Policenauts PC-98 Text Dump Hey guys, I've been browsing these forums for years but recently I've started to go crazy with the idea of a PC-98 Policenauts English translation. I loved the PSX translation but the I personally find the graphics of the PC-98 version much better so it would be nice to play it in English. The latest version of DOSBox-X (0.83.9) has been released! As a cross-platform DOS emulator it was originally based on DOSBox, but it aims to be a complete DOS emulation package, so apart from being a standard DOS emulator it officially supports the NEC PC-98 system as a machine type. Just set machine=pc98 to enable NEC PC-98 emulation in DOSBox-X.
Audio plugins free. Policenauts is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Konami.It was written and directed by Hideo Kojima, and originally released for the PC-9821 in 1994. A hard science fiction story, Policenauts is set in the mid 21st century and follows Jonathan Ingram, an astronaut recently recovered floating in space in cryosleep after an accident at a space colony sent him drifting into. Policenauts is a Japanese-style adventure with action elements, similar in many ways to Snatcher. The player interacts with the environment in a point-and-click fashion: positioning a cursor over an object allows the player character to examine it or perform other context-dependent actions. Policenauts was first released on the NEC PC-98 Japanese microcomputer on July 29, 1994 and, unlike the title's later console ports, featured a presentation made up entirely of pixel art, giving the game a look very similar to Snatcher. The first console release of Policenauts was for the 3DO in 1995 and it was extensively reworked from the.
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- PC-88 and PC-98 games
PC-88 and PC-98 is kind of confidential outside Japan, but the emulation scene is quite active.
PC-88 and PC-98 emulators + download
Recommended emulators are M88 for PC-88 (Windows only) and Neko Project II for PC-98 (Windows / Mac, ported as Xnp2 on Linux). Some games won't work with these emulators, you may try Virtual98 instead (available below).
However, the most popular PC98 emulator in Japan is Anex86. Although a few games doen't work with it (e.g. Ningyo Tsukai: the original Japanese version of Metal & Lace), Anex86 has high emulating performance. Strictly speaking, Anex86 is not a PC98 emulator. It is the emulator of EPSON's PC-286, 386, 486, 586 which are compatible hardware of NEC's PC98. Therefore some games need to have the EPSON check removed: this fragment of code discriminates whether the hardware is the genuine NEC PC98 or not. You can download the check remover, DISPELL, from this page.
Several other emulators are available for the PC-88, check this page (jp) or this page (en).
You may encounter several problems to get these programs running properly on your computer. Thanks a to generous contributor, we host working archives of M88, Neko Project II and Virtual98 :
- Download M88 v2.21a (build 2017/06/16)
- Download Neko Project II v0.83 (build 2017/06/04)
- Download Anex86 v2.77 (build 2004/07/26)
- Download Virtual98 v0.28 (build 1999/12/14)
- Download DISPELL v1.13 (EPSON check remover)
Some instructions are provided in text files, next to the emulator files. Thanks to nekoneko for providing many insights on the PC-88/98 emulation, as well as several missing games.
PC-88 and 98 game archives
After downloading a game from our pages, you may find a lot of different archives nested in the primary archive. Below is an example for the game Dinosaur:
Many PC-88 came on several floppy disks, thus most of the games published in the 90s have several nested archives. You will also find a lot of disks have the [a] tag, meaning it's an alternate dump of the disk. You may come across other tags in brackets, these are based on the TOSEC Naming Convention:
- cr: cracked
- f: fixed
- h: hacked
- m: modified
- p: pirated
- t: trained
- tr: translated
- o: over dump
- u: under dump
- v: virus
- b: bad dump
- a: alternate
- [!]: verified dump
Another example for a PC-98 game, EDGE, which came with 7 disks:
Policenauts Pc 98 Openingsuren
Running PC-88 games in M88
Most floppy disks are bootable, you need to set the first disk image in drive 1 and reset the emulator. Check the video below to do it.
Some usual issues as stated in the English instructions:
- Controls: For games, movement is almost always Numpad 4,6,2,8 or the cursor keys. The buttons are usually some combination of Enter, Spacebar, Shift, Esc, Tab, and ZXCV.
- Error / Beep / Glitches / blue-green screen: V2 mode games will not run in V1 mode and return an error (or just beep at you). V1 games will usually run in V2 mode, but with subtle glitches. A common symptom of a V1 game running incorrectly in V2 mode is a washed-out bluish-green screen. If you see screens like this, you need to switch to V1 mode (Control menu).
- CPU speed: The choice between 4Mhz and 8MHz is mostly just a matter of convenience, but keep in mind that some older games run too fast at 8MHz.
- Settings: open 'M88 Settings in English.html' to see a translated version of the settings.
BASIC commands
If a game requires disk BASIC, you need to boot from an N88 BASIC system disk first, swap disks, and then run the desired program. The usual BASIC commands apply:
For most cassette games, simply type:
More complicated load instructions are indicated at the end of the file names in this set. For example, to run the file 'Fire House (Honoo no Yakata) {V1 mode, MON R Ctrl-B LOAD CAS}.t88', do the following (Boot up in V1 mode):
Running PC-98 games in Neko Project II
Policenauts English Download
PC-98 games come in bootable floppy format, in which case you just have to set the first floppy disk image in FDD1 and reset the hardware. As shown in the following video, you may have to display all file types in the file selection window.
Policenauts Iso
Policenauts Psx
Some games need to be installed to work, you will have to configure a hard drive. You may also come across pre-installed games, these files need to be set as a harddisk.