Phantasie series

[KeighnMcDeath]

Does any of the USB Hubs help any? Sometimes these work ok extending your USB usage.

https://www.investopedia.com/best-usb-hubs-5186394

This depends on the platform. AtariST, Amiga can use the mouse. But with the proper programs I wonder if you could use a gamepad. AppleII i'll assume keyboard. C64 I know you can use keyboard and/or Joystick. Atari800 similar situation. DOS keyboard at least. Any of these I could probably use gamepad by customizing a joystick-keyboard program. I've used joytokey for a very long time. I even registered mine because I was that impressed.

My laptop has 3 usb ports. I use a laptop fancooler platform, an actual wireless mouse and a wireless keyboard and a gamepad. Usually the assistsnce of a usb hub helps. I can even hook my phone up during wifi hotspotting.

I tried that with a chromebook but generally failed.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I was looking at the japanese ports of the Phantasie series by Starcraft

• Phantasie - Jelnoa's Chapter
• Phantasie II - Story of Ferronrah
• Phantasie III - The Wrath of Nikademus
• Phantasie IV - The Birth of Heroes

Jelnoa?

 

[newtmonkey]

Jelnoa = Gelnor

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I'd say it's pretty vital for most non-arcade games on the C64. Phantasie is keyboard operated, as you can see in the manual.
You can get one of those USB keyboards that have a built-in USB port on them, then you can daisy-chain the joystick and the keyboard. Or just use a regular 4-in-1 USB hub, it must work (as far the USB port on the C64 Mini can power it, but then you could also get a powered USB hub).

Interesting, didn't think of daisy-chaining it. I think I'll try it that way. It comes with Temple of Asphai and despite being a fairly arcadey RPG, its already requires significant use of the Mini's in-built keyboard.

Jelnoa?

Translating complex English words like Gelnor into Japanese is often very confusing when the English look at it later. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

[Ladonna]

Out of curiosity, how vital is the keyboard in these game? I recently got a C64 Mini and its a different experience playing a game there as opposed to the usual emulation stuff. It only has two USB slots, and its actual keyboard is non-functional. I can't exactly stick a keyboard and a joystick and the usb stick with all the games on it in at the same time.

I remember this was my goto for certain emulation along with a few other sites until this site:

They used to be my go-to, but I kept finding their selection lacking, and eventually I found an emulation wiki. Doesn't really tell you the ins and outs of using such emulators, but for finding them its a good enough resource.

Apart from moving (and maybe one command?) you need a keyboard.

 

[Rincewind]

Does Phantasie IV - The Birth of Heroes have a fan-translated English version, perhaps? It looks interesting.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Does Phantasie IV - The Birth of Heroes have a fan-translated English version, perhaps? It looks interesting.

Quoting where one could be found earlier in the topic.

I have some experience with it, but not with translated software. The issue with the version you found seems to be it isn't complete. You can find one that's complete here. It works...you might have to do frequent disk swapping though.

MSX emulation is a bitch to get working, since you need ROM files for not only the system itself, but any peripherals you have attached to the system. My setup is messy and I can't tell you what I exactly use. Some MSX games don't work well with newer system models, but there shouldn't be any issues with Phantasie IV, since its not an old MSX1 title. I have no idea the quality of the translation, for obvious reasons.

 

[Rincewind]

MSX emulation is a bitch to get working, since you need ROM files for not only the system itself, but any peripherals you have attached to the system. My setup is messy and I can't tell you what I exactly use. Some MSX games don't work well with newer system models, but there shouldn't be any issues with Phantasie IV, since its not an old MSX1 title. I have no idea the quality of the translation, for obvious reasons.

Cheers, I'll download that archive anyway for safekeeping. But based on your summary, PIV and, more generally, MSX falls squarely in the "too much effort for not enough reward" category. There's so many other good old games to play, and time is always a limiting factor.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

MSX emulation is a bitch to get working, since you need ROM files for not only the system itself, but any peripherals you have attached to the system. My setup is messy and I can't tell you what I exactly use. Some MSX games don't work well with newer system models, but there shouldn't be any issues with Phantasie IV, since its not an old MSX1 title. I have no idea the quality of the translation, for obvious reasons.

Cheers, I'll download that archive anyway for safekeeping. But based on your summary, PIV and, more generally, MSX falls squarely in the "too much effort for not enough reward" category. There's so many other good old games to play, and time is always a limiting factor.

Well...yes. Although I don't think Phantasie IV would require that much effort compared to the usual MSX experience. Since its entirely in English you don't need a Kanji module, just the roms to a system, preferably a MSX TurboR. Which I guess should take about 10 minutes, some finding which machine, then getting the roms to that machine. Running the cassette or cartridge titles don't require all that, the emulator comes with an open-source BIOS that works with those, its just disk-based games that are a pain to run. But at this point I'm already in, so I have a bias.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Does Phantasie IV - The Birth of Heroes have a fan-translated English version, perhaps? It looks interesting.

The PC-98 version is in the works. I remember stumbling upon the MSX patch, but I never tried it.

IIRC MrRichard999 checked that patch and said it's far from perfect, but I guess it's better than nothing at this point.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I was wondering which japanese computer system to emulate for phantasie 1-4. MSX sounds damn tempting to start with but the completionist would want to emulate each system.

Funny I was reading anomalies like Macintosh version and ZX-spectrum. I'm unaware of any files nor screenshots.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I knew i should have screenied the zx spectrum reference. I can't find it now. But this manual mentions MAC.

 

[octavius]

I'm pretty sure it was never a Spectrum game.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Interesting, I wonder why its existence isn't even mentioned on either big Macintosh abandonware sites. I guess it must not have had a big production run or made any notice in old Mac magazines. I have to wonder if any Spectrum versions were actually put out, since it seems to me like some place would document that quite readily. Does World of Spectrum have unreleased titles in its database?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I also can't find a phantasie mac image/dsk file.

As to spectrum... nice looking games on that list: http://zxds.raxoft.cz/games.html

 

[Fluent]

This game surprises me session after session. I'm on map 2, the Pineville area, and had a rough encounter that seemed to repeat every time i loaded my game that I could not defeat. Spike Beetles or something. On the 3rd try I said, what the heck, let's try to (G)reet them. And it actually worked! The happy little Spine Beetles greeted us and we both went on our way. I couldn't believe it. Rather than punishing u with an impossible encounter (that seems to happen in some old-school games like this), there was an option there to avoid it entirely. Happened again later with some Barbarians who looked tough. Unreal.

The game in my opinion is a work of art in terms of accessibility, effectiveness and efficiency on the Apple II. Profoundly good version. After you play awhile u really see all the brilliant details they addressed and added that just must have been revolutionary in their day. There's games today that didn't do their acute details as good as this RPG from 1984. The Apple II version is LEGIT. Much love guys.

 

[octavius]

As to spectrum... nice looking games on that list: http://zxds.raxoft.cz/games.html

Damned, that really set off my nostalgia glands...
I still love the vibrant colours of Speccy games.

 

[Rincewind]

As to spectrum... nice looking games on that list: http://zxds.raxoft.cz/games.html

Damned, that really set off my nostalgia glands...
I still love the vibrant colours of Speccy games.

What a find KeighnMcDeath! This page is *great*! I never owned a Spectrum myself (C64 was my first computer), but I love the Speccy aesthetics. Some of these games will definitely end up on my list. But see, now my problem is that as it grows bigger and bigger, it will take decades to complete... (admittedly, a good "problem" to have)

I didn't know either that the Speccy had such a huge game library:

The ZX Spectrum can boast some 15 thousand titles, which is about ten times more than what is currently available for either GBA or NDS alone. This is quite a lot of games to choose from. To put it into perspective, if you try out one title each day, it will keep you occupied for more than forty years. So, where do you start?

 

[Rincewind]

There's games today that didn't do their acute details as good as this RPG from 1984.

Yes! As I'm researching which old games to play, I'm astonished what great ideas people implemented in those early 80s titles. Apparently, there was much more experimentation going on than nowadays, and they were really forced to focus on making the gameplay as good and interesting as possible because of the relatively primitive graphics capabilities of those machines. Maybe another contributing factor was that most of those games were developed by one or two person "teams", and even if they had a dedicated graphics or sound person, they had to be pretty technical and well-versed in assembly programming. They were pioneers, and apparently many of those early ideas have never been improved upon in later games, but were just discarded or "streamlined" away as the publishers have been increasingly trying to appeal to bigger and bigger markets.

 

[Infinitron]

Uh, okay:

hey. mondblut here. could someone kindly inquire on my behalf in the Phantasie thread if anyone experiences a glitch with mouse cursor occasionally disappearing while in town (Atari ST version), especially after reading scrolls? I can read answers in guest mode.

 

[octavius]

Uh, okay:

hey. mondblut here. could someone kindly inquire on my behalf in the Phantasie thread if anyone experiences a glitch with mouse cursor occasionally disappearing while in town (Atari ST version), especially after reading scrolls? I can read answers in guest mode.

I haven't had that problem, using Win 7 and playing in a window.
Have you tried Alt-Tab'ing back and forth to capture the mouse cursor?

 

[unseeingeye]

I haven't had that problem, using Win 7 and playing in a window.
Have you tried Alt-Tab'ing back and forth to capture the mouse cursor?

I've encountered what mondblut is describing, under Windows 10 and haven't found a fix yet, and had a similar issue when I was trying to play Fate: Gates of Dawn but that was the Amiga version and changing the emulator to the A2000 fixed it for me (until mondblut came along and provided me with a superior setup), but when I alt+tab while running Phantasie emulating Atari ST the entire screen goes black and nothing I seem to do brings it back. This is both in windowed mode and full screen. If I manage to find a fix for either problem I'll post an update here; I'll try messing with the emulator a bit later on.

EDIT - Also, something to try may be to change the shortcut key settings in Steem for mouse-capture and whether or not it is automatic; I think the default is "pause". But if I'm describing the same thing as mondblut is, it isn't a matter of capturing the mouse - the actual mouse icon disappears completely and I can't resume playing as before without closing out and turning it back on.

 

[unseeingeye]

Otherwise, unless you need something very specific from DosBox-X, I really recommend using Dosbox Staging these days.

Does Dosbox Staging utilize a front end of its own, and would you recommend it over D-Fend Reloaded?
At this point I've just stuck with eXoDOS and LaunchBox for my DOS games for convenience, but I do maintain an active setup with D-Fend Reloaded and all of the many games I manually acquired prior to discovering eXoDOS. But if Dosbox Staging is where its at going forward, I'd look into starting over if its worth it. Seems like every time you turn around there is a new and improved fork or front end!

 

[Rincewind]

Does Dosbox Staging utilize a front end of its own, and would you recommend it over D-Fend Reloaded?

No, it doesn't have it's own frontend, but most likely you can use it with existing frontends. Most settings should be backwards compatible, and if you can specify custom config params in the frontend, then you can use all the extra features easily..

But if Dosbox Staging is where its at going forward, I'd look into starting over if its worth it. Seems like every time you turn around there is a new and improved fork or front end!

I've spent some time researching this before I settled on Dosbox Staging. Think of it as modern fork (DOSBox itself hasn't really been updated for over 10 years now!), with features similar to the Daum build (which has been abandoned a long time ago as well). So it has shader support, built-in MUNT support (Roland MT-32 emulation, you just need to provide the ROM files), a much better OPL synth, integrated SoundFont player, and so on.

I can't help much with frontends because I stopped using them; I configure each game manually. It's easy once you get the hang of it, especially with Staging as it supports cascading config files (you can have a global config and then game specific overrides in the game folders). Moreover, it has sensible defaults, unlike the original DOSBox, so you don't need to configure much. For example, this is how my config looks like for Legend of Kyrandia, pretty straightforward:

[sdl]
fullscreen = on
max_resolution = 960x720

[midi]
mididevice = mt32

[mt32]
model = cm32l

[autoexec]
mount C "C"
imgmount D "CD\KYRANDIA_1.ISO" -t iso
c:
kyracd

 

[Rincewind]

EDIT - Also, something to try may be to change the shortcut key settings in Steem for mouse-capture and whether or not it is automatic; I think the default is "pause". But if I'm describing the same thing as mondblut is, it isn't a matter of capturing the mouse - the actual mouse icon disappears completely and I can't resume playing as before without closing out and turning it back on.

There's Hatari too, you can try that.