Given that people in this club clearly have an interest in Falcom games, I thought I might mention that I’ve managed to get 英雄伝説III 白き魔女 (the first game in the trilogy that preceded the Kiseki games) running on Linux from the Windows version provided on DLSite
I’ve not managed to get 4 or 5 running just yet. Made attempts but run into different gremlins so those will probably be their own kettle of fish to deal with
You made me do it – I looked at DLsite and it just happens to have a -50% promotion going on right now… I’ll also be trying to run these on Linux, so happy if you can figure it out first.
Researching what my options were wrt. playing the original Dragon Slayer series, I note that the EGG project is apparently going to release a huge bundle of the original series in early 2026:
That will have all the games up to 英雄伝説II. It’s going to cost a pretty penny though, at ¥14,080…
Looks like most of the titles in the collection have also been released on EGG CONSOLE, so that would be another option for Switch (2).
Even though I do love retro games, these are approaching the limit of what’s too old for me to really be able to enjoy. I wish these were the PC-98 versions instead. This era was incredible, PCs got so much more capable each and every year.
The egg console releases are definitely interesting
I’d be too scared to spend that much on the big bundle given that it’s not guaranteed I’d be able to run them though. Main reason I picked up the Gagharv games was them being cheap enough that I was willing to take the risk of not being able to run them (but I’m hoping that with some elbow grease it should be possible)
With Win10/Win11 compatibility, Wine won’t have a problem with them. (Most likely all of those games come wrapped with EGG’s in-house emulators, which are much more modern than the games themselves.)
It’s these older Windows 95/98 era releases from DLsite that are a bit of a problem. There’s actually warnings all over the place that Windows 10 and above won’t be able to run them. Luckily Wine most likely will, with some added elbow grease…
Nice! I was toying with the idea of writing a dynamic recompiler for my PSX emulator recently, but I don’t know if I want to deal with all the caching corner cases…
One cool idea that I wanted to play with is remapping the full 32bit address space of the PSX in virtual memory (easily doable on modern 64bit hardware) and then use hardware page fault mechanics to handle access to PS1 hardware pages (while letting RAM access pass through unchecked without overhead).
Both sound like cool ideas! It’s so sad that dynarmic got caught in the crossfire when Nintendo killed Yuzu and Ryujinx. I’ve had idle thoughts of redoing that in Rust…
While doing this fix, I’ve also fixed a bunch of pthread bugs in Vita3k… C++ is an awful language, and a project with rotating cast of passionate amateurs certainly doesn’t increase the odds of working software, lol. If I didn’t have to go to work I’d take a sabbatical and write a full PS Vita emulator in Rust. It hits such an interesting cross-section of computing…
I would be interested in lending a hand if I’m not too deep in my Japanese book clubs. Although in my experience it’s a bit difficult to work as a team on an early emulator, you can’t always cleanly delineate independent “chunks” for people to work in parallel without stepping on each other’s toes all the time.
Although I guess you’d start with an interpreter and do the recompiler afterwards, so that could be something. I see that it uses a Cortex A-9 too, which I know very well. Anyway, feel free to ping me if you want.
Given how little time I have due to this whole “learn Japanese” subquest, it’s likely the best use of my time to help the one project that already boots games, lol. But the itch is still there, especially since I took on the role of director and can’t code every day anymore…
At least it’s clear what I’ll be working on if I ever burn & crash out due to meeting overdose.
The original author of dynarmic is an “IRL white mage” and wrote it exclusively during weekends and vacations… I only have excuses.
Pretty interesting that they haven’t yet decided whether to continue with 3rd or 零の軌跡 remakes, they say they’ll decide after finishing 2nd.
Also, they tease a big announcement for February – most likely release date for TOKYO XANADU NEW PROJECT | 日本ファルコム - Falcom? I’ve yet to play the first one, seems like an interesting mix of Persona and Ys. Seems very derivative at first sight, but has some potential for a positive surprise.
There’s actually warnings all over the place that Windows 10 and above won’t be able to run them. Luckily Wine most likely will, with some added elbow grease…