LGR Oddware - NEC PC-FXGA DOS/V Game Accelerator Card

Thomas Daede

Cool! Yeah, I was lucky enough to have a PC-98 that already came with Japanese Windows. Thanks for the video, it was very comprehensive. (I think you found the best PC-FX games also, it only goes downhill from there...)

LGR

Yep! As mentioned in the video this particular PC didn't have any kind of compatible Japanese Windows configured. I'll have a follow-up episode though.

Thomas Daede

If you launch MENU_WIN on Windows 3.1 or Windows 98, there is a 3D graphics and animation editor that is pretty cool. It will upload models and animations to the card, and let you edit the wireframes on the Windows side.

LGR

I fully expect remixes, haha.

LGR

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC-J

Library of Context

Did I understand correctly that this card output to NTSC? Wasn't PAL the standard in Japan?

Brian Gordon

OMG, I was just as delighted as Clint by the dragonfly video. The music and animation just scream vaporwave

What a quirky thing this is! Loved the dragonfly meets T. Rex video... And even kinda like the anime stuff as well. Another fun video!

The dragonfly video is one of the best things I've ever seen. Laughed SO hard when it kept going, channeling those 90s vibes so hard. 🤣

Kenneth Cummings

You were correct, Der Langrisser got a English fan translation on the SNES. And a offical translation recently on the PS4/Switch.

moosemaimer

That video with the dragonfly started out as every CGI demo from the early 90's and turned into Gon's ending from Tekken 3.

I thought the Kubota logo was interesting. I thought they only made tractors.

Adam Baxter

Cool to see the Hudson logo on some of the chips.

Rob Caporetto

Now that's an interesting piece of kit. It's a shame it, or the PC-FX itself never had any success (which is easy to see why), as for being a set of dev tools, it's a neat way to do it.

LGR

Other than a couple of games I'd probably have skipped it myself!

Jason Wellband

And more singing about the World O' Weirdness... Wonder if that's related to Fester Blatt's World O' Wonders :D

Jason Wellband

Love your reaction to the dragonfly & the T-Rex. We need more of these things to counteract the rest of 2020 :)

Nathan (PixelPipes)

You may not care to be this anal, but technically "gouraud" is pronounced GOO-ROH, as it's derived from a French name from the guy that coined "gouraud shading". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-GKzksIb-4

RetroSwim

When I first visited Japan back in 2013, Super Potato had PCFX systems for basically pocket change, they were just so unpopular. I passed on it then because when I googled the game list, I didn't care much for what it had to offer. Kicking myself now, though!!

LGR

Planning to do so next time I've got the Woodgrain PC next to my capture rig 😊

Eric

Love the card and the review; what a strange item... Any chance of that dragonfly dinosaur masterpiece being capture card’ed by itself for internet posterity?

LGR

Heh, seriously though. I typically leave 300h free just because so many cards I swap in will try to occupy it by default, this one included. My SCSI-2 card is set to 340h as a result.

LGR

I've been lucky enough to attain both! They are increasingly rare beasts indeed, and will no doubt make some awesome videos once get around to them. Still trying to track down a component or two for each system.

LGR

Ooooh now that'd be awesome to see happen. Those videos deserve to be shared in all their compressed glory.

LGR

I got it from Real Arcade as well! Pretty sure I ordered a registered one at some point too, gotta see if I can dig that up.

Since FMV is just MJPEG someone at the FFMPEG project could probably figure out the PC-FX's MIX file format and add playback support so we can all enjoy CGI dinosaurs and dragonflies.

Rich

Now those are some PC Graphix right there.

Default base port 300h? Now that's totally not occupied at all and will totally not interfere with common SCSI cards of the time. /s

And if you really want something that's weird compared to what you're used to... PC-98 MS-DOS makes whatever drive you booted from drive A: ... that includes the hard drive. Even Windows 95 for PC-98 keeps the weird tradition, which means programs by default are installed to A:¥Program Files and Windows is A:¥WINDOWS

I think you'll find the Yen symbol for backslash is just the start of how just how weird Shift-JIS character encoding is for old Japanese DOS and Windows :)

Maximilien Noal

This is really... fascinating ! Now that's a great oddware episode ! I can't wrap my head around the economical sense (or lack thereof) around it. How was it going to sell well ? Although I'm very glad that it exists and still runs. Speaking of odd stuff, I'm trying to track down a TeraPC (IBM PC + Megadrive combo) or the more known Amstrad MegaPC, with no luck so far. All those PC + Console combos are really alluring for us retrogamers.

Jamie Cruickshank

The FLUX game you mention is one I thought about a few days ago. It was a really fun game but I couldn't not for the life of me get it to run anymore. It was a Real Arcade game and had a really good song that went with the game.

LGR

Thank you!

LGR

Ha! Yeah, who put all these darned interactive sections in this anime, what a silly idea.

LGR

Not many, that's for sure. Mostly it's things like the PlayStation development kits, which came with a pair of PC ISA cards for PS1 game creation.

You’ve been on a roll with your videos and LGR Blerbs. So much cool stuff!

Erwin Bierhof

It's always slightly annoying when your FMV is interrupted by some gameplay. That's aside, what an amazingly rare piece of hardware. Excellent stuff.

Hernando Heilbron

I find stuff like this and the 3DO super interesting. I wonder if a more "mainstream" console ever did something like this...

LGR

Indeed! I'm hoping it brings a few folks out of the woodwork to share some of the homebrew stuff so I can do a short follow-up.

Nathan (PixelPipes)

This is some pretty historic YT material for sure.

LGR

More or less, yep! Unlike that though, it didn't come with the software tools to do so. Programming kits and SDKs were sold separately and hit the market some time after the card launched.

So... It seems to me like was intended to be or become a homebrew dev kit, kind of like the Net Yaroze for the PS1?