Rare/Obscure PC versions

[Talos 1]

17 hours ago, Luigi master89 said:

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.

Thanks for the reply. Like I said, almost all of the titles released under the DigiCube label were released only in Japan. One of the releases documented here is the Wizardry: Llylgamyn Saga, which was also released for the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation. (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Wizardry:_Llylgamyn_Saga) However, there is also the PC port of Fushigi no Dungeon Fuurai no Shiren ~Tsukikage-mura no Kaibutsu~, an enhanced port of the original which came out on GameBoy. Fushigi no Dungeon is a series of Japanese roguelikes made by Spike Chunsoft, the company famous for the Dragon Quest series. Fushigi no Dungeon has spanned multiple games and spinoffs throughout the 90's and mid 2000's, on a multitude of platforms. Fushigi no Dungeon Fuurai no Shiren ~Tsukikage-mura no Kaibutsu~ is the only one (as far as I know) that was released on the PC.

Now, this release in question had two editions: the first one is by DigiCube and it features desktop accesories. The other is an updated version with internet support.

Both of these versions can be found on the Japanese Amazon, but they commend staggering prices (200~250 USD), as it is out of print. On the other hand, there is currently an auction on Yahoo Auctions that offers the DigiCube release for cheap (~40 USD). Usually they are cheaper if they appear on Yahoo Auctions.

First edition (DigiCube): https://tinyurl.com/y6ux42k2

Second edition (internet support version): https://tinyurl.com/y8jkmvsw

Yahoo Auction offer: https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/l597398774

Now, I've never heard about a (perhaps potential) Russian PC port of the original Yakuza. If confirmed, it would be a very interesting find indeed. I can help you with some Russian, as my native language is actually Serbian, also a Slavic language with many similarities to Russian, and uses Cyrillic script. I believe that by restricting the search to Cyrillic, one might find some info on the game. If you want, I can contact you through here or through Discord and we can sort some things out.

EDIT: I've found another Fushigi no Dungeon game for PC, also on Yahoo Auction, in very good condition, but it is very expensive. https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/v721541638

[Theclaw135 4]

On 7/1/2020 at 9:29 PM, Luigi master89 said:

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.

World Series Baseball 96 is one of those curiously Asian only games featuring American MLB teams and players. (Konami's MLB Power Pros also has untranslated entries)

It feels as if companies weren't quite sure what to make of the success of Windows 95 and tried everything for a while.

[Talos 1]

On 7/3/2020 at 6:22 PM, Theclaw135 said:

World Series Baseball 96 is one of those curiously Asian only games featuring American MLB teams and players. (Konami's MLB Power Pros also has untranslated entries)

It feels as if companies weren't quite sure what to make of the success of Windows 95 and tried everything for a while.

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.

[alrayes_brn 3]

4 hours ago, Talos said:

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.

There are 2 Daytona USA games on the PC, the other one is the deluxe version. It also has a D3D patch which adds filtering option and fog to covers the short draw distance but people didn't like it.

Unfortunately the PC ports are nowhere as good as the arcade version. The same could be said for Sega Touring Car Championship and Virtua Cop.

[Talos 1]

18 minutes ago, alrayes_brn said:

There are 2 Daytona USA games on the PC, the other one is the deluxe version. It also has a D3D patch which adds filtering option and fog to covers the short draw distance but people didn't like it.

Unfortunately the PC ports are nowhere as good as the arcade version. The same could be said for Sega Touring Car Championship and Virtua Cop.

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)

[alrayes_brn 3]

A lot of Sega arcade games were ported to the PC such as Panzer Dargoon, The House of the Dead, After burner, Virtua Fighter and some other titles I can't remember. All of them are not as good as the arcade counterparts.

[Talos 1]

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)

[Luigi master89 12]

Interesting timing, especially since Sega released a new Sakura Wars game a few months ago, though unlike the prior games it appears to have no PC version.  The game seemed to just have flied under the radar, so perhaps it will be a Valkyria Revolution situation where the game is released to little fanfare and never gets a PC version, despite prior games getting PC versions.  Then again this is Sega, who has a knack for porting either really old games years past their relevancy or porting games most people didn't even ask for.  This game will likely fall into one of the two categories, considering how lame it looks it will probably be a column B game.

[Talos 1]

7 hours ago, Luigi master89 said:

Interesting timing, especially since Sega released a new Sakura Wars game a few months ago, though unlike the prior games it appears to have no PC version.  The game seemed to just have flied under the radar, so perhaps it will be a Valkyria Revolution situation where the game is released to little fanfare and never gets a PC version, despite prior games getting PC versions.  Then again this is Sega, who has a knack for porting either really old games years past their relevancy or porting games most people didn't even ask for.  This game will likely fall into one of the two categories, considering how lame it looks it will probably be a column B game.

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.

[KyoriAsh 2]

Sakura Wars 1 - 4 article for PCGW is one of my target article creation and I'm glad to hear that there is other version than Japanese and Chinese Traditional.

You may see my workings here regarding Rare and obscure PC games, mostly from Taiwan and Japanese.

Currently I need to complete all the details of article in PCGW that I had touched before I works on Sakura Wars articles

[Luigi master89 12]

On 7/16/2020 at 7:56 PM, Talos said:

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.

The game has been out in Japan since last year, and it was just recently localized for the PS4.  Yakuza is arguably a much larger franchise, so it's no surprise that they want to release it on more platforms, meanwhile Sakura Wars looks like one of those panty quest games that people kept mocking the Playstation line of consoles of having.

Also, here is something quite interesting:  A Korea-only PC demo of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Gold Rescue Team, which had to be downloaded from the Korean Pokemon website and required an internet connection to play, which is no longer supported.  I wonder if this was an actual port of the game or an emulator packaged with a GBA ROM.

[Talos 1]

13 hours ago, Luigi master89 said:

Also, here is something quite interesting:  A Korea-only PC demo of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Gold Rescue Team, which had to be downloaded from the Korean Pokemon website and required an internet connection to play, which is no longer supported.  I wonder if this was an actual port of the game or an emulator packaged with a GBA ROM.

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.

[tremirodomi 1]

 

On 7/16/2020 at 11:37 AM, Luigi master89 said:

...porting games most people didn't even ask for.  This game will likely fall into one of the two categories, considering how lame it looks it will probably be a column B game...

 

On 7/18/2020 at 1:26 AM, Luigi master89 said:

...meanwhile Sakura Wars looks like one of those panty quest games that people kept mocking the Playstation line of consoles of having....

Maybe play the games first before blindly dismissing them? Also, people have been asking for ports of both of them for a while. 

Anyways, this is all really interesting to me. If the reports of the first Yakuza game getting a PC port way before the Kiwami version happened are true, then man, this will be cool for preservation purposes.

[Theclaw135 4]

Eggerland / Adventures of Lolo has a few PC games.

They've got to be obscure, even the fan remake has been lost for years. Seriously?

[magikgimp 2]

An interesting one, or rather a game that I have a soft spot for even though it's not the best game ever made, is DroneZ or to give it its full title- Dennou Taisen DroneZ. Originally made by Zetha gameZ as a demo product for GeForce 3 graphics cards, it was further developed into an XBox release only for Japan which was then ported back to PC but only for Russian customers!

I have the "OEM" version which consists of the first few levels, a benchmarking rolling demo and features the best title / menu screen ever (check the screenshots for an idea why). I was also kindly given the ISO for the full game by someone who made a full playthough on YouTube. Sadly that image requires a CD key I seem to recall--there was some problem with it anyway--and tracking down an XBox copy (and a suitable XBox to play it on!) isn't something I've put my efforts to yet. Besides, neither release is in English either sadly, I think. And they got rid of all that great interface too by the looks of it. Anyway, it's an obscure one although I expect quite a few people have played that OEM disk.