Hi,
The article mentioned the extended memory size of the cartridge indeed.
If the legend is true, Paul Cuisset showed the game to Sega and they were surprised because Delphine had created their own 24 mega-bits cartridge (which didn't exist at that time, only 16 existed).
Yes that's true
. I do not remember the exact figures but we developped that special test cartridge because it didn't exist.
In fact I first modified an existing SEGA test cartridge. As a coincidence, I recently moved my collection of consoles, micro computers and old stuff back where I live. And preparing the parcels, I found those cartridges that I didn't even recall I had some copies !
As a worldwide exclusivity, I'm proud to present to the Dragon's Lair Fans audience their unique pictures
!
This is the original SEGA cartridge. As far as the silk screen printing shows, it would be an 8 megabits sized cartridge.
On the back we can see the modification I did to expand its capacity.
And now, here is the cartridge I developped during my early days at Delphine :
This one is a 16 or 32 megabits cartridge.
As you can see, I even have a blank PCB without its components !
We manufactured a small serie (in fact we ask a PCB company to burn the pcbs, and I assembled the components by myself
).
The funny things is even years later, we sold a few copies of this cartridge to Japanese companies !
(as far as I remember, it was Funsoft : we were in contact with them because they did the adaptation of Flashback for the Japanese market !).
It was quite a gamble and it paid off because as Sega liked the game, they agreed to produce that special cartridge.
I do not remember precisely, but I would say that the test cartridge didn't exist, and that's why we built it by ourselves. Regarding the final consumer cartridge, I believe this size already existed for other games (it was just a question of manufacturing cost
). But that's true that SEGA was impressed that a small French company made their own test cartridge
.
See you
