Titenic is a Famicom/NES beat 'em up by Hummer Team and is based on the 1997 film Titanic. The game was first known to appear on an ABAB 3-in-1 multicart, however, the first documented release of it was on Super New Year Cart 15-in-1, where it was separated into two different menu items, those being Hacker and Heroine.
Overview
Gameplay as Jack.
The game is a 2D sidescrolling beat 'em up set on RMS Titanic. Both playable characters, Jack and Rose, have their own sets of levels, before and after the ship crashed into the iceberg, respectively. The gameplay doesn't differ much for either character, except for a couple of levels where Rose has to escape a flooded room before she drowns or the timer runs out.
The A button jumps and the B button attacks. Both Jack and Rose have a three-hit combo, which knocks the enemy down. While crouching, both can punch with A and kick with B. The B button also makes them attack while they're in the air. In addition to that, both characters have two special attacks each, performed by either pressing A+B together, or by pressing Up, then Down: Jack does a charging elbow attack and a charging uppercut; Rose has a scissor kick and an axe swing (which, unlike her crouching attacks, can hit small enemies, such as rats). Special attacks drain a small portion of health, and can't be performed when there's no health to take away from.
Wine bottles and lobsters serve as small and large health pickups respectively, and are the only pickups in Titenic, aside from extra lives.
Enemies
Generally, the animal enemies, such as octopi, bats, rats, snakes and chicken, all have pre-determined behavior, inflict damage on contact with them and can be defeated in one hit. The fish jumping out of the water, however, are unkillable. Similarly, there's a rescue tube bouncing around.
The rest of the enemy roster is the ship's crew and, occasionally, passengers. All of them, excluding the waitress, were taken from The Mask on SNES and modified in some way.
Playing as Rose, fighting the fat man boss.
The bosses include a muscular sailor weilding a knife (who later appears as a regular enemy), a fat man wearing a tuxedo and sporing a pistol, and a lean rich man - supposedly Cal, the movie's original antagonist - who also appears to have a pistol, alongside the dashing attack. Cal must be fought three times throughout the playthrough, each time he appears in a different color and with harder AI. While it's possible to defeat Cal with regular attacks, he can be forced to run off the ship - that also counts as completing the stage.
History
According to an interview with Hummer Cheng, Titenic was originally developed much earlier than it was released, and was supposed to be published by NT. [1] However, at that 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 a supplier by the name of IC通路公司 (Silicon Application Corp.) It was originally presumed that Trump Grand Manufacturing Co. had the direct rights to Harry's Legend in the past, although Hummer Cheng currently has trouble recalling any experience with the company.
In 2003, ABAB Soft would be established by Handel Liao, who published several multicarts with 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] Sometime around in 2005, a cart known as the Super New Year Cart 15-in-1 would be officially published and distributed by 鴻景 (Hong Jing) and was the first known cart to haveTitenic on it. Here, the game could be accessed from one of two menu items: Hacker, which covers Jack's levels, and Heroine, which covers Rose's; completing both parts one-by-one is required to see the credits. Titenic would mark its' second official release on ZDog - a plug and play console made by Zechess and Hummer Technology - where it was split into several minigames, each featuring a small chunk of levels from the original.
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 Super New Year Cart 15-in-1 version disables the title screen and the cutscenes, possibly to remove the Titenic references. [3] (as the game goes under different names on the menu)
- Another game on the cart, Rings, shared a similar fate. The game was supposed to have a title screen but was removed to get rid of the Lord of the Rings reference. However, unlike Titenic the graphics for it were also removed.
- 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 exploit appears to be fixed. It's also not present in Harry's Legend.
- One of the enemies is reused in War, another game from Hummer Team which is dated 1999.
- Many of Jack's and Rose's sprites resemble Kyo Kusanagi's and Athena Asamiya's from The King of Fighters respectively. 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 The 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.
- For a short period of time,Titenic gathered some attention on the Internet, after the game was featured in a video by JonTron.
Harry's Legend
Harry's Legend is a modification of Titenic based on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (most likely the novel, as the movie came out in 2001) and was made by Hummer Technology, a successor of Hummer Team. Two versions of the game were originally released, both with title screens in English and Chinese - however, both also feature cutscenes written entirely in English. Harry's Legend has become an object of multiple unofficial rereleases, appearing on both multicarts and single game cartridges.
Overview
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Gameplay of Harry's Legend. Note the Dudley-like enemy.
In comparison to Titenic, the gameplay has been somewhat dumbed down. Harry Potter, the only playable character, has got only three non-special attacks: non-comboable standing kick, crouching punch and crouching kick - which means he can't attack while in the air. The inputs for both special attacks remain the same, however, one of them, the broom projectile, isn't available until level two, while the second, the sparkling magic projectile, is only usable since level three.
There are five levels present in Harry's Legend, all of which can be chosen right after the title screen, although all of them have to be completed in order to see the ending. The majority of level layouts have been brought over from Titenic with a few differences in graphics and item placements.
In addition to that, most of the enemies make a return from Titenic, albeit none of them do proper attacks, going for contact damage instead. A few of them, like the animals, don't sport any changes whatsoever, while the human enemies were edited to not handle guns. The only all-new enemies in Harry's Legend are a giant chess piece and an indestructible floating flame. Even though a book-holding ghost also appears in level five, he can't do any damage to Harry normally, and is only here to bounce off the ball.
Each stage ends with a boss - possibly based on professor Quirrel and Voldemort - who has two faces and is constanly walking backwards. Strangely, his death animation always has him fall right down into water, even if it doesn't make sense from the stage's design.
The first segment of stage five, At School, features a volleyball minigame, in which Harry plays against an old lady, and either takes damage by letting the ball into his goal, or does damage to the lady if it gets into her goal.
Trivia
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 that 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". In the ROM, there are unused tiles for the HUD that have "BO". This could have been for his name (Harry Botter), either to avoid copyright infringement, or simply a mistake, as his name is 哈利波特 (Ha Li Bo Te) in Chinese. The Game Genie code XIYXOX will replace Harry Potter's name with "Harry Botter".
- On level two, it is possible to knock 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 One Station cartridges. [4]
- 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 variation of Rose's theme, as heard in stage three, appears neither during Titenic's normal gameplay, nor in its' restored state, with all the cutscenes present.
- Harry appears on the front of the BootlegGames Wiki.
Subpages
| Harry's Legend Unused Stuff
Harry's Legend contains a bunch of unused stuff, many of it being leftovers from Titenic. |
Gallery
References
| List of games by ABAB Soft |
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Dance Y2K · Dragon Running · Harry's Legend · Mortal Kombat 4 · Panda Adventure · Ping Pong · Rings · Sanguo Chunqiu: Sichuan Sheng · Space Shuttle Exploration · Titenic · War · War of Strike Mouse |