Beggar Prince

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Beggar Prince

Developer(s)	C&E
Publisher(s)	Super Fighter Team
Release date(s)	1996/2006
Genre(s)	RPG
Mode(s)
Platform(s)	Mega Drive/Genesis
Media	32 Megabit Cartridge
System requirements	Game controller
Input	1 Player

Beggar Prince (Chinese Xin Qigai Wangzi 新乞丐王子, literally The New The Prince and the Pauper) is a Chinese game for Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, originally released in 1996 by C&E, Inc. An English translation of the game was done by American company Super Fighter Team, and began shipping to preorder customers on May 22, 2006 at the price of $40 per copy. Beggar Prince is the first game for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis to be commercially released in the United States since 1998.

For a Sega Mega Drive/Genesis game, Beggar Prince is rather large, weighing in at 32-megabits (4 megabytes) in size. Players could record their progress to any of the four available save slots. The game shipped within a plastic clamshell case along with a glossy, full-color 27-page instruction manual.

Beggar Prince works with any Sega Genesis, Mega Drive or Nomad system, regardless of region (NTSC and PAL are both supported). However, due to the manner in which the game's save function is programmed, it is impossible to save on systems connected to the 32X or hybrid CD systems such as the CDX and Wondermega. But playing the game with a Sega Mega-CD/Sega CD attached to the Mega Drive/Genesis works fine. In fact when tried on a European Multi-Mega (the EU equivalent of the CDX) the game doesn't even go beyond the introduction scenes without resetting itself.

Although the game was received with acclaim upon its release, gamers soon discovered a few glitches in the game. While Super Fighter Team had spent over a year working out the bugs left behind by C&E, it was simply not cost efficient to fix them all. While most of these errors were trivial, one or two could result in the game's main character getting stuck in a certain place where he was not supposed to be, meaning the player would have to backtrack by loading a previously saved game.

As of September 8th 2006, the Super Fighter Team release of this game (600 copies) had completely sold out. However, on October 18th 2006, Super Fighter Team announced they had begun taking pre-orders for a second production run (300 copies).