Dungeon Master Nexus

[Gambit37]

Woo hooo! I finally got Dungeon Master Nexus, so I think that my Dungeon Master collection is more or less complete, other than the old NEC-9801, FM-Towns and X68000 versions of DM and CSB.

I'm pissed off though - the Saturn that I recently got hold of comes with a cartridge that is supposed to allow it to play all imports - but it doesn't work!! Arse. Now I am going to have to try and get rid of that and see if I can get hold of a professionally switched Saturn. I only know of one place in the UK that does them, so I am going to phone them tomorrow to see if they still have any.... fingers crossed.

So obviously I haven't been able to play it, but the screen shots in the manual look pretty good. Think Hexen 2 but with simpler architecture and no filtering on the textures. I might try and post a few samples up somewhere to whet your appetites...

Of course, the entire manual is in Japanese, so I can't make head nor tail of it! And the CD has some Audio tracks on it that can be played on any normal CD player... but they are short and not very interesting.

[ChristopheF]

You can also watch the videos on the CD on your PC by using "Truemotion Player", which can be found here:
http://ssftribute.emuunlim.com/ (look in the downloads section).

An idea: maybe you could scan the manual and post it on your web site: maybe someone able to read japanese could then translate it to english? I studied japanese a little, but far not enough to be able to translate this

Christophe
http://dmweb.free.fr/

[Gambit37]

Found a place in London that does switched saturns and have placed an order for one, so i'll be off up there on Saturday to purchase it (assuming the guy can get hold of it). Fingers crossed... hopefully by next week I'll get around to posting some screen shots some where....

[cowsmanaut]

be sure and take the game with you and test it out to be sure that it will work.. the main reason for buying this thing is for the game right? if the game or system doesn't work why bother paying for it?

[Gambit37]

Had a very productive Sunday. I had managed to track down a shop in London that sells retro gear, and had placed an order for a switched saturn, which I was to pick up on Sunday.

On arrival, the guy told me that it had blown up adding the switch so it didn't work. But he had some Japanese saturns which would play the game with no modification. I suspect he never did have the switched saturn, as the Jap models are £15.00 extra, and he probably just wanted to make a bit more cash, but by that point I was past caring.

We set up a unit, and finally, after about a year and a half of waiting I saw Nexus running for the first time...! Wow - it looks pretty good, although pretty dated by today's standards. Now that I've got the unit home, I still can't play it though - the one thing I forgot to buy was a voltage converter! (Japanese kit runs on 100V, and here in the UK we're 240V).

Now I've been searching around for a cheap converter but have not been able to find one. I will have to go back to the retro shop to see if he has any available.

Additionally, I told the guy about my DM website project, and he's got some contacts in Japan that might be able to find the X68000, FM-Towns and PC-9801 originals. Although this will be expensive, if he can find them it will mean the collection will be complete, and the website will be fully comprehensive in documenting all versions, which was one of my original goals.

Nearly there... talk about obssessive!

[cowsmanaut]

one word for ya.... ebay.

I just looked and saw sega saturn systems on there both US and Jap versions. I imagine UK ones too..

As well as a number of games.

I imagine searching online could get you a power converter too..

[cowsmanaut]

hey what do you know.. a travel voltage converter on ebay.. it's at about 4 bucks right now too.

[Gambit37]

yep, eBay rocks - that's where I've been spending the last year or so buying up all the DM stuff I could find. I had also previously bought a Saturn from there, and a converter cartridge, but it didn't work... one has to be careful with that kind of stuff as people aren't always honest about the condition it's in. That's why I wanted to find an original system that I could test for myself - it's a fair wad of cash after all, and I didn't want to get stung again.

As for finding x68000 and FM-Towns games outside of Japan, and on eBay, well that's pretty slim as they are incredibly rare. The guy told me I could expect to pay anything up to £200 for a good quality copy for FM-Towns (approx $350)...

The voltage converters aren't so easy to come by. UK-US are easy enough, but they only go down to 110V which is still slightly too high for the Jap system that requires 100V - it is possible to use them but there's a risk of blowing the transformer and I don't want to do that....!

[Gambit37]

Well, I bought a UK-USA voltage converter in the end and it works fine with the Saturn... yay!

However, I have now discovered that neither my TV nor my capture card in the PC are NTSC compatible, so I can't get a decent picture.

I have decided to wait until the spring to do any work on the Nexus part of my website. I will be buying a new computer in January, and I'll make sure that I get a good capture card that supports NTSC. So Nexus stuff is on hold until then.

I will probably release the website in sections now anyway, so this fits in well with that.

[cowsmanaut]

how about a polaroid!

hmm no? ok what about emulators? lots of those.. they can provide you with screencaps..

[Gambit37]

None of the Saturn emulators can do anything useful with Nexus right now...

[cowsmanaut]

did you try non northamerican produced emus? there may be certain differences in the structure of the code..