Hello Sonic Retro, I joined your forum to share a bit of a mini-project I've been working on over the last few months. I've been collecting old sega pc games and finally found the time and motivation to start going through them, working out how to get them running on Windows 10 (for various definitions of the word 'running'), testing for cheats and secrets (even finding a few that aren't documented anywhere online) and just general tinkering. I then stuck that information in a word document, took a bunch of screenshots and left it at that. Then I discovered that the good people of sonic/sega retro have been doing something similar and actually going to the trouble of sharing it online, so thought I'd sign up and share what I had. There's nothing earth shattering here, these are all quick and dirty ports of average quality (or worse). I'm no rom hacker, the only reason I've been able to find the odd new thing is because no one else looked yet. There are of course much better ways to play all of these games, these versions are just curiosities with their own quirks. A few general notes on getting old games to run on windows 10. -Windows compatibility for something this old is very fragile and dependent on your specific setup. I can only tell you what worked for my Windows 10 desktop pc, with intel core i5 processor and reasonably modern nvidia graphics card. -If my tricks don't work for you, you're out of luck I'm afraid! -I'm using the original cds so I definitely can't help with ISOs and patches to get cd audio working. I'm using a cheap LG usb cd drive for this -No widescreen in 1995, you'll need a direct x wrapper to force the correct 4:3 aspect ratio. if you don't do this, the game will probably be stretched to fill your monitor and won't look good. I use two different wrappers. --if the game requires the classic windows 95 menu bar to handle setup and options, I use DxWnd setup to run the game in a full screen 4:3 window with the menu available. --if the game has an in-game menu, I use dgvoodoo which for me at least, has better options for upscaling & image processing (but disables access to menu bars) -Some of the very old games use general MIDI for music. I highly recommend VirtualMidiSynth to allow you to use the MIDI sound font of your choosing. -Some of the games have 16bit installers even though the game itself is 32bit. 16bit is not supported on windows 10, there are a few different ways to get around this. --sometimes, there's a fan replacement installer --winevdm (aka otvdm) is software which uses wine as a backend to recreate Windows XP's 16 bit support on modern windows. Sometimes this can be used to run the installer --if all else fails, you can often manually perform the steps required to install, though it's a bit of a pain. Anyway, there's more to come. Here's a picture of what I'm working with
Yes I was looking at this last month (starting around here), emulating a Windows 95 setup with PCem. I stopped when I ran out of virtual hard disk space, which was about the same time I was encountering 3D accelerated titles - it was more of a broad strokes fact-finding mission than anything super serious. It could do with more dedicated fans.
Comix Zone This is a faithful port of the mega drive version, with the following differences -New title screen -Options menu has been removed and replaced with classic win 95 menu bar -Music has been replaced with general MIDI Cheats & Secrets Level/Panel Select Menu This one is listed on pretty much every cheat site around, it's a classic stage select. At any time after the application has been started (logos, title screen or during gameplay), hold Shift and type CAMERON to enable an additional menu bar item, ‘Cheat’, which contains a stage select and individual panel select. Set the desired level and panel in the menu then start a new game by pressing Action on the title screen or using the ‘Game’ menu (or keyboard shortcut F2) during play. In Game Debug Keys This is more interesting and only partially covered by a single cheat site. The site mistitles it as a 'refill your inventory' cheat, but it's actually much more than that. There's a whole set of debug keys to try! During play, open any menu in the menu bar. This should automatically pause the game. Now, with the menu still open, click anywhere in the white space to the right of the ‘Options’ menu. The game should remain in a paused state and the mouse cursor should disappear. You now have access to a number of debug options by pressing the appropriate key then resuming the game by pressing F3 twice. Add ‘Iced Tea’, ‘Super Hero Fist’ and ‘Roadkill’ to inventory: Action (default key X) Enable panel exits before all enemies defeated: Item 1 (default key 1) Refill Health Bar to full: Item 2 (default key 2) Add ‘Grenade’, ‘Knife’ and ‘Bomb’ to inventory: Item 3 (default key 3) Getting It Working Sadly, this is one of those 'install it manually' games. It actually predates direct x and uses microsoft's older 'WinG' technology. No registry shenanigans, it's not too hard to do! copy the following files from the cd to C:/SEGA/COMIX Comix.ex_ Seqs.95 Sprites.bin WAIL32.dl_ WING32.dl_ Use 7zip to extract the files with underscores (and rename file extension of extracted files to exe or dll, getting rid of the underscores). Move WING32.DLL into C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 and delete the file from comix folder (I appreciate that this is not recommended practice, do so at your own risk. I took the risk) Even doing this, the game only works in 320x240 window so worth forcing resolution to 640x480 so it fills enough of the screen. EDIT - corrected the name of WING32.dll (previously said WIN32.dll)
Ecco the Dolphin A unique port of the mega cd version (including the cd audio tracks, fmv videos and the 5 extra levels) which also includes -a high(er) resolution mode with redrawn sprites and backgrounds (worth playing for this alone, this graphics set is exclusive to this version) -file based save system with multiple save slots -difficulty that can be modified at any time during play via the menu -half the sound effects are missing for some reason -the usual win 95 menu bar containing setup options Getting It Working Ecco is sufficiently old and coded in such a way that no amount of messing around with compatibility modes will let you play it on Windows 10. But there's a much better option, @Korama of this very forum has created a compatibility tool, Sega PC Reloaded, which will take care of installation, fixes compatibility issues, increases the number of save slots and allows custom sounds and music to be used. Also, via the Caverns of Hope website, they released the 'fixed and enhanced edition' which contains the same fixes and is bundled with FLAC versions of both megadrive and Mega CD/PC soundtracks as well as all the missing sound effects. Cheats and Secrets Again, all credit to @Korama and Caverns of Hope for documenting these, I'm just the messenger! Message Viewer Hit enter to pause the game whilst turning around, so that Ecco is looking outwards towards the screen when the game freezes. Now press Z, X, C, X, C, X, Z, C, X, Z (assuming default keyboard controls where Z=sonar, X=attack and C=speedup). The game will unpause and the words 'MESSAGE NUM: 00’ will appear in the bottom left corner of the screen. Press up or down to select a message number and C to view the message (Ecco will continue to respond to the button presses you use to select a message). Press left or right at any time to exit this mode. Sega PC Reloaded Cheat Options Yes, that's right. The Sega PC Reloaded compatibility tool itself has a hidden code which enables some extra cheats not present in the original version of Ecco! After you open the launcher and before pressing any other button, type in the code A, B, C, B, C, B, A, C, B, A (which is the same code as the above cheat but using the a, b and c keys). Now when you select Ecco PC, 3 new cheat options will be visible. Super Dolphin Mode: Enables the invincibility power up found in Atlantis permanently. Unlimited Air: Ecco never loses air Unlimited Life: Ecco cannot be harmed
I had a read and I did laugh at your start menu screenshot, if sega can do so well to keep the 'sega pc' branding consistent on all the packaging, can they really not have them all under 'Sega' on the start menu!? PCEm has a number of advantages over windows 10, it's a good approach. For example, Sega Rally has a crippling 'fast cpu' bug on modern PCs. If your CPU is too fast, the framerate is all over the place and the game is unplayable. There's no solution other than artificially slowing your processor down. Don't have to worry about things like that in an emulator.
Virtua Cop The first of many bare bones sega saturn ports I'll be looking at. Nothing stood out to me as a unique feature other than the usual menu being replaced by function keys which bring up settings. The settings appear to be using 'comic sans' as a font for reasons known only to the programmers. 320x240 and 640x480 8 and 16bit colour modes are available as well as high detail backgrounds and 30/60 fps option (which appears to not actually work in practise) The most interesting thing about it is probably the fact that there's a version for the Nvidia NV1 on the disk, a very early Nvidia 3d card that featured among other things, a sega saturn joypad port! Unfortunately the unique feature set of this card isn't supported by any modern wrapper so we're stuck with direct draw. Getting It Working This one isn't too bad. Amusingly, the setup EXE was actually tricked into thinking I had an NV1 by my modern nvidia card! To get around this, browse the cd and find NATIVE.EXE and run it directly to install the direct x version. There were a few error message but nothing stopped the installation I then had to manually copy DPLAY.DLL from the CD's DIRECTX subfolder into the folder where vcop is installed. Finally, I used dxwnd to force a 4:3 aspect ratio with mouse clipper set to ON to avoid scrolling outside the window. DxWnd has trouble displaying the title screens in 8bit colour mode so be sure to immediately hit F6 and bump the resolution up to 640x480x16. Note that the game EXE is named PPJDD.EXE. I don't know why, alternative name perhaps? Cheats & Secrets Nothing on the usual cheat sites, but then I thought 'well this is literally a direct copy of the saturn version, so maybe...' and guess what? The cheats below have been tested by setting Player 1’s controller to ‘keyboard’ via the F5 controller setup menu Cheat Mode When the game first starts and the SEGA logo appears, quickly hold down Reload (default key G) and press Up (W), Down (S), Left (A), Right (D). A gunshot sound will confirm correct entry. This will unlock all of the content below except 'Gun Select'. To unlock 'Gun Select' as well, when the Sega logo appears again, hold down Reload (G) and press Down (S), Up (W), Right (D), Left (A), Up (W), Up (W), Left (A), Right (D). A gunshot sound will again confirm entry. Note that both codes stay unlocked, and you don’t have to input both codes in a single session. Inputting the first code, closing the game then inputting the second code works fine. This unlocks the following features. Ranking Mode Ranking Mode is automatically unlocked without having to finish the game, it can be selected from the main menu. Ranking mode is a challenge mode where you have to beat the game on a single credit, with your skill level ranked after you finish. Extra Options New options are available in the options menu. New difficulty levels Easiest and Hardest as well as intermediate difficulty levels Medium Easy and Medium Hard can now be selected. The continue option now allows you to select ‘Free Play’ as well as the usual number of credits. Option Plus Menu Go to the options menu and note the three arrows on the right hand side of the ‘EXIT’ option. Press Down whilst exit is highlighted to highlight the arrows, then press Shoot (V) to access the new menu. Language: Change the language used in game (English or Japanese) Mirror: Enables mirror mode, the screen is mirrored left to right. Gun Select: If enabled you can change gun at any time in game by pausing (F3) then pressing reload (G) to cycle through the available weapons Book Keep: View statistics related to play time. Reset Timer on Name Entry Screen On the name entry screen after you finish a game and get your score, you can reset the timer to 99 seconds by repeatedly shooting the 'Backspace' key (labeled 'B S' in the game). After enough shots, a 'death' sound effect will play and the timer will reset. EDIT 10/01/22 - replaced screenshots with correct aspect ratio versions, added info on graphics settings, added timer reset cheat
Daytona USA Not to be confused with Daytona USA Deluxe (which is an enhanced port of the Saturn's championship circuit edition), this is the original direct draw only release, based on the original Saturn game, which was itself criticised for it's lack of draw distance and dodgy framerate. So we have a bare bones port of a bare bones port. The results as you would expect, are not great. Like VCop, the resolution has been doubled to 640x480, but the poor draw distance remains. As usual, Saturn menus are replaced with the classic windows menu bar. Modified options don't even appear to save on shut down. Controller support, at least on Windows 10 for me is very janky as well. Not recommended. Getting It Working I had very little trouble with this game. The cd installer ran without any trickery. I use the DxWnd wrapper to force a 4:3 aspect ratio and keep the windows menu bar visible for messing around with settings. Cheats and Secrets This is another one where there's almost nothing on the cheat sites, but the trick is to work out how the Saturn buttons were mapped when it was ported over. The clue is that a few sites list a cheat which 'requires a sidewinder gamepad'. Theorising that that's a reference to the fact that most gamepads in the mid 90s only had 4 buttons but the sidewinder had about 10, I had a look at the gamepad mappings, and sure enough, all Saturn buttons (including X Y and Z and bumpers) are mapped. It seems keyboard only maps a subset of the buttons, so these really are gamepad only. The game detects a USB Xbox One pad, but maps the buttons in a bizarre way (which you can't change). Still, that's enough for my needs, bring on the cheats! Thanks Sega Retro for the Saturn cheats list, which this blatantly rips off! :-D In Game X-Box Pad Button A A B B C X X Y Y LB Z RB Start Left Stick Press L Start R Select For all of these, 'in game' buttons are listed first with x-box buttons in brackets Unlock Hidden Cars & The Horse On the title screen, hold Up + Left + A + B + X + Z (Up+Left+A+B+Y+RB on an xbox pad) and press Start (left stick press) It’s easiest to do this by holding the buttons and pressing start on the intro screen, then keeping the buttons held and pressing start again on the title screen. Now go to PC mode and the following new vehicles have been unlocked. First colour is automatic, second colour is manual. Green/Pink Car, Black/Yellow Car, Cyan/Orange Car and the Horse The Green/Pink Car and the Horse can drive/gallop just as effectively on grass as they can on the road. Time Trial Mode On the transmission select screen, hold down Start (left stick press) and select a transmission type to enable time trial mode. The words ‘Time Lap Mode’ and a stopwatch will appear at the bottom of the screen and you will now be racing against the clock. Mirror Mode On the circuit select screen, hold down Start (left stick press) and select a track to enable mirror mode. The words ‘mirror mode’ will appear at the bottom of the screen and the track will now be mirrored left to right. Maniac Mode Press Start (left stick press) on the intro screen, then wait on the title screen for the sega/am2 logos to appear. When they do, quickly press Up, Up, Down, Down, A (A), B (B), C (X). A sound effect will immediately play if entered correctly. Now when you start a new race it will be in maniac mode, an extra hard difficulty level. A letter ‘M’ will appear in the top left corner when this mode is enabled. Karaoke Mode (bugged?) On the select course screen, hold Up and select a course to enable a karaoke mode where the lyrics to the background music appear at the bottom of the screen. Note - In my testing, this mode appears to be bugged. What actually appears at the bottom of the screen does not match up with the music. Slower AI Hold down Z (RB) during a race to instantly slow the lead car down. Releasing Z will restore the lead car to its previous position. View Credits After finishing first in a race, press Start (Left stick press) during the victory lap/replay to view the credits Easter Eggs All Saturn easter eggs are present in this one too. -Slot Machine on beginner course (press X (Y) to stop the reels) -Hidden message up the ramp on the intermediate course -Jeffry statue on the expert course (press X (Y) to get him to move) -High score jingles using specific initials are present Check out the Sega Retro Daytona USA entry for more info on all of these.
Virtua Fighter PC Finally something a little more interesting, it's another Saturn port, this time of Virtua Fighter Remix, but a bit more effort has gone into it this time around. It's still direct draw software rendering, no direct 3d hardware acceleration yet (don't worry, we'll get there). Apparently, there's a version floating around that came bundled with a 3d card which uses the NVidia NV1, but a) I've never seen this version, and b) no modern wrappers support it, so direct draw it is. There are a number of differences to the Saturn verson. -title has been changed to 'Virtua Fighter PC' and title screen updated accordingly -Saturn menus replaced with in game menus pulled up using the function keys -In particular the 'configurations' menu (press F6) offers quite a bit of extra customisation over the Saturn version. You can re-enable the classic arcade style smooth shaded polygons for both the players and the background (by switching model/background texture off) You can change the background at any time during play Resolution can be 640x480 (Hi) or 320x240 (Lo) Frame rate can allegedly be switched between 30fps (fast) and 60fps (smooth). I don't think this actually works, it's always 30fps! -Some functionality that was previously locked behind cheat modes (e.g. ranking mode, free play, background switches) can just be accessed from the main menu Getting It Working Previously I had recommended the unofficial version linked to on PCGamingWiki, but this version has badly glitched backgrounds and I've since discovered that the game can be installed properly from CD with a bit of manual intervention. First browse the CD to find SSP.EXE and set Win95 compatibility mode. Install the game to hard drive ignoring any errors that may pop up. Now for the nasty manual step, the installer fails to properly create the disk check file on modern systems so we'll have to do it ourselves. Find the file TEXTURE2.BIN in the folder on the hard drive where you installed the game and open it in your hex editor of choice (I use the free one, Frhed). It should be a 1kb file entirely filled with byte '03'. Replace every byte in the file with '00'. Then go to the byte at offset 0x9b and set this to your drive number (04 for D:\, 05 for E:\ etc). Save the file (which should still be 1kb and filled with zeroes except for the drive number) and you should now be able to launch the game without failing the disk check. Once again I'm using DxWnd to force a 4:3 aspect ratio. Cheats and Secrets I had a considerably easier time with this one compared to Daytona as all the keys you need are mapped and can be reconfigured from the F5 menu. No PC exclusives sadly, it's all Saturn cheats here. Option+ Menu On the title screen, press Up x 12 (default W). Press Start (Z) to go to the main menu then enter the options menu, a ‘K.O.’ sound effect will play when the options menu first opens. Now highlight ‘EXIT’ and press Down (S) to make the cursor disappear. Press Guard (V) to access the OPTION+ menu. STAGE SELECT: Choose the stage/opponent of the next battle. STAGE SIZE: Choose the size of the ring for all battles. Play As Dural On the character select screen, press Down (default S), Up (W), Right (D) then press and hold Left (A) + Guard (V) until the next battle starts. A sound will immediately play if done correctly and you will now be playing as Dural. Add Dural to Records Screens On the title screen, press Up x 17 (default W). Press Start (Z) to go to the main menu then enter the options menu, a ‘Ring Out’ sound effect will play when the options menu first opens. Dural’s stats will now be added to the VS Record screen and their winning average can also be viewed. View Credits Wait for the attract mode/demo to start playing and press Guard (default V) to display the credits. Disable In-game Pause On the title screen press 'P+G' & 'K+G' & 'P+K+G' (Keyboard T+Y+U). When you start a new battle you will no longer be able to pause by pressing Start (V). Press T+Y+U again to disable. There's no visual indication that it's worked but the screen occasionally flashed in my testing. Also, you can still pause by accessing the function key menus so it's a bit of a pointless one! Saturn Cheats With No PC Equivalent These either only work on the Saturn or are Virtua Fighter 2 cheats that everyone assumed work here too. Either way, they don't appear to work on PC. Slow Motion Replay Hold V, G, and H at the end of a round. Victory Pose Select Hold V, G, or H before your character begins their victory pose. Alternate Costume Up + V when selecting a character EDIT 06/01/22 - updated with new method to install from original disk. Replaced screenshots with new ones taken using official versoin.
Tomcat Alley One more for today, this one is an absolute shocker. It's a port of a Mega CD 'interactive FMV' game. You know the kind of thing, fill the CD with FMVs containing terrible acting and lots of explosions, every so often let the player click the mouse to do something (in this case, fire missiles/play a different FMV). There's a very simple 'shoot down enemy planes by clicking' mechanic, but mostly, you just watch the videos. Baffling choice by Sega/Novotrade to bring this one to PC. The FMVs are higher quality than the Mega CD version, you can choose between 256 colour (Mega CD quality) or True Colour which is better. You can also fiddle with the controls (mouse, keyboard or gamepad) and the speed of the aiming reticle. There's also a file based save system allowing multiple saves, so it is 'better'. But this is very much a relative term! Getting It Working This is tough, Tomcat Alley is the only game in this collection which is completely 16 bit, not just the installer, the whole game. Your choices are not pretty -Grab the DOSBox emulator, get a copy of Windows 3.1 and install it in the DosBox environment. Then install the game on there. -Get a Virtual Machine (like virtual box for example), install XP on it, install the game on there. Or my preferred choice -Set up WineVDM (aka OTVDM), then you can install it directly in Windows 10. You get the odd error message popping up during play, but just clicking 'continue' seems to have no ill effects whatsoever. Like Comix Zone, you're stuck in a 320x240 window so again worth forcing resolution to 640x480 while you 'play' Cheats & Secrets Stage Select This one is amusing, a few of the cheat sites noticed this and I have confirmed it. Start a new game, immediately save, then quit. Find and open tomcat.ini (in my case, it's in the WineVDM version of the Windows folder because I'm using that software to play). Note the three digit number, in my case it was 417 but sites have listed different numbers. Just add 1 to it for each level you want to try and save. That's it. In this case, changing to 419 puts you on level 3. There are 7 levels in total. Happy FMV watching :-)
Which version(s) of the soundtrack is included on the CD: the arranged Saturn version, or the original arcade version? You might still be getting to the PC version of Virtua Fighter 2, but I'm curious about soundtrack options there as well. Your overviews of these titles and their similarities/differences compared to their original console versions are excellent.
Thanks for the kind words. Sound is a bit neglected as I tend to mess around with these games as a background task whilst doing other things. Shouldn't be hard to compare to Mame though. I strongly suspect it will be Saturn. EDIT - yeah, definitely different to the original model 1 arcade music, I don't have the Saturn version to hand, but I'm sure it'll turn out to be the arranged tracks.
Bug! Moving away from fancy 3d, next is that classic 90s genre, the irritating wise cracking creature platformer. Bug wishes he was Sonic the Hedgehog and had his own 'Bug Retro' website, but sadly he's stuck with this forum post. It's a solid enough platformer though, and I seem to remember reviews at the time being quite impressed with some of the clever uses of perspective as part of the 'pseudo 3d' visuals. But what about the PC version? Once again, we're dealing with very early windows 95 direct draw, but there's a surprising amount of flexibility with the visuals. -as usual, the Saturn options menu has been dropped in favour of the menu bar -you can choose between 320x200 and 640x480 (fullscreen resolution that is, window is always 320x200) -you can use lower or higher quality fmv movies -you can control how much depth the game draws (effectively draw distance) and even switch off background graphics -you can disable sound, music and voices individually -the game autosaves at the start of each level (I think the Saturn did this as well) Getting it Working This was a pain in the butt, I previously used compatibility modes to get this to work, but found a better way to let DxWnd do most of the work. This is based on some work on different games done by 'VirtuaIceMan' of the VOGONS forum. Install the game as normal, this works as you'd expect. Next bit is harder, we need to create a 'compatibility shim', basically a set of instructions to tell windows which compatibility modes to use. I'm not gonna go into too much detail otherwise I'll be here all day, but you need to get hold of Microsoft Compatibility Administrator (the 32 bit version), create a new 'database', point it at Bug!.EXE and apply the following compatibility patch -IgnoreException IgnoreException stops the videos crashing Now you need to set up Bug! in DxWnd, on the 'Main' tab set 'Run in Window', with Width 0 and Height 0 and window position as 'Desktop Centre' (to allow the game to set the window size). In the video tab, set initial colour setting to '8BPP', which is effectively 256 colour. Bug will crash using anything else. Now start the game. It'll start with bad colours. But press F4 a few times to enable 'full screen mode' and the colours will be corrected. Change the 'Detail' tab to 640x480x8 then press F4 to play in a 640x480 window which is actually quite pleasant. There does still appear to be a problem with autosaving at checkpoints and end of level. Playing with cheat mode enabled is a workaround (as the game doesn't save in that mode). Cheats and Secrets Cheat Menu Sega Retro already know about this one, it's a PC exclusive cheat. Open the 'Help' menu and click 'About' to open a dialogue box. Hold Shift and click on Bug's face until a text box appears below, type BABYSEALS into the text box then click the 'Wow!' to close the dialogue box. Now if you click to the right of the 'Help' menu, a new cheat menu is available containing the following options Level Skip: hold Crouch (default key D) and press Up to skip forward one level, hold Crouch and press Down to skip backward one level Flying Bug: hold Y to enable a free movement mode (use the cursor keys to move around) Invincibility: enemies do not harm you, falls don't harm you either (but you get stuck in the pit) Hitpoints: appears to also be invincibility but you still get knocked back? Not sure EDIT - 03/12/2021 replaced the 'getting it to work' section with a much better way using DxWnd
Can confirm that the Sonic bonus stage cameo is present in PC Bug! Access a bonus stage on level 2-1 just like the Saturn version to race him.
Panzer Dragoon This is a fun game, a rail shooter where you fly on the back of a dragon shooting down strange creatures. The PC version has a few enhancements over the Saturn version (mostly graphics related) and was even considered good enough to port to xbox as a bonus extra in Panzer Dragoon Orta. Once again the internet tells me there's a mysterious Nvidia NV1 version floating around, and you can see evidence of this in the controller settings where you can configure a pc gamepad or switch to Saturn pad mode! (as the NV1 has a port for a Saturn pad). But once again, there's no way to play on a modern device, so direct draw it is. This game goes for function key menus rather than menu bar, which is a welcome change. Press F7 to get some interesting graphics options -Detail can be high, medium or low -Resolution can be 320x200 8 bit colour, 640x480 8 bit, or 640x480 16 bit which gives a nice bump in quality of the visuals -You can enable 'interlace' which appears to be a primitive scanline effect. Maybe it looked better on a CRT -You can change the quality of the FMVs too -You can also change game speed from normal to fast (more on this later) Getting it Working This game was simple for me to get going, but looking on PCGamingWiki it sounds like I got lucky. Installation from CD didn't give me any issues, I had to go to setup.exe directly rather than use autorun but other than that, it was fine. The game defaults to the worst possible graphics settings, a 320x200 window with low detail, so immediately hit F7 and bump everything up to highest settings. Your PC can probably handle it... :-P And once again, use DxWnd to force a 4:3 aspect ratio. The one big annoyance is that the videos will not display in full screen mode. The screen will go black when a video should play. You can work around this by pressing F3 a few times to skip the video and resume play. Alternatively, you can setup DxWnd to force the game to play in a window, which will cause the videos to play normally. Curiously, PCGamingWiki also says that if you change the sound settings in anyway (F8 to open the sound options), sound will break forever and you have to do a complete reinstall. I never bother messing with the sound settings so I don't know if this is true. Cheats and Secrets This was simple in the sense that the keyboard maps very obviously to Saturn buttons, but a pain in that there are a lot of codes. Big thanks to Sega Retro for doing the hard work of already having a complete set of Saturn codes for me to use as a base. Here are the mappings from Saturn Button to in game action to default PC keyboard key A / Fire 1 / X B / Fire 2 / V C / Fire 3 / B X / Zoom 1 / A Y / Zoom 2 / S Z / Zoom 3 / D L / Turn Left / Z R / Turn Right / C The cheats below are listed using the default PC keyboard keys, if you change them then the codes change too. Suicide During play press X + V + B + Z + C to immediately kill the player character and go to the game over/continue screen. View Normal Mode Ending On the title screen (after having pressed enter to get to the difficulty select menu) press the following Up, Up, Down, Up, Right, Right, Left, Right, Down, Down, Up, Down, Left, Left, Right, Left The normal ending FMV will immediately play View Hard Mode Ending On the title screen (after having pressed enter to get to the difficulty select menu) press the following Up, Up, Down, Up, Left, Left, Right, Left, Down, Down, Up, Down, Right, Right, Left, Right The hard ending FMV will immediately play Invincible Mode On the title screen (after having pressed enter to get to the difficulty select menu) press the following Z, Z, C, C, Up Down, Left, Right You will now be invulnerable when you start a new game Rolling Mode On the title screen (after having pressed enter to get to the difficulty select menu) quickly press the following Up, Right, Down, Left, Up, Right, Down, Left, Up, Right, Down, Left, Up At any point during play, quickly double tap a diagonal direction (up+left, up+right, down+left, down+right) to perform a barrel roll Episode Select On the title screen (after having pressed enter to get to the difficulty select menu) press the following Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, A, S, D Play Episode 0 On the title screen (after having pressed enter to get to the difficulty select menu) press the following Up, Up, Up, Down, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left Right, Z, C You will immediately start playing 'episode 0', a survival mode where you face endless waves of enemies whilst your health slowly depletes Cheat Mode On the title screen (after having pressed enter to get to the difficulty select menu) quickly press the following Up, A, Right, S, Down, D, Left, S, Up, A A sound effect will play to confirm correct entry. This changes the Sega logo FMV to a different one where a woman transforms into the logo. Unlike the Saturn version, it doesn't appear to enable infinite continues. It also allows you to enable the following extra cheat modes. Alternative Weapons Not 100% sure about this one. With cheat mode enabled, hold V, B, S or D during an episode title card to replace your weapons. V and B change the speed and power of your homing laser while S and D change your normal laser. Holding down S definitely replaced my basic laser with a rapid fire version, but the colour didn't change like it does on the Saturn Dragon only mode With the cheat mode code enabled, press Left, Left, Right, Right Up, Down, Up, Down, Z, C A sound effect will confirm correct entry. When you start a new game you will be playing as the dragon with no rider 'Space Harrier' Mode With the cheat mode code enabled, press Up, A, Right, A, Down, A, Left, A, Up, S, D A sound effect will confirm correct entry. When you start a new game you will be playing as the rider with no dragon (like Space Harrier) There's a bunch of cheat sites that say you have to input this one during play. That's wrong, definitely needs cheat mode and definitely is done on the main menu like all the others! Saturn Cheats That Don't Work Wizard Mode Looks for all the world like it should. The hard ending video even gives you the damn code! But given that it's meant to speed up the game and there's already a 'game speed' option in the menu, maybe they took it out? But still, that's my reward for finishing damn it! Z, C, Z, C, Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, Right? Clean pause This probably was disabled when Pause was moved to a function key (F3), it doesn't work for me. A + S + D during pause screen?
Sega Rally The classic 90s arcade rally game arrives on the PC. This is once again a faithful port of the Saturn game but with the usual bonus that the screen size is now 640x480. Sega Retro has pointed out that it's 'true' 640x480 as well, the textures have been redrawn to suit the resolution. This time we have the unusual hybrid solution of pressing F3 to pause, which then displays the classic menu bar to mess with some settings. Graphics modes (320x240 or 640x480 16bit or 8bit colour) and setting controls are on the menu bar, the rest of it remains in the in game options menu. For the first time, there's a patch (v2.1 here Game Patches - Download (soggi.org)) which adds better gamepad and wheel support. This patch was not tested, but it doesn't appear to make any gameplay changes. This game is also special in that it's the first game I've covered to include a Direct 3D hardware accelerated version. This is an unusual one in that it was a separate version of the game bundled with a specific graphics card (very much like the NV1 versions, but using a graphics API that still exists!). Luckily, the clever people at VOGONS were able to get hold of this elusive version and modify it to work with the files of the original game, effectively creating a direct 3d patch. This version is also 640x480 but with lots of new graphics options to fiddle with (bilinear filtering, perspective correction etc) in a new menu called 'Game Effects'. There's also a nice exclusive cheat covered below. Getting it Working This game suffers from a really nasty CPU bug on Windows 10 systems. If your processor is too fast (and assuming your PC isn't from 1997, it will be) then the framerate will wildly fluctuate making the game largely unplayable. This is a real shame because otherwise it's as simple as installing the game and using DxWnd to get the correct aspect ratio without any further modification required. The only solution is to find a way to throttle your processor (the direct 3d version actually comes with a CPU throttler for this purpose), but I found that to be ineffective on my gaming PC. If you want to try the fan D3D patch, it can be found here Sega Rally Championship Unofficial Direct3D patch & mod \ VOGONS, just extract the archive into your Sega Rally folder and run the separate RallyD3D EXE. The one way I did have success, which allowed me to play well enough to test the cheats is to use my DxWnd 'screenshot setup'. In DxWnd, set 'run in window', window size to 0 width, 0 height, and window position to 'desktop centre'. This'll let the game run in a 640x480 window which was sufficiently taxing on my processor that after some initial hitching at the start of the race, it ran ok. Not perfect, but well enough. What a pity. Take all this with a pinch of salt, it's going to be highly dependent on your specific processor. Cheats & Secrets First some notes. The cheat keys are hardcoded to keyboard X,Y and Z. The most sensible default control scheme also uses those keys and causes clashes. I highly recommend you remap the keys to A/S/D or similar to avoid this. The cheat sites are an absolute mess of contradictory information, mainly because the Saturn versions of these cheats are subtly different and also because the same key combos do different things in different game modes. I think I've sorted it all out. I've split the cheats up by where you perform them. MAIN MENU Unlock 'Lakeside' Track On the main menu hold X+Y and press Enter to select which game type to play. The Lakeside track can now be selected in arcade mode by pressing Right with the Mountain track highlighted on the ‘Select Course’ screen, and it's just added to the list of tracks in time attack/2 player mode. Unlock 'Lancia Stratos' Car On the main menu press X,Y,Z,Y,X then select any mode. The Lancia Stratos can now be selected on the arcade ‘Car Select’ screen by pressing Down or Left whilst highlighting the bottom left car for automatic transmission and Down or Right on the bottom right car for manual transmission. It's just added to the list of cars in Time Attack/2 Player mode Oddly this code does not appear to work on the VOGONS direct 3d patch version of the game. ARCADE/PRACTICE MODE Mirror Mode Hold Y and press Enter on the mode selection (Championship or Practice) screen. The track will now be mirrored left to right. Improve Car Handling (‘Special’ Mode) On the car select screen, hold X and press Enter to select your car. Your car will now have improved handling. I was sceptical at first but this does appear to be real. It doesn’t increase your speed like some sites say but it makes it much harder to over-steer and go into a spin when going round corners. In theory, arcade mode records set in this mode will be logged in the ‘SPECIAL’ category on the records screen instead of ‘STANDARD’. That would require me to set a record using a keyboard with a broken frame limiter to find out, so we may be waiting a while... EDIT - It's real! Behold my mighty time in 'Special' mode, a full second off slowest time on record. Practice Against Lancia Stratos Having already unlocked the Lancia Stratos, hold X + Z and press Enter on the practise mode course select screen to have the AI opponent drive the Lancia Stratos TIME ATTACK/2 PLAYER MODE Mirror Mode Hold Y and press Enter on the Course Select screen. The track will now be mirrored left to right. More Challenging Ghost Car On the time attack menu, hold X+Z and press Enter to select ‘3 Laps’ mode to enable a ghost car which drives the developer’s best time. Remove Dashboard/HUD Display On the time attack or 2 player course select, hold X and press Enter to hide the dashboard/HUD from view. This does not appear to be possible on arcade/practice mode as X+Enter enables Special Mode there. BONUS DIRECT 3D PATCH CHEAT Hidden Weather Effects The direct 3D version of the game has some bonus weather effects you can enable. After selecting a course, quickly hold any of the following keys until the game has loaded. LEFT Night DOWN Sunset RIGHT Fog
Daytona USA Deluxe An enhanced port of the Sega Saturn's championship circuit edition, which is itself a remake/port of the original daytona usa by the team which developed Saturn Sega Rally. Just by looking at the options you can see that more effort has been put into this than the original. It's another 'press F3 to pause and use the menu bar' game like Sega Rally. The options are similar as well, with 320x240 and 640x480 8 and 16 bit colour available. You can also enable/disable the background as well as a 'high polygon' mode. I can't say I noticed a huge difference using it, but it's there so I'm switching it on :-) For sound fans, there's a sound test available in the 'Tools' menu, stereo or mono and you can customise which bgm you want for each track. This game is the first in our list to receive a direct 3d hardware mode as a patch, which you can pick up here. Game Patches - Download (soggi.org) As usual the low texture resolution means it doesn't look particularly different, but it does seem to play better with the wrappers and you get a smoother framerate. The patch adds a 'D3D options' menu where you can mess around with filtering and fog distance (I normally just switch the fog off, it doesn't look great). It also adds weather/lighting options like Sega Rally D3D when you select a track (Dawn, Night, etc) as well as mirror mode without cheating. Definitely recommended. Getting it Working This one is nice and simple, run the installer from the cd in windows 95 compatibility mode to install the game. Use DxWnd to force a 4:3 aspect ratio. Install the direct 3d patch if desired. I didn't encounter any quirks when playing. Cheats & Secrets Just like the original Daytona (see above), there are no documented codes online but once again we're saved by a) this being an enhanced port of championship circuit edition and b) undocumented Saturn buttons being mapped to the gamepad. These extra buttons do not map to the keyboard so these cheats are gamepad only. The game detects an X-box pad like the original. You can remap the actual in game controls to any button you want, but these undocumented Saturn buttons are hardcoded, so don't overwrite them when customising controls. The mappings are the same as the original game. Saturn Button / X-Box One pad Button X / Y Y / LB Z / RB L / Select R / Start Hidden Cars Unlock the 'Original Daytona' car On the title screen, hold down Y + LB + RB + Select on the x-box pad and press Enter. The original car from Daytona USA is now available for selection below 'Balance' in all play modes. Unlock 'Uma' the Horse Having already unlocked 'Daytona', return to the title screen by pressing Escape a few times, then hold down Y + RB + Start on the x-box pad and press Enter. Uma, the horse is now available for selection below 'Daytona' in all play modes. Unlock 'Uma2' the Grey Horse Having already unlocked 'Daytona' & 'Uma', return to the title screen by pressing Escape a few times, then hold down LB + RB + Start + Select on the x-box pad and press Enter. Uma2, another grey horse is now available for selection below 'Uma' in all play modes. Note that all three of these codes remain unlocked even when you close the game, you only have to enter them once. Mirror Mode (Direct Draw Only) On the track select screen in any play mode hold down Y + LB + RB on the x-box pad and press Enter to select your track. The words 'Mirror Mode' will appear under the game type and the track will be mirrored left to right. Note that with the direct 3d patch, mirror mode is available as a standard option after you select a track. Easter Eggs All Saturn championship circuit edition Easter eggs are present in this one too. -Slot Machine on beginner course (press Y to stop the reels) -Hidden message up the ramp on the intermediate course -Jeffry statue on the expert course (press Y to get him to do a backflip) EDIT 05/01/22 - Added overview of features & getting it working
Manx TT Superbike Another classic 90s racer, this time focused on the famous Isle of Man TT race. The PC version was developed by Tantalus interactive (and unusually, published by Psygnosis, the only Sega PC game I have at least which was done this way). It's no mere Saturn port as it's the only game in the collection to support 'Glide' Open GL cards which allow much improved visuals (still 640x480 screen resolution though) and a nice smooth framerate. Once again I'm skipping the comparison and tech support because I've been cheat hunting and had some nice success. Cheats & Secrets The big breakthrough here was to realise that this was a Tantalus game, just like House of the Dead. And I just happened to know that House of the Dead has a list of command line parameters as plain text in the EXE. I was very pleased to discover that Manx TT is the same. Once again, I don't believe this has ever been documented anywhere, so like Daytona another 'first' :-) Replace All Bikes With Sheep Lets get the famous one out of the way. This is the one all the cheat sites know about and also as far as I can tell, the only in game cheat. On the transmission select screen in Arcade mode, or the bike select screen in any other mode, press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Break (Z), Accelerate (X). A sheep 'baa' sound effect will play if entered correctly. Now when you start the race, all bikes (including your own) will be replaced by sheep. The normal music is also replaced by a different cartoonish track complete with wacky sound effects. Enable Superbikes Create a shortcut to the game (either GLMANXTT.EXE for opengl or MANXTT.exe for direct draw) and pass in the command line parameter -superbikes This unlocks the 'Superbikes' Option in PC Mode and enables three new Superbikes to be used in any mode where a bike can be selected. I haven't found a way to use the Superbikes in Arcade mode. This option only needs to be used once and it's unlocked permanently on your save. You can disable it again by passing in the command line -nosuperbikes Clean Pause Screen Create a shortcut to the game (either GLMANXTT.EXE for opengl or MANXTT.exe for direct draw) and pass in the command line parameter -nopausemenu, pressing Escape during play will now leave the screen clean. Select Music In Arcade Mode This is more of a feature than a 'secret', but I don't think it's that obvious. On the transmission screen, press Up and down to scroll through the different music options. No secret code required, this is always enabled. Other Command Line Parameters These are the parameters I was able to find in the EXE, there may be more, they were scattered throughout the binary. Most of them aren't very interesting -cd_nocheck play the game without the CD in the drive (obviously no cd music available if you do this) -noquitmenu ALT F4 immediately closes the game without asking if you're sure -resetoptions reset all in game options to default (also disables superbikes) -resetrecords reset all in game records to default -resetcontrols restores default control scheme -nosound disables all sound (including cd music) -nocda disables just the cd music -language force the in-game language (e.g. -language german) -nfullscreen sounds like it should play the game in a window. In fact, it crashes direct draw and appears to do nothing for OpenGL. Saturn Cheats I Can't Find An Equivalent For Some open questions here, the Saturn version has more extra content I haven't found a way to access. Tantalus Bike? On the Saturn, there's a hidden 'Tantalus' bike which you access by pressing Y on the transmission screen and waiting for the time to run out. On the PC there is no time limit on the transmission screen and no Y button! Nor can I find a command line switch to enable it. Interestingly in a list of bike names in the EXE, 'Tantalus One' is present. Maybe it's hiding in there somewhere... Super Bikes in Arcade Mode? There are codes on the sites that apparently let you use superbikes in arcade mode. I don't even know if they work on the Saturn, but they definitely don't work on the PC. The only in game code appears to be the sheep code. EDITS 13th/14th Dec - Corrected sheep code (it was back to front), updated to confirm sheep code works in all modes, added language command line parameter
Sega Touring Car Championship Continuing our tour (yes, I went there) through 90s racers, we have the somewhat less heralded cousin of Daytona & Sega Rally, Sega Touring Car. Featuring the slightly odd combo of a more serious premise (you play through an actual touring car season) and more realistic handling engine which is very punishing of mistakes, combined with a techno soundtrack with cheesy lyrics. For the PC port at least, that realistic handling is the game's undoing. Not sure if it's the original game, the port, or playing on Windows 10 but every control scheme I tried (keyboard, various gamepads) was so sensitive as to be borderline unplayable. I can only assume the game was optimised for a racing wheel and not much else! Once again I'm leaving this section sparse as this thread slowly morphs into an 'ongoing research into undocumented cheats' thread instead. Cheats & Secrets The game is surprisingly rich in hidden content, but for the PC at least, reluctant to give up its secrets (besides, you know, actually playing the game and unlocking things 'properly' :-P ), unexpectedly, the Sega of Japan website itself showed me how to unlock the Global Net Event bonus races but sadly didn't give me any clues as to how to get at anything else. Global Net Events The game intended you to be playing on specific days in order to gain access to bonus races/content. Don't worry, you don't have to set your calendar back to 1997 (I tried, it doesn't work!), all net events can be enabled on the command line. When you enable them you get a custom title screen for that event. To play them, go to the 'PC Side' menu and a new option, 'Global Net Events' will appear below existing game modes. 'Have a nice Winter Holiday!' Event Create a shortcut to STTC.EXE and pass in the command line parameter /N19971225 This is a standard race with a night time/winter theme. 'Hit & Run!' Event Create a shortcut to STTC.EXE and pass in the command line parameter /N19980214 This is a minigame, follow the racing line to knock over as many traffic cones as possible. 'April Fool Everbody turn around!' Event Create a shortcut to STTC.EXE and pass in the command line parameter /N19980401 In this race, you race backwards whilst the AI races forward and tries to ram into you. Alternate Colour Schemes Three of the four cars have alternate colour schemes based on the 1997 touring car season. On the 'select car' screen, hold up or down and press Enter to use the alternative scheme Saturn Cheats I Can't Find An Equivalent For There is a lot of hidden content in this game. 2 Tracks (Urban & Boom Town) 4 New Play Modes (Grand Prix, Exhibition, Expert, VS A.I. Car) 3 Hidden Cars (Sega Racing Prototype and the Lancia + Toyota from Sega Rally) All of these except the Sega Rally cars just require you to keep coming first, unlocking the next thing and coming first in the next thing till you have it all. Curiously, the Sega Rally cars require you to train the Sega Proto by driving it, then actually having the AI win the championship using your training! A unique idea which sadly I lack the skill and patience to test. The Saturn featured a special 'unlock all' cheat using a racing wheel in 2 player mode, but I see no way this can work on PC (the Sega racing wheel doesn't exist and neither does the option menu where the cheat is performed). Nor are there any obvious command lines in the EXE to do it. For now I'm forced to conclude that us poor old PC players have to do things properly. Unless anyone can remember anything from back in the day?
Continuing my ongoing obsession with Touring Car, it turns out that if you set every setting to easy, PC mode becomes so comically easy that you can even win by just holding down the accelerator and bumping into walls (my preferred driving style). This at least allowed me to confirm that exhibition mode, boom town track and the Sega proto car are in. You press CTRL on the car select to get to the proto (the game even tells you this which is nice). Arcade mode still requires you to drive properly even on the easiest setting so I haven't got anywhere with that yet. My next challenge is to try and train up the proto to win the championship (on super duper easy mode of course) and answer the question on the mind of all 3 of the people following this thread, are the hidden Sega Rally cars in the PC version? I had a look at the binary and the names at least are in there as text, it'd be nice to get some screenshots of them though. I don't think any faq, forum post, youtube video or anything exists confirming this.
Virtua Fighter 2 Taking a well earned break from trying to race using a keyboard, we have the sequel to Virtua Fighter. This is a proper PC port with a fair bit of effort put into it. Once again the resolution is bumped to 640x480. There's a large number of options to customize the graphics, and like Daytona Deluxe and Touring Car there's a nice Direct 3D hardware patch which helps a lot with the framerate. Also like those two games its an odd hybrid in that you press F3 to pause the game which gives you a windows menu bar. But selecting an option from that menu bar brings up an in game screen! Bit strange that choice. One of the more surprising options is you can choose whether to use the moveset from Arcade version 2.0 or Arcade version 2.1. The game is still based on the Saturn version in the sense that the models are the lower polygon versions, but all the extra game modes are there. Getting It Working The big gotcha with this game is that the hi res graphics modes require 16 bit colour. Not 16 and above, specifically 16 bit! Even worse, for some reason (presumably performance on old CPUs), the devs elected to only include the full fledged adaptive AI with the 16 bit colour version. A simplified AI model is used if you try and run the lo res version which does rather spoil the game, so you need to find a way to trick the game into using the hi res version. Easiest way to do this is to use DxWnd (which you'll want for the usual aspect ratio correction anyway) and select 16BPP in the 'initial virtual colour' option in the 'Video' tab. Windows 10 also has it as a compatibility option if you want to play native without a wrapper. Older versions of windows don't so you're stuck with lo res/bad ai or less reliable third party solutions. Be sure to grab the direct 3d patch from PCGamingWiki. Like alot of these early 3d games, the texture resolution is so low that it makes little difference to the visuals, but for me at least, I get a much more stable framerate using the direct 3d version. Cheats & Secrets Like the first game, this was a simple exercise as the cheats are mostly the same as the Saturn version and the buttons are almost the same. Once again, default keyboard keys are assumed here. In game name first, default PC keyboard key in brackets Play as Dural On the character select screen, highlight Akira and quickly press Down (S), Up (W), Right (D), Start (Z) + Left (A). Your bio picture will briefly change to Dural and you will now be playing as them. Play as Gold Dural On the character select screen, highlight Akira and quickly press Down (S), Up (W), Left (A), Start (Z) + Right (D). Your bio picture will briefly change to Gold Dural and you will now be playing as them. Alternate Background Music Hold down the following keys after you've selected a character and keep held until the battle starts to modify the music. P1 G+K (keyboard 'T') - Sarah's original Virtua Fighter theme P2 G+K (keyboard 'Home') Jacky's original Virtua Fighter theme Watch Mode Content You can cycle through various camera angles whilst watching by repeatedly pressing any of the R, T and Y keys. You can force specific characters in the Watch Mode character select screen by pressing P1 Start (V) when the P1 cursor is highlighting the desired character, and P2 Start (Enter) when the P2 cursor is highlighting the desired character. Slow Motion Replay Hold down V+G+H at the end of a round (when the K.O. message appears) to trigger the replay in slow motion. Select Winning Pose Hold either V, G or H to force a specific winning pose after winning a round. Alternate Costume On the character select screen, choose your character by holding Up (W) and pressing Start (Z) to use their alternate costume Extra Ending Content If you beat arcade mode on hard difficulty without losing a round, you get a bonus ending video featuring Dural. This is very easy to force if you just want to see the video, in Arcade options menu set rounds to 1, player 1 health to unlimited, player 2 health to smallest and ring size to the largest possible, then keep spamming those elbows! (or your preferred method of fighting...) There is a Saturn code on the sites to force this video to appear without fulfilling these criteria, but I couldn't get it to work on PC. Given that the above takes all of about 5 minutes to pull off, it's no great loss. Saturn Cheats With No PC Equivalent Option+ Menu All options in the Option+ menu (background size, slow mode etc) have been incorporated into regular PC menus so unsurprisingly, this doesn't work. Note that to get the full range of options, select a game mode before pressing F3 and going to settings. Only a subset of options can be changed directly from the title screen. The 'High Score' Character Fights Back! Disappointing that I couldn't get this to work, you can hold down certain buttons and the high score 'giant letter' character will fight back. Apparently you can even control the moveset using different button combos. Nothing seemed to work on PC though, boo! Clear Pause Screen Pause doesn't work that way anymore, you press F3 to get the menu bar which disables the main game window completely Change Control Scheme On Character Select Menu Controls are fully customisable at any time from the options menu so this doesn't work either.