All about Saurus

andsuchisdeath

General Morden's Aide
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No, not dinosaurs, silly. Everyone knows about them.

I'm talking about something more elusive than the creatures from the jurassic period!

Ok, they were established in 1993? Who worked there? Were they really just an SNK guise??

Please post any information you may have about Saurus here.


saurus.gif
 
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Reclaimer

Haomaru's Blade Shiner
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Is the logo two brontosaurus? Or an ass with two skinny curvy legs and tiny feet?
 

Tron

Test
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I all ways wonder how saurus got the first shock troopers right but screw up it's sequel :loco:
 

oliverclaude

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Quick infos I gathered:

- Some names from the Shock Troopers credits appear on earlier SNK games like Street Smart (Masato Mioshi) or Ghost Pilots (also Mioshi & Kenji Ishimoto). This suggest that SNK designers were borrowed to Saurus for support [source: mobygames]

- Saurus worked on the port of Art of Fighting 2 for the Super Nintendo from 1994, which apparently marks the earliest collaboration between Saurus and SNK and maybe the time frame of their origin, too(?) [source: gamefaqs]

- They ported their own games (SW 1+2, Ragnagard) to both Saturn and/or Playstation, just like SNK did [source: mobygames]

- Quiz King of Fighters is Saurus' first Neo Geo game (MVS 1995/02/01), followed by Stakes Winner (1995/09/27) [source: neogeomuseum]

- The french wiki page on Saurus links this archived site as the official Saurus internet presence. Hmm... [source: wikipedia]

- Trivia: The Sharp Zaurus is the name of a series of personal digital assistants (PDAs) made by Sharp Corporation. The Zaurus was the most popular PDA during the 1990s in Japan and was based on a proprietary operating system. The japanese spelling of Zaurus is apparently the same as Saurus ザウルス [source: wikipedia]

...unfortunately, nothing really in-depth.
 

Heinz

Parteizeit
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This thread has presented a rare moment where Oliver communicates in a clear and concise manner.
 

oliverclaude

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Here's an interview from gamingmoe with Akihiro Takanami/Hiroaki Fujimoto of h.a.n.d. and System Vision. Saurus is mentioned:

Q:There isn’t a lot of information available on Saurus, the little-known publisher of Ragnagard. What kind of company was it? What was your connection to the company during development, and what kind of relationship did it have to SNK?

A: My understanding now and at the time was that they were an affiliate of SNK responsible for porting Neo Geo games to consumer hardware. I never spoke at length directly with anyone internally at the company, so I don’t really know much about them, either. They mostly gave us advice on how to design Shin-Oh-Ken as an arcade game. Very simple stuff, just talk about making the design of the game simpler. We corresponded back and forth with them, but while the release date for Shin-Oh-Ken was June 13, 1996, the game wasn’t actually released until about two or three months after that.

One of the points that came up when we signed the contract to make a Neo Geo game is that the release of SNK’s games took priority, and I heard that the ROM burning plants stopped manufacturing ROMs for third-party games. This was around the time when KOF96 went on sale on July 30, 1996, so Shin-Oh-Ken being pushed back was probably the result of us being in the same window. The ROMs for Shin-Oh-Ken simply didn’t exist on its release date.

I found it through this page here. It lists May 6, 1993 as the date Saurus was established and further states, that Nobuyuki Tanaka (田中信之) was the president. The info was gathered through actual mentions and/or shared staff.
 

oliverclaude

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This thread has presented a rare moment where Oliver communicates in a clear and concise manner.

Hehe, don't worry, lach. I don't claim to understand even half of Wasabi's or LoneSage's output either, but the fact that I don't, doesn't state that half of their posts mean nothing. Quite the opposite. Believe it or not, I'm always glad to use the Simple English option on any wiki page, so if you don't see clear on those other moments you had in mind, just ask. They're always meant as conversation starters. BTW, did you know that at the time of its release, Seinfeld was criticized for being a "show about nothing"? Anyway, I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.
 

Tarma

Old Man
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I always thought the logo was a lobster's head...
 

Yamazaki

Belnar Institute Student
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they made some decent stuff.

ST2 will always be a favorite of mine including slowdowns and sometimes terrible sprites.
 

oliverclaude

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Thanks guys! It's not much but it's a start.

@Yama: Maybe you could find something more, hidden under piles of Kana? You know Japanese better than I do baking ;). BTW, the Hosoya/Koyama/Morishita/Falcoon interview was golden.
 
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