Panzer Dragoon Saga PC?

Win98 emulator, WINE style?

 

Never heard of one for Windows XP (virtual machine for other platforms, maybe), got a link?

Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure all those Sega games are Windows-only, so it's no surprise I didn't get far with DosBox...

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx give it a read and tell me what you make of it

 

Virtual PC doesn't support DirectX, which most likely all those games require. What you ought to do is just set up a dual boot with Windows 98 and XP simultaneously installed. I used to have a system like that, if I remember correctly.

 

Nice collection, JP. I have the memorial album. It is good cracker... one of the few game soundtracks that I really like.

 

Well yeah, that'd probably be close to ideal, although my system's speed might be too high for some games. That's not the problem though, the problem is that my drives are NTFS, so 98 won't recognise them, and all my IDE and SATA ports are in use so I'd have to buy a PCI IDE card, which I'd then have to get Win98 to recognise to install on, etc etc etc. That's a good day's work at least, not to mention money I'd rather spend on more vital stuff, all for a few games I'd probably only spend an hour or so playing anyway.

I guess there isn't a quick, easy way of playing older PC games. Just seems like the kind of thing someone would've figured out by now.

 

Partition magic

 

The hell it doesn't.

Virtual PC emulates a S3 Trio64 video chip which has no problem with DirectX.

Now, unless you've got a high end machine, you might run into framerate issues with VPC running Win98 under XP, but the games will run. I just installed VF2 and it fired up right away. Used the DX3 (yes, version 3) that was on the CD.

-hl718

 

To save me a lot of time/effort, could you let me know whether VF2 ran full speed, and what specs you're running?

 

CPU on the host machine was a P4, 3.0.

VPC had Win98 with a 1 gig hard drive and 128 meg RAM assigned.

VF2 ran in demo mode just fine (didn't bother trying to play) with the occasional framerate hiccup. I'm guessing that if I had Win98 installed on a standard VPC drive file (usually use differencing ones for work so I never have to worry about damaging the base OS install) or on a real drive and tossed a bit more RAM at it, it would have run a peach.

-hl718

 

Should be good to go then, thanks.

 

I can confirm Bug! completely. It was on an old machine in a special ed class in my High School. Shame the Win95 install was fubar and only bootable with safe mode.

I believe Panzer Dragoon came with whatever video card it was that was supposed to have the saturn controller port built in. I have pictures of the card local but I can't remember the name. Want to say Nvidia made it.

 

A few early Sega games were designed to run on that card, the NV1 chipset as I recall. Was quad- rather than polygon-based, like the Saturn. It did have a Saturn controller port built in, and also had a sound chipset of some kind too.

 

I'm not sure this list is definitive, but here's most of what Sega released during the Saturn era for PC:

Baku Baku Animal
BUG!
BUG TOO!
Daytona USA
Daytona USA Deluxe
Enemy Zero
Formula Karts
Last Bronx
Manx TT SuperBike
NBA Action '98
Panzer Dragoon
Sega Rally Championship
Sega Touring Car
Sega Worldwide Soccer
Sonic 3D
Sonic R
The House Of The Dead
Virtua Cop/Virtua Squad
Virtua Cop 2
Virtua Fighter
Virtua Fighter 2
Virtual On

The majority of these were later reissued on the XPLOSIV label, while others have become increasingly rare over the last few years. I've never heard of a Panzer Dragoon Saga demo being included with early copies of the soundtrack, though it's always possible. Considering it's the first time many of us have read about the existence of such a thing, I presume this must be incredibly hard to find. If only somebody could provide further evidence or, better yet, the demo itself for undeniable proof...

P.S. Were there any more games other than Virtua Fighter and Panzer Dragoon that had NV1 support?

 

Just checked the wiki on NV1, it says Nascar Racing was too. Not a Sega game as far as I can tell.

 

x

 

vf 2 runs fine on my machine (win xp pro 2x xeons 2 gig ram 6800gt)

and for Panzer : http://www.gamestation.co.uk/product.asp?id=101097122949695
8 English Pence brand new

 

I've been trying desperately to collect the whole SEGA PC range for years, but so far I'm only able to find the "usual suspects" and a few rarities once every blue moon when browsing in the second-hand bargain bins of my local games stores. What's the chance of ever finding a boxed copy of BUG! or Baku Baku out in the proverbial wild? Come to think of it, do these - or Virtual On, for that matter - show up on eBay very often? At least there's always the free demos I can find in the download sections at most Sega fan sites worth their salt...

P.S. The reason most of the SEGA PC titles are so bad is due to many of them being direct ports of the Saturn versions, and we all know that few games were truly "arcade perfect" on that system. Still, that doesn't excuse console-exclusives like Panzer Dragoon or BUG!, which really could have benefitted from all the extra power that the PC format allows. In fact, the only game superior in its PC guise is probably Sonic R, but even that's now (arguably) been superceded by the PS2 edition!

 

And don't forget, there's the gold version of Virtual On.

Back when these games shipped, CDs were still being hyped up like mad and gold plated CDs (vs just plain aluminum) were another hype factor. The amount of gold required to do the plating was miniscule, but hey, it looks good and it was another way to market the game.

IIRC, Virtual On was the only game to get the gold treatment.

As for the NV1, a good number of the Sega games supported the NV1, even if it was not announced on the box. I keep meaning to rebuild a proper NV1 box and test out the collection, but it's a project that (as always) keeps getting put off.

There were also a number of non-Sega games that had NV1 support including a version of MechWarrior II and an unreleased version of Descent.

-hl718

 

I didn't know about the gold version of Virtual On - as if this game wasn't already obscure enough! Also, it's good to hear that NV1 support extended beyond just Sega titles.