Heya all!
I've recently been writing a video game history by year and obviously Sega comes up a lot, but there are three particular titles which show up in 1981 that we basically know nothing about, and I want to be able to talk about them. Obviously since these are Japanese games, I'm unaware of any resources which exist that I cannot access, being English speaking, but I'm curious if some other people have come across some information that most people don't know about.
Particularly I'm looking for information on three titles: Frogger, 005, and Turbo, all of which were released under the famous Sega-Gremlin logo in the US (Frogger was made by Konami though). I'm looking for development details, production details, public reaction, and most importantly release dates. I'll give a small summation of the information that I've accumulate on these titles thus far.
Frogger:
Basically any source about this game redirects you to the many console ports by Parker Brothers, rather than anything to do with the original arcade game. Arcade History lists it as a June release, presumably for North America, but I don't find Arcade History to be a reliable source because they never cite how they actually come up with these dates. Wikipedia cites them blindly though.
005:
This is interesting, because I may have found some information that disproves the 1981 release date. Here's the US Service Manual (PDF) which has a copyright date of 1982. Of course, that doesn't mean it didn't come out a year earlier in Japan, but I haven't seen a Japanese manual if there is one. Can anyone make out a date on the Japanese poster? Posters didn't usually list dates, but it's worth a shot.
Turbo:
An October release date is given in this interview with Sega's Steve Hanawa. I'm inclined to believe this statement because the article is very particular about sorting the arcade games listing in order, and goes into a small story about the creation of the game. That's far from conclusive, and it doesn't say if this was the Japanese or American release, but it's a better lead than I have on the other two games.
Thanks for reading, even if you couldn't stand my ramblings. I'll be looking deeper into this stuff, and I thought this was the best place to ask about it. Hoping you all have some information or might be able to point me in the right direction. Cheers!