Recent posts

#1

News / [MERGED] PCEFX Reviews, Preser...

Last post by NightWolve - 03/11/2025, 10:41 PM

This topic has been merged into The Brothers DuoMazov 2.0 Returns - 100% Rebooted/Restored!!!!.

[finally]

#2

News / Re: The Brothers DuoMazov 2.0 ...

Last post by NightWolve - 03/11/2025, 10:34 PM

Progress: Last night I finished a decent Wayback download Perl script to download the whole Brothers DuoMazov website to finally move forward in totally rebuilding/rehosting it here on PCEFX 2.0!

There are 5,814 images / screenshots, 100% uploaded to PCEFX:
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/images/?dir

It's live!!! Presenting "The Brothers DuoMazov 2.0" - 100% Rebooted/Restored!!!!:
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/


The next step is another script to clean up the HTML and decide the basic template for which to upgrade all the review body/content, etc. Some new basic ideas like appending a @ChrisBucci TurboViews video will be considered for extra benefit when time/progress permit.

But yeah, seeing/realizing that ~7 years elapsed (WOW!) from when I first made these threads and manually downloaded/patched about a dozen reviews gave me some motivation to finally continue since nobody else cares or has done so, etc. I did mention somebody is working on rebuilding pcecp.com though, nice to see.



More Ideas:
* New Github entry to share the Wayback Download script.
* Full Offline copy of Brothers DuoMazov. A simple ZIP/7z file that you download and works 100% locally letting you browse/see everything. And we can send it to WayBack for final/guaranteed backup/preservation in the end. I do tend to think about the inevitable, if something happens to me, what happens to my work ? So I'm gearing up to eventually share my projects/code to Github, Wayback, or to friends, etc.

#3

Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: IFU Backup Memory corrupte...

Last post by Keith Courage - 03/06/2025, 03:13 AM

Wait a minute! I just went back and read your first post about this. Does the CD drive still do nothing when you hit the run button?  Does the CD drive power on if you hit the play button on top of the CD drive? If the Drive doesn't power on either way, then you are missing power from one area of the board for some reason. There should be 9V-10V getting to the CD drive IO connector when you turn on the switch to lock the IFU and have the PCE powered on.

I'm trying to remember what I did to repair this in a DUO before. I'm pretty sure it was a bad trace. For most IFUs, I've just swapped that entire top board out as I used to have a bunch of IFUs  on hand with various problems. I could swap enough parts around to make more usable IFUs.

Usually the symptoms of bad Ram for the CD drive is glitchy graphics for when CD games load or a Black screen once a CD game loads. So your Ram may have been good and this could be my mistake for not noticing your CD drive was not powering on. I was just paying attention to the lines shown on your CD bios save manager screen. Sorry for not noticing that part.

#4

Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: IFU Backup Memory corrupte...

Last post by NightWolve - 03/04/2025, 02:23 AM

Oh wow!

Before Chris/Keith sees this and maybe can offer advice, how about Covell himself who made that BRAM tool ? You can also ask him on X/Twitter: x.com/covell_chris

#5

Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / General Localization News

Last post by NightWolve - 03/04/2025, 12:18 AM

February 13, 2025

Rather earth-shattering news in the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 community: Cosmic Fantasy 3 & 4 has been officially localized to English by Edia 30 years later! Hard to believe! I know their script quality is poor given the 1&2 port but still good to see.

nintendo.com/us/store/products/cosmic-fantasy-collection2-switch/

#6

PC-FX Discussion / Re: Space Patrol Luluco lays a...

Last post by NightWolve - 03/03/2025, 11:51 PM

/lulucopcfx.jpg

How dare they call it worthless garbage! But at least they're rethinking it.

Man, I can't believe I just saw a PC-FX reference in a 2016 anime. What a time to be alive, haha.

-We Blackholeians have shoplifted all kinds of things that hold value.
But because we shoplifted too many valuable things, we instead
ended up wondering if worthless garbage was actually more valuable.

-Huh? We made light of this stuff until now, but maybe it's actually amazing!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Patrol_Luluco
https://www.animerealms.org/watch?id=21637&ep=10&prv=prime
https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G63VM514Y/space-patrol-luluco

Admin Action: I noticed the image capturing this PC-FX anime reference was lost/deleted, so I took a research excursion to find out what Aggie was talking about, restore the image, or even better, make an animation .avif. I downloaded 13 subtitles of this (there were only 13 episodes) and began reading until I found "garbage" in the 10th one. Sure enough, that's what I was looking for, what Aggie was talking about. I then used ShotCut and ezgif.com to create the above animation and preserve/embed it.

For some reason, or reasons, I don't seem to understand, diehard NEC PC-FX fans are growing in number from 12 up to 24 these days (go figure) , so I thought they might appreciate this little bit of history if it could be recovered.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is only thanks to PCEFX 2.0 that you could learn about the mysterious "Blackholeian shoplifters" so I'm proud to have made that possible for you...  Guess that helps explain why PC-FX prices are skyrocketing over the years...

#7

Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: IFU Backup Memory corrupte...

Last post by elartur77 - 03/03/2025, 10:31 PM

Hello.. bumping an old thread, its me again...

Its has been a while, after trying to repair I follow the recomendation from Keith Courage and got another IFU because they are pretty cheap, but now I wanted to give it another go, so here is what I just did with the unit..

I changed booth RAM chips with a SONY CXK58257M  I used this model because when I remove the original M5M5256BFP-70 (Mitsubishi) chip, under it there was a text in the board SONY CXK58257M but still got the same lines and "no BRAM present" message from the BRAM TOOL, so I think this isnt a RAM issue, next I replace capacitors on the board and same thing happened, and at last I try to do the FRAM mod and still the same thing..

Now Im lost, I dont know if the culprit are the other 3 chips left HC245 (74HC245 Texas Instruments) that are around in the RAM board.

So anyone can give me a little help..

Its not like I need to repair this, I alredy have the other IFU working great, this is like a little project to test my skills and if I could make it work in the process, that would be great..

Thanks..

#8

General Gaming / Heroine Anthem II

Last post by NightWolve - 02/27/2025, 11:23 PM

This is a temp placeholder post, I just wanted to upload/share these Wayback screenshots to someone. It's a 2004 thread on my offline backup of RIGG/Retro ISO Gaming Guild, an ancient PC Engine forum primarily. I hope to rebuild it and upload it again here to keep the threads/history shared. Anyway, this post may be deleted, so I wouldn't bookmark it or anything, I just temporarily want the screenshots.

I came across chinese rpgs about a year ago and been addicted to it since! Well maybe me being chinese also had something to do with it XD

Chinese RPGs are probably never heard of by USA rpg lovers and here is a preview of some of the biggest titles.

here is a popular title in China Heroine Anthem 2










Heroine Anthem 2.; its a sequel to Heroine Anthem: The Elect of Wassernixie (or bride of Mermaid if you will). Heroine Anthem is a story follows the girl Edda, who drowned at sea trying to save this boy while on board a slave ship. She was saved by the mermaid prince, who turned her into a mermaid intending to make her his bride. She fled the palace of Mermaid under the help of a lobster named Bedin, wanting to find her lost sister; who was also sold into slavery. During her advanture in the mermaid world, she finds out that Ragnarok is upon the world, and the Dark Ark of Noah has also returned (the Dark ark of noah has monsters trapped in it since the time of the great flood). So bascially she is trying to stop it from happening and finding her sister. The game is split into two parts that tells one whole story which is an interesting way for an RPG to present itself(like the way Matrix's 2 and 3 presented itself).

The entire game takes place in a 2D world (well 3D pre-rendered background) and there is no world map, so going from place to place takes alot of walking or running around through forests, dungeons and moutains etc.

Music wise I think its very well written here is couple of music samples hope you'll enjoy.
http://www.rit.edu/~wqd9695/HA2/mus...les/Track01.cda
http://www.rit.edu/~wqd9695/HA2/mus...les/Track04.cda
http://www.rit.edu/~wqd9695/HA2/mus...les/Track17.cda
http://www.rit.edu/~wqd9695/HA2/mus...les/Track20.cda
http://www.rit.edu/~wqd9695/HA2/mus...les/Track29.cda

graphic wise it is 2gb of pure 2D graphics. I would show some frames, but I can't seem to get this tool working right, so maybe at a later time.

Battle system wise it is also quite different from many of the traditional rpg battle system. Each character has special moves that takes up SP(SP can only be gained from being attacked) and then each takes a certain amount of time and when u select a move it is allocated onto his or her action bar; certain moves take alot of the time and certain takes very little and you can do this for all characters and these characters will excute all the list of actions you have allocated onto their action bar. So timing is definitly a very important element in this game, it could mean wining and losing an important mission. and all the characters can be attacking at the same time causing an effect of linear motion battle system like Tales of Destiny. Once a characters action has ran out you'll be prompted to select more actions. Character placement are also up to u, u get a 3X3 grid to form your formations. Characters in the front actually do get attacked more than characters in the back and also ur spell has ranges so how u place ur character can also mean whether or not ur spell will effect them in battle to save them.

Magic system is also quite interesting. Through out the game you find rune stones that has certain vocabulary attached to them individually. To create magic spells u need to learn the enchantment of it to get the spell to form properly. You can also form summon spell, which I've yet to be able to do so, since u can only learn certain enchantments at a certain stage of the game.

Cutscenes in this game is done with real nice anime and decent CG and converted into Bink Video. Some reason WindThunder never makes HIGH res CGI movies for their game, so some of the movies seems blocky. I guess the intention is let the game speak for itself rather than having high res cutscenes to speak for it.

here is one movie. u need divx to watch it, quality is bad but I'm no coding expert so there
Gameplay movie for HA2 FEAST YOUR EYE ON THIS BEAUTY!

And the second game I'm here to present is a game called Fantasia three kingdom!!!  losely based on the story of Romance of Three Kingdom several important events of that story were taken to formulate this amazing game. I wrote a review for it but the site is under construction so I'll link it when its back!!! :p

here is a preview for you all who loves RPG

#9

PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Patched PC Engine CD BIOS ...

Last post by Keith Courage - 02/26/2025, 02:17 AM

So, If I used the TED Pro on an Express I would get stereo HUcard sound through the Headphone port, but no CDDA out of either the speaker or the Headphone port because the CDDA doesn't come off the card port because of the pinout?  Thanks.

I'm pretty sure the Turbo Express gets all audio when using the everdrive pro but the CD sound is Mono not stereo. Just like with coregrafx, supergrafx, and PC engine shuttles.

#10

PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Motoroader multiplayer

Last post by Keith Courage - 02/25/2025, 04:15 AM

Moto Roader is one of my favorites on the system. Probabaly because I played it so much with friends back in the day. Definitely more fun multiplayer as it cuts down on the CPU opponents, which somehow have the ability to get better upgrade parts than they have the money to buy.

I've always been dissapointed with Moto Roader II. The addition of cars that can fly kind of ruins it for me.

They should have made Moto Roader II with just cars but then added more variety of tracks. Maybe some off road or city race tracks.