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 Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 6:01 pm | Post subject: Running Legend Entertainment's old adventures on a PPC |
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Menneisyys
pm Member
Joined: 19 Dec 2004
Posts: 207
 
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Another reason to get a VGA device – running Legend Entertainment's old adventures reviewed
PC oldtimers must have heard of Legend Entertainment (on them, see for example http://www.the-underdogs.org/company.php?name=Legend+Entertainment ). They were the first to bring real, hi-res adventures to the PC. While, in 1990, Sierra was still releasing (at most) EGA low-res games (King's Quest IV, Space Quest III), Legend Entertainment came into the scene with Spellcasting 101 with wonderful, groundbreaking hi-res EGA graphics. Actually, that was the second PC game I could show my Amiga-owner friends (after Indy 500, which had a pretty lousy Amiga port – even my 12 MHz NEC V20+CGA combo was able to run it faster than a friend's Amiga 500) without making them laugh 
No wonder I fell in love with Legend Entertainment's games. (Of course, I had played before a lot with Magnetic Scrolls/Infocom games on my Commodore devices – Fish! and the other big titles –, so the genre wasn't unknown to me and liked it much.) I've played all of them through, laughed my @ss off and just loved the games.
I've always hoped my PDA's were able to run their games. Up to now, because of the lack of hi-res (VGA) screens, sufficiently advanced emulators and fast CPU's, this seemed impossible. Fortunately, now that there're VGA devices on the market, these old games can be played again.
You'll need Pocket DOS ( http://www.pocketdos.com ) to play the games. You'll only be able to play games released before the 386/486 age; that is, games released before Death Gate. Later games like Mission Critical, Shannara, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon etc are 386/486 only; therefore, they don't run.
The emulation speed on my VGA Pocket Loox 720 is pretty good – as on a 8-10 MHz 286 AT.
A generic note: delete all .RS (RealSound) files before running these games because they'll crash Pocket DOS! They're digitized sound. You won't need .MUS files either because Pocket DOS doesn't support MIDI music.
The games with their first engine:
Spellcasting 101 : only runs in CGA mode; in EGA, it crashes.
Time Quest : has problems with mouse. This means, no matter what magnification you use, your screen taps will always be registered in an upper position than they really are. Mouse sensitivity setting, orientation changing won't help. Switching to CGA mode / deleting EGA pic files won't help because they app will strictly want to start in EGA mode. Spellcasting 201 also suffers from this problem. These two games are to be played with an external keyboard (and maybe mouse – don't know, I haven't tested the later).
Eric the Unready : works great. So does Gateway Corporation and Gateway 2 too. The latter, incidentally, requires legend.ini, which must be downloaded separately and edited to refer to the current location of your files.
These two games are VGA, so, run in 640*480. This is advantageous, therefore, to hide the on-screen keyboard if you play with mouse / an external keyboard.
The two games, Companions of Xanth and Superhero League of Hoboken, utilizing their second, more of a point-and-click engine also run OK. They're low-res VGA (MCGA), so they won't look really cool on a VGA device. On a QVGA PPC, however, they're great.
All in all, there're 3 high-res and 2 low-res games that run flawlessly. Even this is a big plus because, for example, Eric the Unready is a very-very good game. Their first title, S101, however, needs to be run in CGA mode and the next two titles, S201 and TQ, also have problems. Still, they can be played too. So, you'll surely have a lot of fun
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| Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 10:47 pm | Post subject: |
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sponge
Not sponge
Joined: 13 Jan 2002
Posts: 13073
Location: Connecticut, USA
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I've edited out the direct links to Underdogs games - great site but still technically illegal.
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holy internets batman.
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 4:03 am | Post subject: |
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cjasus730
pm Member
Joined: 21 Nov 2004
Posts: 137
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Just wondering...
Were these links to full versions of the games or just demos?
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Current:HP 6515a, Nokia 8801, Asus A730
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 12:16 pm | Post subject: |
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Guest
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Full versions
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 2:36 pm | Post subject: |
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Menneisyys
pm Member
Joined: 19 Dec 2004
Posts: 207
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I've linked the only pages that contain really good info on these games with tons of crosslinks, polls, related links - anything an adventure gamer would have ever dreamed of. No other page contains as much info on them as the Underdogs pages on them. (Give a try to Google.)
If anyone can come up with a better (!) page on Legend Entertainment games, I'd certainly welcome the links.
Certainly, pages without direct download links (I didn't directly link any downloadable games) would have been better, but what should be done if there are no better Legend Ent.-related pages?
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:04 pm | Post subject: |
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Menneisyys
pm Member
Joined: 19 Dec 2004
Posts: 207
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I've done some additional research in the meantime:
I've played with the 386/486 plug-ins for PocketDos to make the more recent, 386/486-only Legend games works. While I've managed to start the apps, the lack of a SVGA adapter (VESA mode 101h (640x480, 256 colors)) made it impossible to run any of the 386/486 apps. That is, until PocketDOS supports SVGA modes too (or, at least, shows itself to be a SVGA adapter to UNIVBE or other VESA drivers), it's unable to run any games/programs having at least 8 bit color depth at VGA resolution.
They don't work with USB mice either, which is sad news for people using USB host-capable PDA's (Toshiba e750, e800, e830, Mitac Mio 558, Asus a730(w), Pocket Loox 720 etc.). I haven't tested with the ThinkOutside StowAway BT Travel Mouse, though. They work great with the ThinkOutside StowAway BT keyboard, which is good news for people that would like to play Spellcasting 201 or Time Quest.
The creator of PocketDOS announced in another PPC forum (PPCThoughts) that he's working on the SVGA-compliant version of the emulator and, for example, Mission Critical is already running under it.
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