The Castle

From Sega Retro

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TheCastle Title.png

The Castle
System(s): SG-1000
Publisher: Sega
Developer:
Licensor: ASCII
Original system(s): JP Home computers
Developer(s) of original games: ASCII
Peripherals supported: 8kB RAM Adapter (TW)
Genre: Action[1]

















Number of players: 1
Release Date RRP Code
SG-1000
JP
¥5,0005,000[1] G-1046
SG-1000
TW
Non-Sega versions

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The Castle (ザ・キャッスル) is a video game developed by ASCII and released for the SG-1000/SC-3000 in 1986. It is a port of an MSX game of the same name, and is largely identical due to the similar hardware between the two machines. Due to the decline of the SG-1000 and emergence of the Sega Master System, the game was not released in Europe or Australia like many other SG-1000 games.

The game has a fairly standard plot of rescuing a princess from a castle, though the game itself was considered very large for the time. It also contains a map system similar to that of later Metroid and Castlevania games.

History

Because The Castle was released shortly after the launch of the Sega Mark III, its packaging differs from previous SG-1000/SC-3000 cartridges, essentially using the same packaging format as Sega's Gold Cartridge series for the Mark III, but labelled as a "Sega Cartridge" instead (due to the ROM size being only 32KB with 8KB of RAM, below the 1-Megabit requirement for Gold Cartridge releases). The packaging promotes the game as being compatible with all Sega platforms (セガ全製品に共用) available at the time (the SG-1000 series, SC-3000 and Sega Mark III), with the Mark III itself shown at the back of the box. The cartridge itself is white, the same color as early Mark III cartridges. The packaging artwork, drawn by shojo manga artist Maerchen Maker, was reused from the original MSX version.

The Castle was followed by an MSX sequel titled Castle Excellent later in the year, which also saw a release for the Famicom/NES. The MSX version was also brought independently to the SG-1000 in Taiwan.

Magazine articles

Main article: The Castle/Magazine articles.

Physical scans

SG-1000, JP
The Castle SG-1000 JP Top.jpg
TheCastle SG1000 JP Box Back.jpgThe Castle SG-1000 JP Spine.jpgTheCastle SG1000 JP Box Front.jpgThe Castle SG-1000 JP Spine2.jpg
The Castle SG-1000 JP Bottom.jpg
Cover
The Castle SG-1000 JP Carttop.jpg
The Castle SG-1000 JP Cartback.jpgTheCastle SG1000 JP Cart.jpg
Cart
CastleSGJPManual.pdf
Manual
SG-1000, TW

Technical information

ROM dump status

System Hash Size Build Date Source Comments
SG-1000
 ?
CRC32 092f29d6
MD5 d047c10d6b27cf34ccb66340a089523a
SHA-1 2681786bffccf58b59410c331865d30a4d027087
32kB Cartridge (JP)
SG-1000
 ?
CRC32 2e366ccf
MD5 a85ec287bb4151875446c245750fb8c0
SHA-1 5a81d5103487695cabd811aabd9e71f48b9e7996
48kB Cartridge (TW)

References

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NEC Retro has more information related to The Castle
  1. 1.0 1.1 https://sega.jp/history/hard/sc3000/software.html (Wayback Machine: 2020-09-28 02:34)


The Castle

TheCastle Title.png

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