you think the Genesis can run those games? There is more to a console than the CPU, chief.
A'can do what Sega wish nintendidn't
In terms of aesthetics I don't like how the case is all square but all the controllers and add-ons where rounded, choose a style motif & stick with it. I checked the specs and it was more powerful than the mega-drive. Where the company failed is software, no platform specific hits. They should have started their own in-house software development team with good graphic and sound artists to give it a chance.
For that generation (4th), anything released after 1992 would have been too late. Assuming you were successful, it would have been extremely short lived. By the time you really started gaining momentum the Saturn would have been released, soon followed by the PS1. You'd be crushed in no time flat.
They very likely knew they were doomed when they released this in late 95, but they had put all that work into it and probably wanted to at least give it a shot. They may have been thinking that just MAYBE they'd win the lottery and it would somehow work. I would love to see those RPG's it had get translated, but they will no doubt be very, very low priority and it could take at least another 2 decades to see that start to happen I think.
more games were developed but never released for this console. I even tried emailing the company who owns super a can for more information/interview, but no response.
I think a can I think a can....but I really cant - Tommy Tallarico
Never heard of this system... Love this channel
One system on eBay for only £2,500,00 and games at £450,00
I love lady decades narration.
Hi I love your videos, I just wondered if you ever thought about covering the very obscure Amstrad GX4000?.
13:10 “There you are playing your World War II shooter, and all of a sudden, you’re a Nazi. You didn’t ask for this, you didn’t choose this, but there it is, and it’s treated no differently than playing a British soldier.” - Extra Credits
Imperial Japanese army was AT LEAST as bad. So fck it.
I remember doing a paper on the Asian Tiger Economies back in Uni. Thanks for the refresher.
Wooot, I got mentioned in a LadyDecade video.
Imagine the alternate world where the Acan actually released the "I Can't Believe it's not a 32X," thing and was the dominant video game company for years to come.
I haven't watched this video yet, but from what I've seen of the Super A'Can, its graphical features are nearly identical to the Super NES / Famicom, with its background scaling, color blending and windowing effects, not to mention per scanline updates a la HDMA. The sampled audio is somewhat similar, but I'll get back to that later.
The reason that this feature set is so suspiciously similar is that UMC, the semiconductor manufacturer that produced the Super A'Can, had been swiping technology from Ricoh, who was the main chip supplier to Nintendo for the NES/Famicom as well as the SNES.
Some time in the 80's, Ricoh began working with UMC, either to have an extra line of chip production or by licensing out semiconductor designs. UMC ended up getting a hold of the chip designs for the NES/Famicom, in this case, the custom 6502 with sound generation and the Picture Processing Unit. The result of this was a flood of Famiclones and bootleg systems, many of which catered to the needs of countries that Nintendo didn't officially market in. UMC would eventually get their hands on the SNES IC designs that Ricoh had.
This didn't stop with Nintendo. When Capcom was designing the CP System arcade board (otherwise known as CPS1) the decision was made to use custom ICs for generating sprites and background tiles respectively, and the contract chip fabricator they reached out to was none other than Ricoh. In 1991, a certain game was released on that hardware that set arcades on fire, and an update was released the next year, that being Street Fighter II Champion Edition.
Some gamers who lived in that time might remember playing the game with bizarre features, such as fireballs that moved up and down, vastly increased walking speed, special moves that can be performed in the air, etc. This is of course because those games were bootlegs with modified ROMs, which were sold under names like "Rainbow Edition" and the like. The fact that Capcom USA required operators to buy whole new cabinets for SFII Champion Edition rather than upgrade their existing Street Fighter II cabs with new PCBs no doubt contributed to the proliferation of these bootlegs. That and they were naturally less expensive.
The CPS1 board featured two custom ICs and every other chip was off-the-shelf. The bootlegs instead used UMC chips - designs they had acquired indirectly from Capcom through their relationship with Ricoh. While Capcom's previous hit game for the hardware, Final Fight, had seen a degree of bootlegging, the massive success of Street Fighter II led to UMC pumping out more CPS1 compatible ICs to meet unprecedented demand. In response to this, Capcom would design their next arcade board, CP System 2 (CPS2), with a comprehensive encryption scheme for the ROMs.
That brings us back to the Super A'Can, where UMC used the chip designs from Ricoh clients to build a game system. Now, the SNES/SFC's sound chips, a CPU and a digital signal processor, were not manufactured by Ricoh, but by Sony. So what was the source of the Super A'Can's sound hardware? In 1989, Fujitsu released the FM Towns computer, which featured a Yamaha 2612 for FM synthesis (same one used in the Mega Drive / Genesis) and a Ricoh RF5c68 (which would later be used in the Sega CD as well as Sega's System 18 and System 32 arcade boards). This chip features 8 PCM channels just like the S-SMP of similar vintage in the SNES.
It would make perfect sense for the Super A'Can's sound chip to be based on the RF5c68, but it does raise the question of why Nintendo ended up working with Sony for the SNES sound hardware. Anyway, I've typed enough, the simple answer is that UMC was unscrupulous and Ricoh didn't protect the intellectual properties of their clients.
Knocking it out the park with the obscurity! nice work
Ms. Decade, could you do a video about the Ouya?
Yes this is a necessity for gracious living. THIS . THIS IS A NECESSITY FOR GRACIOUS LIVING.
Do you come up with the ideas for these videos yourself? Love the content , so many interesting games and consoles I never knew existed
i'm a simple nut. I hear "gracious living" i press the like button.
Very cool, didn't know about the planned 32x like add on!
Nobody expects the Taiwanese 32X!
Please, Lady Decade, do a documentary about Zeebo. Thanks in advance!
*pulls out sunglasses* It would seem the Super A'Can.... *puts on sunglasses* Super A'Can't....
I agree that adding DVD functionality would’ve been a feather in the Dreamcast’s cap, but I don’t know if it really would’ve made a difference in the long run.
The Dreamcast wasn’t released in 2000 or 2001 like its contemporaries: it was released in 1998. There was no guarantee at that point in time that DVD functionality would even really be a selling point (especially not if it drastically increased the price), as the format war between VCD and DVD was not fully settled. The first DVD players had only just arrived in Japan in 1996, and hadn’t even made it to Australia and New Zealand yet. Let’s also not forget that it was the PS2 (and to a lesser extent, the original XBox) that helped cement DVDs. It may have had a head-start on the competition, but I don’t have quite the imagination to see a world where people bought a Dreamcast to primarily use as a DVD player in the same way that they did with the offerings from Sony and Microsoft. Those companies have much broader insight into consumer electronics, and correspondingly larger brand equity. Adults with zero interest in gaming would buy a PS2 or XBox just to watch DVDs, and let their kids or grandkids play games on it. Having DVD functionality certainly wouldn’t have left the Dreamcast looking so dated when the competition arrived, but I don’t know if it would’ve been enough. Sony had already gobbled up so much of their market share, and Microsoft still might’ve been able to bump Sega out in its weakened state.
DVD would've expand the lifespand of the dreamcast. I wish sega would've managed the Saturn well so the dreamcast will be released later and more powerful than the ps2
Sounds like this console was too little too late. The add one would have gone some way to addressing the lack of power, but as we now know (and admittedly didn't then), people who buy consoles don't generally buy potentially expensive add ons just so they can play one or two games , and developers will not develop for those peripherals because they can get greater sales for the base console. This happened with the 32X, and more recently, the Kinect.. Assuming the base console was successful, developers would be more likely to develop for the base console, after all, that would mean their game would run both on base and expanded consoles. Thanks to increases in storage and downloading, it *is* feasible to build in proper support for expansions, and just disable it if it's not needed, but that wasn't practical with cartridges, which is why you can get games with enhancements for the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles that run on the PS4 and Xbox One..
Funtech didn't have that advantage. They didn't have a successful base console to fall back to, so an add on that probably moved the purchase price of the console near to that of the Playstation or Saturn (both of which had some success, even if the Saturn wasn't the massive hit the PS was). Given that choice most punters would have gone for the Sony or Sega console, which was also more powerful.
I didn't even knew this console existed and I was one of the few people that look more into import games and systems back in the days.
I wish they would fan translate those 2 rpgs
When I was a kid I remember seeing a large amount of products that were made in Taiwan.Over the years I stopped seeing products that were made in Taiwan. I can not tell you the last time I saw a product with that label
Speedy Dragon looks like if Sega of America came up with the first sonic game. What a weird console thanks for sharing
Now we really need a fan tranlation of that monopoly game.
Another fun vid. How do you do it?!
Sounds like SEGA, releasing the SG-1000 II, jumping the gun and releasing any new hardware way too soon without properly fleshing them out instead of being patient and relying on the quality of their games.
Interesting to see another company try to dive into the gaming market. Competing with Sega and Nintendo, bold. But the library was lacking. Arrived late, and close to the PlayStation, Saturn, and N64. At least they tried.
Oh no not the 32X clone!!
No it cannot be!!
Ahhhhhh!
Another obscure console? 👀 Might develop for it.
A'Can a do it captain!
Weird watching gameplay and thinking i seen it somehwere before ;)
If we read it as akan it makes a Japanese word that means "no good", like its fate was decided rapidly.
(insert Ouya joke here)
Great vid, great gags!
Might be first console I've never heard of. And I know the Pippin. And the UMC x86 CPU that was banned from the US.
With as much as she uploads with unique content idk how long she will be able to keep this up
this is not unique content
Do your thing Lady, ENDZone604 approves
Hey, better color palette than Genesis. I reckon this was a failure of software development, not hardware. Looks like it could have been pretty capable in the right hands.
Still a bombshell, that is why i watch and as bonus a great info about video games....... keep it up
Here in the states never got Super A'Can
Is the end music from Ninja Baseball Batman? Anyway, for some reason this story reminds me of when I had a really nice bike ride and swallowed a fly 😒
I bet that even if the super a can was released in 1991,it still wouldn’t had sold well due it’s high price and lack of games,but also because everybody wanted mario or sonic,so i don’t think it would,ve make much sense.
awesome piece of history
love your docs!
What was the name of the RPG this system featured?
what did you do different with your videos this time?. did you green screen your room in behind you?. it looks funky. your like very orange and kinda stand out off the background lol. i mean your still as stunning as always. but the lighting and background look kinds funky lol?. did you have to do some retakes or something ?.
Japan is not considered to be in inSouth East Asia, and Mandarin is the most spoken language in Taiwan, not 'Taiwanese'
I strongly criticize this video for being nothing but a direct plagarism of the Top Hat A'Can video. I'm aware of the marital ties between the two, but I still invite all of you to watch the two videos back to back. Specifically, watch this video from the 3:57 mark and then the THGM version at 2:32. As you will see, *this video is nothing more than a shot-by-shot remake of the original video, while contributing nothing new to the viewer.*
Is the need to pump out content that bad that one must resort to a shot-by-shot remake of a video from three years ago? I say to you, this is plagarism through and through of the shadiest variety.
😨oh wow 💥
Firstly, I wrote the Super A'can video in the first place for the Top Hat Gaming Man channel.
Secondly, who said we can't produce much more polished re-writes and edits of our content from years ago, to entertain broader audiences with. It would be very wasteful for us to put all that work in to just have the TH-cam algorithm bury it. So we will always update our old work as and when appropriate.
It's incredibly rude for you to tell my audience I have contributed nothing new here when the ENTIRE EDIT is BRAND NEW, the script was a REWRITE.
There is NOTHING shady about drastically improving my own older work and introducing it to brand new audiences. What a ridiculous and pathetic thing to even have an issue with. Some people online are total weirdos.
Please ignore OP's comment and see my response. SMDH.
@@LadyDecade I see absolutely nothing in this video that remotely constitutes BRAND NEW. If you shuffle images around, or change the wording of certain sentences, that doesn't make it new. If I take the US constitution and rewrite the first few lines to say "We the population of the country, in order to better unite ourselves...", it's still the exact same content. You've added nothing to the experience.
Worse, many people here are praising "this new research" that has been rehashed from three years prior. There are no new breakthrough's here. It's being presented as brand new, and that is shady. You know very well that the original video is one of TWO video's that really go in depth on the subject of A'can. When added to the popularity of the other channel, there's really not that big a concern of the algorithm burying the original video. This is just self-plagiarism for the sake of putting out content. I believe that is the real rudeness. What's even the point of having the same video twice? How does it contribute anything positive towards research on the subject. Remaking the same video is only slightly less shady than uploading other bands songs as a lyric video.
Graphically, it reminds me of the Phillips CDi or the Amiga 32CD.
Japan and Taiwan aren't in Southeast Asia, but in East Asia.
Where can one get one online
If the Acan had been launched in 1989 it might have done something but in1995 it was a bad joke
Monopoly Adventures in Africa... with Adolf Hitler. 😳
I thought I saw him when you started showing the game but I thought I was seeing things. Then when you pointed it out my brain just froze and what's worse reminded me of one of those long/story type jokes about Hitler living in South America that I heard ages ago that I had forgotten I even knew. So I got twice the Hitler from this. Not what I was expecting would happen from a video about a Taiwanese game console.
Perhaps the people working on the Super A'Can should've started _much_ earlier, or gotten help from wherever; hiring people with experience making consoles who aren't locked into the big companies.
Yeah, when Funtech decided to design their own 16-bit console after the 16-bit generation started over THREE YEARS AGO, they were already too damn late in the console cycle. This thing needed to be at least equivalent to a NeoGeo to survive the Saturn/PS1 it launched against.
Interesting stuff. You'd think when developing this they would have had their ear to the ground and found out that the 32bit era was about to kick off. It's not like Sega and Sony were being quiet about it.
Not everyone can jump into the "next generation" immediately.
It’s interesting that the super A can was released on 26 october 1995 but discontinued on april 1996,i rememver my first love in october 9 1995 till januari 23 1996,then after 3 month’s off i did got again for in love with that same gilr on april 25 till may 7 1996,those were those exciting and not so exciting school days of my live,and with that said,that super A can system will have a special place in my hearth because of the time frame it was released and discontinued,
And let’s face it,the super a can should,ve the supernintendo instead because it does have builtin sprite zoom in and a much faster processor.
Agreed. IMO, the PS2 was so successful because it was, by far, the cheapest DVD player. If the Dreamcast had that ability AND Sega was smart enough to promote it (by packing in an IR remote, for example), they would also have cannibalized sales of stand-alone DVD players.
You seem to forget that the PS2 was also more powerful than the Dreamcast and Sony could make the DVD player components themselves, Sega would have had to buy them in from Sony or a third party and the end result of that would have been a more expensive console. You also seem to forget Ps1 backwards compatibility was a big selling point for people wanting to upgrade. I like the Dreamcast and believe it to have been a unique console, unfortunately I would still have collected my PS2 on day of release and passed on the Dreamcast, sorry probably not a popular view point but a sensible one nonetheless 😔
@@andrewsearson9802 When Sony announced the PS2 specs, I was hoping Sony had upset Philips enough for them to counter with their own console by partnering with Sega, for example. I was disappointed by their lack of tactical awareness as they ceded the complete low-end DVD-player market to Sony. If you had a PS2, why would you consider buying a more expensive standalone Philips DVD player as well? And if you already had a PS2 to play DVDs, why would you (or your parents) buy an additional Sega or Nintendo game system?
I did consider buying a PS2 simply to play DVDs, but settled on a DVD drive for my PC, which cost about the same, but played on a better monitor than my TV.
As features go, I think the PS2 was fine without backwards compatibility as the DVD player was the killer app for the initial sales ramp. But I see no way to prove or disprove this assertion.
Very interesting console for sure.
i would like to see you dig into the colecovision, not that it was overly obscure, but dig into what generation it should REALLY be part of. as it is widely considered as a 2nd gen but really is a 3rd gen console
☺️ you're the best, Lady Decade...
Rare and expensive door wedge. 💥💥💥💥💥
Both Japan and Taiwan are not in Southeast Asia.
If there is one lesson to be learned from A'Can, is that the timing of releasing a console is important as well: By the time A'Can was out, it wasn't facing SNES or Megadrive anymore, but far more (for the time) powerful consoles like the PS1 or the Saturn. The lack of a "killer game" made matters worse. Anyway, this was an interesting slice of gaming history.
Your husband reviewed this console 3 years ago. You two haven't done the Atari Jaguar yet because you did not have a Jaguar GameDrive. Are you any closer to getting one? I know they are hard to procure. Keep up the great reviews!
I would so love to have one of those but I'm not rich so that'll never happen. I first heard about this system a few years ago.
Another strange console, great vid and beautiful creator! Go Lady D
Turns out the A'Can... Can't
Wow, well researched! Awesome job as usual! Some amazingly bad business decisions in that period of gaming that’s for sure.
Never heard this before
Do you have Prince Albert in A'Can?
almost fell out of my chair when I saw hitler as a playable character lmao
I don’t know what’s going on lady Gatorade
😍the way you say jaguar
LOVED THOS EPISODE
Even find emulator is complicated
If I have the tattoo on the right thigh and not the left thigh, does that still count?....I'm asking for a friend >.> lol
Remind me to never listen to your videos on my earpods lol.... You always jump scaring me