Messages

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

I think the idea behind tcaud's original post wasn't that the Discord server needs to "represent" this forum, but rather offer a nice startup Discord community tailored around discussion of the PC-Engine / TurboGrafx.

That's cool if there is another Discord server already setup for this and if it is thriving, then perhaps that's the way to go. We couldn't find one which is why we made our own. This is mainly in response to how well the PC-98 Discord Server has taken off with gathering a large following of interesting members with many available skillsets.

In any case, that was the point of this was to try and gather members who might be interested in chatting over Discord. Not all of us have the time for forums anymore, but find it easier to just hop over to see what's cooking on the Discord server.

If anyone happens to be a member of the other Discord server for PCE-FX, please let us know the link to that communtiy so that we can check it out.

Thanks,

-Thomas

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: The "PCE CDROM Emulator" anticipation thread.]

I would gladly pay for one that could be implemented in a DUO!

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Henshin Engine Game for TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine]

Just wanted to drop in and say good luck with the game! I just backed it for a physical Turbo disc. Just in time too seeing as it's in the final hours of the Kickstarter.

I really like the concept of the game having the main protagonist represent NEC and the antagonist / rival represent Sega. That will be a lot of fun to see how that story plays out.

I came up with a similar concept for a game I wanted to work on for MSX one day, but life got in the way. It was going to be a Mega Man style game for MSX 2+ called naturally, MSX Man. But instead of robot masters, they would be Computer Masters and it was MSX Man's mission after being created by a "pair" of doctors, Dr. Nishi and Dr. Gates, to show them all who was boss. He was going to fight against Atari Man, Commodore Man, NEC (PC-88) Man, Spectrum Man, BBC Man, and others ultimately getting upgrades to make the MSX Man the most powerful 8-bit machine ever built. This would of course parody the actual MSX history some having Dr. Gates go on to "Do his own thing" and you'd have to fight him and his computer robot armies in a Windows fortress before he could give full power and support to... dun dun dun, the International Business Machine, which would be MSX Man's final boss. MSX Man ultimately cannot win against IBM's power, but MSX Man is later found years later and resurrected to live on and fight for "Great Justice!"

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Ys Special Edition - 2001 -> 2016 version plans.]

I really like this project and I'm happy it's getting a revival. I had not seen it before and I'm looking forward to playing the game again with an all new arranged soundtrack. We've decided to do a similar process of providing an optional patch for Ys Celceta PC (originally in Chinese) which would offer alternate soundtracks and possibly include additional Ys IV related music queues since there were not too many tracks in the game and a lot of repeats. Also, there is TONS of Ys IV music spanning 4 different versions of the game, SFC, DUO, PS2, VITA.

Just to clarify since I don't think there is much news about it elsewhere on the net other than our forum, but there is an English translation project for the game in the works, but we preferred to try and see if we can insert a brand new translation instead of the XSEED version if we can find a willing Chinese to English translator. The entire game is pretty much already hacked, a debug mode has been found, and we're currently working on a 60 FPS tweak as well. It'll be without a doubt the definitive version of Ys IV Celceta by far, much nicer than the Vita version.

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread]

Congratulations Elmer and SamIAm! Looks like the project is coming along very well and I'm happy to hear that the first draft of the script it finished.

Is an English dub project already open for this?

-Thomas

[General Gaming / Re: Xenoblade Chronicles X]

I'm also playing Xenoblade Chronicles X and I'm loving it so far. I just wish I had more time to play it! That and my wife tends to hog the Wii U for to participate in squad-based Splatoon battles daily. I've never seen such an addition to a video game before! Oh wait, that was me with Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II...

I just watched that video explaining how large the world of Mira is in comparison to Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Witcher. That's a really impressive size! 4 times the size of San Francisco!

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread]

Just checking it to see the progress and it really looks like it is coming along nicely! Looking forward to finally being able to understand and enjoy these titles. I'm a huge Xanadu series fan.

Btw, if you do happen to do a dub for the games, I'd be interested in auditioning for a part, though I am afraid I don't know the characters well enough yet. I did Lefance in the Ys IV dub.

-Thomas

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Saber Riders Kickstarter]

It looks amazing! I'll have to think about backing it before the Kickstarter ends. Hope it reaches that stretch goal of $210,000 for the PCE version. : )

-Thomas

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Xanadu I disc owners: Please help!]

That's good that you were able to find out what the issue was, but that sucks about your Dracula X 100% save.

But it could be that not being turned on for ages caused the super-capacitor to get so low that it caused trouble. I might try leaving the system on overnight to give it a good charge.

I see. So the problem might be that the system wasn't Obeyed often enough? 

-Thomas

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Xanadu I disc owners: Please help!]

Also, have you tried saving with this game yet? What hardware are you using?

Thank you! 

I currently only have a Duo RX to test this on, but I can confirm that it saves and loads from this my system at least.

-Thomas

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Xanadu I disc owners: Please help!]

Hi Sam, not sure if my version will help, but I checked it and it's FFLTF HE60916-1 TCW1 which may be an earlier batch from your serial number.

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: Going rate for PC-FX?]

Normally my PC-98 wouldn't have a processor powerful enough to support it, but I upgraded it to 83 mHz using an overdrive chip. I believe the specs on a PC-FX GA call for a 100 mHz, so I'm hoping to scrape by and still be able to use this thing. However, in the event that it doesn't work out, I don't want to be above the $100 range for a loss.

The specs on the ISA card require a 486SX33, but recommend a 486DX100.

If you've got enough RAM in the system to use Fez's PC-FXGA CD cache program, then I suspect that you'll be fine.

Thanks for explaining the recommended specs. Well, natively the Ce2 has a 486SX chip running 25 mHz. But with this adapter/overdrive CPU I'm able to overclock it to 83mHz, so hopefully that should be enough.

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: Going rate for PC-FX?]

Thanks Elmer,

In checking eBay it looks like the auctions that previously sold were for complete sets anywhere from $60 to $90 not including shipping. So that'll be my target range to aim for I think. It's not that I absolutely gotta have one of these babies, but I really would like to see how it performs on my PC-98 as a hobbyist type of project. Normally my PC-98 wouldn't have a processor powerful enough to support it, but I upgraded it to 83 mHz using an overdrive chip. I believe the specs on a PC-FX GA call for a 100 mHz, so I'm hoping to scrape by and still be able to use this thing. However, in the event that it doesn't work out, I don't want to be above the $100 range for a loss.

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: Any Ys Collectors here?]

You guys have some nice Ys collections! I don't have the X68000 releases yet, but maybe one day when there aren't other financial priorities.

I'm an Ys / Falcom collector too. I'd love to show all the Ys stuff, but it would take me so long to pull it all out and put it all back... Maybe one day I can show it. For now I'll just show the main shelf. There's plenty of books, other figures, games a clock and even jigsaw puzzles for Ys behind a lot of this stuff. I've taken a bit of a hiatus on collecting though.

New setup:
https://retro-type.com/skyewelse/gameroom/falcom_shelf_new.jpg
Old setup:
https://retro-type.com/skyewelse/gameroom/falcom_shelf.jpg



-Thomas

[General Gaming / Re: Retro VGS Game Console]

I'm looking forward to the Kickstarter to see what they show then and what the price will be. I hope it does well, regardless on whether or not I buy one. But it does seem like it has some very nice potential. Seriously thinking about it at least. But I guess it just depends on the price.

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: ZEROIGAR RELEASE!]

Awesome! Looking forward to playing this when I can either get a PC-FX or a PC-FX GA for my 98 machine. Thank you for working on it. It looks great!

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: Going rate for PC-FX?]

For personal reasons, I'm more interested in getting a PC-FX GA card for my NEC PC-9821 Ce2. I'm not really sure what the actual going rate is for one of these though as both eBay and Yahoo Actions Japan seem marked up very high. Surely these can be cheaper? I don't even need the full complete box, disk or demos even.

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!]

Sent a tweet that I hope will be effective. A few RTs might help get it started if you are a Twitter user.

Loading: twitter.com/SkyeWelse/status/626436711145451520

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!]

Wow, I can't believe they made an energy drink to enjoy while they laugh at Konami and all the collector's who pay top dollar for their warez in pretty packaging.

Well, your move Konami. But I guess I'll start something on Twitter to see where it goes.

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!]

Wow Professor! I guess that's why they call you... "Professor" as you really dished out a valuable lesson here... "Tobias, open your book to 'Chapter 11'. "

I hope anyway!

I was wondering though, after reading the comments about whether Konami will do anything and I was thinking, why stop there? Create a situation where Konami can't ignore it because it's gone viral and out in the public. Right now Konami is trending pretty low, and they are an easy target to make fun of for their recent business decisions. I can't imagine they wouldn't react or try to do something if word got out that "Look how stupid they are! Konami doesn't even care about copyright issues for their own past works! Free Konami games for everyone!"

This could also be re-enforced by sending a letter to the copyright holders for all of the software titles that Tobias as released. Every last one of them. And the same letter too, which states that Tobias is profiteering off of the copyrighted works from this company, this company, this company, this one, this one too" and have that be in the same letter that you send out to each copyright holder. It might take some work tracking all that information down, but I think it would be worth it in the end.

If not only the public knows, but other companies as well, it should create an appropriate shut down hammer with Konami leading the charge.

Not sure if many of you knew this, but in the MSX communities, there was a place called Konamito, which was cited by Konami for having copyrighted material and they decided to shut down and reopen under a slightly different name and different content. There was a whole forum discussion about it here.

And then there is this too:

Metal Gear Remake gets the okay from Konami... Not!

So I think they will react accordingly, especially if there is some fuel to add to the fire. As this been sent through Twitter? I know myself and Nightwolve are on Twitter and I'd be happy to send a tweet about this. I just need to lock and load. It would be more effective if we had an official tweet setup that we could copy and paste with who we want to send it to, i.e. @konami #KonamiCopyrights, et cetera.

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: Kickstarting translation projects?]

Yeah, pretty much the only person I know who has done "legit repros" was Brandon over at Super Fighter Team. He got the rights for several titles from the original developers and translated, romhacked and then released the games. 

He's got a bit of a mixed track record as to release times, but I give him props for pulling off a release that keeps the original rights holders/developers in mind as well.

That's really very cool that he was able to accomplish that. As a collector myself, I've also thought about how nice it would be to own some nice pretty reproductions to sit on a shelf and occasionally glance at, but I've never taken a bite out of that sandwich for the reason that I'd be purchasing something that wasn't legitimate and therefore only contain the value of the beholder and how much it was worth to them personally (or subsequently how much it was worth to the Repro shop to sell it by creating a demand for it). I just see it as overpaying for something that isn't real and doesn't support the original copyright holders and/or the translation teams that worked on it.

But in a case like what xcrement5x describes above with Brandon from Super Fighter Team, I think i would be totally behind an operation like this.

True Puffer, I'm not sure if you are trolling or not as it does seem like you haven't made too many friends here with your posts so far, but I'll assume that you are being serious about finding a real solution for collectors, translators and copyright holders alike. Reading on what you've stated so far, to really do this correctly so that all parties involved are happy and compensated, an entity "We are the next Working Designs" publisher would need to be established.

This of course would be of no small feat to accomplish, because even if you were to have all the crowdfunding money in the world, there is no guarantee that that money will A) allow you to purchase a legal license to sell the game B) bind you to any actual release schedule or contract for releasing the game (a.k.a. they might take the money and run and call it a failed project, just like so many other Kickstarter projects that fail after they get funded).

To become such an entity, you would first need your own money and influence and probably a track history of being a successful publisher yourself, or at the very least a person with a lot of connections who knows who to contact to make things happen. I would wager that most Japanese businesses would not care to deal with an entity that has no proven track record or relies on crowdfunding as the only means of funding a localization project, even if it is for old / dead software. They would probably just not even be interested in appeasing a handful of collectors.

But, all negativity aside, I would honestly love to see something like this happen actually, if it really could be done correctly. A rise of a new publishing entity geared toward releasing physical retro-games and unreleased localizations of software, perhaps only in limited quantity. With the publisher's blessing as well as the team working on bringing the translation forward being able to work with this entity to secure the rights and release their projects as new official releases. This could actually be a positive news story for the developer as well: "Developer's game gets new release in the United States after 20 years!" and other developers / copyright holders might want a piece of that action once it became popular / trendy enough.

I guess I would kind of envision it as a similar concept to how IndieBox does it for indie games today.

But if you ask me, I don't think we are quite there yet. There still needs to be a successful publishing entity out there willing to make that kind of bold move first, and that all takes capital and likely a huge loss, before any real profit or breaking even is met. Ultimately it is a bit of a gamble. It may even be more of a risk than releasing the RetroVGS in this day and age.

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Shada translation: beta testers wanted]

Now that I've got a Turbo ED, I'd be interested in testing this if there is an availability for another tester.

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: TED Group Buy Round 2! ORDERED!]

In case it helps anyone with setting it up, I learned that there can only be a maximum of 25 pages in each folder directory, so at least in my case I was able to split up a GoodPCE archive as follows:

A-E
F-N
O-S
T-Z

Having a lot of fun with this so far. Is there a comprehensive list anywhere of fan-translated HuCard projects available anywhere?

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: TED Group Buy Round 2! ORDERED!]

Hi jtucci31,

I got in the mail today. Thanks very much! It's been fun testing it so far. Started a game in Neutopia II and was able to reload a save game off the card. Next I guess I'll see what this expensive game, Magical Chase is all about.

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: TED Group Buy Round 2! ORDERED!]

It won't cost any of you extra, I know that. I'm sorry for this mess-up. I feel very guilty, I thought this could be done smoothly. I sadly won't be getting much help from krikzz on any of this, so matters are in my own hands. I assumed responsibility for this sort of thing when I said that I'd do this group buy, so it's no issue to me. I just know that it sucks that you guys have to wait a little longer to get them.

Accidents happen and while in hindsight it would have made more sense to have done this in two orders perhaps, I don't think you should feel guilty about it. You were trying to do us all a favor. We recently had an order where someone like you who was trying to do a favor for the MSX community was trying to work with a shop to create new keyboard membranes for Panasonic MSX machines. He worked so hard to try and get the orders processed and get everyone a fully working membrane, but there were issues and now pretty much the cost of all of the membranes will need to be refunded to those who paid for them (or partial amounts if the shop honors a lower price for a non-perfect one) and it's a huge hassle for him to now have to deal with. So I definitely want to tell you that I really appreciate what you are trying to do here very much.

While I would prefer if it didn't cost me more to get it, if it helps things out I don't mind paying a little more for my order if need be to offset the extra shipping expense that will have to be paid.  Consider it a handling fee. There may be others here who feel the same way. Please let me know if you think this offer would help the situation.

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: TED Group Buy Round 2! ORDERED!]

Thanks for the updates everyone. I'm sure it will all get straightened out in the end and I don't mind waiting a bit longer for it to arrive. I appreciate you all working together to get it all sorted out.

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: TED Group Buy Round 2! PM's are out!]

Payment sent! Thanks again for organizing this. : )

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: TED Group Buy Round 2! (Not accepting anymore people. Sorry!)]

Thank you very much for organizing this jtucci. : )

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: WAIT! Don't buy an everdrive on your own just yet! TED Group Buy Round 2!]

Count me in for one too if there is still room for another order.

-Thomas

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

SkyWelse or anyone that speaks to these people, I need your help to get this confirmation... Before I make a speech on my site, I wanna have my facts before opening my mouth.

Hi Nightwolve, I asked Tom for you and he said that they hired a different third-party contractor and retranslated the game from scratch. They didn't use Deuce as a translator for this.

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: CD Stupid Card 4.0]

I kind of have the same question as ParanoiaDragon. I'm not a PCE developer, or a PCE Romhacker, but if I did decide to work on a project one day with a group here, would it benefit me to have this and would it generally have a benefit for the non-developer at this stage in the development process?

Also, would you plan to produce more batches in the future if it made more sense for non-developers to take a pass on it currently so that it can be used by developers as a priority?

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!]

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

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Elusive Ys IV Debug Mode - Now Accessible with New Mednafen Cheat Code!!!!]

Looks great, can't wait to mess around with this. : )

I have an end game save via emulator on my Xbox using MednafenX, I'll have to check this out. I've actually never been to the Developer's room before, only heard about it.

-Thomas

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: Raffle: Neutopia Manual]

OPTIONAL: Show me a picture of your flooring (carpet preferred) with something interesting on it so that we may compare carpet/flooring diversity on PCEFX and you can get 2 more entries (for a total of three) to leverage your odds!

And I modified the option part for extra entries.  It can be any flooring, I didn't want to a flooring discriminant. 

I love this. I just wanted to say that. I'm not entering or anything, (not that I can anyway) but I do have an extra Ys III Japanese version that I might put up for raffle with some rules just like this one. Maybe extra points if you happen to take a PCE related photo with a cat or dog...

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!]

1. So Tobias is planning to press Ys IV and has possibly already started? And he's going to give them away for free just like he said he would do with Xak III? I wish that were true and not being sold for profit, but I guess we'll just have to see if these popup for sale. There's also the risk that some people might jump at an opportunity to get the pressed discs for free and resell them anyway, which would be difficult to tell if it is truly Tobias / PCE Memories' operation.
-Thomas

Tobias is a douchebag profiteer. Don't support him. He is not a friend of this community 

BurntLasagna is someone who didn't want folks to make a profit by selling reproductions (in other words, Tobias). He said: PCE fans, make your own personal copies, enjoy the English-language dub!

I support BurntLasagna's wishes.

I will always support the folks who hack/modify/translate/dub/create games.  These folks, and the fruits of their labor, are far more important than some collectard fetish for a fucking mass-produced reproduction.

LightScribe your own disc and print your own manual/insert. It really isn't that difficult.

www.tg-16.com/print_your_own_stuff.htm

Oh I definitely want to make it clear that I do not personally want Tobia's pressed discs. I wasn't suggesting that. I have just about every Xak series release out there, but I don't want what Tobias is pushing. It has no value from a collector's standpoint, only a functional one of being a pressed disc. I was simply stating that I hope that Tobias keeps his word about not selling these. But I have my doubts, just as I have my doubts that some other person who gets one of these discs for free would be decent enough to not turn around and try to make a profit on it. It's just a bad situation no matter how you view it, with the only positive being that if Tobias did keep his word, at least he discs he's pressing for these would end after all the free copies are distributed.

I've made a lightscribe disc before for personal use for Ys IV shortly after the English Dub project was completed. But having learned that playing cd-rs on the actual system can damage the laser much quicker and that a laser for a Turbo Duo RX machine may be rare/expensive to replace, I've been reluctant to play too many cd-rs lately until I can figure out a plan B of how to replace that laser.

So if NightWolve were to make a pressed disc, I'd be all over that, for one because it would be a pressed disc, and second because it would be something of value to me from a collector's standpoint because in my eyes, it came from an original source that made the translation possible and a friend. Kind of hard to put a price on that.

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!]

1. So Tobias is planning to press Ys IV and has possibly already started? And he's going to give them away for free just like he said he would do with Xak III? I wish that were true and not being sold for profit, but I guess we'll just have to see if these popup for sale. There's also the risk that some people might jump at an opportunity to get the pressed discs for free and resell them anyway, which would be difficult to tell if it is truly Tobias / PCE Memories' operation.

2. I got pretty excited when you said that you planned to make your own pressing of Ys IV. If you ended up doing that, I'd definitely want to buy it from you directly.

3. I guess by from what I read by Bernie's post, Burnt Lasagna isn't liked by everyone here. He seemed like a pretty cool guy to me at least when I was working on the Ys IV Dub project with him.

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Elusive Ys IV Debug Mode - May need a programmer to make it accessible.]

Very cool, I had not heard about this before. I have the Ys IV Dawn of Ys Guidebook and I checked that to see if there was any information in there about this, but doesn't look like it. It does however have some nice chapters about the "Making of the Game" and the intended Ys IV anime though.

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Lucretia - Demon Princess (鬼姫の呪い in Japan) NOW IN BETA TESTING]

Looks really nice Old Rover. Looking forward to seeing a video of it soon. : )

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Neutopia III Homebrew?]

@Old Rover, that is wonderful news that you all will be continuing the Neutopia 3 project under a new name. I can't wait to hear more on the progress of this and I hope you all will consider releasing some tasty screenshots of the new project soon.

Action RPGs that are in the vein of Zelda / Neutopia with secrets to discover tend to be my favorite types. I still love faster paced action RPGs like the Ys series, but the hunting for secrets / passages, etc part is what I enjoy the most I think. Probably why I enjoy the Brandish series so much actually for the same reasons. So much to discover!

Not sure if you all have heard of a game called Wander Wander from Compile, but I've been wanting to be a part of a translation project for that game for awhile, and now it looks like that might actually get started up sooner than later. I think that Neutopia fans would really like that game a lot.

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!]

Or everyone could snub his useless effort at "good will".  I'm too cool to take Tobias's ratty boots, even for free.

That's how I feel about it too. While he offering it for free, if it isn't something that Nightwolve was a part of, then it doesn't belong in the Xak collection because to me, that's a fake unauthorized bootleg, no matter how good the quality may actually seem on the surface. There is an actual Xak series bootleg that I would love to have in my collection, but the difference is, it was a big-boxed MSX style bootleg of Xak I sold at a few dutch MSX fairs by the actual romhackers and translators that worked on it to bring it to the fans. Now something like that... that is treasure worth having, not this stuff that Tobias is pushing.

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: CD Stupid Card 4.0]

Thank you for clarifying that Elmer. That makes sense to me. It would likely have to be in the hands of developers for awhile before any real decisions or processes would be made as to whether the card would be required or not.

And if that's the case, perhaps there would be enough support at that time for TailChao to make another batch. I'm definitely considering getting a Turbo EverDrive 2.0 at the very least. I'm trying to follow along with what SamIAm mentioned in the post directly after yours about the Stupid Card 4.0 and EverDrive 2.0 being compatible, but I'm a bit lost on that since you could only have one card inserted in the HuCard bay at one time right? Unless there is a slot expander hardware that I don't know about. I may be over thinking things here... but it I'm trying to get on the same page as the rest of you.

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: CD Stupid Card 4.0]

This sounds like a great project, and it's nice to see new PCE hardware being created. If developers were to use this card to enhance PCE translations, then it would require this card to play the patched game correct?

I'm not a PCE developer... (yet), but if that is the case, then as a regular player it would benefit anyone interested who wanted to play these new enhanced translations to have this card. If that's a correct understanding of how this card would work, I'd definitely like to order one when they become available. 

Would this card also be available eventually as a system card that could be used with emulation as well?

-Thomas

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Nice to meet you all]

I started trolling ebay for a copy of Nayuta; thankfully it's pretty cheap even with shipping from Japan.  How do translation patches work on a PSP anyway?  Do they patch on the fly (like Ys IV or Xak III in Magic Engine) or do you have to rip an iso, patch it, then play from memory?

There are a few ways to go about it, but the best method is to take any UMD-reading PSP that has Custom Firmware on it and change your USB Mode setup so that it can read UMDs. Then once you have your PSP hooked up to your computer via USB, you'll see the actual ISO all ready to go that you can click and drag to your desktop. Then in about 5 - 10 mins you'll have ripped the UMD to ISO on your PC. It's a pretty simple process. Also you may want to rename the ISO that you save, you may need to open up properties on the ISO file and uncheck "Read Only".

The patch we are working on is in XDelta format, so you would just need to download an XDelta patcher. The internal version we are working with is at 4.06, but the last public release is currently 4.04 at time of writing. We've fixed quite a bit of issues in 4.06, so it may be worth waiting until the next public release, but you can certainly feel free to test the patch as it is now if you'd like to go ahead and check the game out.

One the ISO is patched, you should be able to either A) play it on your PSP with custom firmware, or B) Play it on a PSP emulator. PPSSPP is what I currently play it on because it works well and actually enhances some of the 3D polygons making everything look a lot nicer and it helps when you can play it on a larger monitor too.

Save files for Nayuta currently are not compatible between PPSSPP and a real PSP, but I'm sure we will figure out how to get those working between emulator and real hardware eventually.

I'd be interested in hearing if you enjoyed the game. I actually wrote a review for Nayuta for my LE purchase on Amazon recently that tells more about it.

-Thomas

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Nice to meet you all]

Thank you for your comments Dicer, blueraven, and cjamesslv.

Thanks for the info!　ファルキャラ will be on my watch list for stuff now.  I'm guessing it's a portmanteau of Falcom and Character.

Yep, I'm pretty sure that are just making their own word there for a combination of Falcom and Character. You might stand a better search by simply typing ファルコム  コースター or Falcom Coaster, though you could do some variation of ファルコム　Falcom －ファルキャラ  Falchara トレーヂングコースター Trading Coaster.

Good luck. Yahoo auctions is probably where they would likely show up.

Also I asked a friend "So what does "Obey" mean at the PCEFX community? And he replied with the following URL: http://www.pcengine.co.uk/obey/obeypce.htm <== This is true gold right here I must say. I dare say that I may too be tempted to create a few Photoshop additions to this if you'll have them  as I eat this stuff up, for breakfast, with crushed up SNES cartridges for a good source of Fiber. ;)

Please do.  Quality lulz are always welcome.

More currently I'm assisting a Romhacking team for the translation of a Falcom PSP title called Nayuta no Kiseki which is pretty much all ready to go now aside from a few script corrections and errors that I'm discovering and fixing as I play through it.

Please keep us (me) updated on this one.  It looks pretty sweet.

Sure, only where is the best place to drop a "quality Obey lulz"? Is there a specified place for those submissions? Seems like this thread is the place from what I can tell:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=6927.0

Sure, I'd be happy to let you all know when we finally get to a "finished" spot with the Nayuta patch. I mean it's ready to go now, but with some extra adjustments it can be a better experience overall. It still could really use a translation checker and a more localized script, but I'm essentially looking for any script / opcode errors I see or dialogue that just doesn't make sense, so once I've completed the game, I'd say we'd be done with the patch for awhile. I wish I could get the Boss names/Area Introduction names changed into English as well, but that would involve converting a specific Falcom format for .IT3 files and .ITV files, which we've not been able to figure out yet. All other graphics are fully in English now though.

-Thomas

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Nice to meet you all]

Thanks everyone for the nice comments!

@Necromancer, how about for the time being I send you this instead!

Necromancer - One of the coolest boss fight music tracks from Xak I. Though I'm not entirely sure it even exists in the PCE-Remake. I tried to find it.

@xcrement5x, thanks! That coaster set I actually got from a friend who goes by the name GameMusicFreak on various forums. He's a cool guy and I bought some things from him a few years ago that he was selling and he just threw those in as well.

This is what the package for that looks like if you are interested. Click

For the record I also haven't assembled and painted that Mail figure either, mainly because if I do I know I want to make sure to do a good job on it and not mess up. I haven't painted a model since I was ten...

@esteban, yep, that's me over at Nightwolve's forums and Plight of the Fan Translator before that. I think I remember you there as well. Never been to Gamengai forums before though.

@Nightwolve, wasn't that just for one small little graphic though? I can't remember. And my part for Lefance will surely put everyone to sleep! To be fair though, Lefance does have some pretty boring dialog...haha

-Thomas

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Nice to meet you all]

Hello Everyone,

I've been here for a few weeks now and so far I think it's a great community. I see a lot of love for the TurboGrafx/PC-Engine and it feels like it is constantly active with many members and projects, and it seems that many of the members here have known each other for years. It reminds me quite a bit of the forum community Ancient Land of Ys where I hail from, as well as the MSX Resource Center.

I used to be pretty heavily active in playing through many PC-Engine CD titles many years ago when Magic Engine was first released and being actively developed, and I was playing just about anything and everything I could get my hands on using that and something called MednafenX for the original Xbox which worked really well! Since I'm getting back into PC-Engine again after acquiring real hardware a few years back, this place really does have a wealth of information that is great for me to catch up on and read about. I'm also pretty excited to learn about new fan-translation projects such as Emerald Dragon, AnEarth, and all new PCE games such as Mysterious Song (which sadly I purchased but not have played through yet, for shame I know... Sorry Paranoia Dragon, and now a really cool Mega Man port with remixed music, Jungle Bros, and Aetherbutt's Atlantean HuCard game. (Also I know Atherbyte through their MSX releases as well, so it's cool to see they are still actively developing games).

It's really all quite amazing and I love seeing new projects come about for classic hardware. It's part of the reason that keeps me so interested in the MSX community, since there's always new hardware and games, even entirely new machines being released for something that is considered to be a "dead system". It's wonderful because it shows that it continues to live strong even today.

Also I asked a friend "So what does "Obey" mean at the PCEFX community? And he replied with the following URL: http://www.pcengine.co.uk/obey/obeypce.htm <== This is true gold right here I must say. I dare say that I may too be tempted to create a few Photoshop additions to this if you'll have them  as I eat this stuff up, for breakfast, with crushed up SNES cartridges for a good source of Fiber. ;)

Here is my TurboGrafx / PC-Engine / Turbo-Duo Collection:



Larger Pic

If you are interested in reading, I'll tell you about myself a bit. I've been an avid gamer and collector for most of my life and I'm into many genres and systems, both new and old, though the PC-Engine TurboDuo is definitely one of my favorite systems, especially the CD-Rom games. I'm pretty huge into Falcom and Microcabin games such as Ys and Xak, and many others, though my all-time favorite series is and will likely always be Panzer Dragoon.

I'm really into graphic design, website design and animation as well as making 3D models, although I haven't had as much time for the latter two after college. I've run a few websites over the years, Suikocastle.net, (now gone) MiraiGamer.net (also now gone), Cavestory.org (was the original creator of the tribute site back when the fan-translation by AGTP was first released and later passed the torch) and I also made a fansite for the Xak series, which really has a pretty bad design and could stand a facelift one of these days. I'm a HUGE fan of the Xak series and I got into that series through Nightwolve's very own Xak III English translation. I guess you might say that Nightwolve created a bit of a monster here with that patch... haha.

I still hope to see the first two Xak games (Xak I&II) for PCE get a translation one day as well as Fray CD. It really is an incredible series and on Par with a few of the old school Ys games too in my opinion. (Watch out Adol... Latok Kart doesn't mess around! He can lawn mow and stab with a sword with the best of them...)

Here's my Xak collection if anyone is interested:



Larger Pic

Nowadays, I mainly run 3 websites, which are not very active yet, retro-type.com which is/was intended to be a gaming blog, which never quite got off the ground due to lack of time/interest on my part. shantae.net which was another Tribute Fansite that I created during the Shantae Half-Genie Hero Kickstarter about a year ago. I'm big Shantae fan, it's an incredible platforming series for sure and extremely enjoyable to play.

And along with a local MSX friend and collector, I run a startup MSX site called USAMSX that was intended to be kind of an entryway/gateway site for Americans to utilize should they ever want to get into the MSX hobby with real hardware and for U.S. based MSX fans to have something to connect with, but unfortunately it hasn't gotten too far in development either, but hey! At least we manage to do some kickass exhibits of our MSX machines at the Vintage Computer Fair Southeast. Last year we had 24 machines! That's probably the largest MSX exhibit in America ever! We even had both of the American-only released MSX machines there as well.

Currently also working on a port and remix of Fix It Felix, Jr for the MSX with the same friend.
Here is our title screen so far:



More currently I'm assisting a Romhacking team for the translation of a Falcom PSP title called Nayuta no Kiseki which is pretty much all ready to go now aside from a few script corrections and errors that I'm discovering and fixing as I play through it. I mainly helped on that project with editing the original Japanese graphics, which I have to say was quite a challenge due to how many hoops you have to go through to get graphics to work correctly... Anyhow it's a fun game if you enjoy the Ys Oath in Felghana, Ys Ark of Napistim, and Ys Origin's gameplay style that had some fast paced action and tons of Jumping/Platforming, then this is definitely another great one to add to the list. The newer Ys games, while still good, are missing that jumping/platforming action that I feel really needs to be there.

Anyhow, it's nice to meet all of you and I guess I better start reading through some threads!

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: RIP Leonard Nimoy]

Wow, I had no idea he had passed away today. I was just playing Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep a few days ago where he was doing the voice work for one of the major characters and thinking on how much I enjoyed his role as Spock growing up... So many legendary actors are passing away now...

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!]

I really, really, like what SamIAm suggested. It does remind me of the Earthbound situation as well as with a game called "Game Dev Tycoon" which had a pretty hilarious anti-piracy measure.

Hell, if you guys are skilled enough to insert a check for disclaimer that gets removed, that sounds like a great idea! Also the same could apply to the disclaimer if say the disc actually was released as a pressed disc through a production house that was authorized to do business with the developer/romhacker where the message could say something like:

"This translation was created by INSERT NAME and distributed through INSERT NAME only. If you have purchased this disc from anyone other than INSERT NAME, you have been been ripped off and quite possibly the this version will break at some point during play."

Also, I just had a friend explain to me how pressed discs work versus CD-Rs and how pressed discs tend to be easier on the laser to read the data, so I guess you can throw out my suggestion for an operation of selling only the nice looking CD/Case/Manual that requires the game to be written to it like a CD-R. I guess in my mind I originally thought that these pressed discs were just fancier Lightscribed CD-Rs, but apparently I had no idea what I was talking about. I'll just chalk that up as a learned lesson in recordable media technology.

-Thomas

[Off-Topic / Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!]

The more I think on this I agree with the points that Professor brought up as well. After you mentioned that he is charging so much money for producing these, it became pretty apparent that he is not interested in selling these at slightly over cost giving you a fair deal. But let's say that even if he was being fair to you in your cut of each print/sale, you risk your name as being an accomplice should anything go down about his operation being illegal to the IP holders. There's just no good way to go about this unless say the print/cd pressing house you decided to do business with was only selling fan-developed manuals and fan-developed pressed discs that could still be written to in a CD-Rom burning software program, as then you would not be selling illegal bootlegs of software.

In any case I retract any statements that I may have made previously about it being something to even consider, especially in light of what he has been known to be doing in the past as far as illegal operations go and other games that he is selling pressed discs of, and the sheer amount of money that he is charging for some of these games. Also as one poster pointed out, how come there is a such a vast price difference between certain games if the process for printing and pressing the disc is the same?

-Thomas

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: The Official Emerald Dragon Translation Project]

I received my Emerald Dragon in the mail today and it did come with that extra disc which is the same as what was referenced earlier, the Emerald Dragon Taikenban disc.



It has some fun omake content on there such as a demo of the game, (In the Center), the ability to view the Emerald Dragon FMVs (Top-Left), Play various ED themed mini-games similar to the archery game in Link to the Past and Slots (Top-Right), Listen to the game's music while looking at various artwork (Bottom-Left) and lastly some reference information where you can view info on the characters and history/prologue to the story? Not quite sure. (Bottom-Right).

I've made rips of both discs using Nightwolve's kickass TurboRip software.

-Thomas