Seize the Advantage, the NES Advantage

The NES Advantage was the first arcade-style controller for the NES, but it would not be the last.  It is, however, the best of the bunch.  In this post I would like to explain why it is the best and what kind of games for which it is best suited.

Design

The NES Advantage appears to have been designed in-house by Nintendo.  While it is similar to products from ASCIIWARE, it is of a very high build quality.

There were other arcade-style joysticks.  Camerica brought over the Freedom Stick and the TurboTronic, the latter has the same button layout as the ASCII Turbo Jr Stick for the Famicom.  Beeshu marketed the Jammer and Ultimate Superstick, but the only thing ultimate about it was the terrible build quality.  The Quickshot Arcade was another arcade-style stick.  The Ultimate Superstick and the Freedom Stick are wireless infrared sticks.

The NES Advantage uses a light gray color for its plastic like the NES front loader.  It comes with crevices cut into the plastic to give it some style.  These crevices are hard to clean if they get really filthy and I always thought they were a bit over the top.  The red lettering on the top can also get worn down by sunlight and abuse.

The bottom of the NES Advantage has a metal base and four rubber feet.  This gives it some heft.  To open the advantage, you need to remove the bottom feet (which are attached to the base by an adhesive) and the turbo knobs, because they screw into the top plastic with hex nuts on the potentiometers.

Features

The NES Advantage has three spring latched switches for the Turbo B, Turbo A and Slow buttons.  It has a sliding switch for the 1/2 Player button.  The four directionals and four regular buttons use rubber domes to make contact, just like a regular NES controller except these are larger.  Most arcade sticks of the day came in two varieties, leaf switches and micro switches.  Leaf switches are quiet but may be less precise, while micro switches are noisy but clicky.  Each button or directional has a separate pad, making replacement somewhat easier.  The stick has a knob that can be unscrewed and has a metal coil inside it to recenter it like a spring.

The Turbo control knobs allow for a very finely tuned turbo selection for each button independently.  This is very important because some games work better with a lower Turbo setting and other games work better with a higher Turbo setting.  An adjustable Turbo setting may simulate pressing the button one time per second, fifteen times per second or thirty times per second.  Some games do not respond to the Turbo at all, as in one shot at a time games like Galaga.

The LEDs above the buttons flash with the button presses.  As you turn the dial up on the Turbo knows, you will see the LED light up faster and faster until it turns a solid red.  At that point your eyes can no longer track the discrete turning on and off of the LED.  Because there are switches on the Turbo to turn it on and off, you never need to bother with it if you don't want to.

For many sidescrolling games, the A button is used to jump.  Turbo is not usually helpful in this instance.  The NES Advantage is often used where only the B button has any Turbo on it.  Nor is it useful in shooter games to activate a secondary weapon with a limited supply of ammo or select a weapons option.

The Slow button is essentially a Turbo Start button.  This means that you will often hear the annoying sound assigned to a press of the Start button.  Also, not every game allows you to pause, making this useless when it is pressed.  Other games will bring up a menu or subscreen, which is very distracting.  Pressing the Start button can cause you to lose other button presses, making this feature really something of a novelty.

The cable for the NES Advantage has two connectors on the end.  The end connectors are separated for the last four inches of the cable length and one of the connectors has a white stripe.  This allows you and a friend to use your own NES Advantages.  The connector with the white stripe always goes into Controller Port 1 and the connector without the white stripe always goes into Controller Port 2.  You also need to make sure that the Player 1/2 switch is set appropriately.

You can use four NES Advantages with a NES Four Score or NES Satellite.  The NES Advantage plugged into Controller Port 3 should have its switch set to Player 1 and the NES Advantage plugged into Controller Port 4 should have its switch set to Player 2.

If you are playing a two-player alternating game, you can share the NES Advantage between you and your friend.  In this case, you must flip the switch when you pass the NES Advantage back and forth.  This is useful even when you are playing alone for practice because you can play two games at once.

Overall, the NES Advantage is very durable and very responsive.  One complaint about the internals is that the buttons can get stuck.  I have read that this usually happens when the carbon pads underneath the A and B buttons get worn out or are not properly underneath the button.  You should test the buttons before you buy one if possible.

When Nintendo releases a first-party product for the NES with a Turbo and Slow features, is it really cheating to use them?  You may recall that Nintendo released the NES Satellite, which also had Turbo support, in the NES Sports Set.  Sega also put out a Genesis controller with Turbo and NEC's Turbo Grafx-16 came with a Turbo-supporting controller.  Under these circumstances, it is really hard to say that Turbo is cheating.  After all, Turbo is only simulating the rapid pressing of a button.

If one takes the argument further, then what about the Game Genie?  Nintendo never licensed the device, which came out for the NES, SNES and Game Boy.  However, Sega did license the Genesis and Game Gear versions.

Best Games

Many of Nintendo's early releases were based off arcade games.  Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3, Popeye and Mario Bros. are direct ports.  Balloon Fight is a clone of Joust and Mach Rider is a clone of Hang-On.  Galaga, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Defender, Joust, Elevator Action, the list can go on and on.  The NES Advantage offers a somewhat more authentic arcade style experience when playing these games.

The NES Advantage has its place elsewhere.  The classic Konami games like Contra, Jackal, Super C, Gradius and Life Force can all take advantage of the NES Advantage's Turbo.  Compile's top-down shooters, Zanac, The Guardian Legend and Gun-Nac are also good games for the Advantage.  Fester's Quest becomes much more playable with the Turbo function of the Advantage.  The few fighting games for the NES like TMNT Tournament Fighters could benefit from the smooth motion of the stick.

The Journey of the "PCjr./Tandy Sound Chip"

The TI SN 76496, what we today typically refer to as the PCjr./Tandy sound chip, is a long and varied one as it pertains to the IBM PC platform.  Texas Instruments originally developed this simple music chip for use in its TI/99 4 computer, where it was called the TI TMS9919.  Texas Instruments offered the core of this chip as the TI SN79426 and later the TI SN76489 as an off-the-shelf part.  The TI SN76489 found its way into the Colecovision and the Coleco Adam computer as well as many arcade machines.  Additionally, a clone of the chip is integrated into the Sega Master System and Sega Genesis and the Sega Game Gear.

The TI SN76489 can generate three square waves at different frequencies.  The input clock is typically 3,579,545MHz.  For the square wave channels, the input clock is divided by 32 by the chip and then by a 10-bit number in a register to obtain the output frequency for the square wave.  The human ear can perceive sound waves in the range of 20KHz to 20Hz, but the lowest square wave tone the chip can produce at this input clock is about 109.24Hz.

The chip can also generate periodic or white noise for sound effects and percussion.  The channel divides the clock rate by 64, 128 or 256 or uses the rate of square wave generator 3 which drives a linear feedback 15-bit shift register (1 bit is shifted every clock cycle) to produce a pseudo-random pattern of 1s and 0s at a high rate of frequency.  The periodic noise option is output only once every 15 clock cycles compared to the white noise option.

The chip has eight registers, two for each square wave channel and two for the noise channel.  Any write to the chip will select a register and send data to the chip.  However, the frequency for each square wave channel is controlled by two registers, and if the register is not changed, the lower six bits of the frequency for a square wave channel can be updated quickly for frequency sweeps.

The chip uses a 4-bit number to attentuate the amplitude/volume of the each channel and then mixes all four channels into the single output pin on the chip.

Usage in the IBM PCjr.

The IBM PCjr. uses a discrete TI SN76496 (or TI SN76496A) at ZM26.  The TI SN76496 is the same chip as the TI SN76489A except that it has an audio in pin on pin 9 to allow for an external audio source, like a speech synthesis chip, to be mixed into the chip for a combined output.  The TI SN79494 has the audio input pin but only divides the input clock by 4 instead of 32, so it is not a drop in replacement.

IBM did not connect the audio in on pin 9 to anything in the PCjr.  Instead, all sources of audio, the PC Speaker, the TI SN76496 and the audio output pins from the cassette connector and from the sidecar bus (used for the IBM PCjr. Speech Attachment) all go to a audio multiplexer chip called the MC14529.  This chip will determine which of these four sources will be heard at the RCA audio jack, through the TV RF Modulator and through the IBM 4893 PCjr. Display.  Note that the internal speaker in the PCjr. only outputs PC Speaker audio.

IBM assigned I/O ports C0-C7 to the chip in the PCjr., even though it only needs one port.  The chip is write-only and cannot be reliably detected, the system it is part of is what gets detected.

Usage in the Tandy 1000A/HD

The Tandy 1000A/HD use a discrete TI SN76496 at U96.  The first difference in the implementation from the PCjr. is that the audio input pin is used to mix in PC Speaker sound.  This allows both the PC Speaker and SN76496 sound to be heard from the audio multiplexer chip.  The second difference is that you can hear the SN76496 through the Tandy's internal speaker as well as through its RCA audio output.  In fact, the audio selector chip is only connected to the RCA audio jack, so you will always hear the PC Speaker and SN76496 from the internal speaker, which is pretty large and loud.

Unfortunately, the default setting for the multiplexer chip will output only PC Speaker audio to the RCA jack.  Some games, like LucasArts' SCUMM games, will not touch the multiplexer chip, leaving you with only the internal speaker for music and sound effects.  You can avoid this by running a Sierra AGI game or finding a program that will let you set the multiplexer accordingly.

Usage in the Tandy 1000EX, SX, HX, TX

The Tandy 1000EX and 1000SX are similar to the earlier 1000s except now they are using NCR8496 clones of the TI SN76496 as well as the real TI SN76496s.  It is a crapshoot as to which chip you will find in any given EX or SX.  You can find the chip at U15 in the EX and U37A in the SX.

While the two chips work almost identically, there are two differences.  First, the NCR chip requires a 2K resistor instead of a 2.7K resistor for mixing in the PC Speaker audio into pin 9.  Second, the TI chip and the NCR chip behave slightly, but at times audibly differently when it comes to the noise channel. In the TI chip, any change to the noise control register will reset the shift register.  In the NCR chip, this does not appear to happen.  (This difference in behavior also appears to be true for the registers governing the square wave channels)  The bits used for the feedback register are not the same for the TI and NCR chips.

The SX has a complex connection to the audio multiplexer chip and will require a write to hear the TI/NCR audio from the RCA jack.  This machine has the same problem with the LucasArts' SCUMM games described above. See here for more details : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/06/ibm-pcjr-and-tandy-1000-sound.html

The EX has a simplified connections to the audio multiplexer chip so that by default PC Speaker and TI audio will always be heard without needing to write to the audio multiplexer chip.  The HX and TX give identical output options to the EX, except its highly likely that in these machines Tandy was exclusively using the NCR chips.  In the HX, U19 contains the chip.  In the TX, it's at U7.

While real TI SN 76496 chips can still be sourced from chip vendors, the NCR 8496 chips seem impossible to find, except in these Tandys.

Usage in the Tandy 1000 SL, SL/2, TL, TL/2, TL/3, RL, RL-HD

These machines embed the NCR version of the TI chip into a custom Tandy chip called the PSSJ (Parallel, Serial, Sound & Joystick).  The PSSJ has acquired a DMA-fed, IRQ-driven DAC/ADC, which uses ports C4-C7.  The DMA used is 1 and the IRQ used is 7, making it impossible to coexist with a Sound Blaster.

The audio multiplexer chip no longer exists in these machines.

The PSSJ chip has an option to allow an extra divisor bit (for an 11-bit divider) to be enabled for the TI/NCR chip, but it is unknown if this feature was ever used.

For some reason, the first note of Greensleeves in the opening of King's Quest I & II is not heard in these systems.

Usage in the Tandy 1000RLX & RLX-HD

The PSSJ chip in these machines is accessed identically to the other Tandy machines, but because these machines have VGA built-in instead of Tandy video, certain games will refuse to play audio through the chip.  Electronic Arts games like Skate or Die and Kings of the Beach will not work with Tandy audio in these machines.  AGI games with interpreter versions below 2.917 will show graphical glitches in the form of "trails" on these machines, but will still produce Tandy sound.

Usage in the Tandy 1000RSX & RSX-HD, 2500 and Sensation!

In addition to the VGA issue of the RLX, these systems are fully AT compatible.  This required them to relocate the PSSJ audio to I/O 1E0-1E7.  IBM decided when it made the IBM PC AT to put the second DMA controller at C0-DF.  It did not appreciate or care that its PCjr. had its TI chip there as well.  The IBM AT was a success and the PCjr. was not, so other companies followed IBM's lead.  Hence Tandy had to relocate the chip.

The result of the relocation broke Tandy music compatibility with most games because they were expecting the chip to be at C0-C7.  The TI chip was always programmed through direct register writes, neither IBM nor Tandy wrote BIOS routines to program the chip.  A few later games, mostly from Sierra, have drivers that support these machines.

The chip's presence is not advertised on the Sensation!, which contains an Adlib Gold clone.  It is there, but it sounds very muffled compared to the earlier computers.

Usage in the IBM PS/1 Model 2011 and 2121

IBM released the PS/1 Audio/Joystick Card as an upgrade for one of the proprietary sockets on the motherboards of these machines.  The PS/1 line was introduced in 1990 with the Model 2011, which uses a 10MHz 286 CPU.  The basic functionality of the TI chip is integrated into the Card, even though its musical capabilities were very unimpressive to everybody by this time.  Adding ISA slots to these machines requires an external expansion box.  It uses I/O address 205.  It can use interrupts, namely IRQ7, but does not use DMA.  Later the Model 2121 was released with support for the Card, it uses a 386SX @ 16MHz.  None of the later PS/1s support the Card.

Interestingly, while the system board supplies a 10MHz Clock signal to the Card, the integrated TI chip is based off an 8MHz signal, which means the clock rate is stepped down somewhere on the Card.  The 8MHz signal is divided by 64 and then by the 10-bit number.  Therefore, if you put the maximum value of 1,024 into the square wave generator, you will end up with a square wave being output at 122.07Hz.

The PS/1 Audio Card has a problem then if fed with pure Tandy music data, it is running the same notes at 11.74% higher frequencies!  Unfortunately, the Tandy is no master of the lower octaves, and IBM's version is even less capable of reaching the lower notes.  The Game Blaster can get all the way down to 28Hz and has three times the channels.

Now this frequency difference can be accounted for the most part if the programmers write a driver that adjusts the speed of the music playback.  However, this was not always done, as can be seen when running the special PS/1 version of Silpheed running on a real IBM PS/1.

Now for some audio comparisons :

Audio Comparison #1 - TI vs. NCR Noise Channel

IBM PCjr Maniac Mansion (low resolution version) :



Tandy 1000TL Maniac Mansion  (low resolution version) :



Audio Comparison #2 - PCjr. Discrete Chip vs. Tandy Integrated Chip

IBM PCjr. King's Quest :



Tandy 1000TL King's Quest :



Audio Comparison #3 - Tandy vs. IBM PS/1

Tandy 1000 Prince of Persia (via DOSBox SVN)



IBM PS/1 Prince of Persia (via IBMulator 0.7)

Advantages of the 160x200 16-color Tandy/PCjr. Resolution

160x200 in 16 colors is a resolution officially only supported on the Tandy 1000s and the IBM PCjr.  Despite having the memory (16K) available, CGA can only do 160x200 in 4 pre-defined colors (by doubling pixels in the 320x200 mode) or 160x100 in 16 colors (by tweaking the 80-column text mode)  EGA can also support 160x200 unofficially either by doubling pixels or adjusting the parameters in its CRT controller, but this was seldom supported on EGA-supporting titles.

One of the most substantial benefits to the 160x200 16-color mode is that it uses half the video memory of the 320x200 16-color mode (16KB vs. 32KB).  The CPU needs only send half as much data to the video memory, improving performance on any machine.

One drawback with the 160x200 16-color mode is that you can only uses 20-columns of text at the standard 8x8 pixel IBM character set.  In this case, developers typically chose two options.  First, they could use their own character set which would fit into a smaller pixel matrix.  Maniac Mansion is an example of this option, it uses 4x8 characters for the Tandy mode and the standard 8x8 characters for CGA, MCGA, EGA or VGA modes.  Second, they could use the 320x200 16-color mode, which is what King's Quest and its sequels use.  In King's Quest, the pixels for the graphics display are doubled, improving performance to a good extent but not as much as if the true 160x200 mode was used.

Another benefit, which is under-appreciated these days, is that games using this mode look very good on a composite monitor.  The IBM PCjr. and the early Tandy 1000s (1000/A/HD/EX/HX/SX/TX) have a composite video output jack.  In a 320x200 mode, these computers show artifact colors that are markedly different from an IBM CGA card.

But in a 160x200 16-color mode, their composite colors correspond to their RGB colors quite well.  This is because in this mode, the pixel clock is the same as the NTSC color burst frequency, 3.58MHz.  Because the pixel clock is aligned with the color clock, the TV's color decoding circuitry can keep pace with the color changes being sent to it.  Even in a psuedo-160x200 game like King's Quest, the doubling of the pixels makes the graphics look as they should, color-wise.

By contrast, the pixel clock in a 320 pixel mode is 7.16MHz and 14.318MHz in a 640 pixel mode.  In those resolutions, the color decoding circuitry cannot keep up, leading to artifact colors.  The timing of the PCjr. and Tandy video controller chips is "off" compared to the IBM PC CGA, leading to different artifact colors. The 320x200 16 color mode does not look good on a composite monitor, the artifacting becomes ugly at this point, especially when it comes to dithering.

The final benefit to the 160x200 mode is that the end result looks acceptable on a video capture device. Capturing 320x200 or 640x200 graphics from a CGA card, PCjr., Tandy or EGA card that gives a good representation of RGB color is much, much more difficult.  First, you need a board that will convert the digital RGB signal to an analog RGB signal and preferably keeps color 6 brown, not dark yellow.  (From the composite video output, color 6 will look closer to dark yellow than to brown.)  Second, you will need a hardware device that can capture 15kHz RGB.  They do exist, but most people would probably use a scan-line doubler and send it to a VGA capture device.

You may think that only a handful of games used a 160x200 mode, but you would be surprised.  Here is a list of forty nine games that primarily use a 160x200 16-color mode for their graphics when run on a PCjr. or a Tandy 1000 :

Black Cauldron, The

Boulder Dash

Boulder Dash II: Rockford's Revenge

Bruce Lee

California Games

Demon Attack

Donald Duck's Playground

F-15 Strike Eagle

Ghostbusters

Gold Rush!

Indianapolis 500

Jumpman

King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown

King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne

King's Quest III: To Heir is Human

King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards

Lost Tomb

Manhunter 2: San Francisco

Manhunter: New York

Maniac Mansion

Mickey's Space Adventure

Microsoft Flight Simulator (v2.0)

Microsurgeon

Mixed-Up Mother Goose

Mouser

Murder on the Zinderneuf

Ninja

Dr. J and Larry Bird go One-on-One

Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

Pitstop II

Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel

Rasterscan

River Raid

ScubaVenture

Sea Speller

Silent Service

Slugger, The

Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter

Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge

Starflight

Storm

Super Bowl Sunday

The World's Greatest Baseball Game

Touchdown Football

Troll's Tale

Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood

Wizard and the Princess, The

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

NES Satellite : Pinnacle of Early Wireless Controller Solutions

Ever since the Nintendo WaveBird controller was released for the Gamecube, wireless controllers have finally entered their own.  Using high frequency RF technology in the 900MHz and later 2.4GHz bands, it combined long distance wirelessness without a significant;y bulky design.  Later controllers for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii, Wii U, PS3 and PS4

Before the advent of the Nintendo Wavebird, previous wireless controllers, with one important exception, used infrared technology.  Infrared technology is typically used in TV remotes and is a cheap, low powered way to communicate signals without a wired connection.  In the 1980s it was fairly compact and did not add a great deal of bulk to a controller.

The NES was the first console which wireless controllers were fairly common.  Examples include the Camerica Freedom Stick, Supersonic Joystick and Freedom Connection (the latter is an adapter only) and the Acclaim Double Player Wireless Head-to-Head System and Wireless-Infrared Remote Controller.  There was even a wireless Light Gun, the Playco Toys Video Shooter (which looks like a Sega Light Phaser).

The trouble with infrared technology is that the technology requires a line of sight between the controller and the console.  This is why TV remotes tend to work only within a "sweet spot" and the NES wireless controllers were no different.  But while you can typically hold a TV remote in a fixed position, even if channel surfing, the same cannot be true for a wireless video game controller.  Excited gamers will move their controller all over the place, confusing the infrared controller and causing lag and missing hits.

The other option at the time was the rf technology used in the Atari CX-42 Wireless Joysticks.  These sticks came with a large receiver with an antenna.  Each stick required a 9V battery and had an extremely large base compared to the regular CX-40 joystick.  The sticks had an antenna sticking out the side.  In addition to the bulk of the sticks and the ugly receiver box, the sticks did not have a very long range.

Enter the NES Satellite.  Nintendo understood the problem that gamers would not keep their controllers in a straight line with the infrared receiver, so it designed an adapter that was not designed to move.  The Satellite can easily add eight feet of distance to the sev

en and a half foot controller cords Nintendo used with its NES controllers.  This is especially useful if you have AV Famicom controllers, which plug into NES controller ports but have very short cable lengths at less than three feet long.

The Satellite may not look particularly heavy, but it uses six C-cell batteries, adding a bit of heft to the unit. However, with the slack in the controller cable, a gamer is free to move his controller about without disturbing the infrared connection.  It is unlikely that someone will yank it away.

Why large, bulky C-cell batteries?  The NES Satellite is a four player adapter and the infrared unit, the adapter circuitry and the turbo circuitry all need power.  Also, the Satellite has to provide power for four controllers.  The Satellite is rated for 9VDC, 150mA.  Six C-Cell betteries connected in series provide 9VDC and have a maximum 8000mA-H capacity.  Fresh batteries should give at least 20 hours of usage out of the Satellite.  Unfortunately, Nintendo did not provide an AC adapter or plug for the device, but if you can find a 9V brick of sufficient amperage, you should not have a problem with powering the device by soldering the split wire to the battery terminal connectors.

The Satellite has a power button to avoid draining the batteries when the NES is not in use.  It has separate turbo buttons for A and B.  The turbo buttons work, but the turbo cannot be adjusted, so it is not as great as the adjustable turbo of an NES Advantage. When the Satellite is communicating with its receiver, you will see a LED on the receiver light up.

It works with the NES Advantage.  The NES Advantage has an adjustable turbo feature and a slow feature, so it may drain the batteries a bit more quickly than a standard controller when the turbo is active.  It also works with the Zapper, but only in Controller Port 2.  Also, the Ctlr/Gun switch must be in the Gun position.  Finally, you will need to turn the power off and back on again (if the switch was in the Ctlr position) before the device will register the trigger function of the Zapper.  It should work with other Controller Port 2 peripherals like the Arkanoid VAUS paddle controller or the NES Power Pad.

The Satellite's only other disadvantage, other than its battery consumption, is that it must maintain a line of sight with the receiver plugged into the NES controller ports.  Moreover, that line of sight should be dead-on straight and not at anything more than a slight angle, either horizontally or vertically.  If you feel like the game is not responding appropriately, adjust the Satellite unit and turn the power off and back on.

The Satellite, when properly focused on the receiver, does not offer any appreciable lag to your gameplay.  I have tested it with games like Contra, Battletoads and Duck Hunt.  I could observe no appreciable decrease in my performance and no obvious time where button presses and game response seemed out of sync.  Modern RF-based controllers cannot make this claim.  They will add lag compared to a wired controller.  Some people state they notice it, others do not.  This is typically important for systems with a wired and a wireless option like the Gamecube and Xbox 360.  For systems that more or less exclusively use wireless controllers, the programmers should have factored in the lag from the controller.

There were not too many four player games released for the NES.  Here is the list of licensed NES games that support the NES Satellite adapter and its wired version, the NES Four-Score :

Bomberman II
Championship Bowling
Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat
Gauntlet II
Greg Norman's Golf Power
Harlem Globetrotters
Kings of the Beach
Magic Johnson's Fast Break
Monster Truck Rally
M.U.L.E.
NES Play Action Football
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Nintendo World Cup
R.C. Pro-Am II
Rackets & Rivals
Roundball: 2 on 2 Challenge
Spot: The Video Game
Smash TV
Super Off Road
Super Jeopardy!
Super Spike V'Ball
Swords and Serpents
Top Players' Tennis

Of all those games, Bomberman II, M.U.L.E. and Smash TV are the best games in my opinion.  Bomberman II allows for four-player simultaneous fun.  M.U.L.E. has a change to the town area in its NES version that makes purists scoff, but outside that change to the town, the game offers a lot of four player fun and strategy.  Its usually much easier to find a NES and a four player adapter than an Atari 400 or 800 home computer.

Smash TV is very clever, the game only supports two players at maximum.  However, with a four player adapter, each player can use the D-pads of two standard controllers to mimic the arcade controls much more precisely than by using one D-pad for each player.

Gauntlet II allows for four player simultaneous action, but while that port appears to be pretty faithful to the arcade game, it feels a little bland and has no in-game music (like the arcade).  I'm not a huge sports game fan, even on the NES.  Some people like Pat the NES Punk extol the virtues of Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat, but I am not a big fan of Super Sprint-style games on the NES.  R.C. Pro-Am II is a good single player game, but is not good for multiplayer.  I personally have a fondness for Swords and Serpents, but I cannot imagine four people coming together to play this game (the first player controls the movement).

Getting Started in System Shock

Welcome to my DEATH MACHINE!

System Shock is a classic from the DOS gaming era, but trying to play it can be, well, something of a shock.  If you are used to DOOM and its simple controls, you are in for quite the learning curve.  However, once you get a feel for the game, you should be able to appreciate what it was trying to do.  While it has been unavailable legitimately for many years outside of eBay, GoG is now offering System Shock Enhanced Edition, which includes the original CD-ROM Enhanced version as well as a Windows executable to run the game on modern systems.  I have beaten the game multiple times and really love it.  In the spirit of the times, I offer this guide to get the most out of the game.

Installation and Settings

Getting the game running in DOS or DOSBox is no particular chore.  I am assuming you are using the Enhanced CD-ROM version, most people do over the inferior (but original) floppy version.  For any system, I highly recommend that the CD-ROM drive is D.  That will save many a headache trying to figure out why the game is not loading. After you mount the CD, the game is installed with ORIGIN.BAT (not INSTALL.EXE) on the root directory of the CD.  Installation is straightforward, and I recommend choosing the Roland SCC-1 for music and the Sound Blaster 16 for digital audio.  Even if you only have the built-in General MIDI capabilities of Windows, the music is still better than Adlib.  If sound or music is not working, try the manual setup.

Running the game in Windows 9x is a bit more tricky.  You can always run it in real mode DOS, but that requires you to exit Windows and load mouse and CD drivers and maybe sound drivers.  If you want to run it within Windows, it can be done.  Right click on CDSHOCK.BAT and go to Properties, then the Memory tab.  Under the memory tab, put all the memory value for Conventional at 600 and the DPMI Memory at 16384.  Click on the Protected box, then Apply.  You then start the game with the MS-DOS shortcut.  Even though the game will play fine on my machine, once I click on the checkbox to get rid of the window, it will crash my system hard.

For a good challenge, start the game with the default "2" settings for each category, and when you enter the game you will immediately be presented with a screen full of stuff and information boxes.  The first thing you should do is to hit the Space Bar key, then the Esc key, go to Video and increase the resolution to 640x400 or 640x480.  Even 320x400 is better than the default 320x200.  However, if you are running this game on a 486 spec machine, 320x400 is the best resolution/performance option you will likely achieve.  You can set the number of audio channels to eight, which is advisable if you are running the game on a Pentium or better.  Neither the enhanced video modes nor the extra audio  channels nor the voice acting is available in the Floppy version.  Everything that I talk about hereafter applies to both versions.  I use DOSBox at a fixed 100,000 cycles for my preferred resolution of 640x400.  If you use max cycles, you will find the mouse cursor exceptionally jerky when moved.

Movement Controls

Today, everyone uses WASD to navigate through a first-person perspective game.  In System Shock's time, that convention had yet to be established.  Unfortunately, the game did not allow you to remap keys. Instead, you use ASDX to move.  The S and X keys move forward and backward, but the A and D keys turn left and right.  System Shock was made before the days of mouse-look, which essentially eliminated the turning movement.  Strafing left and right is done by the Z and C keys.  You can run by holding down the Shift key or always run by pressing the Caps Lock key.  (DOSBox may require a few key presses of the Caps Lock key before emulator will register a change to the key's state.)

System Shock truly expanded the scope of your ability to move and interact with the environment.  The Q and E keys allow you to lean left and right, and W will return your posture to the center.  The R and V keys allow you to look up and down and F will put your head movement back to the straight ahead position.  This is important because System Shock is much closer to a true 3-D environment than DOOM.  Finally, G makes you squat, B puts you on your stomach and T lets you stand upright.  Sometimes this is necessary to squeeze through low-height corridors and tight spaces.  Having such freedom was unprecedented, but so much of this has been simplified by the mouse look and extra mouse buttons.  The last key set is confusing because it is the top key that puts you back to normal instead of the middle key.

If you forget what any key does, just hit ? and it will bring up the Help Screen.  Alt-O will give you a description of the items in your HUD display.  You can click the Full Screen box or Alt-V to play the game in Full Screen with a minimal HUD, but sometimes even the minimal HUD will get in the way and you will sometimes use an item by mistake where the full HUD would keep you from doing so.

The mouse controls both cursor by which you interact with objects on the screen and the aiming and firing of your weapons.  A single click on an object will give you a description of the object, a double click will grab the object.  You can place the object in your inventory by dragging it into one of the bottom panels.  You can throw the item by right clicking, and the higher the item's icon is on the screen, the farther you will throw it.  A double left click will allow you to search corpses, both human and enemy.

The first weapon you get will be a pipe, and it is easy enough to swing by right clicking.  When you encounter the first enemies, you may have to look down to get good hits in them.  You will have to look up to destroy security cameras with the pipe and it can be a bit of trial and error.

Soon you will find a projectile weapon.  They shoot where you aim the cursor.  Many of the guns have more than one type of ammo available, and you need to observe which type works best against which type of enemy.  Regular rounds are best against organics or cyborgs, but teflon rounds work better against robots.  EMP weapons are useless against organics and gas or tranquilizer darts are useless against robots.  Energy weapons are usually good against anything and do not waste ammo.  Instead, they use energy, as their name implies, and finding recharge stations becomes very important.

HUD

In-Game Help Display

You will not get far in this game if you do not master the HUD.  The first thing you will notice are the two rows of arrows on the top left of the screen.  They represent your Health and Energy Level.  If the former disappears, you die.  If the latter disappears or gets too low, you cannot fire energy weapons or use software that consumes energy like Shield.

There are three panels on the bottom, and the left and right panels, called the Multi-Functional Displays have identical functions.  The middle panel, the Inventory Panel, has four buttons, Main, Hardware, General and Software.  Main and General are the most important.  On either, you can select the weapon or item by clicking on the name.  You can activate a grenade or a patch or a battery or first aid kit by clicking on it twice.  You can throw an item away by right clicking on it.  You only have a certain number of slots for weapons and items, so you may need to make some hard choices.

Would you like to play a game?  Just don't on company time

The left and and right MFD Panels are mostly informational.  They can show Weapon, Item, Automap, Target and Data.  Weapon will show you any settings you may be able to adjust with the weapon and also to unload and reload a weapon.  If you have more than one type of ammo available, you can choose which type to load.  Item will give you a visual identification of an item, and it can also show you how many clips of each type of ammo you have if you click on the name of a gun on the Main panel.  Automap is a feature you will be using almost constantly.

The Side Icons control various functions.  As you find the hardware, you can install a Sensaround unit to look behind you, a Turbo Boost to go faster, a Lantern to light up dark places and a Shield to help absorb damage.  Most of these upgrades will consume energy.

Most of the functions on the HUD can be selected with hotkeys as the following diagram shows for the major functions :

The Data Reader can be accessed by clicking on the E box on the left of the Side Icons.  Email comes from living people like SHODAN and Rebecca or to update you on the status of the ship itself.  Logs can be picked up on the station from its former inhabitants and give you information, clues and background to the plot.  Data is only found in Cyberspace and will appear when you leave it.

Data Reader Log List

Cyberspace

Finally, there is Cyberspace.  You enter Cyberspace when you double click on a large multi-pronged jack.  Each level usually has one or two of these jacks.  In Cyberspace you have full 3-D movement.  You move forward by pressing the S key, and you turn up, down, left and right by pressing W, A, D, and X.  Q or Z rotate your position left and E and C rotate you right.  It is not dissimilar to how flight simulators control a plane.  You only have a limited time to explore Cyberspace.

Cyberspace is a series of rooms connected by corridors.  Most corridors will propel you one way and your movement is limited.  You are looking for spinning cubes, usually found in the rooms, which contain helpful software or data.  You will need to find a weapon called a Pulser quickly to defend yourself against Enemy Software.  You will be able to spot enemy software because its always large and hostile looking and will approach or shoot at you.  Shoot at it until it disappears.  If you take too much time or damage, you will be ejected from Cyberspace with lower health and high fatigue.  Also avoid the two squares connected by a short cylinder, they act like land mines.  Eventually you should find a circular exit.  Before you do, you should try to collect all the spinning cubes in the area and activate switches that look like two triangles and a rectangle between them.

The red spinning rectangles contain pulser or drill, yellow has c-shield software, purple contains data you can read with your E-Reader and blue is for decoy or recall software, and green is for amusement software.

Cyberspace showing software and enemies

Sometimes, you will see an item with a blue polygon outlined around it.  That is a security barrier and needs to be destroyed using the Drill software.  You can choose your software in the Software tab, the only part of your HUD available to you in Cyberspace.  You can upgrade your Pulser and Drill software whenever you can.  The red crosses can be collected to restore health, which is called System Integrity in cyberspace.  The amount of damage you receive is influenced by the C-Shield software. You can and should upgrade your Drill and Pulser and C-Shield software to the highest levels possible.  Cyberspace rewards searching everywhere for hard to find nooks and corridors.

Mouselook

At some point in the 21st Century, someone finally decided to hack System Shock to add mouse look support.  Prior to that, the only option other than using the keyboard to do things like lean and look up or down was to use the Logitech Cyberman mouse.  The Cyberman was a mouse that was raised above its mousepad on a stick to allow for six-degrees of freedom movement.   In System Shock, the roll movement is used for leaning and the pitch movement is for looking up and down.  Unfortunately, the Cyberman gained a reputation as one of the worst controller peripherals of all time and six degrees of freedom controllers (6DOF) never really caught on until arguably the Nintendo Wii.

The mouselook patch can be found here : https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=1719.0.  I used the older patch, which gives you the ability to set a different resolution in game and remap keys by editing a CFG file.  You press the E key to activate the mouselook mode and WASD to move forward/back and strafe left/right.  You need to deactivate mouselook mode often to bring items into your Inventory Panel and to use items located in your inventory panel, so its less than a perfect solution.

Practical Advice and Hints for Playing your First Game

The first real object of the game, once you have grabbed your initial items and restored your health and energy, is to find a Sparq beam.  The Sparq beam will be your weapon of choice for Levels 1, 2 and R.  It can kill all the common enemies on these levels in one or two fully charged hits.  If you follow the ducts past the first logic puzzle you find, you will come across an area with many bodies and it will be there.  Using the Sparq beam will make life easier when you deal with the Cyborgs who have ranged weapons.  It is also useful when you need to light up a dark place.

Nah nah, you can't catch me!

This game has an automap, be sure to explore every nook and cranny for items and enemies to kill for items. Your HUD display can show you a section of the map and you can enlarge the map to fill the screen.  You can and should leave notes on the map, especially where the Power Stations can be found.  You should use rooms near an elevator to store equipment you cannot fit in your inventory.

Level 1 Complete, most levels are similarly complex

Do not waste ammo on Humanoid Mutants, they respawn on level 1 and you will need the ammo for the Minipistol and the Dart Pistol for later levels, mostly the Groves.  If you go back to the healing suite before reaching Level 2, the game will delight in throwing multiple Humanoid Mutants at you on the way to and at the healing suite.  Hit the Energy Station near the entrance to Beta and Delta quadrants before making the trip back there.

After you acquire a Sparq beam, the next goal for Level 1 is to find the Cyborg Conversion chamber and flip the switch that turns off Cyborg Conversion.  The chamber is in Beta Quadrant and there are quite a few Cyborg Drones and Cyborg Assassins between the entrance to Beta Quadrant and the Conversion Chamber.  They shoot projectiles, so you should get in plenty of practice in leaning around corners to fire at them.  Cyborg Assassins act silently, unlike most enemies who make noises indicating their presence.  If you suddenly start taking damage and there is no enemy sounds about, chances are you are dealing with a Cyborg Assassin, so run until you figure out where it is hiding.

Berzerk patches can come in handy when crowd control is necessary

Once you find a Cyborg Conversion Chamber and turn Cyborg Conversion off, finishing a level is usually a matter of time.  It should be your first priority to find the Chamber upon entering a new level.  You can die as often as you like and you will be brought back to the Chamber and be resurrected.  On one occasion, you must activate the chamber or you will be caught in an inescapable death trap after performing a certain plot critical event.  Be warned that not every level has an accessible conversion chamber.

Once you reach the Research Level, Level 2, you should have fully mastered the HUD and the Control System.  Level 2's Cyborg Conversion Chamber's Switch can be a tad tricky to find  It is in the western part of the Level, in a room that looks like the top half of a heart.  Level R is your next stop, but you won't be able to see everything on your first trip.  It also has the second of two healing units in the game, but the puzzle to open its door is tricky.  While you can get Level 2 to an almost respawnless state, Level R will respawn Hoppers, those annoying blue enemies that shoot at you.  Remember that often you can hit enemies by exploiting angled walls and height differences and they won't shoot back until its too late.

The logs and emails will often give you clues to the plot events if you want a spoiler-free game.  Write down any important numbers you may find.  Logic Probes can be used to bypass some of the more tricky puzzles, including those trial-and-error wire puzzles.

When you get to Level 3, you may feel overwhelmed by invisible mutants, which respawn and take many hits to kill.  The Sparq beam is no longer going to cut it here.  You need not spend much time on Level 3 initially.  If you find a Laser Rapier, you can cut them down in two hits as long as you have some energy.  It is near an Elevator and is very powerful, provided you can get close enough to an enemy to use it without dying.  After you do what you can on Level 3, you can choose whether to go to Levels 4, 5 or 6.  I would suggest taking the levels in their numbered order, but really the rest is up to you.  Good luck, you'll need it!

Adventures in Porting - US PC Game Developers and the FM Towns

Released in 1989, the Fujitsu Micro (FM) Towns home computer was an amazingly powerful gaming computer for its time.  It used a 386DX CPU running at 16MHz with 1MB of RAM (upgradeable to 2MB). It could display many resolutions like 640x480 with 256 colors and could support 15-bit color at 320x240 and lots of sprites.  It came with 1x CD-ROM drive, providing redbook audio support in addition to the 4-Operator FM Synthesis 6-channel YM-2612 chip (also used in the Sega Genesis) and 8-channel 8-bit Ricoh RF5c68 PCM chip.  It also came with 2 HD floppy drives and could be connected to an external hard drive.  The Operating System, FM Towns OS, was a Windows-like GUI operating system.  A bootable only version of the OS was freely available to applications developers so their software could boot in the CD drive without needing to load the OS.

Of course, this powerful machine was available only in Japan, where it competed with the Sharp X68000 and the NEC PC-9801 series.  Of all the three system lines, the FM Towns was the closest, hardware-wise, to the IBM PC compatible machines in the west.  Fujitsu came calling to US companies looking for software to showcase their new machine, and several companies were interested.  Most licensed their games to be ported in Japan, but a few put in something extra when it came to the FM Towns.

LucasArts

LucasArts was quite enthusiastic when it came to the FM Towns, porting many of its classic SCUMM adventure games to the system.  Unlike other companies, they did not ship their code off to Japan for a local company to convert their game.  Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders was their one game where none of the advanced features ever found their way back to the US.

Zak's FM Towns version featured a 256 color graphics update of the 320x200 Enhanced PC version.  There was a great deal more music, with the CD containing 23 CD audio tracks for background music throughout the game.  The original C64 version had music two tracks and none of the other versions had more than that until this FM Towns version.  Most of the tracks consist of ambient noise and sounds appropriate to the scene with new age music themes popping up from time to time.  The sound effects also received an upgrade thanks to the more capable sound hardware.



























































Zak is easily accessible to non-Japanese players because it kept the English language text.  Not all games would use Japanese text.  However, all of LucasArts' games had a Japanese text option, but in Zak the graphics for the player characters were altered to give their eyes a larger, more anime-style look.  The effect is more creepy than cute and the faces of the non player characters are not altered.

Next we turn to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure.  This game shares the graphics from the 256-color PC VGA version, which was floppy-disk sized.  There were a few 16-color graphics left over in the PC VGA version that were fixed in the FM Towns version.  However, there is an error in the FM Towns version where some of the tiny character sprites are in 16 colors instead of 256 colors as they were in the PC VGA version.

The audio in the PC 16 color or 256 color version supported nothing better than the Adlib, but the FM Towns version's music received a huge upgrade.  The music appears to be taken from the film's soundtrack, so it really cannot get much better, quality-wise.  Not every scene and area in the PC version used music, but there are 14 tracks on the CD devoted to John Williams' recordings.

 After Indy comes Loom.  Here the graphics were updated to 256 colors, except for the icons that appear when you click on objects.  Unlike the PC version, the graphic for the FM Towns' distaff uses a palette not strictly limited to the 16 color IBM CGA/EGA palette.

Whereas the PC CD version of Loom devotes its CD audio space to speech and sound effects, the FM Towns version of Loom devotes it to music.  There are two sets of eight tracks used for music in the game, and they correspond to the music in the PC floppy disk version.  The first set of tracks (1-8) sound like they were recorded with a real orchestra.  The second set of tracks (9-16) were clearly composed with a synthesizer.  When music starts to play, the track from the first set plays, then the second set plays.  Unfortunately, after that the inferior second set track loops.  Whoever thought that was a good idea?

Interestingly, of all the boxes, only Zak and Loom used artwork that was not found on LucasArts' own PC boxes.  Indy's box art and the rest essentially follow the LucasArts' PC boxes.  Zak included a translated version of The National Inquisitor and collectible cards featuring the playable characters.  Lucas or Fujitsu went the extra mile and had the Audio Drama from Loom done by Japanese voice actors.   Loom and Zak took much longer than the other games to be converted due to their 16-color origins.  Indy for the FM Towns had been completed within two months of the PC 256-color version, while Loom took a year to be released after its 16-color PC version.

Since all the dialogue is kept from the PC floppy version and the portraits have been redone in 256 colors, some consider this to be the definitive version of the game.  The cutscenes and animations lost in the PC CD version are kept here.

With the Secret of Monkey Island, the inventory item graphics were in 16 colors compared to the 256 color pictures of the PC CD VGA version?  They were not planning 320x200 EGA 16-color support for the CD version in 1991-1992.  So why bother to create 16-color versions of these graphics?  My theory is that they were in 16-colors because the lower part of the screen is using an overlay mode.

Essentially put, many PC ports to the FM Towns would use the nearest analogous mode, 320x240. However, kanji text requires a high resolution mode.  I believe the SCUMM engine games used 320x240 with 256 colors (the mode is capable of 15-bit color) for the main graphics window and a 640x480 overlay for the text on the submenu and the spoken dialogue. This gives the kanji 16x16 pixels for each character, but the mode only supports 16 colors on the screen.  This minimized the performance hit compared to everything being drawn in a 640x480 resolution.  An unfortunate side effect is that the inventory graphics in SoMI and the closeup graphics in Loom would have to be in 16 colors.

Zak takes advantage of the extra resolution compared to its PC versions.  It essentially uses 432 of its 480 lines for the text-based portions of the game.  This allows the player to select three additional rows of inventory objects over the PC versions.  The rest of these games do not use the extra space and just leave back letterbox-like bars there.  While Loom puts the bars on the bottom of the screen, the rest of the games center the game in between top and bottom bars.  This tends to suggest that these games were made with a 1.6:1 aspect ratio in mind when most PC games, including LucasArts, really were not.

The Secret of Monkey Island looks, sounds and plays like the PC CD version.  This is when LucasArts' ports no longer have substantial value over their corresponding PC versions.

LucasArts also released Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, but Fate corresponds to its PC CD version and MI2 to its PC version, which was not enhanced for CD. Fate's Japanese text option uses the English voice acting.  Neither CD has CD audio, making them rather uninteresting from a PC perspective.  There are some palette changes, but otherwise they play the same.  LucasArts's iMUSE music engine was too complex to be handled by CD Audio at the time.  The only addition FM Towns' MI2 has over the PC release is a Japanese language option.  These games boot to a language selection screen instead of the FM Towns OS. Compare Loom with Monkey Island 2's boot options :

Origin Systems

Another interesting FM Towns port is that of Ultima VI: The False Prophet.  The major CD enhancement for this port is the addition of voice acting.  There is both English and Japanese voice acting, each is used for the appropriate language choice.  For the English voice acting, employees from Origin Studios and their relatives were used. Richard Garriott voices Lord British and Shamino, for example.  The samples are stored on the CD in files, so the resulting quality is 8-bit.  The sound effects have taken a major improvement over the PC speaker sound effects in the PC version.  This particular port was overseen by Origin.  They were probably planning to use their efforts to release an Enhanced PC CD-ROM version, but that never happened.

For Ultima VI, the 640x480 mode's extra height allows for an extra box.  Typically, this has icons to allow the user to select the English or Japanese language language, save or load a game and return to the FM Towns OS. Uniquely of the games I have sampled, Ultima VI allows you to select the language by either an executable or in the game.  When in dialogue, this allows you to select any conversation choice revealed by the dialogue without typing. Of course you can still type anything into the box to ask the character.




Origin also ported Wing Commander to the FM Towns.  The FM Towns version includes both the expansion packs and you can select either expansion pack from the main menu, unlike the PC version.  The CD audio is used for the music, while the sound effects are substantially upgraded.  Unlike Ultima VI, there is no voice acting and selecting between English and Japanese is done via executables.  Interestingly, there are three executables for each language choice, one for each drive you could use to save your progress.  In the FM Towns, Drives A and B are floppies, Drive C is for the internal ROM and Drive D is for an external hard drive.

Wing Commander II requires an installation to a hard drive, and like its predecessor it uses the CD audio for music.  Ultima Underworld uses it for voice acting heard in the introduction in the PC version.  The samples are obviously of higher quality than what floppy disks could hold, but after you finish the intro, the PC and the FM Towns should play identically thereafter.  By this time, the early FM Towns with their 386D X/16 CPUs were not quite up to the task of running these games, so a faster system was recommended.

Origin also ported the first three games in the Ultima Series as the Ultima Trilogy.  The CD audio is used for fanfare.  Richard Garriott recorded a short introduction in his Lord British voice that also plays as an audio track.  Each game has an introduction with pictures accompanied by text and one of the tracks playing.  Character creation for each game is accompanied by another track.  There is in-game music for all three Ultimas, but it is completely original.  The sound effects are digitized as well.  The graphics are completely redone in high resolution and the games may feel a bit off compared to the Apple II or PC versions.  These conversions were not done in-house by Origin.

Additionally, Origin ported Ultima IV and Ultima V to the FM Towns, but they are much less remarkable.  Ultima IV uses Ultima V's PC tiles and has two CD audio tracks with renditions of Towns and Stones.  These are played during the special introduction and main menu, otherwise music is played through the internal FM chip.  Ultima V has CD audio tracks for the Ultima Theme and Greyson's Tale, played through the special introduction and the main menu.  Otherwise Ultima 5 uses the tiles from the PC and similarly plays music through the internal FM chip.  Again these conversions were not from Origin.

For the Ultima ports, Origin used the built-in YM-2612 for music.  LucasArts did the same for MI2 and Fate of Atlantis.  In these games, the Adlib music is roughly ported to the FM Towns chip.  When I mean rough, I mean in the sense that the results are inferior to the original despite the fact that the FM Towns' YM-2612 (which is also used in the Sega Genesis) is mostly superior to the Adlib's YM-3812.

Sierra Online

Sierra only just dipped its toe into FM Towns ports.  It released King's Quest V for the FM Towns apparently before it did for the PC.   It also released Roberta Williams Mixed-Up Mother Goose which also is cut from the same cloth as the PC CD version of the game.

King's Quest V for the FM Towns has Japanese and English voice acting.  The default voice selection is Japanese, you can change it to English by clicking on the mountain button in the settings menu after you start a game.  Unfortunately, you won't be able to hear the English dialog in the introduction in this version.  Restarting the game returns you to Crispin's house, not the Title Screen.  All in-game text in this version is in English, even when the Japanese language option is selected.  No version of the King's Quest V CD version contains text for the speech or a text option.

This game uses the YM-2612 sound chip for music but does have digital sound effects.  The music does sound like it was ported from the Adlib, so do not expect much.  While the PC CD versions play a low fidelity recording of the MT-32 music for the introduction and finale of the game mixed with the voice acting in the audio file, the FM Towns version plays the FM music and the speech is not mixed with anything until the FM Towns mixes the two audio sources.

There is an early and a late version of King's Quest V for the PC CD-ROM, the major difference between the two being the processing applied to the voice samples.  In the early (December 1991 file date) version, there is minimal processing, leading to crisper sample playback but it gives very pronounced sibilant sounds.  The later (April 1992 file date) version suppresses the sibilant sounds and some of the background noise, but the overall output of the samples is noticeably more muffled.  The voice samples for the English and Japanese voice options in the FM Towns version generally follows the later PC CD version, although NewRisingSun observed there is more reverb for the narrator's voice samples.

Interestingly, while the Icon Bar from the FM Towns version is identical to the PC version, the FM Towns uses the black and white mouse cursor icons from the floppy version.  The PC version uses multicolored mouse cursor icons when run in DOS and black and white mouse cursors when run in Windows. Unfortunately, another thing the FM Towns shares with the Windows version is the ugly stretching algorithm used to stretch 320x200 graphics into 640x480 graphics, leading to lines that have uneven heights.

FTL

FTL released Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back.  Both have CD audio music, but Dungeon Master II does not appear to have an English language option.  All the tracks for Dungeon Master and some of the tracks for Chaos Strikes Back were released for Dungeon Master: The Album, which could be purchased via mail order as stated in an advertisement booklet in the PC release.  These pieces were done by Western musicians.  Otherwise they look and sound like their western originals.  I must note that Chaos Strikes Back was never released for the PC.

Dungeon Master II was also released for the FM Towns two years before it was released for the PC. Dungeon Master II came on CD and floppy for the PC, but the CD does not appear to offer any advantages over the floppy.  The same CD audio tracks on the FM Towns CD can also be found on the Sega CD version of the game.