Beyond Oasis / Story of Thor [MD/GEN - Beta / Debug]

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by In: mega drive & genesis|SEGA

30 Jul 2009

Beyond Oasis (aka Story of Thor in Japan/Europe) is an action rpg developed by Ancient and published by SEGA in 1994.

Alert reader Servbot01 found a beta version of the game (check the video below):

It’s a strange version of Beyond Oasis for Mega Drive/Genesis, probably an early beta. It comes on an old Smash Pack collection for Dreamcast. Features a new enemy (it shows blood when defeated), new (but locked) items like a spear, a teleport system, different music, and other things.

The beta is freely available on the internet. Also, there are some sound effects from Streets of Rage (Yuzo koshiro scored both games).

It’s a very interesting build, so let’s have a little look at the most important changes:


The three different title screens. The EUR version is the same as the japanese one (minus the ideograms of course)

Interestingly, the final debug shows 28 areas compared to the 27 of the beta build.

The spear was completely removed from the final game. Unfortunately it’s just an icon, we can’t use it in the beta.

The guy with the horns is nowhere to be found in the final version.

In the beta we can find some random items in the field. Probably they are there just for testing purposes.

In the beta every building lacks a door and we can’t talk to anyone.

I wonder why they changed the position of this character.

Originally the elder was outside his house. Probably he was there just because  the developers were still creating the inside of the building.

In the final version they added a fire and some enemies near the bridge.


Some small changes to the area around the bidge.

In the final version there is a trap room where we have to jump over waves. In the beta this room is still empty.

In the final room of the beta temple the water spirit is nowhere to be found.

No door and no siren statues in the upper floor of the royal palace.

The village is still empty and it lacks some objects

The beach

The mountain

The marshes

The castle on the summit of the mountain became much bigger in the final version. They added an elegant set of stairs too.

Now the sky looks much more realistic with those nice clouds.

I wonder why they changed the sea, in the beta it looks much better. Maybe the developers encountered some technical issues when they were testing the enemies in the water ?


The crater

As always, if you know more about this beta let us know!

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Videos:

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6 Responses to Beyond Oasis / Story of Thor [MD/GEN - Beta / Debug]

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Matthew

October 8th, 2009 at 2:47 am

I’m not sure those are differences. In the final game the HUD switches sides depending on the action and the lightness on the hero is from him pressing A to cast the magic shot and the rest of the color differences might be the way it was scanned

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monokoma

October 8th, 2009 at 1:45 pm

Thanks for these info Matthew, i’ll update the description :)

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Xil

September 23rd, 2010 at 5:52 am

The music that plays on the title screen is also in the Streets of Rage 3 ROM for some reason (but not Bare Knuckle 3, oddly enough)

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monokoma

September 23rd, 2010 at 11:08 am

Maybe the same team did the english convertion? :O

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yota

September 15th, 2012 at 1:17 pm

i have completely rewritten the article with an in-depth look at the beta :)

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Elian

May 28th, 2013 at 8:53 pm

I Can’t belive since i was kid i never knew that i was playing the beta version with Gens

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