Remember boys, no points for second place!

16 years ago, Sega stopped the production of its Dreamcast. Following this unfortunate decision, many game studios decided to cancel their projects on that platform. I suppose they made the choice of stopping the bleeding rather than taking any more risks and releasing their Dreamcast games. I remember I was really disappointed to see all those promising games being canned. I think that brutal stop is probably one of the aspects that make this system so fascinating. More than 15 years after this tragic end of Sega as hardware and console maker, the Dreamcast community remains strong, fans keep faith and share theirs gems: Propeller Arena, Half-life and Geist Force to name but a few.

Last week, I received a message from Kuririn84 who is an enthousiastic owner of a Katana devkit. On the hard drive, he found files of an unreleased game, Millenium Racer: Y2K Fighters. I think only few people knew about this game and even fewer knew about its portage to the Dreamcast. I took those files and worked on giving this game a second chance. After digging a bit in code to see why it was failing to boot and doing few file manipulations, the game started to show its guts and to be honest, it rocks! It is not a demo or an alpha version that would be just frustrating, it is a complete version! Cool, right? Another brand new game! The WiiU is far from being that good :p

To distribute the game, I built a GDI image, region-free with VGA support (was already there) and forced PAL-60hz mode for PAL console. For the sake of digital preservation, I kept original files datetime, ISO9660 volume name, date, etc. as if a real GDR existed. I hope you will like it and again thank you Kuririn84 for sharing your findings 😉

Download: Millenium Racer – Y2K Fighters v1.000 (2001)(Creat Studio)(Region Free)(devkit).zip

And sorry if I haven’t replied yet to some of you. I will next week!

45 replies on “Remember boys, no points for second place!”

RE: brilliant

Please, let me join to your message. I just wanted to say Thank you for job you’ve done! I like Sega 🙂

Thanks so much for this. The DC scene never ceases to amaze! Is there any chance of a .cdi for those of us wanting to burn and play on real hardware? Thanks!

Hey great job on fixing this!

I’m the one that suggested to contact you after I failed to make it work myself.

He did you fix it to boot, if I may ask? I’m really interested to know, especially since the files seemed pretty normal at first sight.

Cheers,

FG

I looked at the initialization sequence that was trying to load different files. I noticed that when loading the “message.tbl” file from the “LANG/LANG_US” folder, the current folder in the gdFs structure was “DATA”. But as you know there was no data folder in the folder structure in the devkit. Moving all the files in a “DATA” folder was enough to overcome this problem. The second one was also related to the folder structure: the audio driver file, “audio64.drv”, was in the “SOUNDA64” folder whereas the code expected it to be located in the “SOUND” folder. It is quite easy when you know all that. The complexity resides in finding what the game is looking for.

Looking back at the second session vds file, I should totally have figured that out myself…

I guess hindsight is 20/20 …

For those interested, for future reference, to read the filesystem of a S1 vds file:

“””
from gditools import ISO9660
a = ISO9660([dict(filename=’MRACER1-S1-0.VDS’, lba=45000, mode=2048, wormhole=[0,92160000, 65536], tnum=1, offset=92160000)])
a.print_files()
“””

FG

They’re not mine to provide.
I guess asking Kuririn for them wouldn’t hurt.

FG

asking there ?

assemblergames is dead now (and btw seems leaked user/password database)

Kuririn84 is on reddit: http://reddit.com/u/Kuririn84

According to Kev on reddit.com/r/assemblergames they don’t think anything was compromised, but if you used the same password elsewhere, you should change it to be safe.

Kuririn is on reddit: reddit[dot]com/u/Kuririn84

Kev said he don’t think anything was compromised, but you should change your passwords to be safe.
The AG subreddit is reddit[dot]com/r/assemblergames

thank you!

have no idea that said Kev, but today my fellow had sad accident with passwords for few important services, and the only way they can leak is AG.
so beware.

Hello Japonese Cake, I praise your great work on patches and everything related to this great console.
I have been investigating the binary and also refers to more languages LANG_SP, LANG_IT, etc, in particular I think it is the file MESSAGE.TBL, where the text of the game is located.

Maybe inside the devkit are found?

Hi,
Unfortunately on the devkit no other language files were found. I presume that was one of the last thing the developpers had to do. If we RE the message.tbl file, for sure we can bring this feature to light. I can’t do it at the moment though :-/

good cdi file with cdda tracks is available in the isozone if you look well 😉
I’have done one but I can’t inject the cdda in the cdi. If someone has a mod.
My problem is how could I create the cdi ? mine are not cdda compatible… But I know how to inject the cdda files.

Google “echelon Selfboot tutorial”, there are a few result with it, melt one on consolecopyworld.

There are no simple ways I know of to make a cdda Selfboot, you have to burn a disc.

With lazyboot, you can create a mds/mdf file with cdda but I don’t how to use it propoerly for now.

I’ve found one game with cdda injector I can inject which music i want but I can’t inject with my own cdi…

I look in your link.

Thanks for your help.

truemaster1 from assembler games here. since assembler games is down quite some time now talkings about the site and hardware are done in reddit so if anyone want to tell something or ask something go there

I’m not living in paris but I had to go there last week. the life go on.

what happened it’s terrible, but we have very good police. It’s safe, no french people is afraid.

do you have any dreamcast project in progress ?
I have fun with your half life release, I’m trying to find a way for enjoy it with dreamshell 🙂 I’m still waiting for a RECVX project issue. But japanese cake seems to be working in a amazing project as always but I don’t know which one is it. He likes mystery ^^

no nothing new. i dont know much of dreamshell so cant help. but i thing it has problems with half life. im sure japanese cake will look at recvx. its one of dreamcast aaa title but ofcource time and other things always are in the way

Anyway a lot of games don’t run with dreamshell but the selfboot pack you gave me build by family guy. some games run with dreamshell so maybe half life too ^^
I Have a good issue with deep fighter and others homebrew so maybe it will work. But don’t worry. I no need help.

I think japanese cake like to adapt his amazing bios with dreamshell. But it has always a way for surprise us !
So we’ll see 🙂

Happy to see you again, I hope assembler games we’ll be available soon, a lot of works were done there.

Have you heard of this ?

a gdrom of deer avenger have be found in a garage in the usa ^^

It’s a not release game like millenium racer. It will be amazing !
the dreamcast junkyard talk about this.

hi! its possible to force house of the dead 2 pal to 60hz, without using a ntsc Dreamcast? any patch, thanks if you can check that.

Interesting isn’t it? Anyway you did a great job with this game. Just by looking at few lines of assembly code, I can tell that the game seems to be well programmed 😉

Maybe you could share some tools or information about its development?

Some people asked me whether I could re the language file (messages.tbl iirc). Rather than wasting time, maybe you could give is a hand on that file format 🙂

Thank you!

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