MagicEngine

finjo34 · Visitor Joined: 24 Aug 2008 Posts: 4

I have the latest MagicEngine 1.13 and have the require bios (SYSCARD3.PCE), load the game normally (virtual drive) like I do with most other turbo cd game. Only this time, this Sapphire graphic is corrupted, total blocky garbage, I try everything, from adjusting the graphic option available to trying download a few other sites, all to no avail. Still blocky chunk of undeciprable graphic, what am I doing wrong ? I can load other cd games notmally without any graphic issue.

Anyone have this problem and able to work around it, please assist me. Thanks.

Kaminari · Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:03 pm Post subject:

Try running it with Ootake. If you encounter the same issues, your CD rip is invalid.
_________________
Kaminarimon HES Music Archive | Tokugawa Corporation | YouTube Channel

finjo34 · Visitor Joined: 24 Aug 2008 Posts: 4

Kaminari, thanks for bringing up an alternative emulator known as Ootake. But I try downgrading the MagicEngine to ver. 1.0 and guess what.. The graphic problem is gone, and damn, this game rocks. I thought I am gonna skip this game entirely and forget about it, boy... I am grateful that I didn't. To anyone who haven't try the game, I wholly recommend this shooter, it's so awesome, words can't describe how action packed and marvelous this little 30 MB zip download is !

My only question now is why the degraded version is able to run while the latest one couldn't. And Kaminari, is Ootake a good emulator for pc engine ? Also, does anyone else encounter this graphical glitch running Sapphire with the latest MagicEngine 1.13 or is it just me? And can someone provide me a link for the 1.12 version, the 1.0 one is way too outdated although Sapphore still manage to run it superbly and the graphic is stunning. Thanks.

Kaminari · Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 7:55 pm Post subject:

Strange, I don't have any problem with Sapphire and ME 1.1.3.

You can get the previous version here.
_________________
Kaminarimon HES Music Archive | Tokugawa Corporation | YouTube Channel

finjo34 · Visitor Joined: 24 Aug 2008 Posts: 4

Thanks again for the link. Hope the 1.12 has no issue with sapphire.

finjo34 · Visitor Joined: 24 Aug 2008 Posts: 4

ME 1.12 has similar graphical glitches. Does ME has 1.10 version? Otherwise, I'll just stick with version 1.0.

segagamer · Visitor Joined: 25 Jan 2006 Posts: 12

Ichabod · Visitor Joined: 18 Aug 2009 Posts: 5

I have exactly the same glitches. Burned with DaemonTools.

Kaminari · Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 5:23 pm Post subject:

Can't help here, sorry. My original copy works.
_________________
Kaminarimon HES Music Archive | Tokugawa Corporation | YouTube Channel

Integrater · Visitor Joined: 15 Apr 2011 Posts: 2

I know this is an old thread but after having the very same problem with the same game and searching google to find an answer I found this thread hoping to find a solution.

I ended up finding it on my own and would like to put it here.

Simply remove ALL your system card files (*.pce) from your magic engine directory and the game will play perfectly fine with no GFX problems at all.

At least this worked for me.

I hope this is useful to someone.
_________________
<unreadable squiggle>

Kaminari · Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 7:17 pm Post subject:

Interesting workaround.

However, the built-in Magic System has many issues compared to the real System Cards. Besides, I don't have the problems mentioned in this topic while using a System Card 3 ROM. The graphic bugs must come from some other factor.
_________________
Kaminarimon HES Music Archive | Tokugawa Corporation | YouTube Channel

tirewse1 · Visitor Joined: 26 Apr 2011 Posts: 1

good post

David Shadoff · Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2011 3:23 am Post subject:

I hate to be so blunt, because most people won't read past the first sentence and simply recoil, but you must be playing with a bad rip.

The original game was actually mastered differently than all other PC Engine games that I aware of - using "Track-At-Once" rather than "Disk-At-Once" mastering. This means that there are additional inter-track linkages which don't exist on other game disks, which cause a number of problems if you play with a rip done through conventional means. One such problem is a blast of noise roughly at the point where a music track might start/end (or loop), and another is graphical glitches.

I recall researching this issue (I believe it was with NightWolve) many years back, and this was one of the motivating factors for him writing his tools and tutorials; he also created a custom hand-edited version of the raw rip of this game due to this problem.

Trogdor · Visitor Joined: 09 Mar 2020 Posts: 1 Location: Vinland

I made an account to post in this thread to personally thank Integrater for finding the fix (and also the other guy who noted it works in v1.10). I know you only have 2 posts and will probably never see this but thank you anyways. You posted this years ago and there have probably been countless guys like me who could play this epic game because you figured that out.

Id also like to tell Dave that I have had a long and complicated relationship with his emulator. I was initially annoyed that I had to pay but I appreciate that its pretty user friendly for Hu card games. Emulating CDs of course is a total pain because of the moralistic stance you have taken. Regular guys like me are expected to pay for the emulator so we can find a Japanese guy on Ebay and pay him a high price to ship it to the other side of the planet so we can try out a game from 30 years ago. May I recommend the alternative that maybe if these gems would become accessible to international markets they could develop a following online and get released on steam, virtual console, and other such networks allowing the ones who made the game to actually make money on it and open them to new audiences? Its a fairly established principle now, kids burning CDs and putting music on the internet helps bands make money because it makes it massively more accessible and cuts out the middlemen. Its all the more logical with a product that has long ago ceased production.