Spreading the PC-FX word

[esteban]

It seemed more of a novelty than actually playable. I guess to get excited about it, I'd want to see an easily playable game. A shooter, racing game, or fighting game seem to fit the bill in my opinion. And it would have helped immensely to have someone sit down with me and get excited about the PC-FX.

An arrow shot straight through the heart of the ethnically Japanese anime fan circa 1996, the PC-FX has arrived to bring all your animated multimedia dreams to life! Play your favorite PC games like Ah! Megami-sama, Power Dolls, Pia Carrot e Youkoso, and Doukyusei now with animated cut scenes and full CD quality voice acting! Catch up on all your 1996 anime news with the digital magazine series Anime Freak FX inluding digital video interviews, bathing suit photo sessions, mini games with voice actresses, and an original OAV series only available via these titles called Prisim Knights! The system brings amazing full screen full motion animated video scenes and CD quality music to charming simulation and RPG titles, briming with large colorful sprites! Enjoy hours of captivating single player text heaving gaming in your living room, no PC required! Just hook it up to your television that you already own. There is even an available mouse!

The PC-FX is an anachronism, and in that way it is like the 3DO.  At the time not everyone had a computer, there was no digital video on the internet, "multimedia" was a thing, and 2D might have still mattered. NEC played the system's strengths to the audience they thought would embrace it the most. There are some truly enjoyable experiences on it, definitely worth playing if you like what they bring to the table, but you have to know Japanese. Otherwise there are about 5 games you can play and have any fun and none of them are really worth owning the system for. It just is what it is.

One of the best things I have read at the forums this past week.

[SamIAm]

Indeed, filler, that post was well-written and fun to read. When looking back on the PC-FX, it's easy to forget that it wasn't all bad, and the people behind it had a plan that at least made some sense.

I don't think I need to go over why it wasn't all good, either. What I will say, however, is that if you're anything less than a die-hard fan of that particular kind of software, then the PC-FX is not a treasure trove. What it is, in this case, is a fascinating tragedy. It's the closing chapter in a great saga called The Rise and Fall of NEC-Hudson Gaming. It's a history to be chronicled, analyzed and discussed. So much about the system remains mysterious to us, and even the general gaming public in Japan, that there's a lot of work to do in order to understand everything.

It's worth it to not get carried away talking about the bad stuff and spend a little time talking about the good stuff, though.

By the way, things seem to really be happening with Zeroigar thanks to elmer's generous assistance. I hope people here can enjoy talking about that game as they never have before someday soon.

[filler]

By the way, things seem to really be happening with Zeroigar thanks to elmer's generous assistance. I hope people here can enjoy talking about that game as they never have before someday soon.

That is excellent news. I can't wait to check that out. I myself am still dragging my heels with projects.

[elmer]

By the way, things seem to really be happening with Zeroigar thanks to elmer's generous assistance. I hope people here can enjoy talking about that game as they never have before someday soon.

That is excellent news. I can't wait to check that out. I myself am still dragging my heels with projects.

I'm hoping that SamIAm will soon want to share some screenshots. 

Speaking of the Team Innocent translation ... my cheapo copy arrived from Japan, and watching the intro on real hardware made me even more interested in wanting to know what's going in.

Are the Team Innocent videos going to be subtitled like SamIAm's Zeroigar ones, filler?

[filler]

I'm hoping that SamIAm will soon want to share some screenshots. 

Sweet! Do it!

Speaking of the Team Innocent translation ... my cheapo copy arrived from Japan, and watching the intro on real hardware made me even more interested in wanting to know what's going in.

Are the Team Innocent videos going to be subtitled like SamIAm's Zeroigar ones, filler?

Well... I was more gung-ho for that kind of attention to detail when I was working on WtPC. These days I'm more happy just to get a translation patch out there that is competently done. However, considering that the technical hurdle for this may have been overcome? I'd be on board for hard subbing these if we can make it happen. I haven't done much general subbing myself, but I have done it before, and I know people that might help if necessary.

Speaking of which, would you be up for the same treatment for Welcome to Pia Carrot elmer?

EDIT: This made me think of another question. I assume this change would make a patch file quite large. Has anyone tried making an .ips or other patch from a disc image with video changes made to it and repatching? Has that been done successfully?

[elmer]

Well... I was more gung-ho for that kind of attention to detail when I was working on WtPC. These days I'm more happy just to get a translation patch out there that is competently done. However, considering that the technical hurdle for this may have been overcome? I'd be on board for hard subbing these if we can make it happen. I haven't done much general subbing myself, but I have done it before, and I know people that might help if necessary.

I really don't know what's going on with the video ... EsperKnight and SamIAm had that all done years before I turned up. They'd be the ones to ask.

I know that Hudson's compressor is available ... it's part of the PC-FX GA SDK that's available from various places.

Speaking of which, would you be up for the same treatment for Welcome to Pia Carrot elmer?

I'm confiused ... I thought that you guys already finished that?

This made me think of another question. I assume this change would make a patch file quite large. Has anyone tried making an .ips or other patch from a disc image with video changes made to it and repatching? Has that been done successfully?

No idea, I'm pretty ignorant about these translations, and so I'm just following the example of Ys IV and Xak III and using my own patching code for the little bits that I'm doing.

[filler]

I really don't know what's going on with the video ... EsperKnight and SamIAm had that all done years before I turned up. They'd be the ones to ask.

Okay. We'll deal with the video for Team Innocent when the time comes.

I'm confiused ... I thought that you guys already finished that?

Finished is kind of a loose term. It's as done as I think it needs to be, but we did miss one unlockable portion of the game, some of the choice segments never got spaced correctly, and the videos are not subtitled. That's kind of the part I was thinking would be interesting to revisit.

[SamIAm]

Well... I was more gung-ho for that kind of attention to detail when I was working on WtPC. These days I'm more happy just to get a translation patch out there that is competently done. However, considering that the technical hurdle for this may have been overcome? I'd be on board for hard subbing these if we can make it happen. I haven't done much general subbing myself, but I have done it before, and I know people that might help if necessary.

I really don't know what's going on with the video ... EsperKnight and SamIAm had that all done years before I turned up. They'd be the ones to ask.

I know that Hudson's compressor is available ... it's part of the PC-FX GA SDK that's available from various places.

We were fortunate enough to find two tools made by a Japanese guy. One could rip videos from a game IF they were in a specific format (which Zeroigar fortunately was), and another could convert the videos to lossless AVI.

I used virtualdub and some free subtitle editing program to produce a subtitles file and hard-code the videos. Then, I used the PC-FXGA program to reconvert them to PC-FX video. However, there was a problem: the sound was lost at some stage. In the end, Esperknight had to code a program to copy the sound from the original files to to the newly encoded ones. Finally, Esperknight worked on shoehorning in all the files and updating their locations in the game program - necessary because the file sizes changed.

That's all I really know. If you're serious about ripping and subbing videos, Esperknight is the guy you want to talk to, really. If you're missing some tools, I can help.

This made me think of another question. I assume this change would make a patch file quite large. Has anyone tried making an .ips or other patch from a disc image with video changes made to it and repatching? Has that been done successfully?


No idea, I'm pretty ignorant about these translations, and so I'm just following the example of Ys IV and Xak III and using my own patching code for the little bits that I'm doing.

An ips patch would be ridiculously huge for a game with altered videos. Literally every byte that is different has to be recorded and updated via the patch, and in this case, you're talking about the majority of the ISO.

There's really only one way to go with something like Zeroigar.

[elmer]

What I will say, however, is that if you're anything less than a die-hard fan of that particular kind of software, then the PC-FX is not a treasure trove. What it is, in this case, is a fascinating tragedy. It's the closing chapter in a great saga called The Rise and Fall of NEC-Hudson Gaming. It's a history to be chronicled, analyzed and discussed. So much about the system remains mysterious to us, and even the general gaming public in Japan, that there's a lot of work to do in order to understand everything.

That is exactly how I feel. I'd love to be able to read that story.

How did a small company of locomtive-obsessed geeks have the balls to create their own chipset for a game system in the early 1980s?

Nobody did that back then ... Nintendo, Sega, Atari, Taito, etc all bought off-the-shelf CPUs, and off-the-shelf sound chips, and attached them to simple VLSI graphics chips. Those graphics chips were just integrated versions of the separate digital logic chips that you can see on the big PCBs of old arcade boards.

Hudson not only designed the HuC6270 display chip ... they also created a custom 6502 with extra instructions (identifying and rectifying its weaknesses), a custom sound chip, and then put the whole thing into the smallest and sexiest console design ever made.

Not only that, but they had the foresight to see what CD-ROM could offer gamers years before anyone else.

They were like tech-geek gods.

These days, it is (relatively) cheap to make custom silicon, and designing a simple CPU is the kind of thing that university students do.

Back then ... it was a Black Art, and only the big companies did it (except for another small company who, like Hudson,  didn't know that it couldn't be done and so created the Acorn RISC Machine (ARM)).

How did Hudson go from creating the hardware into being a software developer?
How did they hook up with NEC?
What was that relationship like?
How did they get into early digital TV and produce the early IronMan prototype?
What was the Hudon-created CPU on the IronMan that didn't make it to the PC-FX?
Was that CPU going to be backwards compatible with the PC Engine (it's really the only thing missing on a PC-FX that stops that possibility)?
What other changes were there between the IronMan and the PC-FX?
What happened with the 3D chip, and why didn't it make it into the PC-FX ... but did make it into the PC-FXGA?
And on, and on.

There's a fascinating history to be told ... but will we ever hear it here in the West?

[Aggie Tsubi]

I'd have to echo what's already been said in that I don't think there's going to be much convincing people. People who are interested in very obscure, niche import gaming and want to experience something firsthand before they form an opinion on it will give the PC-FX a shot, but those who have been convinced that there are no good games and that the system is just a joke to be poked fun at will probably never believe otherwise. It's the same sort of deal with the Virtual Boy. I'll defend it endlessly, but there's really no getting through to people who blindly absorb the general, misinformed consensus.

That said, just about any PC-FX info in English is worthwhile, even if it's basically preaching to the choir. There's not a lot out there, so even those of us who are fans of the system could benefit from learning more about the games we've yet to try/buy. Whether it's a short overview or an in-depth review, it's all good. All I ask for is that English coverage come from an unbiased standpoint. And by that I mean not biased against it (the system, certain genres, whatever). Well, and I suppose not biased in favor too, but I can't say I've come across many PC-FX fans who can't recognize that not every game is gold.

And for a more specific request, when it comes to the Angelique games and Arubarea's Maiden, I'd like to see them covered either by a female gamer (this may be a tough request to fill unless I do it myself, haha) or a guy who can assess them fairly, rather than the all too typical "This sucks because I'm a dude and I don't want to romance guys". Coverage of dating sims/romance games/visual novels in the Western world has got enough problems as it is, and it only gets even worse when it comes to otome games.

[esteban]

...

And for a more specific request, when it comes to the Angelique games and Arubarea's Maiden, I'd like to see them covered either by a female gamer (this may be a tough request to fill unless I do it myself, haha) or a guy who can assess them fairly, rather than the all too typical "This sucks because I'm a dude and I don't want to romance guys". Coverage of dating sims/romance games/visual novels in the Western world has got enough problems as it is, and it only gets even worse when it comes to otome games.

Ha! It would take a man who is secure with his own sexuality to do that.

Sadly, this sort of man is in short supply.

It's 2015 and we are still struggling with very basic, fundamental issues of fairness and objectivity in a critique.

I can already envision someone writing such a review, but peppered gratuitously with disclaimers throughout.

[CPTBadAss]

Not sure how serious we are about reviewing games but I'd be willing to take a crack at it. I have absolutely no bias other than me not understanding how to get a PC-FX to work after 10 minutes at Louisville Arcade Expo. I didn't even knew it existed until three months ago. I've written a few reviews, mostly related to mechanical keyboards but I like writing reviews in general. Not sure how feasible it would be for someone to loan me their console and games but I'd definitely would be interested. Just floating that out there . Esteban, come teach me the ways of PC-FX and a crash course in Japanese!

[elmer]

Not sure how serious we are about reviewing games but I'd be willing to take a crack at it. I have absolutely no bias other than me not understanding how to get a PC-FX to work after 10 minutes at Louisville Arcade Expo. <...> Not sure how feasible it would be for someone to loan me their console and games but I'd definitely would be interested. Just floating that out there . Esteban, come teach me the ways of PC-FX and a crash course in Japanese!

Downloading an ISO and using Mednafen seems to be Necromancer's standard response to those interested in getting a taste of the PC-FX ... and that would also seem to be good advice for starting to do a review.

Why not just pick a game that looks somewhat interesting to you and give it a spin, and then let everyone know what you think?

If you hold out a bit longer, you'll even get another translated game to look at ... Zeroigar is getting close to done! 

[CPTBadAss]

If I knew anything about the PC-FX library, I'd be more inclined elmer. I literally know nothing about it. It'd be a pretty poor review if I just picked a game from someone else's Top Ten .

[elmer]

If I knew anything about the PC-FX library, I'd be more inclined elmer. I literally know nothing about it. It'd be a pretty poor review if I just picked a game from someone else's Top Ten .

Well, a good start would be clicking on the "PC-FX World" icon on the first page of this very site ...

http://www.pcenginefx.com/PC-FX/index.html

Information about the system, game lists, game overviews, game videos, and some game reviews.

It's not had any updates in a long time, and I could certainly nit-pick some of the content as being either a bit too biased, or perhaps missing the point ... but once again, Aaron put together a visually beautiful and amazingly useful site.

If Arkhan does ever want to create a new PC-FX site, then Aaron's PC-FX World is the one that it'll be compared to, IMHO.

Now, I don't particularly want to be an ass, but if you seriously want to suggest that someone sends you their PC-FX and their games for you to review ... then it would probably be a good idea to show at least some basic interest in the system by typing "pc-fx review" into google and following some of the links!