nesdev.org

The game "Over Horizon" never came out in the United States. There is only a Japanese and a PAL version.
But the thing that confuses me: Whenever I see the package or the catridge or the manual, it's always the German version. (The Seal of Quality is written "Qualitätssiegel".) I've never seen an English version. Even bootgod.dyndns.org knows only the German cartridge. (Besides, why don't they have the Japanese game listed?)
So, is something like that possible? That a game really only came out in Germany, but not in the other European countries? Why is this the case? Since they bothered to make a PAL conversion of the Famicom game, why release it only in Germany instead of various European countires? And why Germany in the first place?

Nintendo distributed the NES through Mattel in Commonwealth countries and Italy and through someone else in the rest of mainland Europe. Each distributor got its own version of the lockout chip. This is why PAL B games sold in Germany don't work in PAL A consoles sold in Britain.

OK, but this still doesn't answer my question: If Nintendo takes the time to convert a Japanese game to PAL, why do they release it only in Germany? Why not in other European countries?
Alternate question: Did the PAL version of "Over Horizon" ever appear in a country other than Germany? If yes, does an English manual exist?

Looks like Takara decided to publish the game in Germany/Wherever. Generally, it's not Nintendo's decision alone to publish 3rd-party games. The European market was 2-3 years behind the US one for Nintendo systems, so publishers there made decisions to bring over games independently of their US arms. Sunsoft and Konami released several Famicom-derived games that never hit the US.

Anyway, this topic is totally unrelated to developing programs on the NES. Could you put further questions about game/hardware region variants in the "General Stuff" category?

ccovell wrote:Anyway, this topic is totally unrelated to developing programs on the NES. Could you put further questions about game/hardware region variants in the "General Stuff" category?

Yeah, that's a problem, imo: We have sub forums for developing for the NES, for graphic and sound and for hardware. But everything else has to go into the general stuff sub forum where you can talk about anything from the latest movies to cacadoos. Why isn't there a "General NES stuff" sub forum for everything that has nothing to do with developing, but that's still NES-related? Why is there such a gap? Why does the forum go from "technical NES stuff" right to "every topic in the world" instead of having "every other NES topic" in between?

In my opinion there is enough subforums like this, something like this is fine to discuss on the General Topics even if it's NES related.

And I know Gimmick ! is Sweden only so it's possible that Over Horizon is Germany only.
However I think other european countries probably managed to get the German version anyways.

It was common back in the NES days that we got german manuals, despite living in a french speaking region. This is not the case any longer since ~1995

I've moved the thread from the NESdev board to the General Stuff board.

Germany seemed to love Nintendo more than any other country in the EU.

Bregalad wrote:In my opinion there is enough subforums like this, something like this is fine to discuss on the General Topics even if it's NES related.

It's just kind of strange that in an NES forum there is no sub forum for general NES stuff. There is a sub forum for NES development in Middle Eastern languages (WTF???), but not one for general NES discussion. And that's a serious lack.
In the programming forum where I sometimes go, there are sub forums for the various programming languages, then one for general PC stuff and then one for off-topic stuff. The technical PC stuff doesn't get mixed with chat about the latest celebrity gossip.
This should be the same here:

First level forums: NES development stuff
Second level forums: NES general stuff
Third level forums: General stuff

When I go to any kind of NES forum, I don't want to discuss my general-purpose-but-still-NES-related questions in the general off-topic forum because I cannot be sure that the experts here even go to that forum.

No, just no. The general forum here is for general discussion, as previously stated. There is no need for 2, 3 or more general discussion forums. And because you don't want to discuss it in the general forums shouldn't mean more subforums should be added just for you.

What is the point of having 128395 sub-forums anyways, this only increase the chance you're missing a potentially interesting topic.

The technical PC stuff doesn't get mixed with chat about the latest celebrity gossip.

This would not belong to here, not even on the general forums.

JimDaBim wrote:The technical PC stuff doesn't get mixed with chat about the latest celebrity gossip.

When I go to any kind of NES forum, I don't want to discuss my general-purpose-but-still-NES-related questions in the general off-topic forum because I cannot be sure that the experts here even go to that forum.

Have you actually looked at the forum listing? Almost every topic is either about video games or some technical topic. Can you find me even a single "celebrity gossip" or some such "low value" topic on this forum?

Bregalad wrote:No, just no. The general forum here is for general discussion, as previously stated. There is no need for 2, 3 or more general discussion forums.

Right. Let's keep the important forums, like the one that is about discussing NES development in Hebrew and Urdu. Sure, that's what we need. After all, this forum has an astonishing number of two(!) threads and in one there was even a dialog going on between two people.

Also, we have an NES hardware sub forum. So, what kind of moron thinks that an NES software sub forum would be a good idea, right? What a dork!

Bregalad wrote:What is the point of having 128395 sub-forums anyways

Right, right. Sorry, I forgot: "All purpose NES talk" on an NES forum is just one of 128395 random topics that really don't need to be categorized. I mean, if we have this, we could as well have a sub forum called "Blue shoes that got lost on a rainy October day in the late 90s, except for 1998". No, no, you're right. We should keep the really defining sub forums like the one about Membler Industries. Yes, that's what I would call one of THE big, necessary sub forums that you need on an NES board. But not "General NES stuff". No, that can go into "General stuff".

Bregalad wrote:This would not belong to here, not even on the general forums.

Firstly: "You can talk about almost anything that you want to on this board."
Secondly: You clearly don't know what a generic example is. Replace "celebrity gossip" with "discoveries in science" and my argument still works the same.

nitro2k01 wrote:Have you actually looked at the forum listing? Almost every topic is either about video games or some technical topic.

Still, it's the off-topic forum. If someone is interested in NES stuff, he's probably less likely to go there than to a "General NES stuff" sub forum.

nitro2k01 wrote:Can you find me even a single "celebrity gossip" or some such "low value" topic on this forum?

See above. It's not about being low value, it's about being off-topic.

JimDaBim wrote:See above. It's not about being low value, it's about being off-topic.

Well, no, because...

JimDaBim wrote:When I go to any kind of NES forum, I don't want to discuss my general-purpose-but-still-NES-related questions in the general off-topic forum because I cannot be sure that the experts here even go to that forum.

Your argument is that a general off-topic forum doesn't interest "the experts", which depends on the quality of the discussion there. If the quality is high, ie not gossip-ey, there's no reason to suspect the experts avoid that section.

I'm not staff, and I'm also not principally opposed to the idea of a general NES forum, but this isn't nearly as big of an issue as you make it out to be.

Let's keep the important forums, like the one that is about discussing NES development in Hebrew and Urdu. Sure, that's what we need. After all, this forum has an astonishing number of two(!) threads and in one there was even a dialog going on between two people.

I agree they are completely useless. If anyone wants to make posts in some other languages than english there is an international subforum to do so. Other language specific subforums are useless. Especially if nobody uses them.

but this isn't nearly as big of an issue as you make it out to be.

This.
I'm pretty sure I started quite a few discussions about NES or non NES gaming on the general forums, it never was an issue to me.

Bregalad wrote:And I know Gimmick ! is Sweden only so it's possible that Over Horizon is Germany only.
However I think other european countries probably managed to get the German version anyways.

Gimmick! was released in Norway as well. I'm not sure, but I suspect that it might also have been sold in Denmark and Finland too.