Rare/Obscure PC versions

[Luigi master89 12]

By this topic, I am referring to games that got PC versions/ports, but very little information about these games seem to exist.  One example is a game called MorphX, which is a localization of a Russian game called "Symbiont".  Any information you find for "MorphX" will bring up the Xbox 360 release, while there are subtle hints of it getting a PC release also.  A forum (I forget which, sorry) uncovered that it was indeed sold digitally, but has been since taken down.  The same forum also hosts a demo of MorphX, but it requires a cracked executable as the TAGES DRM requires a serial code that cannot be cheated, it also requires online activation.  This proves that MorphX was indeed localized for PC, but proof of it actually existing is very limited.

Two other games confirmed to exist but left no traces of release are Frogger Beyond and Mashed:  Fully Loaded.  You can't find Frogger Beyond on eBay while Mashed: Fully Loaded has precisely one (Italian) listing, but there are videos of their PC versions on YouTube (Frogger, Mashed).  While their PC versions aren't entirely unknown, Wikipedia claims that Metal Gear Solid 2's PC version was also released in the United States, but all results for it on ebay are European, and likewise Wikipedia seems to believe that Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run was only released on consoles.  Are there any other games with PC versions that the internet doesn't seem to know (or care) existed, or perhaps versions that claim to exist but actually don't?

[SargeCassidy 1]

GFWL version of Dark Void. No mention on Wikipedia about it. No mention from Ms or Capcom on their sites. Literally the only place you'll find anything about this are Russian forums... and I got access to a working English version of it. (if by working, you think achievements being possible to earn in offline mode). 

[Luigi master89 12]

I looked up Dark Void GFWL and I got a few results, one from an Xbox/Microsoft news outlet and a few from Steam; apparently the steam version also used GFWL.  On the same note, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game by Konami, based on the 2003 reboot, seems to be a hard to find game, in no part thanks to it simply being titled "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", with no subtitle like Battle Nexus or Mutant Melee.  Ubisoft's TMNT game at least has the distinction of just being called "TMNT", which works greatly in favor of finding it.

[Theclaw135 4]

This reminds me of how the 2004 PC version of Sonic Adventure DX is rare in the United States.

[Luigi master89 12]

I was always under the impression that Sonic Adventure was one of the quintessential PC ports.  I guess with how uncommon some of these games appear to be, it's no surprise why such a large number of 6th generation games never got PC versions.  The distribution model was absolutely abysmal.  By contrast, the lesser known Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg PC version has numerous listings, albeit Europe only as the game was Europe-only.  From the UK to Russia and everywhere in between, Billy Hatcher's PC distribution was much better.  I wonder if the lackluster American PC market was in part influenced by the thunderous success of the PlayStation 2, or Microsoft wanting to shift focus to the Xbox, or maybe both.

[Antrad 37]

Starshot Space Circus Fever.

On YouTube you will find a ton of people playing Nintendo 64 version that is far inferior, even on emulators that don't render it correctly, but you will find very few videos of PC version that is far superior and runs perfectly using nGlide. MobyGames doesn't even have screenshots for it.

A bit off topic, but when Turok 1 and 2 remasters released recently many people thought they ported it to PC now, they praised the publishers for porting a N64 game after all these years, but the PC versions existed already in the 90s.

[Luigi master89 12]

Space Circus reminds me of the fact that Jersey Devil also got a PC version in addition to the PS1 version, but aside from downloads, it's as if this version never existed, I can't even find a box scan of it.  A bit weird that Space Circus doesn't include the widescreen mode from the N64 version, I wonder if someone, preferably thirteenag, could make a widescreen hack of it, it seems like the PC version is leaps and bounds better than the console version.

Speaking of widescreen, South Park Rally seems to be one of the earliest PC games to support it natively, without any weird stretching or cropping quirks.  Go on YouTube and see for yourself.  However it seems like the PC version is locked to 30FPS while the Dreamcast version runs at 60FPS.

[MaxKur67 1]

Regarding games from OP:
MorphX indeed exists on PC, it's actually initial version by name Симбионт/Symbiont, which then got ported to X360 and released worldwide.
As for availabilty - it's retail only. Either in initial jewel box (https://buka.ru/cgi-bin/show.pl?id=387) or in 20th anniversary's publisher anthology from 2012 (http://buka.ru/cgi-bin/show.pl?id=739). This set comes with 2 DVDs and also with a key to activate digital versions on shop.buka.ru (majority of those migrated to Steam by this time but some rus-only titles like Петька 4-9 aka Red Comrades series are not obtainable otherwise, even in this very store)
Should I post links to Rutracker with the game itself and cracked exe?

On Dark Void: It's the same Securom as everywhere, Games for Windows LIVE is just a marking on front cover.

[Luigi master89 12]

I was actually talking about the localization of Symbiont, which was titled as MorphX, getting a PC release in addition to 360.  I posted two links in the OP that implied MorphX existing for PC, but besides that only Symbiont exists for PC.  I even created the entire article for Symbiont.  Sure enough, I tried installing the demo for MorphX, and indeed it was titled MorphX, and even featured the multilingual support from the 360 localization, but couldn't actually play it due to the TAGES DRM it uses.  I am most interested in MorphX, because it seems like it's effectively a piece of lost media, while Symbiont is known to exist.  I should message 505 and see what's up with MorphX PC, and why they decided to skip steam in favor of some other store.

[Antrad 37]

13 hours ago, Luigi master89 said:

Space Circus reminds me of the fact that Jersey Devil also got a PC version in addition to the PS1 version, but aside from downloads, it's as if this version never existed, I can't even find a box scan of it.  A bit weird that Space Circus doesn't include the widescreen mode from the N64 version, I wonder if someone, preferably thirteenag, could make a widescreen hack of it, it seems like the PC version is leaps and bounds better than the console version.

Speaking of widescreen, South Park Rally seems to be one of the earliest PC games to support it natively, without any weird stretching or cropping quirks.  Go on YouTube and see for yourself.  However it seems like the PC version is locked to 30FPS while the Dreamcast version runs at 60FPS.

I wanted to ask a guy called "jackfuste" on Widescreen Gaming Forums to make a widescreen fix, but I never did. He made a widescreen fix for Extreme G-2 when I asked him, which is also a relatively unknown N64 game ported to PC, but it re-released on Steam few years ago. The re-release does not have widescreen, which tells a lot about how much the new publishers cared. They used dgVoodoo to fix the rendering and winmm for CD audio, so they themselves basically didn't do any hard work.

As for early PC games with widescreen support I know Machines from April 1999 (one of the first 3D RTS games) and Starship Troopers Terran Ascendancy from October 2000, however menus remain 640x480.

[Luigi master89 12]

On 2/3/2020 at 4:54 AM, Antrad said:

I wanted to ask a guy called "jackfuste" on Widescreen Gaming Forums to make a widescreen fix, but I never did. He made a widescreen fix for Extreme G-2 when I asked him, which is also a relatively unknown N64 game ported to PC, but it re-released on Steam few years ago. The re-release does not have widescreen, which tells a lot about how much the new publishers cared. They used dgVoodoo to fix the rendering and winmm for CD audio, so they themselves basically didn't do any hard work.

As for early PC games with widescreen support I know Machines from April 1999 (one of the first 3D RTS games) and Starship Troopers Terran Ascendancy from October 2000, however menus remain 640x480.

winmm, is that at all similar to _inmm.dll used to fix some games?  Can it help to play music from games that normally require a CD?

[Theclaw135 4]

On 2/1/2020 at 7:20 PM, Luigi master89 said:

I was always under the impression that Sonic Adventure was one of the quintessential PC ports.  I guess with how uncommon some of these games appear to be, it's no surprise why such a large number of 6th generation games never got PC versions.  The distribution model was absolutely abysmal.  By contrast, the lesser known Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg PC version has numerous listings, albeit Europe only as the game was Europe-only.  From the UK to Russia and everywhere in between, Billy Hatcher's PC distribution was much better.  I wonder if the lackluster American PC market was in part influenced by the thunderous success of the PlayStation 2, or Microsoft wanting to shift focus to the Xbox, or maybe both.

Packaging quality appears to be a common factor. American releases of a number of PC ports (Sonic Adventure, Sonic Heroes, TMNT 2003, Metal Gear Solid 2, etc) were in cardboard boxes more likely to get lost or destroyed, compared to European DVD cases.

Speaking of regions, I noticed we don't yet cover the Japanese version of Gurumin.

[Luigi master89 12]

Regardless of box or plastic packaging, the media should have at least survived.  Seems to me that many of these games sold poorly because they weren't available in many stores.  I think the size wars of the 90's hurt retailers, they had more space occupied by a small number of games, and after seeing how much more profitable console games were, they were increasingly unlikely to buy large PC games that didn't sell as well.  If there was little demand for the product, there was also little demand for the game.  This made piracy sometimes the only way to acquire games, which further convinced a large number of publishers to eschew PC versions of their games, especially from formerly PC-centric publishers like LucasArts (Gladius, Mercenaries), Interplay (Dark Alliance series, Fallout Brotherhood of Steel), and Electronic Arts (Burnout series, Black).

[Talos 1]

Hello everyone! I'm relatevely new around here, but I saw this post way back and I would like to contribute some info about obscure PC ports and releases, particularly from Japan or South Korea.

Back in 1997, Squaresoft (now Square Enix) developed a service to distribute games across Japan's many convenient stores, or through digital kiosks. It was called DigiCube. Their first release was the original debut of Final Fantasy VII in Japan. However, besides console games, they also released and distributed ports of popular titles on the PC or localizations of European or American games (such as SimCity 4 etc.)

One of those titles was Growlanser, a RPG by Atlus and CareerSoft, initially released in 1999 for the PlayStation. Two years later, on April 25th 2001 they released an official Windows PC port of the game. Also, at around the same time, South Korean company Soft Action released the PC port, but with a Korean translation (unfortunately text only, and it does not include the original Japanese voice work.) However, info on the port is rather sparse. Japanese Atlus' website does not mention they developed the port for the PC, so I had to use the Wayback Machine of Internet Archive and access the website in question. The info is even more sparse on the Korean release of the game. I barely managed to find a working version of the website and retrieve the info.

Now, these games can be purchased from Yahoo Auction in Japan (some vendors can ship internationally!). I saw one post that was selling the game for 7000 yen (about 70 USD) in a very good condition. Korean release can be found on Naver and is a lot cheaper, but I don't know if their services ship internationally. However, if anybody is interested in tracking down these releases and document them to this wiki, then I can help with communication in Japanese, and only a little bit in Korean. I can provide the links for the sources that prove the existence of this release, as well as where to get the games.

Also, if nobody is minding, I may start a new thread that is focused on documenting DigiCube PC releases. The info on these obscure PC ports of console games in Japan is quite fascinating, and, from a historical perspective, might reveal these efforts of Japanese companies to support the platform.

Here's a video on YouTube about the Japanese PC release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz7dxjBZK6s

And here's the one for the Korean release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEPww3JPDbA

[Luigi master89 12]

Hello Talos, thanks for the interesting tidbits!  I wonder what other games had PC ports that were left behind in Asia.  I heard of a few reports of a purported Russian/Eastern European exclusive PC port of the original Yakuza, but since the remake is now available searching will be harder.