Talos

Here is another obscure port: Mimana Iyar Chronicle, originally released for the PSP in Japan and the US. The game was also released for the PC, but only for the Chinese markets. It has noticeable graphical differences compared to its PSP counterpart. https://home.gamer.com.tw/creationDetail.php?sn=1598053 What is even stranger is the fact that the game was originally supposed to come out in Japan on the PC, but the project was shifted to PSP during developemnt. https://www.4gamer.net/games/020/G002090/20080711002/ And for even further strangeness, this website lists the PC port with English language! (The image of the packaging still says Chinese release though, so whether it is an English release, I do not know for sure) https://shopee.tw/【傳說企業社】PCGAME-Mimana-Iyar-Chronicle-魔導戰記(英文版)-i.9490946.878774396

Indeed, but searching through auction sites is definately the first step towards discovering rare releases. It can be quite addicting as well. 🙂 Thanks for the link. It will definately come in handy when contributing either here or on MobyGames. Besides Imageneer, CyberFront also did a number of Japanese PC releases over the years before their dissolution in 2013. Here's a list of titles developed/published: https://www.4gamer.net/script/search/index.php?mode=title&P00014 Another obscure release was the Japanese dubbed version of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Originally, the Japanese PlayStation release was planned, but was cancelled in the end. However, the PC retail version has it perfectly fine. Here's some gameplay footage featuring the dub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYbPJrsDoIU Japanese cover for the game: https://www.amazon.co.jp/SOUL-REAVER-ソウル-リバー/dp/B005MGXIAQ And if someone is interested in picking it up: https://product.rakuten.co.jp/product/-/c5df9efc63b45b0148eb8416591c22b3/

A lot of PC games in the past (80's, 90's and 2000's) actually had Japanese releases, though some of them were not full localizations. Rather, they would include a translated manual and that's it. Certain series, such as Civilization, has been localized all the way, with Civ VI having a complete Japanese audio dub. Sometimes I stumble upon a surprise when looking for PC games on Yahoo! Auction or Mercari. I recently discovered a fully localized Japanese PC version of the game Revenant. I will be contributing more info on the game in the next few days. Sadly, all I could find are these screenshots from this website. There's no video footage on either YouTube or NicoNicoDouga. The game is sold on Yahoo! Auction or Mercari for cheap, if anyone is interested in picking it up. I checked out Ebay and all I found was the Nintendo DS and Wii versions of the game. There was no sight of the PC version at all, even though it says even in MobyGames that it was released. Perhaps consider making a forum post on LostMediaWiki. Maybe somebody can help you find sources for the release. Otherwise, you can make an article about the game over there and report it as (potential) lost media. And finally, after years of being originally cancelled by Interplay themselves, the port/remaster of Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance will finally arrive on the PC. It already arrived for all the main consoles. The original game's development on the PC is a special case, as it was supposed to be done by none other than CD Projekt. According to this article on Eurogamer, somebody managed to smuggle the PS2 Development Kit used to develop the game from the Interplay's offices in London to Poland. However, Interplay caught wind of the incident and outright cancelled the game. I really hope that, with this port/remaster, we can finally put the case to rest.

Sorry for the double post, but I have an update. (Issue solved.) To make the long story short, I contacted the devs on their Discord and I explained the situation I had with the game. It turns out that offline installers for the GOG version used an older version of the game (ver 2.25e) rather than the newest one (ver. 2.34). Needless to say, all of us were perplexed. Thankfully, they immediately sent a message to the GOG team and they fixed the issue. The game is updated now on GOG for the offline installers. It works perfectly fine now, and I also have the bonus content with Hypnospace Plus. A big thanks to the developers for their response and understanding!

No problem for the bump. It certainly needs one. 🙂 Thanks for the video. I checked it out. I seriously don't know if this was released. I would suggest reporting the (potential) PC port of Mission: Impossible as lost media on LostMediaWiki, so that the game in question can get some attention. Also, contacting the original developer directly could provide even more clues or evidence for the port's existence I also have another obscure PC port: Suikoden II. I made a post a while back detailing PC ports of PlayStation games made by Konami, through their Konami Computer Games Aoyama department. Check it out here: Now, Suikoden II also received a PC port, but this time it was only released in Traditional and Simplified Chinese variants. I wasn't able to find any info on Japanese PC release, I guess this PC version was developed only for the Chinese market.

Hello everyone! Last year, I bought Hypnospace Outlaw on GOG. I tried the game out yesterday and encountered a problem. Basically, videos played in the game show artifacts, like there's an encoding or codec error. I attached a screenshot from the game that I took. I reported the issue to the developer's Discord channel. I also found this post on Steam forums and a possible solution. https://steamcommunity.com/app/844590/discussions/0/2945873244411307842/?ctp=2 But I decided to post it here, to find even more solutions to this problem. Here are my specs CPU: AMD FX-8350 8-core 4.0GHz GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5500XT 4GB graphics memory (manufacturer: ASUS) RAM: 8GB OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (updated to the latest version, build 19041) Motherboard: Gigabyte MB with AMD chipset Apparently, from what I managed to find on the internet, most people that reported having this issue are users of AMD GPUs. If anyone has/had this problem too, please post it here and/or report it directly to the developer's Discord channel. This needs investigating.

No problem. I tried to do something about this. This is more of a case of a new OS (Windows 10 in this case) not liking the game for the files and the technology it uses (Flash in this case) rather than the other way around. Flash will be discontinued completely on 31 December 2020. There are currently many projects aimed at preserving Flash-based games on the Internet. I don't know which sites are ideal to talk about this problem, but I'm sure you will find sites dedicated exclusevely to preserving games based on Flash technology. A simple Google search of "flash games preservation" or "flash games troubleshooting windows 10" might show some results. Have you tried mailing those new publishers? Perhaps someone can reply. Try to send as many emails as possible. As for Big Fish Games, I know this sounds weird, but maybe you can try sending them a proper mail (on paper!) and mailing them to their offices. Don't forget to write your email address, just in case. A standard old mail is quite rare these days. Maybe they would be surprised to see one 🙂

Hello there! Sorry for the late reply. I decided to test to see if the game does not work on Windows 10 and, fair enough, it doesn't. I tried using a compatibility mode, no luck. Like you said, it is working on a virtual machine. I tested it out on VMWare Workstation, using Windows XP SP3 Japanese. As I was installing the program, I noticed the files it was installing. Most of them were .swf files (for backgrounds maybe?) and .flv files for video. Now, all of these files use the soon-to-be-deprecated Flash format, which is no longer compatible with most web browsers or newer operating systems. Maybe that might be the problem. The only solution right now would be to play the game in a virtual machine or on an old PC with Windows XP or 7 installed on it. Question for anybody versed in Flash: are there any other solutions to this problem?

Hello bentehgray! Apologies for a late reply. I do own a retail copy of the game, and, seeing your post, I decided to test the game on Windows 10. Everything worked out fine, with no problems or fixes needed. I didn't even install the Nvidia PhysX files, as I use AMD cards. It works great right out of the box. Here are my specs: CPU: AMD FX-8350 8 core 4.0 GHz RAM: 8 GB GDDR3 Graphics card: Radeon RX 5500 XT 8 GB graphics memory OS: Windows 10 latest version, updated fully Motherboard: Gigabyte AMD chipset, with up to 32GB RAM support If you can, can you post your PC specs? Maybe we can find something that prevents you from playing the game.

Found another batch of obscure PC ports, this time from Konami: I recently saw an article on LostMediaWiki about a very obscure PC port of NBA Powerdunkers (Also known as NBA In the Zone in the West). The status is currently "lost". https://lostmediawiki.com/NBA_Powerdunkers_(lost_PC_port_of_PlayStation_sports_game;_1997) What is interesting is that, one of the sources listed in the article includes info on all kinds of PC releases that saw a light of day in Japan, but are now very obscure. https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/article/970131/mitei.htm Another very obscure port is Vandal Hearts, a tactical RPG similar to Fire Emblem, initially released in 1996 for the PlayStation. Apparently, the game received a PC port in 1998, developed by Konami Computer Games Aoyama, a one-time studio with an objective to port PlayStation titles to the PCs. It was released in Japan, South Korea and China (I don't know if it means Mainland China or Taiwan, as I found out that there is a Chinese localization). I still do not know if the studio ever had an official website. I am still searching for any kind of link that can prove the existence of that studio. Here are some pictures of the box from a Japanese auction site: https://www.mercari.com/jp/items/m87106641459/ And some gameplay footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RnUAP7u8Sw Also, here is another RPG: Suikoden, also known in Japan as Genso Suikoden, a JRPG loosely based on the famous Chinese novel Water Margin. Initially released in 1995, the game received a PC port in both Japan (in 1998) and South Korea. I do not know if the game received a Chinese localization. (EDIT: It did! And in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese) Gameplay footage (Japanese): https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm3931174 Korean version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf4pYXPdcEA EDIT: Traditional Chinese version footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50UClHS8DKo

I checked it out. I saw an article also on LostMediaWiki, with a status of "Lost". https://lostmediawiki.com/Pokémon_Mystery_Dungeon:_Gold_Rescue_Team_-Challenge_the_Gold_Rank!-_(lost_South_Korean_promotional_demo_of_Nintendo_DS_game;_2007) Now, judging by the info on Bulbapedia (wiki for Pokemon franchise), the game has 450 MB of data. I believe that it isn't a GBA ROM. Not even current emulators for GBA would take that much space, let alone a single GBA ROM file. Unfortunately, as long as we don't have the original file at hand and know how it installs the game, we may never know. https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pokémon_Mystery_Dungeon:_Gold_Rescue_Team Now, for another obscure port: Assault Heroes. Originally released for the Xbox Live Arcade, it also got a PC release, even in the US, complete with a box and everything. I got originally a Direct2Drive release, which unfortunately shut down, so I can't access the files, though I may have backed it up on my hard drive. It had online multiplayer through GameSpy, but nowadays that is impossible to do, due to its server shutdown.

No PC version as of now, though there's a possibility that it might happen. Yakuza 7 got released on PS4 and will be released on Steam as well. I don't know how popular is the new Sakura Wars game in Japan. There can be multiple reasons as to why it went through English-speaking radars (language barrier is one such factor, but sometimes it isn't the only one. Simple lack of interest is oftentimes a much bigger factor in game not getting any traction.) If the game fails to attract interest in its home country, the game will not get any PC release. Now, if the porting is done well, then I appreciate the effort of the company to actually cater to PC and release a polished port (see Persona 4 Golden). The PC gaming community should voice their gratitude, whether on social media, blog posts or articles on news media. That way, ports don't become obscure and instead get interest and support. I believe that we should continue to show support to current porting efforts and seek out past obscure ports, not only for preservation purposes, but to inform the public and the company of their efforts to support PC as a viable gaming platform.

Here's another game by Sega: Sakura Wars (Sakura Taisen) I-IV. Almost all of these titles were released also on PC, but only in Japan. The PC port of Sakura Wars 1 received an international release, but only in certain territories. Initially released in 1999 in Japan, it also got released in Taiwan in 2001, and in Russia in 2006, complete with a full translation of in-game text in Russian (no Russian dubbing though). The second part, Sakura Taisen II, also got a release in Taiwan in 2001 and in Russia in 2008. Note however that the Russian version uses the much maligned StarForce protection, according to the back cover of the game, which means that compatibility with newer systems is NOT guaranteed. The game never got an English release, though a fan translation exists for the Sega Saturn version. Why didn't they do it for the PC version as well, beats me. Source: MobyGames (https://www.mobygames.com/game/sakura-taisen/release-info) (https://www.mobygames.com/game/sakura-taisen-2-kimi-shinitamou-koto-nakare/release-info)

I checked it out. Indeed there are two versions. I didn't even know that the game was ported to the PC in the first place, let alone the fact that it had two editions, which also makes this port rather obscure. I played the PC version of Virtua Cop way back, but I didn't play the original arcade, so I can't judge how the porting was done. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was ported from the Saturn, rather than the arcade. The PC port of Mortal Kombat 4 suffers from lower graphics than the arcade original, because it was based of the ports on the consoles. Contrast that with Mortal Kombat 1, II, 3 and Trilogy, which received PC ports that are very close to the arcade. (Not to mention the fact that the original Mortal Kombat was ported directly from the original source code in C, and thus retains the glitches and bugs of the arcade version)

Thanks for the info. I managed to find the release date for the game and I am currently contributing it to MobyGames. I also discovered that Daytona USA got a Windows port. According to MobyGames, it was released in the US, but I found evidence that it was also released in Japan. I don't know whether or not Windows 95 was a big success in Japan (it was a worldwide success, no doubt about that), but judging from the number of ports released around that time, I guess it might be the case. One should definitely look into doing some comprehensive research on ports of console games in Japan during the 90's/early 2000's.