Does anyone know anything about Whirlwind Manu and Kaiser? I had assumed that Whirlwind Manu was responsible for FDS ports to cart, with the exception of Zanac, but today I saw a Kaiser copyright on an Akumajou Dracula II port, which I had thought was ported by Whirlwind Manu. I've become confused. :-\
probably one of them just pirated the other's port. or maybe they both ported it without knowing the other already had. if they are definitely both the same port, though, i'd imagine kaiser did it, since their copyright is on it, then whirlwind removed it (unless the whirlwind version still has the konami copyright, then its probably the other way around)
kaiser seemed to be more original in their piracy, though, compared to whirlwind - i've seen stuff like a fairly extensive hack of nintendo's mahjong with their name on it, as well as a couple of fds ports, and what must have been one of the earliest multicarts. they even survived long enough to make a slide puzzle game for the snes in 1994.
I tend to agree with the notion that these pirate companies overlapped quite a bit, from development to distribution. We'll probably never know for sure. I've known Whirlwind Manu to be much more active -- financially viable -- than Kaiser, from the sheer number of Whirlwind carts I see. I'm curious who made the large carts, such as the one that hold SMB2j. That unidentified company seems to have ported some games before Kaiser and Whirlwind.
BTW: That Kaiser-copyrighted AKII has "Manu" on the label. Maybe Kaiser ported and Whirlwind published.
yeah, i'd agree that whirlwind manu were quite a large operation, but they probably didn't make all the carts you see with their name on them - i've seen a few where its partly cut off or obscured, which would indicate to me that they're pirate copies of whirlwind manu's own pirate carts, and presumably they wouldn't be the only ones - there are so many carts bearing that name in so many different styles and shapes that they surely can't have all come from the same company. but they must have been quite ubiquitous at some point to have been so widely copied, at least.
as for that one particular cart you have.. maybe someone ripped off kaiser's port and whirlwind manu's label for the same game? i can't imagine whirlwind would just put "manu" on the label, they're never usually shy about including their full name. likewise with kaiser.
Ah, yes...the large SMB2j cart is made by Lee Yin, another company that ported games from FDS.
Well, I've confirmed that Kaiser stole the AKII port from Whirlwind Manu. I found a Whirlwind Manu cart with the full company name on the label and a Konami copyright. So, seems Kaiser just stole stuff. I think Whirlwind Manu and Lee Yin both ported disk games. I have a Kaiser Zanac cart, but I've seen what appears to be a Lee Yin Zanac (large cart). I'd assume Kaiser stole the Zanac port as well.
Hate to bump an old post, but curious to hear if there have been any more discoveries about Whirlwind Manu and Kaiser.
I recently found a few carts by Kaiser. One is Star Wars, and the other is Super Mario Bros. Both have gold Kaiser labels on the top of the carts, and use the same case design, complete with a Japanese label on the back. The Star Wars cart is number LG40, and also has Whirlwind Manu on the front label. I tried to bust the two carts open, but with little success...these cases are made better than the newer cases, and they just aren't popping open.
So, now my question is as follows. Could Kaiser and Whirlwind Manu be the same company? It seems odd that they would both be making FDS conversions of certain titles, and then the overlap where both companies' names are listed on one game. How big are the differences between the Kaiser and WW Manu FDS conversions? Are there just minor differences / tweaks, or big changes?
Also, just want to throw out there that until recently, I owned a NTDEC version of Falsion. It had no info in the title screen, iirc, but was in an NTDEC shell. Just throwing it out there. Also, I know that Kaiser and NTDEC were two different companies, that can be confirmed.
Thoughts on how these companies fit together?
Time to bump up an old thread. I got some news today and now know who the company is behind the Whirlwind Manu carts. I need to do some more research to see if they did (do) anything else, since I am not familiar with the company...they are not NTDEC though, as was once suspected.
I wonder if they were sharing tooling or manufacturing in some way?
I just did a quick Google search on the company behind the Whirlwind Manu carts, and it turned up nothing. I will try searching by the Chinese name next.