Back to the Future and QBIQS videos

A quarter of a century ago, Pony Canyon released Back to the Future, an MSX1 game named after the blockbuster movie Back to the Future. In a nutshell: it's one of those games that has very little to do with the subject it represents. And considering the fact that Hydragon, who recorded these videos, finished the game in less than nine minutes, it's certainly not as classic a game as the movie has become in the 80's.

Luckily there are people who have better knowledge about how to create a good game, such as Z80ST Software. Based on Konami's Quarth, this MSX1 game shows quality in every aspect, and was a strong contender during MSXdev'10, in which it competed. Hydragon demonstrates you how to play it, and what a polished game it really is.

Relevant link: Back to the Future, QBIQS

Comments (10)

By Metalion

Paragon (1621)

22-12-2015, 10:26

Well, there's the dance hall, and Marty's parents ...
There's also some lightning in the sky, and the town hall with a clock.

Sadly no DeLorean !

By Imanok

Paragon (1198)

22-12-2015, 13:39

Watch the final part of the video

By snout

Ascended (15187)

22-12-2015, 15:49

That was an extremely fast cameo

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

22-12-2015, 16:54

Metalion wrote:

Well, there's the dance hall, and Marty's parents ...
There's also some lightning in the sky, and the town hall with a clock.

Don't forget, it has Johnny B. Goode as well (more or less).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1i5coU-0_Q

By JohnHassink

Ambassador (5657)

22-12-2015, 16:57

Also:

By SLotman

Paragon (1242)

24-12-2015, 19:55

There's the Back to the Future MSX2 adventure game on my site... strangely the DSK doesn't work neither in blueMSX or OpenMSX - just got it working on fMSX/RedMSX and older emulatores alike O_o

I recorded a small video, but I have no idea what I was doing in the game
(It appears to follow closely the plot of the movie, at least regarding the pictures I got to see)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz0v7sGAt74

By Manuel

Ascended (19258)

24-12-2015, 21:08

SLotman: I checked the disk image, but the problem is with the disk image. It's a 720kB disk image, but it's formatted as single sided (360kB). When I cut off the last 360kB, it works fine in openMSX. The reason is that the size is used to determine the format.

By SLotman

Paragon (1242)

24-12-2015, 21:28

Well, it worked like that on my Expert MSX2...(probably when I bought it, it was recorded on a 360kb disc - since my A: disk at the time was a 720kb - I probably just copied the disk with some disk copy software into a 720kb disk)

Since it works on a real MSX, shouldn't it work on emulators as well?
(Not trying to be a critic or anything)

Exactly why does this "format problem" happens?

By Manuel

Ascended (19258)

24-12-2015, 23:39

Yes, but a physical disk isn't a disk image

The problem is this: in a normal (9 sectors a track) DS disk image, the sectors are ordered by track, so like this (approximately, I can't quickly find the details at the moment):
C 0, S 0, H 0
C 0, S 0, H 1
C 0, S 1, H 0
C 0, S 1, H 1
C 0, S 2, H 0
C 0, S 2, H 1
C 0, S 3, H 0
C 0, S 3, H 1
C 0, S 4, H 0
C 0, S 4, H 1
C 0, S 5, H 0
C 0, S 5, H 1
C 0, S 6, H 0
C 0, S 6, H 1
C 0, S 7, H 0
C 0, S 7, H 1
C 0, S 8, H 0
C 0, S 8, H 1
C 1, S 0, H 0
C 1, S 0, H 1
C 1, S 1, H 0
C 1, S 1, H 1

etc. where C is Cylinder (or Track, the radial position on the disk), S is the sector (or Record, the angular position on the disk) and H is the head (so basically, the side of the disk).
In a Single Sided disk image, the H=1 data is missing (as it would be blank or noise anyway).

Soo.... the disk image you got there has a weird format: it first has all the H=0 sectors and then all the H=1 sectors (which are all blank). So, the format is wrong.

If you write it back to a real 720kB disk, I'm pretty sure it won't work, as it will be interpreted as the normal format, so half of the data will end up on the wrong side of the disk... Unless the software (just like the emulators you used in which it worked) looks at the media format descriptor (F8 in this case, which means single sided) and would ignore the 2nd half of the disk image....

I hope this is clear (and that I didn't make a mistake here)....

By SLotman

Paragon (1242)

25-12-2015, 06:50

Very clear, thanks

Now I'll have to write this to a real disk and try it to see if it will work or not

Edit: Just tried - and you're right, it behaved just like on OpenMSX and BlueMSX on my turbo-R.

Back to the Future and QBIQS videos

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