BMB (pronounced as "VMV" since these are Cyrillic letters), also reportedly known under the alias TZAR/CARI, or their newer alias Old Pirate, is a developer of bootleg Sega Mega Drive games in the early 2010s for the Russian market. They are closely related to KDS (Kudos), who distributed most of their games. Typically, they go uncredited in their games, but there are enough similarities between their games to be identifiable as a single developer. Exactly what BMB supposedly stands for is unknown.
Common elements in their games[]
- With a few exceptions, most of their games are either side-scrolling platformers or clones of Battle City.
- The font used in their games are taken from the Russian fan-translation of Super Mario Bros. 3 for NES, released in 1999.
- The introductory and ending cutscenes consist of one or more still images, usually with simple writing style.
- Most of the assets are directly plagiarized, especially the music, which is also sometimes reused in multiple games at once. This can be explained by BMB using VGM Music Maker's native sound engine. Since they are unable to produce music on their own, a lot of sample songs from both VGMMM and TFM Music Maker, were used as well. As a matter of fact, almost all sound effects are taken from Uwol: Quest for Money.
- Some level tiles or collectables are either laid out to spell "BMB" or the background objects contain those letters directly.
- Inappropriate and/or graphic Continue and Game Over screens. In reality, few of their games have this, but the ones that do have become well-known to the point that they are perhaps the best-known element of BMB's games.
- The Continue screen is typically accompanied by a slightly sped-up version of the title screen music from Uwol: Quest for Money.
Games[]
Original games[]
| Name | Released | Description | Cartridge No. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Angry Birds in Russia | 2013 | A Russian bootleg of Angry Birds. | |
| Angry Birds: Star Wars | 2013 | A bootleg of Angry Birds Star Wars. | |
| Ben 10 | 2012 | Beat 'em up game based on the TV show of the same name. | |
| Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers | 2011(?) | Port of the NES game of the same name. Made in the same engine as Mario 3: Around the World. | |
| Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2 | 2012(?) | Port of the NES game of the same name. Made in the same engine as Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers. | |
| Darkwing Duck | 2012(?) | Port of the NES game of the same name. Made in the same engine as Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers. | |
| Felix the Cat | 2011(?) | Port of the NES game of the same name. Made in the same engine as Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers. | |
| Iron Man | 2014 | Made with the same engine as Lego Batman. | |
| Lego Batman | 2014 | A platformer featuring a remixed version of Corneria from Star Fox, and graphics stolen from Lego Batman: The Mobile Game. | |
| Lego Pirates of the Caribbean | Summer 2014 | Made with the same engine as Lego Batman. | |
| Mario 3: Around the World | August 20, 2011 | A Mario platformer, with many assets stolen from other sources, mostly from Mario games. | |
| Mario 4: Space Odyssey | 2011(?) | A sequel to the Mario 3: Around The World. The majority of the assets are also stolen from Mario games. |
|
| Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides | 2011 or 2012 | A Battle City clone made on the Tanki engine. | |
| Plants vs. Zombies | 2013(?) | A port of the original PC/mobile/console game. Made with the same engine as Angry Birds in Russia/Angry Birds: Star Wars. | |
| The Adventures of the Gummi Bears | 2014 | A platformer based on the TV show, and shares the same engine as Lego Batman. | |
| TMNT - The Legend Returns | 2012(?) | Made with the same engine as Ben 10. | |
| World of Tanks | 2013(?) | A Battle City clone based on the online game. |
Participated[]
Trivia[]
- BMB were part of the TOF group, which was founded by Russian romhacker TLT. Together, they created several Mega Drive hacks based on popular cartoons, movies, and game franchises.
- In the early-to-mid 2020s, a person under the name "Old Pirate" created accounts for websites such as Patreon and itch.io.[1][2] Old Pirate appears to be a further alias of BMB; with the Patreon account in particular detailing games such as Mario 3: Around the World, and featuring a large majority of BMB-identified titles in the top header image.
- The developer now releases new games as freeware homebrew titles online, including a Sega Master System port of Battle City and ports of Shiru's homebrew NES games to the Mega Drive.
- The font commonly used for the text is similar to the one in Super Mario World for the SNES.
- Some of the songs used in their games are imported from TFM Music Maker, a sister project to VGM Music Maker, both developed by Shiru. This music tracker is capable of creating songs for TurboSound FM, a soundboard created for ZX Spectrum and its' clones which contains an FM synth chip similar to Mega Drive's. Matter of fact, these songs were made by a number of people prominent on the ZX Spectrum demoscene, such as Shiru, Karbofos, and Alone Coder - but none of them got credited. Also at least one song was converted from a Commodore Amiga .mod file: a cover of the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme by Nighthawk.
- While not common, another identifying factor of BMB's is background tiles being arranged to resemble small Mario's head or his full sprite from Super Mario Bros.. This shows up in Iron Man, Lego Batman, Mario 3: Around the World, The Adventures of the Gummi Bears, and World of Tanks.
- All their games are made with the SGDK Development Kit.