To those who have it, how is Mysterious Song?

[nodtveidt]

I can only play for about 20 minutes at a time as this game is EXTREMELY stressful on the CD-ROM mechanics.  Everything loads.  It's like a CD System 2.0 game with only 64k of memory, very similar to Cosmic Fantasy 2 in the amount of loads.  It needs to load every battle, every town, everything.  And it does this A LOT.  I am actually surprised that Super CD is required.

System 3.0 is required because this was done in HuC, first of all, and second of all, there's way more going on behind the scenes than CF2. CF2 lacks battle backgrounds, for starters... it also exploits the hell out of ADPCM RAM, which Mysterious Song only does for cutscenes since ADPCM samples are used for battle sound effects. And actually, the released version of Mysterious Song does WAY less loading than the initial prototypes, which spent a good 15 seconds loading data for battles when the program was self-contained. Splitting the program into map and battle systems reduced load time by over 90%. Load time was always an issue, and the way it works in the released version is the quickest way it could be done.

But as a result my CD drive will eventually "forget" to load until I nudge it.  After a few times of that, I just turn it off.  After it has cooled down it is fine again.  This happens occasionally on other games, too.  Always has since day one.  But Mysterious Song really brings this issue out like no other game.

Your machine has a weak drive motor and overheats. The first Duo that BlueBMW sent me had the same problem; the second one does not. Seems to be a problem with Duo units especially. On the first Duo, it would work fine for about a half an hour and then start having reseek issues... after about 45 minutes, it was having reseek issues almost every time, and I had to let the thing cool down for awhile before playing again. On the second machine, I can play the game from beginning to end, using a CDR, with almost no reseeks.

EDIT:  I think incorporating PSG music would have been much less stressful on the system.

Wouldn't have changed anything there, and would have been harder to pull off anyway. Squirrel wasn't up to par at the time, and memory was already tight so there was no way. Also, the original music is in module format, and would have lost a lot of quality converting it to PSG.

[BigusSchmuck]

Well I'm glad I'm not the only one who has loading time issues. Its not that big of a deal, just seems to do it randomly at least on my U.S Duo...

[roflmao]

I run into that way more on my Duo than I do on my TG-16w/CD.  It almost never happens on the original setup, but it's more than 50% of the time I go into (or come out of) a battle on the Duo.  I find that games in general load easier on the original setup.  I'll be getting a CD drive for the briefcase unit shortly so it'll be interesting to see how that works.

[Senshi]

I need to get a CD system........uuggghhhhh!!!

Yes...yes you do 

[Joe Redifer]

I have an original Turbo CD.  Like I said it's always done this since 1991.  Every once in a blue moon when I nudge it it'll try to spin the disc at 9,000,000 RPM.  At this point I quickly turn it off.

[nodtveidt]

That's... one messed up unit.

[Joe Redifer]

Not really.  That's the only trouble it's ever given me.  Reads CD-Rs like a champ.  I'll take the occasional forgetfulness over the issues that I've read a lot of people having with their units.  It only speeds up to 9 million RPM after many times forgetting to load in a row (very, very rare).  I hope that some day the CD unit can be replaced with some solid-state media.  Moving parts = bleh.

[Drakon]

Its awesome!!  Playing it now.  "Have you seen my pussy?"

No I havn't seen it, and I don't want to.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Not really.  That's the only trouble it's ever given me.  Reads CD-Rs like a champ.  I'll take the occasional forgetfulness over the issues that I've read a lot of people having with their units.  It only speeds up to 9 million RPM after many times forgetting to load in a row (very, very rare).  I hope that some day the CD unit can be replaced with some solid-state media.  Moving parts = bleh.

This sounds like the same problem I had with my unit.  Huh huh.  No but all seriousness aside.  I can remember BITD when my Turbo CD got more use as new games came out, I would have to do the nudge to it once in awhile, & I remember it making some crazy noises occasionally.  I never thought about it being sped up like that though.  Makes me wonder if I should've given it more breaks.  Nowadays, it takes alot of messing around to get it to spin the cd.  I thought it was maybe a disconected ribbon or something, since I busted it open to inspect it, & it seemed to work better, but, it still has problems.  It would be nice to have some sort of solid state way to replace the CD unit someday.  

[meka]

I've only had it for a few days but it's really good so far, I compared it to star odyssey which was released by superfighterteam but it shits right over that game.

[8bitForLife]

I found out were to get the game myself and I got to say great work rover and when I work myself out of debt ill get your game for my collection =)

[Arkhan]

Wouldn't have changed anything there, and would have been harder to pull off anyway. Squirrel wasn't up to par at the time, and memory was already tight so there was no way. Also, the original music is in module format, and would have lost a lot of quality converting it to PSG.

Squirrel was up to par for CD use back when I demoed the game at CCAG 2 years ago, dude.

Hell, it's always been up to par for CD use.  If you didn't want PSG sfx, that is.


Though, I doubt swapping out the music tracks would have done dick.  you'd have had to load data either way.   Seeking to a music track is the least of your worries.


Personally, I would have done the dual PSG/CD route, because I like that option, lol.   

[nodtveidt]

Actually, I should have said "Squirrel wasn't even around then", as it wasn't around when MSR was started. I wanted to do PSG effects from the start but didn't really know how to pull it off back then... wasn't until we started doing Valkyrie Midnight and I discovered snd.c (again, before Squirrel existed) that I even delved into PSG sound, together with the SoundGen ROM. I had later written my own music player code, loosely based on snd.c's stuff, for the Bubble Bobble project, but it was primitive and not worth using in the end. By the time Squirrel was able to do PSG sound effects, we were "one step away" from finishing MSR and it was too late to make any major changes.

[Joe Redifer]

First of all please don't take any of my comments as disdain for the game.  I really do like it so far.  The only reason I thought about PSG is because how Dragon Slayer on the TG-CD handles it.  It seems to put less stress mechanically on the system when constantly battling.  But then again, that game doesn't have battle BGs either.  Oh well.

[BigusSchmuck]

First of all please don't take any of my comments as disdain for the game.  I really do like it so far.  The only reason I thought about PSG is because how Dragon Slayer on the TG-CD handles it.  It seems to put less stress mechanically on the system when constantly battling.  But then again, that game doesn't have battle BGs either.  Oh well.

That was my line of thinking as well. It seems to do this on my Duo-R as well so it looks like I'm going to have to go the SuperCD/SuperGrafx route one day to get a good operating super cd system.