You'd be forgiven for not knowing anything about Sega AI Computer, a system released by the company in 1986. There's very little information about the platform online, but that has just changed overnight thanks to the amazing efforts of Sega super fan Omar Cornut and his team of collaborators at SMS Power.
Cornut – who worked on Lizardcube's Wonder Boy: Dragon's Trap remake – has just made public a vast array of data and information relating to the computer, including system ROMs, game dumps, photographs and more. An early MAME driver has also been released, which finally allows the Sega AI to be emulated.
"The majority of these software titles had zero information about them on the internet prior to us publishing them: no screenshots, no photos or scans of actual software," says Cornut.
"Considering the elusive nature of this machine, it is possible that some games have never been seen or completed by anyone outside of their original development teams. We hope that this release will be interesting to obscure game and computer historians and hobbyists alike. We will further amend it over time by releasing extra scans, hopefully improving emulation and publishing/discovering new information."
You can check out the entire post here.
[source smspower.org, via twitter.com]
Comments 6
All I can say is thank god the Famicom happened.
holy smokes! this is like the missing link between the Sc-3000 and the Pico. it's almost like the SC-3000's version of the MSX2, with the same VDP and everything but already a 16-bit CPU. i cannot wait until this is fully implemented in MAME
Let’s get this on the list! https://www.timeextension.com/guides/best-sega-console-every-sega-system-ranked-by-you
@Poodlestargenerica What does the Famicom have to do with this? It was already out at least three years earlier, and it was not a console designed for an educational market.
There were a couple attempts to make third-party education-based software and hardware on the Famicom but they were both extremely rare.
@KingMike I know it was already out, as was the master system, and every time they tried to make crap like this thing, it failed because people had played Mario and knew what games could be.
@Poodlestargenerica Yeah, but the main thing is it was probably the first to specifically focus on educational software, which is something the industry kind of a had a hard time making compelling, outside of a few examples.
Still though, nearly a decade later Sega would try again with the Pico, which managed to stick around in Japan. I see this was trying to use touch screens... in 1986.
Funny, I'd say the Pico was thinking like the Wii U... if the Wii U GamePad touch screen was made of paper.
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