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

Published:
2020-10-13 17:33:38
Edited:
2020-10-15 23:00:41
Imported:
2021-02

Content

https://youtu.be/JM04vH2et5A

Hi there, folks! It's another week and there's another fresh LGR episode for your viewing pleasure. LGR Oddware, no less!

This time it's the NEC PC-FXGA DOS/V, a so-called "Game Accelerator" from mid-90s Japan that effectively drops an entire PC-FX game console onto a 16-bit ISA card. Yeah, kinda like the 3DO Blaster but even more obscure and even less desirable, haha. This is some prime oddware and I'm excited to have what I believe is the first video review of it on YouTube, at least in English!

Even more so than the 3DO Blaster, it really is a straight up console on a card, to the degree that it doesn't even display anything on your computer monitor. It requires an external TV connection to show any gameplay, something I didn't realize until setting it up for myself. Though it might be fun to whip out an old capture card and pipe it through that just for fun.

Anyway yeah, this episode's been a long time coming and took an inordinate amount of behind the scenes time to put together. Mostly due to setting up, troubleshooting, and testing far, far more stuff than what you see in the final video. So I hope you enjoy, and if not, the next video is already in the works 👍

Files

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

https://cdromrom.wordpress.com/pc-fxga-wip/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiuKxAfc06iM908rk5QL2AQ/videos

Comments

Anonymous

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?

LazyGameReviews
>>45780189

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.

Anonymous

This is some pretty historic YT material for sure.

LazyGameReviews
>>45780577

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.

Anonymous

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

Anonymous

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.

Anonymous

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

LazyGameReviews
>>45781556

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.

Anonymous

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.

Anonymous

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.

Anonymous

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 :)

Anonymous

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

Anonymous

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

Anonymous

Now those are some PC Graphix right there.

Anonymous

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.

LazyGameReviews
>>45783078

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.

LazyGameReviews
>>45786801

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

LazyGameReviews
>>45783757

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.

LazyGameReviews
>>45785173

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.

Anonymous

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?

Anonymous

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!!

Anonymous

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

Jason Wellband

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

Jason Wellband
>>45807616

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

Anonymous

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.

Adam Baxter

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

Anonymous
>>45818701

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

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.

Kenneth Cummings

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

Anonymous

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. 🤣

Anonymous

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!

Anonymous

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

Library of Context

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

Anonymous

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.

LazyGameReviews
>>45987618

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.

Anonymous
>>45987618

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...)