Another Sega PC thread

Inspired by the recent activity on this thread, I hit ebay and managed to snag the PAL release of NBA Action 98! Can't imagine that did huge business when it was first released, we're not exactly crazy about basketball over here. But it's got the Sega PC branding, and it's definitely a real EU release, so it was on my hit list. Title screenshot for the wiki and review on this thread will follow as soon as I get my hands on it (assuming the wrappers work their magic and it runs on Windows 10).

Reminds me, I never did a review of Formula Karts (which I already have). Mainly because the windows version has an awful fast CPU bug, and running the DOS version in an emulator just seems against the spirit of it somehow. It is the only game with the 'Sega PC' branding to include a DOS version on disk interestingly enough. Another possible direction for this is to go back in time, embrace DOS and start looking at the old 'IBM PC' Arcade ports on floppy disk. That would have to be done with unofficial versions, even I don't have a working 5 1/2 inch floppy disk drive!

 

Unfortunately, the retail copy provides a steam key anyway, it's just the key and the files on the disc, you still need steam to play.

 

DOS version works fine in dosbox with my physical cd at least, and doesn't have the fast cpu bug, so that's good! Next job is to trawl through the EXE in a hex editor and see if any plain text passwords can be found.

 

This is what it looks like in DOSBox, I could scan the manual that's inside the cd case (I don't have the big box, so no idea if there's a bigger manual.), but the English section is literally 3 pages long, has system requirements, how to install in Win 95 mode (doesn't even mention DOS), controls and that's it!

 

What an interesting discussion to come back to, I had no idea the Spanish are so fond of their basketball! Hopefully it shows up soon and I can try it out for myself.

 

I've found some single letter command line parameters in the DOS version of Formula Karts. The game is kind in that if you pass in an invalid command line arg, it kicks you out and tells you. So I know at least which letters to try. -? tells you about -i, but sadly all the others are undocumented.

These also work in the windows version, though I can't test properly until I can find a way to cap the framerate!

-i disables intro videos
-t lets you immediately start play on the track of your choice (-t1, -t2, -t3 etc). -t8 is a secret track, the moon!
-g gamma correction
-m0 no textures, just flat shaded models
-s saturation threshold
-v and -z appear to be something to do with vsync (-v made the screen flicker violently, -z sped up the menu animations alot)

others to be determined are
-a -d -f
-h -k
-q and -y

Here's the moon


EDIT - added -m notes, windows notes

 

Formula Karts

Jumping back in time to 1997, we have the obscure kart racer, Formula Karts. This one is a bit of an oddball in that it isn't an arcade conversion, nor was it developed internally by Sega. It's a 3rd party game programmed by Kart game specialists Manic Media Productions, which somehow ended up getting the Sega PC branding and so ended up on my list! It's a Saturn conversion that appears to only have been released in Europe (though Expert Software bought this PC version over to the US a bit later) and has everything you might expect a kart racer to have, 5 teams with suitibly edgy 90s names, 8 tracks set in different countries (plus a secret track). There's a few different modes, a single race mode, a championship mode where you qualify and race on every track and an arcade mode where you can earn money to buy upgrades. It's not quite Mario Kart but you do have in-race upgrades like a quick speed boost which you can activate when you need to.

The graphics are direct draw only but have been giving the usual boost up to 640x480 (320x240 and a few resolutions in between are also available), and you can switch between 256 colour and 16 million colours as well. The graphics are generally poor with low res textures and a lack of detail in the backgrounds. This combined with the very short tracks (which is probably realistic for kart racing but still) makes for quite a dull experience in my opinion. Nowhere near the standard of the Sega arcade stuff that was around at the same time. Saving is done via an infuriatingly large password instead of a file, which is not great. Unusually for Sega, the disc contains both a DOS and Windows version of the game. They appear to have feature parity, graphics/sound config is identical between the two.

Getting it working
This was an interesting experience, which involved the DxWnd developer actually improving DxWnd itself to help get it going. The windows port is incredibly flaky, it's direct x 3, crashes often and has a timing bug causing it to run at 100 miles an hour. The windows port strangely uses the EXE as a tiny wrapper to launch a DLL which runs the game, and actually relies on picking up direct x error messages and ignoring them to even get to the title screen, the handling of which needed to be fixed in DxWnd to stand a chance. So, to try it, grab the bleeding edge latest version of DxWnd (v2.05.88.rc11 or later), then instead of pointing it at the EXE, point it at EWFK.DLL instead. Special handling is required to fix the framerate issues, go to the Timing tab and enable Time Stretch Initial and set to x1, and enable Normalise Performance Counter. Even with this, I often had crashes when starting a race and couldn't get the cd audio to work using the original cd or audio files.

For a much more pleasant experience, installing the DOS version via the DOSBox emulator worked perfectly for me (although at least one other person has reported the DOS installer crashing half way through), and the game works at the correct speed with cd audio without any further tweaks required. This is the recommended way to play as it really isn't missing anything, and looks identical to the windows version.

Cheats & Secrets
Through sheer good fortune, and as mentioned above, I stumbled across some command line parameters when testing the DOS version. These all work on the windows version as well by creating a shortcut (or adding it to the 'Command Line' section in the Hook tab in DxWnd.

Secret Track

The secret track, 'The Moon' is probably unlocked as a reward for winning arcade mode (no I'm not playing it through to find out!), but to play it immediately, pass in the command line parameter -t8.

Single Track Test Mode
The -t parameter can be used to instantly play a single race on any track, the numbering starts at 0 for Germany, through to 8 for the Moon (e.g. -t0, -t1, -t2 etc). The program will close after the race is complete.

Other Command Line Parameters
The following parameters are also available, most are config changes rather than cheats.
-i skip intro movies
-m0 disable textures (all models are flat shaded instead)
Other parameters TBC, see post above for more info.

 

NBA 98 has arrived at last, here it is along with Formula Karts, part of my ever growing 'rare because nobody bought them' 90s PC collection. Could probably chuck Bug Too in there as well, that one took me ages to find.


EDIT - it's another challenge, DxWnd doesn't like it, DGVoodoo doesn't like it either

EDIT 2 - but PCEm can handle it, so there is hope!

 

The lineage of that dreamcast collection is ridiculous. Take Sonic Adventure DX, ported to Game Cube, ported to PC, ported to X-box, ported back to PC (that's what this collection is), then added to Steam. Each step resulted in features being lost or cut out. For Sonic & Crazy Taxi at least, mods can put everything back in that was lost. I'm also pretty sure your boxed version there has Starforce drm, which is completely unusable on a modern PC. You were wise not to open it! :D

Manx TT is really good fun, although light on content (there's basically two tracks), and because it uses glide 3d, nglide can run it really well and make it look pretty. Aliens I picked up in a steam sale but have never played. I was scared off by all the bad reviews at the time!