Mark Plays… SideLine (MS-DOS)(Shmup)(Horizontal)[DOSBox]

#sideline #msdos #retrounlim

A 2D horizontal shmup for MS-DOS developed in 1996 by a Taiwanese developer called EMAG (Electronic Music and Animated Graphics). Born from a group of Taiwanese students at the Chaio Tung University realizing their dream of creating video-games. SideLine was their first game and sadly it sold not very well so the company struggled afterwards. Two later games were lightgun games 3DCop/ADCop and BonBon Paradise and the company was closed after those.

The game was only released in Poland by Union Systems (localization) & Mirage Software (publication). Only about 1500-3000 printed copies were made. It didn’t sell well and it is believed the launch of the Sony PlayStation and PC 3D graphics were the cause of little interest in old fashioned 2D shhmups. So the game remained largely unknown in many parts of the world.

That is until a Spanish online blog Retro Maniac Managzin wrote an article on the game-demo wondering what ever happened to the full version. A couple of months later the Polish full version was discovered (it’s a CD-ROM based game). In October of 2013 the game’s producer Jiun-Ming “Jimmy” Hwang allowed free distribution of SideLine’s original version as long as no profit is made for it. So it has been made available as freeware for all to enjoy.

I this video I am using DOS-BOX to play the game. It’s a little fiddly configuring the joystick to work with it. But it is possible. It’s also possible to play it full screen but for some reason OBS didn’t like to record the game full screen on my computer so I did record a Window.

Well many thanks EMAG! for releasing this game:
http://sideline.ghegs.com/

The EMGA-FANS Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/emagfans

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