Panda Adventure

Panda Adventure
Title screen.
Publisher	RAMAR Int' Co. (unreleased?), ABAB Soft (CB-4034 multicart), Trump Grand (Power Joy multicarts)
Developer	Hummer Team
Console	Famicom
Date	Early 2000's(?)
Sound engine	Hummer Sound Engine
Alternate names/hacks	Rings Adventure Beachhead Jungle War Pink Jelly

Panda Adventure is an unlicensed platform game for the Famicom. This game, along with Space Shuttle Exploration, were originally developed by Hummer Team for Rinco according to Hummer Cheng, but it is currently unknown as to where and how it was released. Its earliest known release was by ABAB Soft on the 4-in-1 Super Cool Boy (CB-4034) multicart.

Overview

A gameplay screenshot.

Panda Adventure is a simple single-screen platformer. You control a panda which must make its way from one side of the screen to the other.

Enemies include birds (which resemble, but are not completely identical to, the ones in Earthworm Jim 3, and are very hard to kill) and various ground-based enemies which can be defeated by jumping on them. Some screens include a pit which must be jumped over, sometimes with the assistance of a moving platform.

There are four different types of level, but the game does not appear to have any boss or ending, and just loops when you complete all the levels.

The game uses Hummer Team's sound engine and has two music tracks (plus a short Game Over tune), one of which is based on the same tune as a track from Sachen's World of Card Games, although it is unknown if Sachen's game is the original source. However, it is much simpler than many of Hummer Team's previous games.

Rings

Rings
4-in-1 with Rings' title screen from ABAB Soft's (now defunct) website.
Publisher	ABAB Soft, 鴻景 (Hong Jing)
Developer	Hummer Team
Console	Famicom
Date	Early 2000's
Sound engine	Hummer Sound Engine
Alternate names/hacks	Pink Jelly, goes under other various names on the Super New Year Cart 15-in-1.

Rings is a variant of Panda Adventure by Hummer Team that is based on Lord of the Rings. Its only known release is on the Super New Year Cart 15-in-1 under different names (Gorge, Peace Sea, The Bridge, Green Evil) as well as its graphical variant Pink Jelly, but it has also appeared on ABAB Soft's website as a multicart. The name was derived from uncompiled source code found within Super New Year Cart 15-in-1's ROM.

Overview

Although the gameplay has remained the same, one notable thing is that a character select is added at the start of the game, which allows the player to choose between 4 characters who look similar to Frodo, Legolas, Gandalf and Arwen. All four characters control identically in-game. Almost all the environments for the levels are near identical to Panda Adventure but are now recolored, and the original bamboo environment from Panda Adventure is now a cave using graphics from Donkey Kong Country 4. The enemies have also changed; the bobcat and bird enemies were completely rehauled graphically while the fox has been recolored. The game also has new music, complete with a version of the Donkey Kong Country 4 fanfare playing every time the player reaches the end of the screen.

Subpages

Unused Stuff Both Panda Adventure and Rings have their share of unused stuff!

Gallery

The CB-4034 Super Cool Boy 4 in 1 multicart, which includes Panda Adventure.

The Power Joy Navigator cartridge, another multicart that has Panda Adventure on it.

The Super New Year Cart 15 in 1 multicart, which includes Rings and Pink Jelly.

Trivia

• Panda Adventure, along with Space Shuttle Exploration, contain an unused Rinco logo in their CHR data, identical to the one used in The Dragon. Panda Adventure also contains graphics for a font from The Dragon, which is used to display the "PAUSE" text.
• A 5-in-1 multicart included with Rinco Famiclones sold in the middle East (i.e., the Talkman RS-7600) lists the games "Space Shuttle" and "Panda". While not confirmed to be the case, these might be referring to the Hummer Team games Space Shuttle Exploration and Panda Adventure, which if true and combined with the unused Rinco graphics present in both games, would confirm that both games were originally developed for and released by Rinco.
• Both Panda Adventure and Space Shuttle Exploration are on the 60 in 1 multicart provided with the Power Joy Supermax by Trump Grand, along with two other games created by Hummer Team, War of Strike Mouse and Dragon Running. Panda Adventure has a different colored title screen and background on this cart.
  • Panda Adventure can also be found on the D-CAT8/Vangard GameCore handheld. Another ABAB Soft game, Space Shuttle Exploration, is included in a game list provided by the manufacturers, but it was replaced in the released version.
• Some sand graphics in the game are taken from Aladdin.
• Two of the panda heads on the title screen look visually similar to Genma Saotome from Ranma 1/2.
• The ROM data of Panda Adventure data contains a lot of unused code from various titles; some names appear in there such as Titenic, ABAB, Rinco, Shuttle, and other generic folder names. There's also a lot of uncompiled code mainly related to Space Shuttle Exploration and Panda Adventure.
• A variant of this game also appears on the Super New Year Cart 15-in-1 called Pink Jelly. This variant removes the select screen and has the player control the titular Pink Jelly, a pink cat who has a striking resemblance to Tails from Sonic The Hedgehog 2. She would later reappear in mini-games on the Samuri and ZDog plug & play consoles released in 2006, which contain software developed by Hummer Team (then operating under the name Hummer Technology).
• The second theme that plays in this game appears to be a cover of the song that plays in-between stages in the Game Boy game Crayon Shin-Chan 4: Ora no Itazura Daihenshin (the same game that Super Mario 4 is a hack of).