Images

[Off-Topic / Re: What are YOU watching on YouTube.com?]

News: Dracula X [PC Engine CD] gets a little review from James Rolfe / Angry Video Game Nerd this time (he laments not taking the opportunity in the past). So he's trying to decide if Super Castlevania IV [SNES] is still his all-time favorite though mostly against Symphony of the Night [PS1] by the end. Anyway, pretty good 25-minute retrospective of Castlevania legacy.

On the other hand, the opening vampire skit REALLY sucks... I wanted some kind of joke out of this like "AVGN 2024 version updated for modern audiences..." It validates typical trends that everything sucks nowadays (mediocrity is the default), haha. Funny enough, I didn't realize the obvious vampire/sucks pun in my first post draft, had to edit it in, *I* suck!

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

Hahahahaha!!! Does this remind you of anyone ??

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: (Homebrew/NSFW 18+) Kidnapped Innocence]

So @gameblabla went all in with his PC-FX homebrew game: ports to GBA and N64 being worked on and actually pursuing physical copies. I didn't expect you'd go that far!

[General Gaming / Re: VG Box Art Dejavus]

Bloody Wolf was more "inspired" (AKA ripped-off) from Arnold's 1985 Commando. I honestly didn't make this exact connection all this time, I figured general 80's action muscle-bound movie star influence, sure, but that they literally stole the EXACT pose/copycat from a movie poster/promo I really didn't expect!



I made this one for fun, sized-up side by side after reviewing these threads some more and patching a few lost images. I'm not sure there was a fuller poster of Arnold where his arm isn't clipped off or I would've used that instead.

A more extensive collection happened in another thread by @Tatsujin:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=8501.0

And HG101 has the most here:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/tracing/tracing.htm

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: What Turbo game are you currently playing?]

I'm with Tengai Makyou, using v1.2 translation now that I know it exists... Before that I abandoned the game a week before because of the v1.0 issues with loading from real hardware 

I was actually looking forward to break in my new Analogue Turbo Duo clone using Supper's localization patch for Ziria, but it's on the backburner after being very disillusioned with the buggy state of the firmware/product... Hopefully the jailbreak redeems it.

Incidentally, Analogue released a new firmware v1.2 [2024-03-15] today actually. But this presents a hard choice to the user: get the bug fixes, but go back to being a normal Duo again, so no CD/ROM image support from the SD card, resume using CD-Rs for localizations... Just gotta wait some more until the jailbreak firmware is synced.
https://www.analogue.co/support/duo

If an updated/synced JailBreak is published soon this is the link to keep watch of:
https://github.com/analoguejb/Analogue-Duo-JB

[General Gaming / Re: Retro VGS Game Console]

While patching some images, clicking around, eventually being led to AtariAge, I realized our PCEFX thread on this "RetroVGS Coleco Chameleon" scam/fool's-dream never really got official closure, like where is Mike NOT-THAT-Kennedy nowadays, and did he ever apologize, acknowledge/face the debacle he led, level with the public or just disappear as I had thought ??

So yeah, as far as I knew, Kennedy had just disappeared, went dark and wasn't seen/heard from again, if at all. That's how I thought the story had ended, but having wandered over at AtariAge today, I learned that he showed up there with a "Parrothead" account which is STILL active today and addressed the issue in some detail after heated confrontation...

Let's take a look at these posts so this thread/chapter finally gets closure here, shall we ?? 

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/274244-pac-man-suit-kohls-25-clearance/
I know you all hate my guts but I cant help but share this. $25 Clearance Pac-Man Suits at Kohls. Normally $120. Find one if you can! I found one tonight. Google Pac-Man Oppo Suits to see what it looks like. Includes Sport Coat, Slacks and Tie. Super high quality. Good luck!

Some were willing to forgive/forget and participated in his thread as if Mike was an average/regular member. Others not-so-much.

I know you all hate my guts

Mike, this is the first time in many years I've seen you speak about gamey things in a way that wasn't trying to sell something. It's a good look for you, please keep it up.

Welcome back to the human race.

I think you will find forgiveness in the community if you can demonstrate that you've given up the get-rich-quick schemes, and always speak the truth. If you don't know something, say so or STFU. No one wants to hear any more lies.

	I'm not buying that tickytack suit, because I'm not The Riddler, nor am I Billy Mitchell. But seriously, it's nice to see you above ground again.

You have a lot to answer for, Mike. If you're going to want to join the social circles of the hobby, you'll need to answer a lot of questions you don't really want to answer.

I appreciate the comments and don't take them for granted. Believe me, no one wants to forget the past more than I. And you can be assured I won't be attempting any more gaming ventures. I woefully mismanaged things the past few years and paid the price, in more ways I can count. And, it will take a few more years for me to recover from that debacle financially. It's true that turning your hobby into even a part-time profession is a sure-fire way to enjoy your hobby less and stress yourself half to death. Especially, when you make the mistakes I did. I nearly lost all my love for gaming and regrettably did lose a handful of great friends in the hobby.

Over the past year, I have played more video games than I have played probably in the past 9 years. I've rebuilt a small collection of consoles that are all out and playable including an Atari 2600, 7800, PS1, Timex Sinclair 1000, Apple IIc and Commodore 64 -- oh, and my original Sega Genesis I had growing up and all my original games (I gave it to my cousin way back when, he kept it and recently found it and shipped it back to me).

In any event, I'll take what I can get but don't expect anything when it comes to being completely forgiven for what I put everyone through the past few years.

I can't speak for everyone, but I do think getting some full and honest answers to what happened might go a long way toward bringing your credibility out of the negative range. Over the past few years, you've been characterized as ducking any question you don't feel like answering. Now that you're not selling anything, you don't owe anyone any answers... but if you're wanting to be on good terms with the community, you will need to offer SOMETHING up. The truth, and I mean the ACTUAL truth, not the "Whatever makes me look better" spin, would be something of value you could extend.

I don't hate you, Mike. But you've hurt a lot of my friends, and I do not take that lightly. Some of these people I know by reputation only, some I have literally broken bread with. Your lies and screwups affected them, and so I'm going to suggest the truth would go a long way toward building that bridge.

I sincerely DO regret how things were handled by me. One thing I'd like to explain is that I ended friendships with some great people in the hobby. I really did this as I didn't want their friendship with me to jeopardize their friendship with others and their reputations. I was (maybe still am) toxic and wanted to remove myself from their equations for that reason. Maybe it came across as I didn't like them anymore, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. I really miss the gaming friends I had prior to that mess. Had some of my best times with them -- they all know who they are And, I will say again, I will not be starting any more gaming businesses personally.

I will not overstay my welcome here but might post occasionally if I come across something cool in the hobby to share.

And now we get to the juicy stuff, @famicommander is not have ANY of it!

What a cop out.

You're a scam artist, no better than a common thief, and you deserve to be treated as such. And worse than that, you still won't even own up to what you did.

Others here may be willing to mince words but I'll call a spade a spade. Or a lying, thieving, scamming scumbag as the case may be.

I can't say the man isn't trying. If you don't have something nice to say...

I can say he isn't trying. It's obvious he isn't, because he's still not admitting what he did. He just tried to slink back into this community as if he didn't attempt to swindle thousands of dollars out of it, all the while lying through his teeth and refusing to accept responsibility for his actions.

I don't have anything nice to say about him because there is nothing nice to be said. He's a scammer. Actually, he's worse. He's a failure at scamming. He's morally bankrupt AND incompetent.

Among a laundry list of other things, he tried to pass off a Super Nintendo crammed into a Jaguar case as a working prototype. And later an off the shelf PC capture card crammed into a Jaguar case.

He tried to get 2 million dollars, and may indeed have if not for the diligent detective work of other members of this forum and the community at large. He raised over $80,000 via crowdfunding. He said he would offer refunds, and may indeed have (I haven't heard either way). But the issue is he accepted people's money after knowingly deceiving them in the first place. Whether he refunded them or not, he knew he was lying to people when he started taking the money. And he has still not admitted this. He lied in his crowd funding pitches and when they failed he started trotting out fake protos.

with all due respect, this is not the time nor place to discuss your grievances with Mike Kennedy. He needs encouragement right now more than anything. You are providing the exact opposite right now.

Why would I care what he needs? He tried to rob us blind and you're telling me to consider his needs?

He did something wrong and has made no effort to correct it. He hasn't even admitted it. He doesn't deserve encouragement.

The "retro Chameleon" provided me with hilarious entertainment for several months. It was always pretty clear that they lacked the competence to deliver on their poorly-conceived dream. It was always fun to watch. No one did it better (worse) than Mike, and we've seen several people try.

He didn't say it in the most articulate way, but it's true that Mike himself was hurt a lot more than anyone else, except perhaps the Coleco brand. He lost money, friends, reputation, and dignity. What did we lose? Time spent on a message board? Speaking for myself, that was mine to waste, and a moment enjoyed is not wasted.

I believe in forgiveness. Why should he serve a life sentence for attempted tomfoolery? It's been two years. His reputation is in the toilet and no one with two brain cells to rub together would give him any money. I'd love to see him back in the community so long as he gives up any ideas about trying to make money from us.

We don't need a confession. We all know what he did. Hate the sin, love the sinner.

Then again, maybe he should be forced to wear that ridiculous Pac-Man suit, all the time, wherever he goes, as long as he lives, forever walking the earth as a Shatnerian parody of himself, cornering the market on retro gaming.

Amen brother. Well said. Take away the "businessman" nonsense and he's just another game dork like us. Well, maybe he talks a lot more than some of us, but it takes all kinds.

How many other people on this forum tried to steal from the rest of us and then lied about it and continues to lie about it? I'll wait.

I was refunded by the campaign. Aside from kicking me to the curb, its all water under the bridge now. He did a lot of good before the CC situation. He was not always like he was during the CC situation. I agree with Pipercub, I welcome him back but in a guarded fashion I miss talking with him on our latest retro finds and talking about things like friends did back before the CC situation.

By all accounts, OJ Simpson was a nice guy before he killed those people. And no, I am absolutely not saying that what Mike did was anywhere near as bad as what OJ did. But the point is, the bad things you do in life can't always be eclipsed by whatever nice things you did beforehand. OJ was a great football player and he was in some awesome movies, but so what? All that good will is gone forever.

I think a punishment should fit the crime. Does him losing GameGavel, Retro Magazine, the Jag shells, etc. along with our trust with future attempts at similar things fit? Yes. Does him getting a life sentence away from the hobby and community to an extent that he isn't even welcome to discuss a Pac-Man suit fit? No.

He lost all of his businesses because he is incompetent. That wasn't a punishment for his attempted thievery.

Once you try to steal from me or my community, that's it. You only get one chance. I don't care where else he goes or what else he does but if he is going to show his face around here, especially without admitting what he did and sincerely apologizing rather than deflecting blame and changing the subject, then he is going to hear about it. I'm not suggesting we cut the man's hand off or lock him up for the rest of his life. But he doesn't deserve to interact on level ground with members who didn't try to run a million dollar scam.

From my understanding Vaporware is something of a problem here. Not too mention certain modders here who takes people's money and systems. None have been bashed as hard as Mike.

I see way more hate towards someone who wanted to make something happen but could not, then he tried to save face but that was a mistake. At the end of the day it appears he did not actually take anyone's money. However other people on this forum have been promising certain items for years and HAVE taken people's money, yet they don't get hammered nearly as much as Mike.

Nobody gets bashed as hard as Mike because nobody else tried to scam people on one tenth this scale.

He knew when he started his crowdfunding that he was lying. He didn't over promise and then, in good faith, fail to deliver. He made an active effort to deceive people from the outset and then repeatedly lied directly to our faces about. Over and over again for a period of months, until he disappeared entirely because he's a coward.

He knowingly tried to defraud people for large sums of money and to the only reason he didn't suceed is because he was exposed before his scam was complete. And then he continued trying to steal and scam for months after the fact.

Mike DID run a scam. He just failed at it because people on this very forum pointed out what a fraud he was.

And nowhere did I say anyone else should get a free pass for the same behavior.

Some of you really want your pound of flesh out of Mike. He tried to do something, it didn't work, he admits that he made mistakes that he regrets, he is paying a personal and financial price for those mistakes. What more needs to happen? Frankly, the worst thing that he could do is to start trying to explain anything, which by the way none of you are owed unless you were PERSONALLY affected by the CC debacle. Those of you who have already gotten your torches and pitchforks back out of the closet obviously have too much time on your hands.

OK, that's a good enough quote collection to give you an idea, the thread was subsequently locked after @CGQuarterly's chastising of Mike's critics by the admin/owner Albert.

So I'll wind down to my final thoughts. I'll close by listing my favorite quote from Mike which is "And you can be assured I won't be attempting any more gaming ventures." or "And, I will say again, I will not be starting any more gaming businesses personally." I hadn't seen that before. So the experience and community extracted a "promise" by him to never again engage in gaming-related businesses, haha! That's good to know I guess.

Now we'll see if Tommy Tallarico has a similar come-to-Jesus moment with the Incellivision Amico scam which has also cost him his reputation, and now home! Incidentally, there IS a connection between the two situations few would know: Mike Kennedy once launched a reasonable Kickstarter idea to buy the Intellivision IP and port all the games to Windows PC AND Tommy Tallarico actually backed the project! It failed to reach the funding goal, BUT Tommy effectively stole the idea years later, bought the IP himself, and then proceeded to try another RetroVGS console idea (The Amico) only this time JUST with that limited IP of retro games!! CRAZY!!!

Anyway, if Mike's truly sorry/repentant for this disaster, and keeps his vow to never again try to sell gamers on boneheaded "retroland" projects/ideas, then that is a good ending to the saga I guess, haha. Everyone knows not to give him a single penny again, so no worries on that front.

Poor Million Dollar Mike, he had a dream...a dream to scheme...

And with that, one last bit of nostalgia I once named "The Winning Team" to truly say good-bye to this thread. They had such promise, such potential, such...passion, but alas, it ended in miserable failure... Au revoir boys.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Some important NEWS about the PC Engine!]

Thread image patch/recovery: 90% of the lost Image Shack images have been restored! This thread was especially worth the time/effort to preserve, and later submit to WayBack. I also made it sticky/pinned. Not sure if it was or not before.

Appending worthy additions while I'm at it:

It's all about the gaming experience! Truly hating a system only limits your own gaming experience...and usually bores the hell out of everyone else.

That being said...

Thank you so much!

https://technoviking.ytmnd.com/

https://www.gamerz.be/t/prosternez-vous-devant-le-techno-viking.73391/
I will be looking into this game seems like a fun time, thanks!

Comrade, I'm sorry. When I re-read my post, it sounded pretty abrasive. Sorry. I was really just venting, I did not mean to direct it at you (100%). Maybe 30% was intended for you, ha!!!

Hey no issues here, I didn't take offense or anything like that, I just wanted to make sure I was clear about what I said since it looked like I might have thrown some people off. I just wanted to explain that I'm a pretty serious Xak fan and collector, and I do not see value in what Tobias has because it's fake. For something like a pressing of Xak III to have real value to me as a hardcore collector, it needs to be from a project that has the original team's blessing...

Hmm, that could make a funny "Obey"picture actually. A Pope or Archbishop giving a pressed PC-Engine disk a sign of benediction / blessing it...

Edit: It shall be done!



-Thomas

NO TV SPORTS HOCKEY THOUGH??? FOR SHAME!

This one comes from @csgx1 via the sega-16 forums:

wth?   First of all, probably not too many Subaru owners that also share a passion for the PC Engine.  I love the PCE and Subaru (I own a Impreza) but what kind of Frankenstein idea are you thinking of?  You planning on modding your Forester to look like a PCE?  Instead of the PC Engine Shuttle may be create PC Engine Subaru Grafx where the hucard slot is where the hood scoop is?  lol...

Notes: sega-16 forums is being upgraded; it's been in a state of disrepair for some months, and its gallery attachment image links are broken! They require the domain to be replaced with an IP to retrieve them, others are missing. So the car/pce meme came from csgx1's profile gallery, but you can't use www.sega-16.com to get it, replace it with the IP 169.45.167.69:

https://www.sega-16.com/forum/member.php?27336-csgx1
https://169.45.167.69/forum/member.php?27336-csgx1

Eventually if you browse his profile you can find it:
http://169.45.167.69/forum/album.php?albumid=183&attachmentid=5424
https://169.45.167.69/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=5424&d=1348955442

csgx1 shared direct attachment links such as these from that neo-geo.com hellhole too, which was also VBulletin, but after it was upgraded to XenForo, all of them were broken & lost unless Wayback captured some. Also, it's very much possible his meme came from here/PCEFX, but if it was hosted with Image Shack it was long gone. I only ran into from sega-16.


UPDATE: So in thinking about this impending image loss, I searched the forum for "attachmentid" to preserve other images and voila, I found that csgx1 had shared it here right after posting it on sega-16!!! I'll attach the recovered photo in place / overwrite the bad link!

Funny enough, I thought I had seen this meme before, felt a vague memory of it, turns out I HAD: I'm in that thread and reacted when csgx1 posted it! It technically just needs "OBEY" slapped somewhere on it to truly fit in this thread's gallery/purpose.

I was just reading Melf - the sega16 owner/admin - to learn what's going on exactly with their forums and it seems he was ready to close down, but settled on archiving/preserving the forum for memory browsing/nostalgia. That's sort of the position I found myself in, was really saddened how it all worked out with Aaron and then his official closure. I felt PCEFX deserved a lot better, it could've been a small-scale Atari/NintedoAge with enough money/management for PCE fans, right place/right time, but the resources/time/money wasn't there; it's not just about bitter/raging psychos/saboteurs, a vulture/parasite faction, that tore the place apart for their own pre-planned agendas (i.e. revenge and for their own PCE groups)!

Be that as it may, I've accepted/realized that the best days of PCEFX are behind it (I enjoy Discord/Twitter a lot more nowadays myself which Melf acknowledges have taken over), and about all I can do is maximize image/photo preservation/archiving since every other case I've seen it's been the most neglected/lost aspect. So, eventually I intend to install a grand marquee, what I'd call the 20-YEAR PCEFX HISTORY randomizer/gallery at the top of forum, after the news block. But first I have to finish recovering as much as I can, a random/ongoing on/off process in the last 2 years, and once I'm satisfied begin working on that feature to showcase it all. Wayback is doing exactly this actually: scrolling a random photo list of captured websites to browse as you would a museum! You gotta show off your best assets, what's left!

I've added an example/demo to show what I want exactly:

That's from macross.fandom.com. So imagine the 20-year PCEFX history of 20,000+ images being displayed/filtered like that at the top of the forum, randomized order every time you refresh, and if you click on one it takes you to the thread/post, etc. It'd be a 20-year walk down memory lane for random OG veterans/visitors. That's what we can do to celebrate/preserve!

But yeah, first I need to finish disabling broken/lost images where there's no hope, and finish repairing the ones that are recoverable, mostly thanks to WayBack, or manual detective work like you saw in this example with expiring Sega-16 links. Melf lost his webmaster and that's part of why he's ready to say good-bye and go archive mode, but I can do my own IT from 25 years ago, so I don't have to pay anyone else, I just need hosting/domain costs, then time/motivation.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: PC Engine Pixelization]

Saw these on Reset Era.

Legend of Xanadu


Sol Moonarge


Cotton

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

Made me laugh. I didn't get the joke at first, other than Gandalf the Grey/Pimp likes Asian ladies ? Or watch this magic trick as he empties out an ATM to spend on hookers ?? 

Now that the forces of evil had been conquered, the war had been won, Gandalf returned home to retire to a life of leisure, cruising the neighborhoods, occasionally using his magic tricks to empty out ATMs to spend on hookers ?? Pretty good meme, I like it!

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: What Turbo game are you currently playing?]

L-DIS and Gradius 2

The last of the higher rated shooters I've played for the system. A delight to play. I haven't beaten it either but I'm working on it.

I bought L-DIS new in the 90's because it was so cheap (for an import!) in the back of gaming magazines (I think $15??)! Not bad for a cute'em up shooter I guess, but Star Parodier is best in that area. Its cover was so unusual!

https://catalog.pcengine-fx.com/#cd1970


I was meaning to buy a real copy of Gradius II too when they were going for $20-ish on eBay (I loved that Konami shooter era and I finished the Gradius/Lifeforce ports on NES), but I think I'm too late and no biggie, I'll eventually load it on my Analogue Duo (or one of the Konami PCE minis!) some day when the mood strikes to finally take it off the backlog.

P. S. Thanks for remembering the forum, haha! Needs to earn back membership every little bit!

While I'm at it, I was reminded before Aaron closed OG PCEFX I was working on my catalog jukebox player as a replacement for PCEFX Radio, and I had encoded the 2 best tracks from L-DIS to MP3 though I never uploaded them anywhere until...today!

_{► /audio/L-Dis-13-Stage-3.mp3}

_{► /audio/L-Dis-37-Stage-6.mp3}

They can randomly be played 24/7 either at:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/main/radio.html
https://catalog.pcengine-fx.com/

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Analogue Turbo Duo FPGA clone - preorders began May 19, thousands of units left!]

https://www.analogue.co/duo
https://store.analogue.co/#duo
Introducing Duo.
The Higher Energy Analogue System.
You've always known what to expect from a video game system. Until now. Duo is an all-in-one reimagining of perhaps the most underappreciated video game systems of all time. Analogue Duo is compatible with nearly every NEC system and game format ever made. TurboGrafx-16. PC Engine. SuperGrafx. TurboGrafx CD. PC Engine CD-ROM². Super Arcade CD-ROM². 1080p. Zero lag. Bluetooth. 2.4g. Because the last thing a video game system should be is predictable.
Completely engineered in FPGA.
Analogue OS.⁷

Loading: twitter.com/NightWolve75/status/1663666835915456512

8553 units left as I wrote this (5/31/2023) with white duos closer to selling out (1593 left) being the more popular choice. But anyone can monitor the remaining stock in realtime with this special link:
store.analogue.co/./checkout/./stock_problems

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: What Turbo game are you currently playing?]

Picked up Legendary Axe II a little while ago and decided to give it a go lately, pretty darn fun and I dig the more sinister look of the game. Looks freaking great too IMO.

Glad you randomly brought up Legendary Axe II, I rediscovered what my favorite track was on the game so perfect opportunity to log some tweets forum-style that I made about it a while back!

The best chiptune of Legendary Axe II (1990) (TurboGrafx-16) I identified awhile back: Stage 3, wait about ~56 seconds for that sweet hook to kick in (though it's much too short)! ❤️

https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/legendary-axe-ii-ost-1990-nec-turbografx-16
Direct Download: 06 Stage 03.mp3 (Sometimes direct link breaks, but page link above should work)
Or better yet, I'll add it to the PC Engine Greatest Hits audio folder:

_{► /audio/Legendary-Axe-II-06-Stage-3.mp3}

I still remember actually getting to rent it as a kid via 1 of 2 video rental stores (Ken's World of Video & Bogarts) that actually stocked TurboGrafx-16 HuCards (never CDs though), was blown away! I owned an original TurboGrafx-16 model at that point which I had won with Bloody Wolf included, but I upgraded to a Turbo Duo after it broke...

Anyway, just wanted to preserve some of my history/share the soundtrack/add content in longer form given the context/your post.

Loading: twitter.com/NightWolve75/status/1146027444857724928

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: Dead CD Spindle Motor? How to Replace?]

Hey Great Hierophant

I made a special blast-from-the-past screenshot in honor of your visit! ; )



Look familiar ? It's my/our old PC Engine RIGG (Retro ISO Gaming Guild) forum running locally, ~20 years to the day, wow! Some day soon I hope to export/upgrade it to SMF and publish it here as read-only to make more PCE/Ys history available: pcengine-fx.com/rigg/. So that's how I remembered your old Mario avatar and just patched it in. If you use another, feel free to update. : )

As for your problem, I've forwarded it both to thesteve and Downtown Chris Brown (AKA Keith Courage)! I'll let you know if I hear anything back. We might even get a visit from Steve, just got his account working (he was our top EE, Voultar-level).

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: TurboGrafx 16 Employee Scans & items (Archive.org)]

Hey, so your thread doesn't have to be lonely, continuing on the WayBack/Archive.org theme: GamingAlexandria (with help/contributors) scanned/preserved EVERY PC Engine Fan issue this year for upload to WayBack!!!

You already knew I'm sure, but it's relevant PCE content that should be shared. Plus I added more embed power (to Wayback links & my auto Twitter embeds), looking much better!

Loading: twitter.com/GamingAlexandri/status/1522236188215631873

PC Engine Fan issue #1 began in December 1988:

...And ran till October 1996:

Random Highlight: Page 57 of issue #1 was a Studio Ghibli ad for their My Neighbor Totoro anime movie which was also released that year.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Introducing myself and Turbo Views......]

Wowser, @Odonadon, been a llllllooooooong time! Mister OG Turbo2K (gone, but not forgotten) himself!

Guess I need to hurry up, get the chatbox back up again for quick hellos/catchups; I surely didn't expect to see you again, but trust you're doing well. If you're on Facebook, Twitter, or Discord BTW, add it to your profile; makes it easier for someone to catch up when old members/veterans randomly wander back.

I think that's your correct avatar, I know I embedded/saved it, but I wondered if that was a placeholder from the host, if not, feel free to patch it before you disappear. (It's all part of my image recovery scripts, so threads/posts are less broken from lost images to better archive ~20 years of PCE history/legacy with some Wayback aid).

I'm still not very happy with the state of the forum/software; the SMF 2.1 core was only a mild catch-up/improvement, but it's still way behind XenForo and even ProBoards where you don't have to deal with maintenance yourself (compelling reason to switch).

Anyway, given the bump to this thread, might as well share details on Chris Bucci's new Turbo Views channel update I noticed just now via Facebook! Ah, you noticed it also; I didn't read your whole post, I was still shocked at the "hi all" and that it was you, heh.

facebook.com/groups/65214321555/posts/10158349665281556


Nice DVD collector's box being readied.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Scan: TurboExpress in Playboy magazine]

Once I got past the side boobage, something else caught my eye...

You can't create a more captivating reason to play KLAX than this. Seriously.

https://twitter.com/Playboy/status/1435665707962880008


Upon patching/embedding lost Image Shack images (thanks to esteban for preserving the PDF!) with some liberties for Klax/TG-gloves and sharing this retro thread, someone questioned if this Playboy issue was for the UK-market. Most any searches for "Playboy April 1991" continue to confirm it's US - Dixon/Deletion who scanned it was a US resident, plus you got interviews with famous US entertainers: Steve Martin, Martin Scorsese, and boxer George Foreman. Those interview choices were for an American/US market.

	And for those of you curious about this particular model that made the cover, another "detective" on Facebook discovered her name/info, etc. Julie Ann Clarke from Arizona, she was the March 1991 Playmate.

So this chick is what now?  50 years old?  *Shudder*

She's 46 years old now and she still remembers the TurboExpress fondly.

FiftyQuid was a tad off in 2012 (DOB: 8/11/1969), so she would actually be 52 now and looking back on the Turbo Express fondly, haha!
Addendum #1: During my typical perusing on Twitter, I came across the April 1990 PC Engine Fan cover which gave me a fun idea for an interestin' comparison to append here! Turns out the editors of PlayBoy magazine were a tad more conservative on how much female skin to show for the front cover versus our PC Engine pals/brethren in Japan, ha! Let's take a look!



So special thanks to Gaming Alexandria for this extra, unexpected PCE excursion who is on a sacred mission to scan all PC Engine Fan covers for preservation on WayBack!

Loading: twitter.com/GamingAlexandri/status/1515746955695116294

Addendum #2: This thread/forum was private to the vast majority of the public, a consequence of which is lost images (Wayback couldn't scan them) and less visibility/fondness of its legacy/history, etc. So to undo some of the past, I'll occasionally share the "best of" threads (like this one) on other platforms where PCE people might congregate. I'd say it was a success judging by the fun replies I got on Facebook and Twitter.

Loading: twitter.com/NightWolve75/status/1514389145925337096

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Trade]

Hey fsa, I don't remember if we ever talked before and I noticed you logging in a few times over the last few months. I dunno how you learned of my relaunched forum, but it hasn't really happened yet and most don't know about it so just FYI, only a few of us are around so far...



So looking at current trading prices on eBay, Jackie Chan sells for $15-$20 more. I think more replay value is in the racing game (I played Chase H.Q. at the arcades), but not sure if you're asking in terms of game quality and/or money. Looks like they're both cheap enough to buy CIC if you're serious...

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: My progress on PC-FX homebrew development]

I figured out how to play a CD-DA track and loop it.
It turns out the PC-FX was not fully compliant with the SCSI-2 standard !
This is apparently because it was based upon an earlier (free) draft of the standard.
Instead, if you want to have a CD-DA track looping, you have to use the vendor-specific 0xD8 and 0xD9 modes.

That's interesting, I had some experience/difficulties in this area when I was developing TurboRip!

The 0xD8 read CD-DA/raw command is a very old fallback on some early NEC (and Toshiba?) PC CDROM drives that were made before SCSI-3 AKA "MMC [1] (Multi-Media Commands)" was drafted/adopted which also dealt with DVD commands!

Ultimately they decided on the 0xBE command to read data sectors raw or for CD-DA extraction/reads, etc. Unfortunately it created an incompatibility with drives produced with the 0xD8 command unless the CD ripping software accounted for it. So all the manufacturers that took early initiative to produce such CDROM drives with 0xD8 kinda got egg on their face and had to rework the designs.

Exact Audio Copy is pretty good about this; it has a specific Drive Option to detect the correct command (just in case), but yeah, pretty much MMC1/0xBE became universal and it's those really rare cases it might be a problem. That's what David Michel had told me years ago when I first started working on TurboRip, to just deal with understanding 0xBE.



Starting with Windows NT, you still had the option to build your own SCSI command packet and send it to the drive direct, but also the prescribed NT SPTI method. In Windows 7 they forced you to do this for MODE1 data sectors which broke TurboRip and I'm assuming other CD ripping software because Microsoft removed this "security" requirement in Windows 8/10+. So I tried to use this exclusively, only to discover from Chris Covell's feedback/tests that it was extremely slow! Part of the reason is if you looked at the API, you can find it checks for old [NEC] drives that need the 0xD8 command, so I liked the idea of more guaranteed compatibility which is why I tried to make it default! In the end, I did a balance: defaulted to my own SCSI command packets with 0xBE, then the SPTI method upon failure detection (which IS hard in SCSI!!). I kept the speed, and still gained some extra compatibility (possibly)!

Anyway, I'm afraid I can't help add much else to your research it being the PC-FX and all, but yeah, I do have some experience with general SCSI-3/MMC commands/programming under a Win32 environment so I share when I can.

[PC/Console/Mobile Ports / Re: "Lords of Thunder: PC" (Updated 1/23/2022 - v.3 released)]

Back in the day I worked on a PC port of Lords of Thunder - recently I've had the desire to revisit it again with modern day tools. If you'd like to try out how far I got, link provided (no install needed). Screenshot of said build. pic.twitter.com/9yjwxrND2V

— Aaron Nanto (@pcenginefx) January 24, 2022

Looks like Aaron has not quite "retired" yet, apparently he's resumed work on his old Lords of Thunder Windows PC port! I'll update the OP thread with download links/shots accordingly when available. The files linked are the same from 2007 so far.

https://youtu.be/YBXYdvG0YIM

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Marshall's PC Engine emulator for the PC-FX]

Hey gameblabla, thanks for stopping by and contributing with this news/work!

I was confused what you meant at first, but I understand now: So this is a PC Engine emulation layer (albeit WIP, very slow, unfinished) whereby the user can take PC Engine ROMs, burn a CD-R with it, and actually load it on their NEC PC-FX console for play! I'm imagining Bonk's Revenge loading on a PC-FX, and other games people would actually wanna play on it, haha!

A fellow PCE turbro of many turbo names -- Tom/Malducci/Tomaitheous/Bonknuts and now Super TurboXray -- actually did something similar: a NES "hackulation/emulation" layer that allowed running games like MegaMan, Contra, Jackal, Dragon Warrior on PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. It was actually very cool to load Contra or MegaMan on my TurboExpress portable with an Everdrive flashcart, so it was kind of useful beyond a novelty experiment to "see what's possible."



Anyway, I spread the word as you know, your tweet got a little bit boosted after David noticed me/it.

And FYI, I patched the thread with YouTube embedding and attached the ZIP download, looking better! It's been a tiring uphill battle to restore this forum, perhaps I've concentrated too much on image/photo retrieval/retention/preservation... I should've relaunched it by now, but things have taken longer than I had hoped.

EDIT: Oh, I'll just embed your tweet, that'll look cool/better too instead of pasting a link here!

[Off-Topic / The “What-Did-You-Buy-Today?” Thread]

Special PC Engine mini sale on Amazon Japan, 25% off!!!



Scored it for $77 total with today's USD/YEN exchange rate! They're limiting orders to 1 per person as well to fight scalpers/resellers also.

Loading: twitter.com/NightWolve75/status/1456015963137220617

Update: It was a clearance sale, the price fell to like $50 USD for a short time!!!!

Loading: twitter.com/Shhiin/status/1457002113095987210

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: My Great Yard Sale Find!!]

I even talked the seller down to $20.

Ah, a broken Turbo Express for $25! Yeah, you got a 9X% chance to fix it yourself with a full capacitor replacement job! That's the same state mine was in after 5 years of storage and trying to turn it on back in 2012 I believe (it cost me $11 in SMD caps from Digikey).

I'd go the distance here, find/buy HQ Panasonic low-ESR capacitors, pay a little extra for more lasting power since you got a broken unit so cheap. Steve knows how to play with tantalum caps at the right spots to eliminate hum, but I don't trust that or novices (us regular folk moonlighting as EEs, don't try stepping in Steve/Voultar's lane) playing around, just replace electrolytic with electrolytic to play it safe.

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: PCE Duo-R Won't read hu cards? What could be the cause?]

Welcome back, you were one of my account-undelete/rebuild experiments (about ~30-40) which works 100% now...

I extracted a better shot of the game, but no, I can make out what it is.



As for your repairs, we pretty much have only ONE active repair person (maybe two if you're willing to pay Canada shipping rates to Jodi/Turbo Reproductions as a last resort), ChrisComputers (KeithKourage). I'll forward him your thread, he's one of the few I privately invited to test the rebuilt forum and say hello.

TheSteve/TurboKon pretty much retired from repair/mod service, as did others... Voultar might take 1 Duo once in a blue moon as a special request for a friend, they require too much time to offer service for general customers. Oh, there's Leon on Twitter that's active.

[General Gaming / Pixelization/Animation Perfection]

Wanted to branch out from the PC Engine Pixelization thread after Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys to include/link cool animations from any game/console.

To start it off, much credit again to Kishi's Gift of GIF, now a lost thread after the www.talking-time.net forum was scraped in 2020 and rebooted with XenForo. But thanks to WayBack and some grunt work we can dig out some of the best highlights!
Find more animated GIFs be it Falcom and others below e.g. Ys I-III PC-98 ports:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.snowy-day.net/grokyou/*
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.snowy-day.net/grokyou/brandish/*


https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.snowy-day.net/grokyou/falcom/*












https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.snowy-day.net/grokyou/gradius/*




https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.snowy-day.net/grokyou/hideo/*






https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.snowy-day.net/grokyou/metroid/*




And finally some of Kishi's finest work, the NES/SNES Super Punch-Out Parade!

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/pdf/CLV-P-NAATE.pdf


https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clvs/manuals/common/pdf/CLV-P-SAAXE.pdf






Arcade extra with Bald Bull:

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Question: Wave-phasing on the PC engine, how feasible is that?]

shape___artillery_wip_mednafen_by_michirin9801-dauhpi7.mp3 ^As you can hear in this WIP, not really... It's good for the higher-pitched notes, but if you put it in the lower pitches it sounds kinda crappy, the popping is very noticeable...

_{► /8/shape___artillery_wip_mednafen_by_michirin9801-dauhpi7.mp3}

I applied some WayBack magic to Michirin9801's intro thread here, it recovered her MP3 chiptune recordings and some images (I returned to further embed everyone's images). That and I kinda like this MP3 I quoted while listening to it a second ago after the WayBack recovery, hence worthy of a bump I thought.

_{EDIT: We have a pretty significant harassment problem in PC Engine fandom which needs to be tackled one way or another, I recently learned michirin9801 was targeted by multiple [banned] turbo trolls here/elsewhere and I suspect she deactivated her DeviantArt profile as a consequence (which hosts these MP3s)... I invited her back without knowing about it, but now I understand her polite reply better...}

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

Ready for the sequel?

Dear lord... I don't think we'd survive it!

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: PC Engine Pixelization - Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys]

Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys | Falcom & Hudson Soft | PC Engine CDRom² | 1993








Credit: Kishi's Gift of GIF - Thank goodness for Wayback machine, that talking-time forum was scraped in 2020, rebooted with XenForo, and the thread these were posted in is lost or offline currently! I'm using Wayback links mostly going forward, they should last the longest given the mission of that group.

Addendum: Find more Falcom animated GIFs and others by Kishi below e.g. from Ys I-III PC-98 ports. I might make a separate thread for it all:

wayback.snowy-day.net/grokyou/falcom/*
wayback.snowy-day.net/grokyou/brandish/*


And while not pertinent to the exact purpose of the thread (pixel animations), pretty Ys IV portraits/eye candy get thrown in while I'm here just for the heck of it:

[Off-Topic / WayBack Runtime Lost Photo/IMG Retrieve Plugin/Patch/Fix]

Synopsis: Dead/broken IMG links plague forums in Random Photo Threads like these, but what if runtime JavaScript could loop through broken/missing images, prepend a special WayBack link (https://web.archive.org/web/0im_/) to search for them in their database and seamlessly return the lost image ??    Let's try!

http://www.sparkcaster.com/demotivational/images/a%20pony.jpg




Dead IMG Link:
https://www.storochliten.se/themes/storochliten/content/images/stor-och-liten-symbol-large.png

Working via WayBack:

Back in the 80 we had Big&Little that was THE toystore here back then, that has somehow
remerged online for being gone in like 20 years time, nostalgic for us...

That logo is for us what TRU are for Americans.

Dead IMG Link (11 years old):
http://chzgifs.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/girlsfartp1.gif

Dead IMG Link (10 years old):
http://asset.soup.io/asset/1180/6135_062f.png

I waslike WTHMF

Dead IMG Link (10 years old):
http://images.paraorkut.com/img/funnypics/images/b/bruce_lee_loves_birthdays-13330.jpg




Here's one of the more interesting cases with lifetime member and former mod GameSack Joe Redifer! When he started off, turns out instead of using his later joeredifer.com domain to share images, he owned/used pixelcraze.film-tech.net circa 2002 (then pixelcraze.com)!

An example post in question:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=3082.msg40362#msg40362

In it, he shared this "pixelcraze.film-tech.net/crap/turbogames.jpg", but that domain is dead and not many files are found on Way Back!

So is all hope lost ? No, I remembered his /crap/ folder being associated with joeredifer, so what if I swap domains and try looking in WayBack again ???

Before : pixelcraze.film-tech.net/crap/turbogames.jpg
After  : joeredifer.com/crap/turbogames.jpg



And voila, now it works, the image can found! *catches breath* But, it's not over yet, searching the forum with Joe's "pixelcraze.film-tech.net" which became "pixelcraze.com" returns dozens of results (60+), so a global find/replace to "joeredifer.com" is needed to lead to most images from 2006-2007 working again! A little more grunt work to recover what is lost, but I made a script for that. It's a bit dangerous though, no mistakes can be made, you make sure the text is 100% unique, no undos if you make a mistake!

So yeah, it's an interesting case where a little extra effort can recover more images/history!


And so on. It's hit or miss, since Aaron kept the forum mostly private in its 2 decades, spiders couldn't archive as much, so if the link was only posted here and nowhere else, it's likely gone forever...

The JavaScript code goes something like this, just a single function called on the onload() event and relies on the fact that SMF forums will set dead image objects to width=0/height=0 so they're not noticed. This idea happened on accident as I was trying to track down where this is happening to stop SMF from setting their dimensions to zero since I want to know a link is dead to fix it manually. But with runtime code you can fix some cases automatically by way of WayBack magic.

Code Select Expand

function ShowLostImages() {
var aLink1, aLink2;
for ( i = 0; i < document.images.length; i++ )
if ( document.images[i].width == 0 || (!document.images[i].complete && document.images[i].width <= 28) ) {
document.images[i].border = 1;
aLink1 = document.images[i].src;
document.images[i].alt = document.images[i].title = aLink1;
aLink2 = "https://web.archive.org/web/0im_/" + aLink1;
document.images[i].src = aLink2;
aLink1 = "https://archive.org/..." + aLink1.substring(aLink1.lastIndexOf("/"));
document.images[i].outerHTML += "<BR><b><font color=red>WayBack Repair:</font></b> <a href=\"" + aLink2 + "\" target=\"_blank\">" + aLink1 + "</a>";
         
document.images[i].onclick = function(event) {
var a = document.createElement("a");
a.target = "_blank";
a.href = this.src;
a.click();
}
}
}


[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Introducing myself and Turbo Views......]

TurboViews tackles Capcom's legendary Street Fighter II: Champion Edition!

Chris "TurboViews" Bucci, a PCE pillar of the TurboGrafx-16 community, will focus on import HuCards after a decade+ of reviewing every US TG-16 game wraps up. A New Challenger Appears, the world phenomenon of "Street Fighter II" which prolonged the declining arcade business! Its arrival on consoles was a big deal. With a TurboExpress and region adapter, you were the cool kid on the block, best portable port at the time if you were lucky! Turns out Chris was one of those kids, even bringing it to school to show off, heh. ; )



I joined the SFII arcade craze with the Hyper Fighting upgrade and at first I didn't understand the appeal of 2 fighters over a static background (I understood Double Dragon/Ninja Gaiden co-ops, the traveling/adventure/stages, not this!), but eventually I got hooked along with Mortal Kombat and dropped countless quarters throughout my High School days. For home consoles I began with the SFII:World Warrior SNES port, but regretted I didn't wait for the HF upgrade... I never dreamed of import shopping off gaming mags, it took Dracula X & Ys IV to make that leap later, so I missed out on the PCE port. By then, SNES ports satisfied the need so it was moot. Anyway, click/watch below for the YouTube Retroview to see what Chris has to say!

The Turbo Views (the TurboGrafx-16 / TurboDuo review series) Facebook Group -

#turboviews #turbografx #turboduo #spida1a #youtube #retrogaming

HQ image assets I used to make this 2021 news entry:

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/images/SFIICE-Manual.jpg
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/images/SFIICE-TurboViewsThumb.jpg
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/images/SFIICE-PCEnginefan_jp_1993-06-2.jpg

(A GIF of the 3 images above made with JSAC Animation Shop)
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/images/SFIICE-TurboView.gif

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Ys History: Ys Book I & II VA dub features Hollywood stars!]

While Alan Oppenheimer is fairly famous for all his voice-acting work in 80's cartoons (He-Man, The Smurfs, The Transformers, Scooby-Doo, etc.) and did a great job voicing Darm and the opening narrator for Ys Book I & II, there's somebody else that worked on the game who achieved far greater fame that's worth mentioning when one fondly looks back at a great classic such as this for the NEC PC Engine/TurboGrafx-CD system! Take a look at this credits roll:



Something I once learned from a Game Sack episode (thanks to Joe Redifer) and never was the wiser till it was explicitly pointed out: See that Thomas H. Church credit for Goban Toba ? Yep, that's one in the same as Thomas Haden Church, the Hollywood actor last known for playing SandMan in Spider-Man 3! The Ys Book I & II dub was well-funded after all and still is one of the best that I know of in a videogame!

Thomas Haden Church
As SandMan	As Goban Toba, leader of the Thieves' Den
Ys Book I&II ADPCM Track #02 "Oh I have heard about your bravery... You're going to Darm Tower to the find book, aren't you? ..."

How about that ? I was pretty surprised when I first learned about it! In addition to a high-quality dub, Ys Book I & II sports one of THE greatest soundtracks in videogame history (as does Ys III to Ys IV!) which is mostly thanks to legends like Yuzo Koshiro and Ryo Yonemitsu's post-arrangement magic which is a big reason why I and many others became such devout Ys fans!!!!

The magic of when I first fired up Ys Book I & II on my brand new Turbo Duo in the 90's still remains with me to this day and for better or worse it's what also led me into fan localization projects like the final "Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys" sequel! The partnership of Hudson Soft and Falcom led to some great things in gaming history, but it's too bad Hudson is no longer with us having been absorbed by Konami and mostly sidelined thereafter (not until the PC Engine/TurboGrafx minis at least)...

References:
https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/video-games/Ys-Book-I-and-II/




Ys Book I & II Reviews:
https://www.rpgfan.com/review/ys-book-i-ii-2/
https://www.rpgfan.com/review/ys-book-i-ii/

For a recently translated interview of the Ys IV: Dawn of Ys staff (both from Hudson & Falcom), check this out as well:
https://shmuplations.com/ysiv/


I just remembered my side project of extracting some of these voice-acting recordings/dubs.

-The TurboGrafx CD Ys games are better than anything XSEED Games has put out.

Ha, I wouldn't know boycotting all their product, but funny to hear you say that.

As to the question, because I grew up with "Ys Book I & II" after I bought a Turbo Duo and it's what made me a lifelong Ys fan, I pronounce "Adol" the way Lilia/she (Mea Martineau as Lilia) says it here:

1)

_{► /audio/YS12_01_005E0000.mp3}

Or, here she is again from the redbook audio track 37:

2)

_{► /audio/37-YsBookI&II.mp3}

3) Incidentally, here is Thomas Haden Church's raw ADPCM clip extracted and converted to MP3 below. I wanted the best possible voice-acting samples for my dub research project (which I still wanna finish).

_{► /audio/YS12_02_00620000.mp3}

(His only recorded line in the game BTW.)

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Finally picked this up, what took me so long?]

Best shooter on the system?  Just might be.

[Blazing Lasers]

What is your favorite?

Blazing Lasers is excellent, one of the best for sure and it's in my top 5, but in reality the under-the-radar Super Star Soldier is unquestionably THE BEST PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 shooter!

When I finished all the TG-16 HuCard games I ever rented or purchased, SSS (and sometimes Dragon Spirit) was the one I could keep slipping into my Turbo Express and playing over and over again while sick in bed or when the random mood struck years apart in leisure. Very high replay value!

Side note: I never traveled with my Express for fear of it being lost or stolen, just how I felt about it. Moreover, it never felt comfortable to play-on-the-go, it's just outside my preferences/habits. Shooters you can justify for portable devices, but say RPGs, my other favorite genre ? No, I wanna play comfortably in front of a TV/panel.

Super Star Soldier > Blazing Lasers









Favorite tracks of stage 2 and 6:

A Chris "TurboViews" Bucci review/gameplay video for a final good measure!

Added a sprite rip collection, may be useful some time for smiley/icon creation. That's how Keith Kursor was forged!

[Feature/News Archive / Kickstarter-triumph Battle Princess Madelyn Released - (posted Dec 6, 2018)!]

Kickstarter-triumph "Battle Princess Madelyn" Released! -  12/6/2018!
Inspired by and a love letter to the NEC SuperGrafx Ghouls 'n Ghosts port!


https://.steampowered/.../Battle_Princess_Madelyn/

Classic retro gameplay for a whole new era!

* Tru NEC SuperGrafx Origin Story: [Developer] Chris Obritsch' daughter Madelyn loved to watch him play Daimakaimura/Ghouls 'n Ghosts on his SuperGrafx which led to her wanting to be IN the game! So eureka, dad's solution was to make her the star of her own!!!

* With the retro feel of Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Wonder Boy 3, this will conjure up memories of the arcade era with its Unity driven hand-drawn pixel art

* 10 levels with five stages each, they're replayable with no starting over (that is unless you want to)

* Two modes including story (by a professional children's author) and arcade (for the experts)

* Hidden collectibles with extra rewards, weapons are upgradeable depending on your armour, which you can find through the blacksmith in story mode

* Madelyn's pet ghost dog "Fritzy" acts as both a weapon and a way to solve puzzles, allowing the player to tackle boss fights and maneuver puzzles.

* Weapons are specific to certain areas, providing access to secret locations

>> Kickstarter History/Game Discussion thread.  <<

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

Loading: twitter.com/AliceProverbio/status/1050672406543486977

Weird one off Twitter, it's a motion illusion effect from a totally static JPEG, i.e. it's NOT an animated GIF! It might make your eyes hurt/or you dizzy from looking at it too long!

[Off-Topic / Re: What do you depise AT THIS MOMENT, literally....]

This is what I get for being a "hot glue cowboy" like thesteve, hot glue blister burn... ;)

I was fixing my fridge, modded it to add 2 more fans to keep the compressor motor from overheating, I soldered the 120V lines very nicely, it was almost a perfect job, but I wanted hot glue on the wire joints before applying black electrical tape, well, the gun spilled a bit of glue on my thumb as I moved it to the wires, should've wore my work gloves but paid the price for being lazy...

I quickly ran to the sink, flushed it in cold water for as much as I could but it got me good, it was too late to avoid a painful burn/blister...

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Third party TG16 pad, has anyone tried it?]

I looked at it, wondered why they defaulted to the TG-16 connector, but then saw the adapter cable from TG-16-to-Duo and thought, "Oh good, smart!"



If it works and feels close to the original, then great. I'm wary of knock-offs though after the experience with SNES pads until I bought an 8bitdo SNES30 which really comes close to the feel of an original pad only with much better features!

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys Project Origins: My 2nd PC Engine CD Import Purchase!]

4K: https://postimg.cc/FYvHVKtd

Ys Blast from the Past: Preserving old PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 receipts as they represent history for a very small group of gamers relative to more successful consoles (e.g NES/SNES/PS1).

Reflections: I shared this receipt in the past but I figured I'd include the original game CD/case as well this time! Found a Turbo Zone Direct flyer also, so I threw that in for good measure!

My purchase represents far more history worth capturing because it IS the reason for my Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys English localization project, it's WHY you can play it in English right now, a dream of mine realized having fallen in love with the Ys series thanks to my TurboDuo purchase from TTi that included Ys Book I & II!!!!

I was VERY hesitant to purchase a Japanese RPG at the time in 1996, I was 21, I didn't game as much as my university studies kicked off, I knew I'd probably get stuck, BUT because of the TurboDuo purchase with Ys Book I & II, and later Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, I knew that I would at least get a legendary soundtrack 100% guaranteed!

The other hesitancy was spending $55 bucks on an import... It was Dracula X that made me do it for the first time ($85 total with shipping), because everybody told me it was excellent, "Castlevania times ten," and even though it's Japanese you'll be able to mostly enjoy it. So Ys IV marked the 2nd time I was willing to buy imports because most of the US games I rented (HuCards-only), owned or didn't interest me, and I wanted to enjoy my TurboDuo for all that it was worth having run out of US options!

Sure enough, I did get stuck in the game as predicted: the white soldier who blocks the door back to the castle you escaped from, and not knowing you had to equip your 1st level armor/sword/shield (the idea being that it's the equipment you stole from that castle when you left, so it makes you "look" like a white soldier but without actual graphical effects)... Sad to say I really gave up, left it on the backburner, and wouldn't beat the game until years later with the help of a guide! But I DID return to it, glad I can say that!

Anyway, that's about it, I may have more thoughts to share some other time, but if you look at the Ys IV ReadMe, I already shared quite a bit of history on all that made the fan localization project possible, so there's more to read there if interested.

Until next time, take it Ysssy!

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: System Card Font Fix]

I'm not familiar with English systems, but AFAIK they also play Japanese games without any problem(or so I've heard), so the Japanese font should be included in the western system cards as well.
So, does it mean that the western system cards included the original Japanese font, but somehow changed the English font for whatever reasons (copyright issues, maybe)?
Edit: Or do you mean that the English fonts in the system cards suck (regardless of region), but it's only less annoying when most of the text are in Japanese?

The PCE/TG-16 System cards all have the S-JIS character set but only up to 0x9872, which covers about half the possible Japanese Kanji representation (JIS Level 1).

See: https://www.ysutopia.net/projects/s-jis/

If you look at the above S-JIS guide I left around when I first started the Xak III project in 2001, you can click on the 0x97-0x98 range to see where it ends.

S-JIS also has English, Greek and Russian characters covered, but in the case of the System card, they're stored in a really ugly 12x12 & 16x16 font as Dave demonstrated below with Exile which used 12x12.

Here's a snapshot ripped directly from a System Card 3 ROM (using fedian) below:

Cmd: "php feidian.php -r 12,12,10,7,0x30998 syscard3.pce S-JIS"

For comparison, here's the even uglier 16x16 font:

Cmd: "php feidian.php -r 16,16,16,15,66048 syscard3.pce S-JIS"

Dave's idea here is simply based on what if you just overwrite those English alphabet tiles in the System Card 3 ROM with a better looking font and boot a game with it ??

Before/After Results:

In the early days, you were limited to emulators, but now you can take an edited ROM file to real NEC hardware using a Turbo Everdrive flashcart which is pretty standard nowadays, and voila, you'll get to play a game with a slightly better font or even other possibilities...

Unfortunately, as you can see, there's only mild improvement, only so much you can do for a fixed-width 12x12 (or 16x16) English font, it'd be more ideal to switch the game over to an 8x12 or 8x16 font, but that would involve extensive hacking work on the ROM of the game itself...

This is a bit of a tangent, the Xak III tangent if you will, but same concept that can be applied to *SOME* PC Engine CDs and HuCards if-and-ONLY-if the font tiles are not compressed as is the case for the System Card ROM! You must find the offset in the data track where the font tiles are and simply overwrite them with other font tile sprites and voila, you can change the font into something better!

Xak III was the perfect candidate because it was ready-to-go with nice English 8x16 font support built-in with no font compression, no expert hackers necessary! Just take tile data from one game, even SNES, and overwrite it at the correct offset(s) and you can accomplish this:

https://www.ysutopia.net/images/xak3/font.html

Lufia [SNES] 8x16	Lagoon [SNES] 8x16	Neutopia [PCE] 8x16

Es magnifique my friend, es magnifique! 

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Merry Xmas! Giving away a Rondo of Blood Blu-ray (No Strings Attached!)]

Wow, so Rob Nava was legit (I wasn't sure about this raffle), the Christmas raffle prize already arrived! I'm already in love with the BluRay cover artwork!!!

(Used my scanner for these photos below since my PC was booted for medicwheat's problem, and I didn't like the shots from my phone)




PCE Works...for the LOVE of it! 

[General Gaming / Re: Ys IX is coming...]

This new game must be all about Dogi's crazy addiction of breaking people out of Jails.

Damn, I didn't think of the Prison Wall-Breaking Dogi angle, totally forgot!

[General Gaming / Re: Ys IX is coming...]

Hmmm, where's Adol in all of this ??? 

I had a Dream, found out the Truth in a prison called "cradle" ...

The mystery begins! ;)

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK! HIM! UP!!!!

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

Loading: twitter.com/cinemassacre/status/1074032285110935552

Hmm, he looks awfully familiar...

[PC/Console/Mobile Ports / Re: Battle Princess Madelyn [PC/PS4/XBOX/] by Causal Bit Games (Chris/LoboDaMainMan)]

So...I purchased Battle Princess Madelyn ($20) with my GOG account today as general practice over Steam. I did learn Steam has an offline mode, but I do prefer the no-strings GOG installer executable model better where possible.

Well, my 8bitdo SNES GamePad is recharged, game is installed (man, installation so fast on nice new SSD drives, love it!) let's see when I take this for a spin!

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: In-game symptoms of laser or bad cap problems?]

I have a PC-Engine Duo RX and all my HuCards work flawlessly without issue, and most of my CDs do. However, I have three games that seem to stop playing music at certain points (but the sound effects continue). Burning these games has no effect - the music drops out unexpectedly and doesn't come back. There are no strange audio artifacts... The music just stops.

You're very much in luck based on what you described, you should be able to fix this yourself!

Good thing about that is you avoid risk to the laser assembly which is fragile and can be damaged during shipping back'n'forth between you and somebody else (besides saving yourself the cost for repair/shipping).

As Keith mentioned, this is a lube problem, and I already did a write-up years ago to help:

"Re: REPAIR GUIDE - TG-CD: Grease is dried up. Symptoms and Solution."
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=7012.msg296648#msg296648

But quick recap: The laser's slider pole has ~25 year old dried-up grease at this point (as old as the console), the laser unit has lost agility as a result, so a good cleaning of the old grease with say alcohol, and application of new white lithium grease will do the trick!

I recommend freeing the slide motor (2 glued screws, it's tough) if you can which will let you move the whole laser unit freely, and also to clean/lubricate all sprockets, not just the pole, etc. In short, fresh grease needs to go everywhere there's old grease!

I assume you know you also need a 4.5mm game security bit which you can easily find on eBay to be able to open NEC consoles. The white lithium grease you can purchase at most any hardware store.



Funny thing, I used petroleum jelly when I had this audio cut off problem, it would work normally again for a year or two, before drying up and leading to the same problem. That was the poor man's way using something already in the home, but obviously not appropriate for a long-term solution. Somebody here once talked about a better grease, Molykote, what's used for joysticks, but I dunno if you wanna experiment just yet.

P. S.

Do *not* touch any of the 3 CD potentiometers, this should just strictly be a grease/lubrication problem.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: TurboFont]

EDIT: I never believed this was anything but trollin',  , but 2x4 did PM me a sample test.

NightWolve, I'm such an ass, I didn't know these PMs were piling up!! So to answer your questions,  I have only given this font designer/ friend a few hundred bucks.  It's practically nothing but,  I always wanted to have the font.  I was excited about the idea of being able to recreate box art, label art,  manuals,  chip labels -- digitally and/or physically -- with total accuracy.  I think it's awesome when people here recreate physical aspects of things. I just wanted to make a contribution to that. Thanks for the support and for making some major contributions yourself over the years!

Heh, to be honest, I haven't believed you at all, haha!

I thought this was all weird trolling on your part...

Nah, s'all good, no need to send me anything. I'll check it out if you ever finish.

Trolling!! That hurts Nightwolve, but I suppose you have your reasons.  Just finishing up 3 or 4 "special characters" to gild the lily.  Here's an appetizer...  don't know how to embed images on this...


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AMVlqIVefJJ7YwzgBXhlFRz09LhTnz77/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J_6dIYPYar5ZbQcfDY932Yw1wHg708dL/view

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Status of PC-FX fan translations]

So looks like Filler is the only other guy that ever finished a PC-FX fan translation/localization project until SamIAm came along with Zeroigar ??

I noticed sabre470 visiting recently, I could swear he played a role in the Dracula X project, but then I realized he was the one that started a PC-FX project on "Little Red Riding Hood Chacha" eons ago.

I found his old project page on WayBack. There was a WIP patch somewhere apparently.

wayback://brinkster.com:80/sabrevgc/

Oh man I haven't touched this translation for ages, I did even take Japanese lessons for 2 years to support that project and satisfy my curiosity of the language. Life got in the way, I guess. I did have fairly automated tooling for translating since it's mostly Hiragana and Katana. I've kept all the files for the project, though so I could resume it, time permitting.

I'm still deep in PC-FX and PC-FXGA though, if you haven't seen my blog cdromrom.wordpress.com

I said hello, he replied back with his new site and I'm guessing he's referring to the ChaCha project ??

Anyway, yeah, as mentioned in chat, I saw Filler's twitter posts about these dead projects, that's too bad. We just don't have the numbers for the kind of attention NES/SNES/Sega and other systems got, it's lucky enough to get PC Engine translations every few years, let alone a total failure like the PC-FX (which failed terribly even in Japan, in contrast to the successful PC Engine ancestor)!


In other news, looks like he's been working on a PC Engine HuCard game, "City Hunter."

https://twitter.com/romtranslator/status/1066781118479912960

I've successfully dumped a script for #CityHunter on the #PCE/#TG16. It was a PITA between having to insert the script values into the ROM so I could ID the 300-or-so kanji, to messing with the final dump encoding due to a kanji missing from JIS, but it wasn't TOO bad in the end. pic.twitter.com/IQGcPZ0TF3

— Filler (@romtranslator) November 25, 2018

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

I was randomly hound-harassed/stalked today by the crazy butthurt psychotic loon pictured above with that shirt in the #Yuki discord chatroom... Sarumaru endorses their extortion troll tactics, sad to say...   To be clear, I do not negotiate with or kowtow to "any-means-necessary" extortionist saboteurs/bullies, and some of what we had here, "forum terrorists," (as White Supremacist DarKKKobold coined them, haha) but JohnPhile, Ryley "NoSexGex" Reynolds, AetherButt, the DildoPhile Dicktator and his DildoKobolds as well as some others never figured that out months ago...

So, who exactly is the above embarrassing loser in that "shirt" you might ask? A petty dramaqueen troll formerly known as "jlued686" (JohnPhile Luedtke) who later proclaimed himself "KingDrool" at some point (progressive ego you understand) if that rings a bell.

All he primarily did here at PCEFX the last ~3 years is rant/rave/screech/scream-at-the-sky about Donald J. Trump's very existence (Orange Man Bad! Orange Man Bad!!!) which drives him bitterly deranged to no end (Thanks Trump!)... That's pretty much all I can remember him for, besides being a vicious, wound-tight bully that trolled me for not liking PCE sports games or something, and for being a republican, etc.

Seems he was alerted by another preexisting troll in the #Yuki chatroom of my visit (Psycho Punch or Gex), as was Psycho Arkhoe (The Greatest PCE Community Saboteur, 2 PCE groups/1 PCE Kickstarter by my count were sabotaged by his bitterness, immaturity, arrogance, envy, jealously, & bullying nature...), both of whom had *never* posted in it, so they only arrived to tag-team troll one target (me) of their unhinged wrath (>6 months well after the dramastorm THEY instigated had passed). It was transparent to anyone with half a brain.

John approached his hounding trying to shoehorn passive-aggressive posts first, followed by playing the usual nerd cliche: he projected his virginity on me (claiming he's seen a vagina), blamed me for his own bullying, harassing, called me an a$$hole (heh, no self-introspection, that's for sure!), pretended to enjoy me telling him what a POS he was directly, etc. It was pathetic to watch his desperation for me to acknowledge his miserable, disgusting existence as he continued to poison a chatroom with his raging butthurt that he had never posted in solely due to learning of my visit... Yep, Psycho Nintega clone-confirmed!

Clearly the cyber-bully is obsessed way way too much about me, a videogame forum, so I say, step away from the keyboard before you fully become Nintega Part II, wipe that shit down with chlorine, go out, get some fresh air, take some walks, get laid buddy (pay for it if you have to!), i.e., get a life - IN GENERAL - cause you clearly don't have one running around wearing DuoDildoDoxPhile t-shirts to honor your destructive doxxing pal!!! Stop hangin' around creepy "dildo/game-huggers" and cutting videos with them (by that I mean tweak the freak with his pierced lip ring, ugh), that might help too, John! (I exclude Esteban/Dan of course).

Overall, I felt the stalking, dox-defending, hound-harasser is VERY confused, outright delusional about how the actions of Nulltard/bullity/insanity/toxicity/doxxity and his gang damaged this forum! He has deluded himself to believe he can pass the blame to me, that the shear act of repetition & feigned outrage, while covering for all the inbetween harassment him/his allies have committed (that would justify their re-banning ANYWHERE!), will establish it as historical fact...

Essentially, he hopes to deflect/cover historical blame away from his friend, the libelous, doxxing spam-terror, Captain DildoPhile, who f*cked up my home phone number worse than ever in buying up domains (2) to link a dox job at a place that encourages REAL physical stalking/contact on their targets... That's who Nulltard formed an alliance with, it's a site that also reportedly caused a suicide, not that these lunatics would give a damn when the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" takes root... Was it worth it creeps ?

In hypocritical rage he ended his "proud" PCEFX membership by screeching at Aaron to delete his account (and Josh's) after I emailed him to stop his lying conspiracy that 20k Necromunster posts were deleted because lying hack BlackTiger suddenly pretended the search feature doesn't work for him.... He protested 2 "unsolicited" emails, portraying himself a "victim" of ~1000 emails by generalization propaganda, yet he was one of the harassers that did exactly that to Aaron months before hoping to sabotage my relations/friendship (Aaron reported ~daily angry messages by Email, Twitter, Facebook, PM, etc)... Incredible!

So yeah, the bitter, raging, stalking, unhinged loon now likes "unsolicited" visits, contact, harassment, etc. when HE does it, even on somebody else's chat property to engage a target of his unhinged wrath! It's targeted hound harassment 101, stalking me to any/all PCE groups to bark in rage, still hoping to extort/bully/browbeat me down to a different outcome here or just sadistic satisfaction (if he feels that's all he has left). So, um, are you're saying hypocrisy by an unhinged loon is supposed to be shocking ? Yes, I know, I'm just laying it out for the record! He's a classic "Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I-Do!" fail!

It's almost like ANTIFA thuggery, I go to a restaurant, a store, or some event, next thing I know, Psycho John and the DoxPhile crew show up, they phone over more of their gang to stop by, sit near or next to me, start acting stupid, raging, heckling, yelling, etc. They DO have my home address, folks, which was passed around in the DoxPhile . com/chat, so it's not out of the realm of possibilities... Dude is crazzzy hateful, no doubt, he took his trolling to live YouTube video level like Nulltard at the MGC and Nintega long before that!

Anyway, we wish DramaQueen JohnPhile all the best at his new rage-based PCE forum and hope he'll eventually get the mental help that he needs... We certainly hope he hasn't ventured out of his basement wearing DildoPhile t-shirts (or hats, like Josh on EVERY GameHugger video), but bad habits are hard to break, we understand... DoxMaster provocateur/troll and White Supremacist "DarKKKobold" once mentioned mommy and daddy had to hire him a therapist, maybe seek his advice, John ?? Just a thought, I mean look at the *fantastic* results with him, that was money well spent! It could change your life buddy, ya never know!

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: Turbo duo sound issue. Capacitors changed op amps are fine.]

The Steve helped me out. turned out to be corrosion on c322 to amp 503 and ground.

Cool, he's still got it!

It's good to have these cases documented somewhere for others to search for in the future.

I'm torn between DIY or just sending it to a pro and not wasting my time biting off more than I can chew; you have to recognize your limitations and not go too far. I still have a full capacitor replacement job to perform on my Turbo Duo, and I'm worried if something like these kinds of issues happens before that.

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: SOLD OUT: PCE/Turbografx RGB THS7374 amps and cables]

You can fix this by lifting that leg.  Here is pic with an arrow pointing to the pin that needs lifted

I found it easiest to just de-solder that side of the IC, lift/break off the leg, then re solder that side down.

That's too bad, one little mistake on what looks like an otherwise professionally-designed/built board.

[Off-Topic / Re: Hudson fans might want this]

You mean "Konami fans," we have to say we're Konami fans in the context of Bomberman now, don't we ?? ;)