Ex Sachen developers refers to an unknown development team, believed to mostly consist of ex-Sachen staff, who worked on a number of pirate platform games and other unlicensed games for the Famicom in the mid to late 90s.
Several such games were programmed by Ei-How Yang (also known as E.H.Y. and variations such as Yi-How Yang), who mostly worked on Game Boy titles for Sachen. He is often the only person credited (although the credit is usually hidden), but he presumably worked as part of a larger development team.
Other games, although credited to a number of different companies (most likely publishers/distributors) share certain features with Yang's and each other, such as fonts, sound and graphics storage methods, however they do not appear to be programmed by Yang himself. They may have been produced by the same development team that worked with Yang, but with a different lead programmer(s). This may be Wu Zhenhong (吳振宏) who is credited in Bao Qing Tian.
Many of these games have very similar music and sound effects to Sachen's later TC-series games. Wang Yueli (王樂禮) is credited for music in Bao Qing Tian; he is usually credited as Amadeus Wang in Sachen games. Others, including most of Yang's own, seem to use the a similar sound engine with a different musician.
Games
Ei-How Yang's
- Contra Spirits (1995)
- Mickey Mania 7 / China Rabbit Baby (1996, published by JY Company)
- Worm Visitor
- Pocohontos
- Super Donkey Kong (published by Hosenkan Electronics)
- Toy Story
Others
- Bao Qing Tian (published by NT)
- Chu Da D (published by Fortune Power/Jichang)
- Earthworm Jim 2 (published by K/Taiwan Shin-Shin)
- Panda Prince / Super Lion King 2 (published by K/NT)
- Super Donkey Kong 2 (published by Family/Gold Leopard)
- The Dragon - (published by Ramar International (Rinco)/Tony Tech)
Famiclone games
Several games have appeared built into Famiclones dating from around the mid-late 2000s, such as the handheld D-Cat 8 and AtGames' Millennium Super Arcade (a hybrid Firecore/Famiclone system, albeit with only a Mega Drive cartridge slot) which appear to exhibit connections with Sachen and its former developers:
- Jungle Adventure - An extremely glitchy hack of Panda Prince containing only the boss fights from that game (including the unused wasp). Each boss can take many more hits than in the original, but from the second stage onwards it is prone to crashing, slowdown and glitchy music.
- Lair's Secret - A hack of Rockball by Sachen, using music from Panda Prince.
- Magic Block - A Tetris clone, not known to be a hack of any previously released game, but using the same sound engine as these games and a text font seen in many Sachen games.
Other connections
- Fonts used in games by these developers have appeared in Yong Yong's Game Boy games, as well as Sachen's GBC ports of their NES games.
- Sachen itself did not release any original games from about 1995 until 1999, when they released Game Boy Color port of Jurassic Boy 2, Rocman X and Street Heroes. While Rocman X appears to have been developed by Yong Yong, the other two are higher quality than Yong Yong's games, and two other GBC fighting games - Street Fighter Zero 4 and Capcom vs SNK: Millennium Fight 2001 - share certain similarities with Street Heroes, so these may have been developed by the same or a related group of ex-Sachen staff.