Multimedia Exploration Journal: October 23, 2002
I made another trip today to the video game shop for lots and lots
more, shall we say, vintage games. Total score: 11 old games.
Another game from
Seanbaby's Crapstravaganza list, but that was the SNES version. Honestly, I think this one must be
better, if only because this has a bunch of CD tracks for audio. Except
that the last several tracks contain atrocious voice acting by Aerosmith
band members. On to the hackable media: I was rather disappointed. There
is a gfx/movies directory that contains several files from 130K-200K with
.ANM extensions. Format does not look familiar. And judging by the
filenames, they correspond to the brief voice tracks on the CD. I may take
this back to the store tomorrow since it is basically worthless for my
purposes.
Kingdom: The Far Reaches/3DO (MobyGames entry)
I thought I would investigate a 3DO game.
This game touts, "Over 57,000 hand painted animation cels captured in
full-motion video..." So far, the disc cannot be mounted as an ISO-9660
filesystem. I will have to check for utilities for examining the disc (I
know it's possible because of the Lemmings FILM files).
Beauty & The Beast/CD-I
I also decided to investigate a Philips CD
Interactive title. I remember from looking through the Linux kernel
cdrom.h header file that there is a slightly different sector format for
CD-I discs. So I can't get anywhere with this game right now. Actually,
it's not a game. Rather, it's an interactive storybook adventure, or so
the store clerk warned me. Perfect. Sure to have plenty of FMV.
more Sega CD games...
Now for 8 more Sega CD games:
Who Shot Johnny Rock?
Umm, who took the CD? The CD was missing when I opened it up. Memo to
self: Always take the ~3 seconds required to actually open
up the case and see if it is occupied. Looks like
I definitely need to take another trip to the store tomorrow. Hopefully
they have another copy of it since it is listed as a TruVideo title.
The Colors of Modern Rock
Not actually a game, but a "VirtualVCR" disc.
It has 6 music videos on it, all in .SGA format. I have only heard of 1 of
the 6 acts, Mr. Big. The other acts are Too Much Joy, T-Ride, The Belltower,
Xtra Large, Dramarama. The disc has a 1993 Copyright date and the music is
licensed through Warner Bros. There might be a reason that the record
company selected these acts for this particular project.
[Link:
SGA sample files]
Marky Mark: Make My Video
I guess this is similar to the
Kriss Kross "game".
Lots of .SGA media.
[Link:
SGA sample files]
Ground Zero: Texas
TruVideo title from Sony ImageSoft and Digital
Pictures. 2 discs with lots and lots of .SGA files.
[Link:
SGA sample files]
Midnight Raiders
TruVideo title from Sega. "All live video action!"
shouts the cover. The CD is loaded with media files. Each movie is split
into 2 files, a .joe file (big) and a .cmd file (always 2048 bytes). Both
file types begin with their own filenames.
[Link:
.joe/.cmd files from Midnight Raiders]
You guessed it, a TruVideo(TM) Production. First, here's the
copy that was in the ad for this game in the manual for Midnight Raiders:
"Tomcat's active matrix software creates each video dogfight with millions
of possible outcomes." I guess that means that there are lots of little
video clips that are branched to in real-time. But the disc layout is very
curious: 3 game files: maincode.prg (61440 bytes), subcode.prg (40960
bytes), and tca.bin (493299712 bytes). The latter file you have to see to
believe. It starts off with an early FILM header. There is the abbreviated
FDSC chunk followed by a very short STAB chunk. At the end of the STAB
chunk is a Quicktime 'mdia' atom! The pattern repeats further down. Final
analysis: I don't think I'll give this game much attention. In fact, I
believe I will take it back tomorrow.
Precursor to the other Sega CD Ecco title I have. This
one does not boast any video and I can't find any discernible media files
on the disc. Though there are 2 files in the neighborhood of 22-23 MB but
no recognizable format. Back to the store. But I would be remiss if I
didn't note that the manual has lots of informative facts about dolphins
as well as resources where you can learn more about these marvelous marine
mammals.
Followup: This title is revisited in the
February 16, 2003
entry.
[Link:
LMS samples from Ecco: Tides of Time]
Prize Fighter
The last TruVideo title of this score. More .SGA files. 'Nuff said.
[Link:
SGA sample files]
thoughts on FILM...
Right about now, I'm thinking that the "TruVideo" branding doesn't
indicate a whole lot. However, browsing through some of these
non-FILM-type files, I do see data patterns that resemble the audio and
video I saw in the FILM files.
by Mike Melanson (mike at multimedia.cx).
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