[PC-98] Night Slave

[invisibleyogurt]

http://insomnia.ac/reviews/pc-9800series/nightslave/

This was a nicely concise review about an extremely obscure game for a console I've never heard of. I was reminded of how much I enjoyed Valken onthe SNES as a kid, back when I only knew it through its horrid localization "CYBERNATOR". I like how the review tactfully got around the "OMFG HENTAI" aspect of things and instead focused on how well crafted and worthwhile the actual game was.

Macaw (you're the guy who wrote it), I wish to try Night Slave out and for the actual GAME, not the H-scenes, but PC-98 emulation coverage seems quite spotty. I have found a few PC-98 emus on Zophar's Domain, but they're all Japanese, most don't work on my machine, and I have no idea where I would go to procure roms.
Depending on whether you took the screenshots/conducted the review on
an actual PC-98 or an emulator, you might be able to help me out? I suspect the latter, as you'd probably have to do some annoying mucking around with video inputs to get it running on your monitor to take some screens.

[Macaw]

I'm happy you enjoyed the review, as for PC98 emulation... I'll write a tutorial as I believe it could help many people. This tutorial will cover most emulation aspects, so much of it will not be needed to know if you just want to play Night Slave:


PC98 EMULATION:

The best PC98 emulator's:
- Neko Project 2 (most user friendly interface) http://retropc.net/yui/
- Anex86 (Widest game compatibility) http://homepage2.nifty.com/ans/ax/axdown.htm
- T-98-Next (decent interface, decent compatibility) http://www.geocities.jp/t98next/

If your playing many different PC98 games, its essential to have all these emulators, because despite Anex86's great compatibility there are still many, many games that wont work on it and will only run on the other emu's. If you just plan on playing Night Slave, then just get Anex86.


PC98 games are image files, not roms. Image files come in 3 different formats:
- CD images
- Floppy disk images
- Hard disk images

CD Images are self explanatory. They are the least common format (not many PC98 games game on a CD) and also the hardest to emulate. Emulating a game from a CD image in any of the emulators is usually a long tricky process, which differs for every game.

Floppy disc images are the most common format, but they come with many, many different filenames. The most common is .FDI (which anex uses) or .HDM. If you have these images for a game then just open up any emulator, mount the discs in each floppy drive, and hopefully it works. If one emulator cant read a certain type of file then try with a different emulator. If the filename isn't recognized by any emulator then you will need to download a small program called 'vfic' (http://nav.to/vfic/) It is a simple program that can convert any pc98 floppy disc file into a different format. For example if you have unreadable files then you can just shove 'em into vfic, convert them into FDI's, and then they're guaranteed to be readable by Anex86.

Sometimes games cannot be run directly off the disc's and need to be installed to a hard disk image in order to run. This is a long process where you must first format a hard disk file and then use the floppy disk files to install the game. I will mention this later, but for the most part you should be able to find games already installed to a hard disk and saving you the installation hassle, which leads me to...

Hard disk images. Games that have been installed to a hard disk and are the simplest to run. All you need to do is load the HDI file in the emulator and then run it.

I have uploaded the HDI image of Night Slave here:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JIJN3E48

So if you want to run Night Slave it in an emulator like Anex86, just get this file and Anex86. When Anex starts up mount the HDI image in HDD slot 1. Click start and your off.

You may also find that the text font in games seems messy in Anex86. To fix this, download Neko Project 2 (which comes with a good font) Its labeled font.tmp in the zip. Then open anex, go to config, select font, and load this font file, its far better than the Anex defaults. If the text is showing up garbled then you may need to change your computer regional settings for non-unicode programs to Japanese, although I cant confirm that as I always just have it in Japanese for my computer.


Here are the best non-Japanese PC98 sites on the web:

http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr - French awesomeness, still my favorite site on the net. Always been the best English resource for PC98 over the years. Unfortunately its not what it used to be...years ago the forum was enormous and brimming with incredible information and tutorials, but then it got lost... ever since then the new forum has been moving incredibly slow. Thankfully the incredibly respected and easily most tech-knowledgeable guy for PC98 that ever posted there, Ashura, has currently got a now rather long running thread up with various PC98 game uploads. Check them out to see a broad range of stuff released on PC98. The site also has an extremely helpful screenshot database listing the name and screenshots of thousands of PC98 games (its not a complete list though) certainly great to randomly go through just to see if you find anything of interest, at which point you can then begin to hunt down the game.

Also of not is the articles section which includes many interesting articles, including a step by step guide on how to create a bootable hard disk image, which as I mentioned before is what you need if you are going to try install a game from floppy disks.

http://pc98.acheronx.com - Great site. Updated every few week with some very rare images. Unfortunately uploads are only around until the next update, so get em quick or just contact site owner RyoCokey and he will send you what you want.

http://emumax.uuu9.com/ - Chinese rom site with the biggest collection of PC98 images of any other site. Thousands upon thousands of games, but still not every pc98 game ever (to get those you gotta go scavenging around Japanese peer to peer programs...)
You may need to do a google translation or something to register as it can be a bit tricky, and registration is required to download stuff.


So yeah thats pretty much it. There are literally hundreds of PC98 games I could recommend beyond Night Slave, so I wont even bother... hmmm maybe I will do some kind of write up in the future about the best pc98 games, who knows. Theres certainly a hell of a lot more quality stuff out there.

[icycalm]

an extremely obscure game for a console I've never heard of.

The PC-9800 series are computer systems -- not consoles. They come with operating systems and keyboards and stuff.

Also, Macaw's tutorial will be going on the frontpage in a few days, at which point I'll edit it out of his post and add a link to the article.

Great stuff.

[invisibleyogurt]

Many thanks, Macaw. It's excruciatingly difficult to find good emulation tutorials online, since most I've found are in French, in very poor English, or just lacking detail and clarity.

icy, that was just a misstep in wording in my part, I knew from the review that they were full-fledged computers. Speaking of which, is it even proper to call handheld gaming devices "consoles"?

[icycalm]

I don't see why not. They are indeed consoles, only handheld ones.

[invisibleyogurt]

I've seen people refer to handhelds as "platforms" but only refer to plug-them-into-the-tv home consoles as "consoles". I wonder where the term in the context of technology originates.

[icycalm]

In the context of videogame hardware, all consoles, computers and arcade systems can be described as 'platforms".

[invisibleyogurt]

Macaw, I've gotten the game up and running emulated on Anex86. THe text is garbled as you said, I can fix that, but the problem is that there isn't any music (sound effects are there though). Any idea what's causing this?

By the way, two of the sites you mentioned are dead links.

[Macaw]

Macaw, I've gotten the game up and running emulated on Anex86. THe text is garbled as you said, I can fix that, but the problem is that there isn't any music (sound effects are there though). Any idea what's causing this?

No clue why thats happening. Perhaps try the game in another emulator and see if you get music? I get music in Anex just fine without having to touch any settings, so maybe it has something to do with sound cards or something... although that shouldn't be the case.

By the way, two of the sites you mentioned are dead links.

Fixed.

[MAXCHAIN]

So yeah thats pretty much it. There are literally hundreds of PC98 games I could recommend beyond Night Slave, so I wont even bother... hmmm maybe I will do some kind of write up in the future about the best pc98 games, who knows. Theres certainly a hell of a lot more quality stuff out there.

That would be awesome! You should really consider it.

[invisibleyogurt]

No clue why thats happening. Perhaps try the game in another emulator and see if you get music? I get music in Anex just fine without having to touch any settings, so maybe it has something to do with sound cards or something... although that shouldn't be the case.

I was going to try it in Neko Project, but I can't get it to start up. I can't figure out where to put the file or how to load the game up.

[Macaw]

To load a hard disk image in neko project 2 you click on the 'HardDisk' tab in the top bar, then go to SASI #1, then click open.

[invisibleyogurt]

I did what you said, Macaw, and it seems to have loaded, but I don't know how to start it up. I just see a row of boxes.

[Macaw]

Whoa forgot about this thread. Sorry for my late response.

Remember when using NP2 to reset the machine every time you load new hard disks/disks.

However I just tried Night Slave in NP2 and it seems it doesn't work in it (at least without fiddling around with the machine settings)

I you are still having trouble I recommend you go to the http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr forum which is currently the most active it has been since the last forum crash. You may be able to get some answers for the music problem and whatever else.

[invisibleyogurt]

ok, thanks.

[Phalanx]

there isn't any music (sound effects are there though). Any idea what's causing this?

Yea, I'm also getting this same problem, here. Even when I attempt to play music tracks in Night Slave's options menu. It's as if they don't exist, or something.

Is there some configuration within Anex that may fix this? I'd love to hear the music selection as I play this.

[EDIT] Also, where'd you get that artwork (or what seems to be artwork) of Night Slave from? If you could, could you either link me to where you got it from, or post the full image here? I'd be forever grateful. Seems finding anything on PC-98 games is fucking impossible.

[Macaw]

Yea, I'm also getting this same problem, here. Even when I attempt to play music tracks in Night Slave's options menu. It's as if they don't exist, or something.

Ok I figured out the problem, I actually dealt with this problem about 3 years ago when I first discovered the game but I had completely forgotten about it until I went into the options myself just now and was reminded.

By default the game is set in MIDI mode, which can only be emulated if you set the drivers up. All you need to do is change that option to FM1 and it will work. Enjoy!

[EDIT] Also, where'd you get that artwork (or what seems to be artwork) of Night Slave from? If you could, could you either link me to where you got it from, or post the full image here? I'd be forever grateful. Seems finding anything on PC-98 games is fucking impossible.

The only way you'll ever find stuff on PC98 games is browsing Japanese sites.

Here is a poster for the game http://misc.insomnia.ac/random/nightslave.jpg

The main image there is the box cover image for the game as well. A clean box scan of the game would be great because it wont have all the thumbnails and stuff over it. Alas, I haven't been able to find one.

[Phalanx]

Excellent stuff. You fixed my sound issue, and provided a great quality image scan of the image I was looking for, all in one fell swoop. I do appreciate your help, sir. Rock on.