Makon Soft is an unlicensed game developer that created numerous games for the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color, with all of their confirmed titles for the platforms being based on popular franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokémon, and Digimon. Their Game Boy games are notorious among online gaming communities as even compared to other well-known unlicensed and bootleg games, they are of a particularly low quality, commonly featuring crudely drawn/digitized graphics, game-breaking bugs, and gameplay that is generally rudimentary. In addition to these qualities, most of Makon Soft's games are strikingly similar to each other in design and gameplay. Their games are known to have been released in English, Spanish, and Chinese.
For a time, they were referred to as Yong Yong by bootleg and unlicensed game enthusiasts, although this name is not commonly used to refer to them anymore.
Overview[]
Sonic 3D Blast 5 ending, where the "Yong Yong" name made its first appearance.
Makon Soft seems to have originated some time in the late 1990s. Their three known earliest games, Sonic 3D Blast 5, Super Donkey Kong 3, and Rockman 8, were developed for monochrome Game Boy systems, whereas most of their subsequent games were developed for the Game Boy Color. Their earliest Game Boy Color games, such as Sonic Adventure 7, suffer from a limited palette, but this improved with later games they made for the system.
The alias "Yong Yong" comes from the endings of Sonic 3D Blast 5 and Sonic Adventure 7. However, all of their subsequent color games either have a maker code of "MK" or write the text "MakonSoftStudios" to RAM.
Although their Game Boy games often suffer from emulation problems, even the actual cartridge games are flawed, as due to either poor programming or the hardware being used, some of the games simply crash at random points. As well as this, at least two of their games cannot be completed on a real cartridge due to programming flaws. Collision detection faults resulting in the player falling through the floor are also common.
Most of Makon Soft's Game Boy games appear to be built off of the engine used in Sonic 3D Blast 5. One of the later games to use this engine, Pokémon Gold Version 2 (more well known by its pirate release Pokémon Adventure), would refine the controls from Sonic 3D Blast 5 and make slight changes to secondary game aspects, such as the health system and the character's attack. Another game engine used by Makon Soft for their Game Boy games is one originally made for the game Rockman 8, which does not feature momentum-based movement like in the Sonic-based engines and is only known to have been used in two other games: Rockman X4, a version of Makon Soft's Rockman 8 for the Game Boy Color, and Sachen's Game Boy Color version of Thunder Blast Man.
Games[]
Game Boy (199X-1999)[]
- Sonic 3D Blast 5 (199x)
- Super Donkey Kong 3 (199x) - Loose port of the SNES game Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! (named Super Donkey Kong 3 in Japan). Game is built off of the Sonic 3D Blast 5 engine. Original release date is unknown, but the game is known to have been released on multicarts as early as 1998.
- Rockman 8 (1999) - Mega Man clone loosely based on the PlayStation and Sega Saturn game of the same name (released as Mega Man 8 outside of Japan). Likely originally published by Ka Sheng.
Game Boy Color (1999 - 2000s)[]
Gameplay of Digimon 02 4.
- Sonic Adventure 7 (1999) - Color version of Sonic 3D Blast 5.
- Pokémon Gold Version 2 (2000) - Another Sonic the Hedgehog clone that bizarrely features Pikachu as the playable character. It is more well-known as Pokémon Adventure, a pirate hack of the game that does not appear to be affiliated with Makon Soft.
- Rockman X4 (2000) - Color version of Rockman 8.
- Sonic Adventure 8 (2000) - Variant of Sonic Adventure 7
- Super Mario Special 3 (2000) - Game Boy Color remake of Super Mario Bros. 3.
- Pokémon Diamond (2001) - Variant of Super Mario Special 3. This game starts at stage 4 of the original game, which has a bug that prevents the goal item from spawning, resulting in a softlock. This does not occur in the Chinese release of the game.
- Pokémon Jade (2001) - A variant of Sonic Adventure 7 that is in full color and changes the sprites for Sonic and the enemies, with the former being changed to Pikachu. Similarly to Pokemon Diamond, the game (at least the English release) cannot progress past stage 1 due to a glitch that causes the game to crash when the goal sign is touched.
- Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back (200x) - A backport of the SNES and Mega Drive Pocket Monster game.
- Pokémon Ruby (200x) - A variant of Mewtwo Strikes Back. Both an English version and a Chinese version were released, the latter allowing the player to cycle between stages by pressing the B button on the stage title cards. A Chinese version with debugging enabled exists, the latter being published by Li Cheng.
- Pokémon Sapphire[1] (200x) - Seems to be based on Super Mario Special 3's gameplay but with new level layout, graphics from the Digimon bootlegs and new music. Only the first three levels are original; the remaining five are from Super Mario Special 3.[2]
- Digimon 2 (200x)
- Digimon 02 4 (200x) - Variant of Digimon 2.
- Digimon 02 5 (200x) - Variant of Digimon 2.
- Pokémon Pearl (200x) [3] - Reskin of Digimon 02 Jade.
- Digimon 3 Crystal - Variant of Digimon 2. Not to be confused with the Vast Fame game.
- Digimon 2 Crystal
- Digimon Ruby
- Digimon Sapphire
- Digimon Diamond - Variant of Digimon 2.
- Digimon Jade - Variant of Digimon 2.
- Digimon Pocket - A variant of Mewtwo Strikes Back.
- Harry Potter 3
- Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Based on the Mewtwo Strikes Back engine.
- Super Donkey Kong 5 - Color version of Super Donkey Kong 3.
- 數碼暴龍 03 - 馴獸師之王 (Digimon Tamers) - Card game based on Digimon. Only known to have been released in Chinese. It is unknown if this game is dumped or not.
Makon Mobile Studios (2011)[]
In 2011, three mobile games were published on the then-named Android Market (now named the Google Play Store) by an entity going by the name "Makon Mobile Studios". This was likely an alias for Makon Soft, as these mobile games resemble Famicom games that were developed by Sachen. These games were only available for download for a short period of time, and have since been delisted for reasons unknown. APKs for two of the three games have since been archived, though. The archived games in question display a logo that reads "Yowoo" when starting up, although it is unclear if this was meant to properly represent Makon Mobile Studios.
- Rolling Ball - A clone of Sachen's Famicom game Rockball (which in itself is a clone of the TurboGrafx-16 game Chew Man Fu). The first level uses the first level layout from the Rockball hack Lair's Secret, which reuses music from The Panda Prince and is believed to have been developed by ex-Sachen developers. The music that plays in levels is a MIDI rendition of the Thief music from RPG Maker 2000.
- Crazy Ball - Currently lost.
- Crazy Ball HD - Presumably an HD version of Crazy Ball. It plays as a game where a set number of balls of the same color have to be stacked vertically or horizontally for points. The difficulty setting chosen from the main menu determines the number of balls that need to be matched - Easy mode requires that three colored balls are matched, Normal mode requires that four are matched, and Hard mode requires that five are matched. Game is designed to be played in a vertical device orientation and is similar in gameplay to Dr. Mario and Columns.
Trivia[]
- Makon Soft was likely contracted to make the Game Boy Color release of Rocman X (aka Thunder Blast Man), a Famicom action platformer by Sachen.
- A series of Ka Sheng-published Makon Soft games were released in a rumble cartridge, similar to Pokémon Pinball and other licensed releases. Ka Sheng is the only unlicensed game publisher known to have done this. Games that used the rumble cartridge include Super Donkey Kong 5, Rockman X4, Super Mario Special 3 and Sonic Adventure 8, although all these games are available in non-rumble versions as well.
- Some rumble-based multicarts were also made, but seemingly all of which include atleast a Makon Soft game included in the games list
- Most of Makon Soft's Game Boy (Color) games use the maker code MK in their ROM header. Rockman 8 however uses the maker code 4b. Pokémon Jade, Pokémon Diamond, and Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back all use the maker code GC.
- Original Makon Soft releases often have an ID number printed on their sticker. Many of these use an ID number format of GANNN (where N is any integer). "Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal" was also released on cartridges with a similar ID number format.
- The original version of Pokémon Adventure, Pokémon Gold 2, was released in a cartridge with an ID number in the style of SCRNNN (where N is any integer).
- Some of the oldest ROM dumps of Makon Soft games appear to have the incorrect title screens.
- Makon Soft's Game Boy platforming engine shares many similarities to the platforming engine used in The Panda Prince.
Gallery[]
