Screenshots of the LCD handhelds needed for magazine article

Panzer Dragoon
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Greetings

My name is John Szczepaniak, a British freelance games journalist.

Some of you may, or may not, have read my articles for GamesTM (Metal Gear, Popful Mail, etc.) and Retro Gamer (Star Control, Famicom hardware, etc.).

Currently I am working on a fully comprehensive Panzer Dragoon history article for GamesTM magazine.
www.gamestm.co.uk

The article is finished, and is due in this coming Monday (the 13th), but I still have not found any decent screenshots of the following:

R-Zone Panzer Dragoon game (I found one, but its not very good)

Panzer Dragoon: The Imperial Challenge - Pocket Arcade handheld - 1997

Actually, I haven’t found ANYTHING for Sega’s Pocket Arcade version.

I emailed Sega, who were sadly unable to assist.
I then emailed the owner of the PD art website, and he said he didn’t have it, but recomended I try on here.

Would anyone be able to provide some high-resolution images which are unmarked, for my magazine article? I can’t promise you anything, but I will try to have you credited in the magazine for providing screenshots.

I need these before the end of Sunday really.

All I need is a single photo of each, head on. The game does not need to be running, but the overall shape needs to be clearly visible as a PD handheld.

Preferably not too big. I need these images no bigger than 800kb, since I will need to email them to my editor.

The most important, is the Pocket Arcade LCD game. Since I could at a push make do with the grainy R-Zone image I already have.

Can anyone even confirm that it is subtitled “The Imperial Challenge”?
These things are so poorly documented, it makes writing an accurate article difficult.

Please use discretion regarding this, I don’t want the project leaked and possible rival magazines trying to upstage things.

Any help is greatkly appreciated.

if you need to email me, please do so at:

megacdman(at)hotmail(dot)com

Please don’t make the images too big in size. 800kb is about my limit per image.

If you have any questions, or comments, feel free to voice them!

Best regards
John Szczepaniak

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Welcome :slight_smile:
The only images I know of are here :

moonapples.com/lagi/portables/FrameSet.htm

The first ones.

The guy who owns the site (and the one who got the images) posts as Lagi_webmaster on this forum.

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Salutations, Mr. Szczepaniak! I read your “Control & Conquer” articles in Retro Gamer, and I must say that I enjoyed them immensely - they were very informative and you also showed a lot of passion for the subject too (and you’re absolutely right… Star Control 2 - which I must confess to never having played until I read your piece and broke open the coverdisc - is amazing!). If I may just ask, were the editorial staff at Retro Gamer straightforward to deal with, and do they like to have simple concept-pitches first or complete drafts, and contact by e-mail or by post? Currently I’m looking to submit a few articles of my own for consideration by the magazine and if you could tell me what sort of pathetic, humiliating begging is most likely to win an indulgent smile from Martyn Carroll, or what pubs he frequents so I can butter him up with a few drinks, I’d be most appreciative. :wink:

Regarding your images problem - I’m quite sure that I remember one of our senior members, Lance Way, showing me a photograph of the Panzer Dragoon LCD game (still in its casing). You should send a Private Message his way.

I must confess to never having heard of the “Pocket Arcade” game before though…

Anyway, it’s always good to see Panzer Dragoon being shown to a wider audience. We’ve got plenty of resources and articles on most of the series (also details, screenshots and analysis of the pre-alpha version of the first game, back when it was 3D Shooting Game and had yet to evolve into Panzer Dragoon). I think I speak for all of us that we hope you find anything here useful for you in polishing off any rough edges or expanding on a point.

Best of luck with everything!

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Hi there, I’m sorry to hear that you’re having trouble finding this stuff. I tried to get hold of some images of the LCD games when I was putting together the product info pages for this site, and I had exactly the same problem; it seems that photos of these things are more or less impossible to come by. In fact, the only photo I’ve seen of the Pocket Arcade game is the following one, which I’ve scanned from one of the old Japanese companion books. Unfortunately, it’s very poor quality - it was printed very small and in black and white, so I doubt it’ll be of any use:

panzerdragoon.net/lance/pocket_arcade_02.jpg

I should confess that I’m a bit of a collector of Panzer Dragoon stuff, and from what I’ve gathered, the Pocket Arcade game is easily one of the hardest bits of merchandise to find; I’ve never come across a photo of it on a website and never seen it appear on eBay, which makes it quite an exception. Judging by that photo though, the game appears to have the same background image as the R-Zone game, so it could simply be a different edition of the same game; both were made by Tiger, and published around the same time period. (From what I’ve gathered, the R-Zone was an LCD handheld that could have different game cartridges plugged into it, whereas a Pocket Arcade game was an all-in-one LCD handheld game; it seems plausible that they released the same game in those two different formats.)

While I can’t confirm if it’s definitely called “Panzer Dragoon: The Imperial Challenge” or not, I strongly suspect that it’s only called “Panzer Dragoon”. Although I’ve seen it referred to on some message boards as “The Imperial Challenge”, it only has the words “Panzer Dragoon” on the casing, and the other Sega Pocket Arcade games (like Virtua Cop and NiGHTS) don’t have subtitles as far as I know.

For reference, the best images of the R-Zone game that I’ve seen are up on these sites, though it doesn’t look like any of them are quite what you’re after either:

And that’s pretty much all I found, unfortunately; sorry I couldn’t be of more help, but good luck with the article.

Hmm, I’m not quite sure where that would have come from; I think it might have been an old eBay auction image, though I don’t even seem to have it on my hard-drive anymore…

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Aha! The plot thickens.

Thanks for all the info. Yes, I spoke to Lagi Webmaster, who recomended this place. :slight_smile:

I thought that the “Nights” screenshot was a mislabelling! But now it throws things into confusion slightly. So it appears that they are in fact the same game, the R-Zone and Pocket Arcade game?

I will have to change my writing accordingly.

Thanks for the B/W screen, thats great. Ill send it along, they may, or may not, use it.

What really complicates things, is that I read on some now defunct website, that the Pokcet Arcade had a casing modelled on the actual PD designs. Heres the text:

[quote]Available here in the U.S., it is another portable gaming machine with the game Panzer Dragoon. This one, unlike the R-Zone’s, is not cartridge based, and the exterior has been designed even to have the “look” of the game. (MSRP: around $18 to $25)
[/quote]

Are there perhaps 3 different LCD games?

I’ll have to be ambiguous about things.

Can anyone give me accurate dates for those things? I have 1995 and 1997. I was planning a full timeline, but now Im nervous about doing so. I would hate to have a mistake go into print.

Unfortunately, I am also limited to only 4 pages to cover the entire series, thats 7+ games, plus anything unusual regarding its history etc. I’d love to write a 12 page epic on it, filled with massive amounts of artwork, but alas I cannot. This means that there will inevitably be things missed out. Such as the pre-alpha version of the game.

Just to clarify a few facts:

  • Saga began development at the same time as Zwei right? I found this bit of info off sega’s own personal history. Its plausible, since it explains why Zwei can recognise the save data from Saga, despite being released 2 years prior.

  • Also, one of the team members died during the development of Saga, right?

I also touched upon Moebius’ artwork, and heavily critise the West for giving us CG covers. (I love good cover art, and try to lambast companies in every article of mine for butchering it :wink: )

My editor is taking care of the Saturn screenshots, so Im ok on that front.

I hope you guys like it, but Im guessing it may be a little “lite” for such serious fans as yourselves. I doubt it will cover any new ground with regards to information, though you may like how I describe the sublime narrative.

If anyone can shed more light or images on these LCD games, please do so! The world needs to know.

As for writing for Retro Gamer, wow, many people have asked me that. I kind of just fell into it tbh. They do work around the concept of lots of freelancers though, so you’re in a good position. My first recomendation is join their forums, get a lay of the land.

I actually sent off a printed version of articles I wrote for another magazine, to give them an idea of what my writing was like, then emailed Martyn several times regarding my SC idea. He liked it and asked me to finish it and send it off. I normally post everything off via CD, since the image file sizes are so big.

My advice is come up with a dynamite idea for an article. There is an archive somewhere of previous articles in RG, which you can find on the forum somewhere, to make sure you don’t do anything already covered.

Then either pitch it to Martyn via email, perhaps with a short section already written for it, say the first 500 words, or you could be brave and send the whole thing completed in the post burned onto CD. Along with screenshots etc. It’s roughly 700 words per page, images in BMP format preferably to ensure high quality. I’m sure having read it you know the kind of layout and style they use, intro paragraph etc.

Basically, if its good, well written and covers an interesting subject, they should be interested.

Be warned though, that due to his workload, Martyn doesn’t always reply right away.

Goodluck! If you have any further questions, PM me here, or email me at the address provided in my previous post. I check it semi-regularly, so will definetly get back to you.

cheers for all the help so far. Im going to work on this today and over the weekend, and have it all done to send off on Monday.

Best regards
John

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It looks that way, though to be on the safe side it probably would be best to be ambiguous. I don’t think I’ve come across a confirmed image of the R-Zone game “in action”, so theoretically it could be a different game that just uses the same fixed background image as the Pocket Arcade game. (Unless you’ve found a screenshot that’s definitely of the R-Zone game, and it matches up with what’s shown in that black-and-white scan, of course.)

As for there being more than two LCD games, I’d say that it’s possible, but that black and white image seems to definitely be the “Pocket Arcade” game. From what I can tell, all of the Sega / Tiger Pocket Arcade games would have had that same black casing - vidgame.net’s Pocket Arcade page shows another one or two of them, which appear to be identical on that front.

I can’t be of much help with accurate dates I’m afraid, as I’ve seen quite a few quoted (1995 to 1997 seems to be the range for the LCD games, but the year for each one seems to differ from source to source). If you’re in doubt, I’d probably recommend leaving dates and exact details out as far as those games are concerned; they’re essentially merchandise items rather than full games, so it shouldn’t hurt your article to be vague about them, especially with the four-page limit.

[quote=“Szczepaniak”]Just to clarify a few facts:

  • Saga began development at the same time as Zwei right? I found this bit of info off sega’s own personal history. Its plausible, since it explains why Zwei can recognise the save data from Saga, despite being released 2 years prior.[/quote]

I’ve got the impression that this is true. For one thing, an old magazine interview with Team Andromeda from the time of Zwei was posted here a while back, and it featured this question:

Interviewer [MAXIMUM magazine]: “Can you tell us anything about the rumoured Panzer Dragoon RPG?”

Team Andromeda: “We haven’t heard anything about it. Can you tell us something about it?”

…which, seeing as the RPG came out under two years later, must have been a bit of a fib.

I’ve read that on Sega of America’s official site too, but nowhere else - I’ve no idea who it would have been, though I expect it’s true.

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Thank you for the advice, Mr. Szczepaniak, it’s much appreciated.

Gamespot’s own article on the history of the Panzer Dragoon series also ratifies the fact that Saga was produced parallel to Zwei. see here: gamespot.com/gamespot/featur … oon/4.html

“As mentioned, development on Panzer Dragoon Saga actually started at roughly the same time as the development of its predecessor, Panzer Dragoon Zwei in 1996.”

That should settle it! :anjou_happy:

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the Pocket Arcade game is easily one of the hardest bits of merchandise to find<<

It was such a crappy toy though- I either threw mine out or buried it in the attic- I doubt it will show up before the article needs to be printed, but it really was a dud. They were practtally giving them away 5 years ago on clearance at toy stores here …

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Oh, I wasn’t implying that it’d be worth trying to find one - I’m taking it for granted that no-one bothers to post details of these things online / tries to sell these things on auction sites because they’re so thoroughly bad. :slight_smile: The reason I know this much about the subject is because I was trying to gather enough info to finish off TWotA’s PD merchandise pages (which are still in a not-100%-done state).