Dear friends:

As you know, some MSX Games were only released in tape format. There are some good conversions on disk format, but as you know there are another games unconverted. Those games are for example: WEC LE MANS, CHASE HQ or ALTERED BEAST. For the 1st and 2nd games supossedly are DSK images, but they are very bad images. For example, WEC LE MANS has BIG problems with "enemy cars" sprites in one image and only runs with a lot of POKES. In another image, it don't work in my VG8235 MSX2. Chase HQ doesn't load also in my MSX and neither in any MSX or emulator I have tried. Altered Beast has not DSK image and for example SHINOBI has been converted to disk, but it only works full speed in a 7 Mhz MSX. (Most of us have a 3.5 Mhz MSX)

So I ask some questions:

1- Has someone converted these games to disk format?
2- If not, there will be CAS format games? For example, all the ZX Spectrum and most of CPC Tapes are in TZX, TAP or CDT format... why not MSX Tape games?

Yours,

PD: In the years I am member of this website, this is my first post

Some versions of the Philips VG8235 have a stange memory bug, easy to fix, but annoying. Also, all these MSX1 games may require the use of the "magic poke" to set properly the subslot registers.

I think that it should be something like poke -1,170 for the VG8235, but I am not sure about this.

If they are brazilian dumps, then it is difficult because they expect to find the RAM in slot 2, while most european MSX have it in the third slot.

Anyway, none of these games was released in disk format, so, you are not using legal versions of those games.

Making quality disk version of cassette games is a very challenging task. I think it's possible, but requires lots of dedication

Quote:

Making quality disk version of cassette games is a very challenging task. I think it's possible, but requires lots of dedication

And make CAS images is so difficult? If you see www.funet.fi/pub/msx there are only a few tape images.

Another question, the VG8235/20 has the memory bug problem? I never had any problem except with the games I told before. I have near 70 games

No idea about efforts involved in making CAS files... But I don't think it's as tough as making disk versions.

Anyway, most cassette games are British ports from ZX Spectrum, and as such are better played on Spectrum emulator or real Spectrum hardware.

Most of the .cas images at funet are dumped by me. The tools I did it with are available at: home.kabelfoon.nl/~vincentd. I only dumped my own collection, that's why the amount there is limited. However, there are more .cas images in the wild not produced by me.

A disadvantage of this format is that it is based on hooking bios calls, which means if the tape loader is built with direct io loading routines it can not be stored is .cas. A lot of the late spanish tape games and a lot of the gremlin games can not be dumped because of this.

As for Chase HQ, I think the original tape also didn't work on a MSX-2 machine. More info about Shinobi can be found at www.caetano.eng.br/shinobi. I don't have info about the other tapes.

Quote:

Chase HQ doesn't load also in my MSX and neither in any MSX or emulator I have tried.

It runs in RuMSX and MSX1 computers with a external FDD although you have to load the stages separately. In both cases graphics appear distorted (due to a bad converion from tape to disk)

Another problem is that, in most cases, the Spectrum original games run faster than the MSX conversions. You can read a technical explanation by Daniel Caetano here:

http://es.groups.yahoo.com/group/hispamsx/message/15416

I've been waiting for ages for a decent disk port to MSX of Chase HQ. The Spectrum version is really impressive.

As Daniel said, it would require at least a 7Mhz MSX or a MSXturboR to run at a decent speed without rewriting the entire game.

I knew about this because I made the questions to Daniel Caetano (spl, mi nick is the initials of my real name, but in Hispamsx and the whole net I am Xenon Soft.), but you can see how some speccy conversions are fast and very good games: After Burner, Pac Land, Power Drift, Mortadelo y Filemon 2, Robocop, Donkey Kong, Klax, Astro Marine Corps, etc, etc.... (I have 28 speccy conversions, and all of them are very very good games)

Also, I tried a bad version of Wec Le Mans and it ran very good, but with problems with "enemies".

Also, I think to made some good things like Vincent. He had dumped his tape games. So, if you have some tape games, try to dump it It will be good for all the MSX community. Also, some tapes are very difficult to find. I was only trying to find Wec Le Mans, Chase HQ, Altered Beast and some another games and is simply impossible.

Yours and thank you,

I own the original tape of Chase HQ.

Tell me what program I should use to dump it.

In the website of Vincent Van Dam:

http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~vincentd

you will find the CASTOOLS, with all the utilities to dump it into a cas image.

Also you will find very good utilities for dumping tapes here:

http://www.terra.es/personal7/miguel.colom/msx/download.htm

Yours,

I remember owning the original version of Wec Le Mans, it didn't work properly on a MSX2 (Philips 8250), and even with the poke-1,170 the game would simply hang after playing for a few seconds. It worked well when using a 64KB MSX1 memory expension from Philips on the MSX2.... So surely it's a slot issue.

Despite the 2 colors GFX it really is a good game, probably one of the only decent 3D (kinda) racing game on MSX 1 and 2.

I think also is an slot issue... because I also have the same problem with my VG8235/20. And yes, is a very good game actually.

Yours,

Yes, Wec Le Mans and Chase HQ are considered by a lot of people the best 3D racing games for MSX (we can also include F1 Spirit 3D Special and Greatest Driver, of course).

But I prefer Chase HQ because it adds the "chase action" of pursuing another vehicle. The brow of hills, tunnels, road forks, car jumps, etc are very good done.

A lot of Spectrum users say that Chase HQ is the best Speccy game ever.
Hopefully the game was converted to MSX and, despite the speed isn't as good as in the Spectrum version, it is playable.

The other versions (Amiga, Atari ST,...) are very poor despite their colourful graphics. The worst of them is the C64 one that was poorly converted from the Speccy (I played it with a C64 emulator and it is horrible):
http://www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php?id=26