Changes: Titenic

Revision as of 22:07, 17 December 2016

Titenic is a Famicom beat 'em up by Hummer Team and is based off of the 1997 film Titanic. The game was first known to be on an ABAB 3-in-1 multicart and was later found on a 15-in-1 separated into two separate games. It is the same game as Harry's Legend, but it was made before it. Harry's Legend is the more common version due to Titenic's rarity, but this game has received more attention due to its gameplay involving the movie.

Overview

The game itself is 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up where the levels all take place inside the ship itself. As Jack, you play on the levels before the ship crashes and as Rose you play on the levels during the ship's sinking. Rose's second level is slightly different; you have to escape each room you enter before a timer runs out.

The A button is to jump, while B is to attack. Both characters have a 2-hit combo which on the second hit, it causes a third attack to come out and it knocks the enemy down. While crouching, holding down the B button punches, and A kicks. In the air, you can attack with B. Both have two special attacks, one done by pressing A and B while another is done by pressing up and then down. Jack has a charging elbow attack and a charging uppercut while Rose does a high kick and an axe attack that automatically knocks the opponent down. Rose's axe attack is notably useful when taking out rats as her crouch kick hits above them.

You have a lifebar and start off with 5 lives. Both special attacks will take some health away if they make contact with an enemy. You can also lose health if your head is in the water. You can replenish it with a wine bottle (Heals half of your max health) or the lobster (Heals all your health). Losing all your health makes you lose a life.

Enemies

There are two types of enemies in the game: animal enemies and human enemies. The animal enemies take one hit to kill and hurt you upon touching them. The animal enemies are rats, bats, snakes, octopi and chickens (Though only one chicken appeared in the game). There's also a rescue tube that bounces around and a fish with a misplaced hitbox that repeatedly jumps out of the water.

The human enemies have their own attacks and resemble people that would be on the ship. These are chefs, waitresses that toss their plates at you, an old lady with a rifle (Who only appears once), a guy with a big gun (Who also only appears once), and sailors. With the exception of the waitress, the enemies all appear to be from The Mask for the SNES although some of them have been edited.

TitenicGameplay2 — Playing as Rose, fighting the fat man boss.

The bosses are a captain with a knife (Who later appears as a normal enemy), a fat rich man with a pistol and a large man who also has a pistol and has a dashing attack (He appears a total of three times in the game, each time with different colors and AI). One thing notable is that two of the encounters with the large man is that it is possible to knock him off the ship and the game would consider him defeated. This is crucial for the final encounter as it is hard to defeat him alone with just attacking him.

History

In an interview with Hummer Cheng, Titenic was originally developed much earlier and was supposed to be published by NT. ^[1] However, during this point the market for Famicom games in Taiwan was at a decline and NT told them they had no interest in publishing original games anymore. This prevented Titenic from having a single cart release at the time and also from being finished. After leaving NT, Hummer Team would have disbanded and either Hummer Cheng and/or Chris Ho would modify Titenic into Harry's Legend and sold it to others. (It is possible one of these companies might have be Trump Grand Manufacturing Co. since they have used it for their multicarts as well as other Hummer Technology games)

In 2003, ABAB Soft would be established by Handel Liao which published several multicarts containing Hummer Team's games. Their site at the time had mockup screenshots of their multicarts and one of them had Titenic while the other had Harry's Legend. ^[2] However, due to the rarity of the carts, the screenshots on the site mainly being mockups and ABAB Soft seemingly disappearing, it is unknown if both multicarts were ever released. Sometime around in 2005, a cart known as the Super New Year Cart 15-in-1 would be officially published and distributed by an unknown publisher (Although it is highly possible it was either ABAB Soft or Zechess) and was the first cart discovered that contained Titenic. On this cart you could start from either Jack's levels (By selecting the fifth game on the list, "Hacker") or Rose's levels (By selecting the sixth game, "Heroine"). In 2005/2006, Hummer Technology developed the ZDog and Zechess published it. This also contained Titenic but with its levels split up, with each one pretending to be a minigame.

Credits

This is the last Famicom game from Hummer Team to actually feature credits. It shows that by the time Titenic was in the work, most of the original members were already gone.

Picture by: Rebecca, Carroll
Program by: Hummer CHENG, Chris
Music by: Hummer CHENG

Trivia

The misspelling of the title for this game appears to be done on purpose, likely to avoid trademark infringement; uncompiled code in the Super New Year Cart 15-in-1 refers to the game as "TITANIC".
There is a debug mode in the game you can access by hitting A on the 2P controller. When using the debug, you can not scroll the screen. Up and Down (2P) raises/lowers the water levels. Pressing A again will summon Jack/Rose. Pressing Left and Right, will summon enemies and bosses. Start on the second controller brings up the ending screen.
- In the ZDog version, the debug menu is inaccessible. In Harry's Legend, it still exists but you can not access the ending.
The crouch attacks seem a bit buggy; it is possible to cancel almost all of your animations when crouching. Because of this, it is possible to prevent yourself from dying by using the crouch attack to cancel the death animation. This, combined with the debug menu and various unused data, suggests that Titenic is actually unfinished.
- In the ZDog version, this control issue seems to be fixed. The issue is also not present in Harry's Legend.
It is possible to kick enemies and even bosses into the water, which automatically kills them. This is essential on the last boss fight because he is almost impossible to defeat otherwise. If you happen to get stuck on the right of the screen he will keep on using the same attack and you will sometimes end up falling into the water.
One of the enemies is reused in War, another game from Hummer Team which is dated 1999.
Jack's fighting stance resembles Kyo Kusanagi's from King of Fighters and Rose's resembles Athena Asamiya's. Also, Jack's "block" (the stance he does when a boss enters) appears to be Iori Yagami's blocking stance. Hummer Team did develop a King of Fighters 96 NES port which would explain the connection. Interesting enough, both Kyo and Athena were cut from the official release of that port.
The fish enemy in this game seems to be an edited version of the fish that Chuck throws up from Hummer Team's Earthworm Jim 3.
In the ROM, there is a list of object names referring to not only the playable characters and enemies in Titenic but also what appears to be enemies and items from Tenchi o Kurau 2: Sekiheki no Tatakai. (Also known as Warriors of Fate outside of Japan.) The lobster in Titenic also looks similar to the one found in Tenchi o Kurau 2. This might imply Titenic originally started out as a port of this game and then got revamped or Hummer Team might have reused assets from an unfinished port they did.
- Despite the lobster having a name on the object list, it does not refer to the lobster found in Titenic itself.
A popular video by JonTron has him playing the game helping popularize it.
- A remix of the video by Schmoyoho turns it into a song along with other JonTron videos

Harry's Legend

Harry's Legend is a hack of Titenic based on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Likely the novel, as the movie came out in 2001) and was made by Hummer Technology. There are two different versions of this game; one with a Chinese title screen, and one with an English title screen. Both versions, however, use English in their cutscenes. This game is a lot more known due to being released on more multicarts and on a few single carts.

Overview

Harry Potter (Unl) -p1--!- 001 — Gameplay of Harry's Legend. Note the Dudley-like enemy

This game has changed quite a bit compared to Titenic. Harry only has a kick attack that will randomly knock an enemy over. He also lacks the ability to attack while in mid-air. One special attack (A+B) is where he fires a broom out of his hand that is available as of Level 2. The other one (Up, Down) is a magic attack that's stronger but a little slower and is available as of Level 3. Other then that, the controls are the same.

There are 5 levels in Harry's Legend and you can choose one from the stage select. Most of the graphics and some level layouts are reused from Titenic. Level 2 and Level 3 appear to use some new graphics. Regardless of the stage you choose, you still go through all of them

The majority of the animal enemies come back (There is a new enemy which is simply a green rat that makes a different noise upon dying). The human enemies are different with a fat kid (Possibly Dudley,) a fat man (Edited off of the fat man boss from Titenic, could resemble Mr. Dursley,) a punk with long hair (Edited off of a gunner enemy,) an old woman (An edit of the old woman with the rifle from Titenic) and a giant chess piece.

Unlike Titenic, the human enemies here cause damage upon touching them and they do not have their own specific attacks. There's also a purple flame later that floats around and can not be killed.

The boss is a man with two faces walking backwards (Possibly Voldemort). He gets knocked back on every hit and appears in every level.

The fifth level starts with a weird volleyball game (Possibly based off Quidditch) where Harry takes damage if he concedes a goal or the enemy (The old lady) takes damage if the ball gets into her goal. Also there's a ghost flying at the top which can knock the ball around. After beating the game, there is a simple screen with "Gryffindor" and fireworks that explode into "Win."

Trivia

HarryPotterTWCover — Taiwanese cover of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

The title screen is directly based on the Taiwanese cover of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. This was later edited slightly for the English version.
The demos do not use Harry's jumping or hitting sounds, yet everything else is in place. This is due to the fact sounds are played differently from Harry's actions. Also, the demos seem strange since Harry is seen kicking and jumping at random while also getting hit by the enemies due to the fact that the AI was not modified from Titenic.
The upper right-hand corner of the HUD normally displays "Harry Potter", though some multicarts change the text to "Harry's Legend". The tiles also have a random "BO" which could have been for his name (Harry Botter), either to avoid copyright infringement, or simply a mistake because his name is 哈利波特 (Ha Li Bo Te) in Chinese.
On Level 2, it is possible to knock the enemies and Voldemort himself into the water just like the large man boss in Titenic. However, if you jump on the ice platform and let Voldemort fall in, you will also fall into the water as well as Harry jumps up and down (the ice platform will not be under his feet after the first jump).
A title hack of this game, called "Hally Poter: Goblet of Fire", appears on some OneStation cartridges. ^[3]
The 4-in-1 (FK23C8079) multicart has a variant of Harry's Legend where not only does the HUD replace "Harry Potter" with "Harry's Legend", but the level select is removed and it plays an entirely different track when Voldemort appears.
The music played on the select screen and Level 3 sounds similar to a track in Ture MK3.
Harry appears on the front of the BootlegGames Wiki.

Subpages

Unused Stuff

Since Titenic seems to be unfinished, it's bound to have a lot of unused stuff.

Gallery

References

[1] ttp://s4.zetaboards.com/PGC_Forums/single/?p=8120193&t=9613847

[2] ttp://web.archive.org/web/20050205212309/http://ababsoft.com/index.html

[3] ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE9sNQJ7SGA

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 [[Category:Based on movies]]
 [[Category:Hummer Team]]
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