Okay folks, this is a long one and a bit different than my usual fare:
So the other day I asked for help o Twitter on how to dump a Mega Drive game and you all helped me.
I asked because, I recently contacted Russian Videogame Comrade , a Russian Retro Gaming Youtuber with one purpose in mind: Tracking down and dumping X-men vs. Street Fighter for the Genesis.
For those those who don’t know, there currently exists a Super Nintendo bootleg of X-men vs. Street Fighter which I’ve already reviewed on my channel and it’s also believed that there also exists a Sega Genesis version out there that is currently undumped.
It’s believed that a Sega version exists because of a couple of youtube videos from a russian channel that show raw gameplay footage of the sega version running on real hardware.
So I contacted Russian Video Comrade, as a native Russian, he could provide insight and maybe even track down a copy with help from other people from the Russian retro gaming scene. I want to make it clear that in all of this, he did all the legwork, I merely came up with the idea.
Turns out that when these videos were dumped, they made waves in the Russian retro gaming scene and people have been trying to track down a copy for a while.
The person who made the videos has a youtube page and when fellow russians tried to contact him to share the PCB, take photos of the cart and dump the rom.
He only linked to the videos that are already on Youtube and sent a few blurry pictures of the PCB that were unusable before eventually ceasing all contact.
because of this, the current belief in the Russian retro gaming scene is that this is an elaborate hoax.
We can’t say with 100% certainty, but all of this leads us to believe that X-men vs. Street Fighter for the Sega Genesis does NOT exist.
I also want to make it clear that this was a well made hoax. For one thing, the videos use sound effects and music from other bootlegs. Recycling music and sound effects is something bootleg developers do very often.
Additonally, to me at least, the sega version of X-Men vs. Street Fighter seemed to be using the same engine as Top Fighter 2000, a bootleg game I already reviewed.
So, while it is sad that it seems that the game does not exist, we do have at least some closure.
Once again, I want to thank Russian Videogame Comrade for his hard work and please, go subscribe to this YT channel