https://archive.org/details/the-cd-graphics-world-by-extended-graphics I think that this is the first dump of a CD+EG disc. I tested it with the PC-FX core on Mednafen, but I couldn't get it to work with the Saturn core (might just be me!). I haven't tested it with any other Saturn emulators. I also tested it on Mega-CD in Ares (CD+G backwards compatibility). https://patents.google.com/patent/US5426516A/en Lots of karaoke software supports CD+G, none support CD+EG, so there is very little technical information about this format. The link above is Victor's patent on it from 1991. Basically it supported storing two images at a time, so you could smoothly transition from one to another (and back and forth if required), whereas CD+G had to slowly overwrite the existing image. It could also combine the colour palette from two images in order to increase the on-screen colours from 16 to 256. As far as I can tell the only major publisher to support it was Victor, although it was also supported by some smaller publishers, such as this Bingo game. I don't think that this format ever left Japan, I did buy a western CD with the logo on it, but it had no data. Maybe the Japanese version has it, but as the CD was from 2017 I suspect they just used the wrong logo. I have a more interesting release on the way, but with how long the last one took that might be a month away. Here's some images from CD+G mode on a Mega-CD through Ares on the left, and CD+EG mode on a PC-FX through Mednafen on the right. I suspect the emulation isn't perfect, there's some artifacts which aren't displayed on the cover images. I resized to 480 x 360 as the emulator screenshots output some wacky aspect ratios.
Oooh, nifty - I'm amazed any emulator can run CD+EG, given there hasn't been any disc dumps. Mednafen's Saturn core doesn't do CD+G, likely due to lack of demand. Maybe someone needs to push that issue.
To be honest I expected it to work as it's all done by the bios rather than the emulator. I guess the Saturn core could easily support it, but a lot of emulators are only focused on playing games rather than other niche uses. Track 6 on that CD is from Dungeon Master (specifically the Super Famicom version), and it's a pretty cool use of CD+G, using palette cycling to create the illusion of movement. I looked it up and it's from this disc, which someone helpfully dumped and uploaded Youtube videos for. It's from a CD+G disc which accompanied the SFC release, which is ironically playable on Sega and NEC systems, but not Nintendo. The back cover mentions PC-Engine CD-ROM and FM-Towns. It released just after Mega-CD, so I guess it was finished before they knew they could put that on the compatible hardware. I recommend watching the videos, it's one of the better uses for CD+G that I've seen. Unfortunately the disc has been converted to MP3+CDG karaoke software files. I might be able to convert it back to a disc image, but how accurate to the orginal will that be? Would Redump accept that? I doubt it, but luckily they've already dumped it, but without the sub-channel data! That blows my mind, isn't the whole point of Redump to accurately redump stuff that previously wasn't dumped properly? I think ~5% of an audio CD's capacity is reserved for the sub-channels, so how do you know there isn't any data there (a lot more formats used it than just CD+G) without dumping it? In this case it's even worse as it's clearly labelled on the box. /end rant.
Hi all! I ran across a copy of The CD Graphics World in July, and then found the various mentions on these forums. Thanks for the dump, I've been passing that around to some folks who've been testing it on PC-FX (mednafen is accurate) and various CD-i and 3DO systems. I was waiting to do a more comprehensive write-up, but might not be patient enough, so here's what I have now: I've found a few more Extended Graphics discs and listed them with photos at extended.graphics. I have dumps of the 4 I've collected but haven't been able to upload them to Internet Archive recently, if there's interest I can put some version of them up somewhere. I made a recording from a Saturn of the EG tracks on CD Graphics World (details in description) I've been working on a web player for EG, there's still some bugs (specifically the blend+scroll scenes) but it can be found here with a link to the source: The CD Graphics World by Extended Graphics [PGCD-5] and Victor CD-Graphics Station Hit Box Special Sampler Feb.~Mar. 1995 [CDSG-5]. I have two videos on YouTube (one, two) showing side-by-side CD+G and CD+EG renderings from the Wataru 3 album (VINY-3~4), don't have that version online yet (and it could still have bugs as I haven't checked that on the Saturn yet). Regarding redump: I dumped that Super Dungeon Master disc for redump, it was actually my first CD+G and got me interested in the tech. There's a few reasons redump doesn't deal with the subchannels needed for CD+G, but the most principled one is that the raw subcode dump has basically no error correction, so it is all but impossible to get a reproducible dump from even the same disc and drive. Redump aims to have hashes that can be verified with multiple dumps, so it is considered out of scope. And even though these can be error-corrected very reliably (see below), that's also not welcome in the dat currently. That said, there's a Non-Game dumping project with similar procedures but a broader scope, and they're also accepting of CD+G, though the procedure is still in some development. Unfortunately the dat isn't public (as with redump's Audio CD) or I'd link to it, but there's this one in the Non-Redump dat (game-related stuff that isn't in redump for whatever reason): Valis III. Super Dungeon Master should also be there when I get around to submitting it, also Flying in the Sky (YouTube example). Aside: I have web players up for Super Dungeon Master and Valis III (also for this NHK bird guide I found). The tool used for dumping CDs with redump and non-game is redumper. It dumps the subchannels, including R-W, but doesn't make use of them besides keeping track of sync. I've been working to make this more useful with CD+G. redumper-extract-rw will get the subchannel data out of the redumper .subcode file in two ways (as of 0.4): .cdg, just the R-W channels, error corrected and deinterleaved so it can be played in VLC, etc .sub, in the bitpacked form used by CloneCD (uncorrected, but trimmed to the TOC contents) Redumper has a "refine" mode for re-reading erroneous sectors, and there's a --refine-subchannel option that includes sectors with errors in the Q subchannel, but this doesn't cover R-W. I have a PR up for redumper (win64 build) that adds a --refine-subchannel-rw option, using the R-W parity error correction code to determine more sectors to retry. Usually these would be correctable errors anyway, and it's not likely to ever get to zero errors, but might be helpful towards getting as accurate as possible before correction. (I would like to add something like this to Aaru, which currently will retry every CD+G sector on all passes since it only expects all zero in R-W). Anyway I hope that's of interest, I'll try to get some dumps online if folks want to check them out.
Oh nice! I also obtained the Mashin Hero Wataru 3 set, but my CD-ROM drive wouldn't read them, although my Mega-CD could (but obviously sans the extended stuff). I was going to get another drive to dump those discs, but if you've already dumped them then I won't worry about that yet. Good job!
Here's the discs on IA, img+sub+ccd format (also .cue and error-corrected .cdg): Amadeus Original Soundtrack Recording [VINY-2] Mashin Hero Wataru 3 Off Voice Collection ~ Special Edition [VINY-3~4] Victor CD-Graphics Station HIT BOX - Special Sampler Feb.~Mar. 1995 [CDSG-5] Many thanks to Pirate Dragon for spotting an auction for Mariko Senju / Vivaldi The Four Seasons [VINY-1], I should have that in a few weeks. That nicely fills the VINY catalog numbers from 1 to 4!
Mariko Senju - Vivaldi: The Four Seasons [VINY-1] Also I found a variant of The CD Graphics World by Extended Graphics, catalog number PGCD-4, seems like it has a different track 5. Haven't found one to buy yet but I added auction photos to extended.graphics. Edit: I also have been making updates to my cdgraphics branch, it now handles the independently scrolling layer effects correctly in PGCD-5, I fixed a 256 color palette bug that especially affected VINY-2 (and which also occurs on PC-FX), and I separated some buffer handling that I think makes VINY-1 transitions more accurate.
