Install the game inside dosbox.

Maybe post the contents of the .bat file.

Maybe this will work, maybe not. Depends on how Win3.1'ish the installer & game is.

Read my 60 Seconds Guide to DOSBox (and don't just read it - follow it too).

If that doesn't help, come back with details on how you mounted your C and D drives, how you did the install, how you configured sound, music etc.

Reading the aptly named README file will be a good idea too.

Thanks for the help so far. I did try to run the install folder in dosbox by first mounting my dvd drive d:\ and then trying to run the setup.exe file, but it wouldn't run and gave some kind of error in garbled Japanese. This same file though will run in windows and launch the install menu, where the user can select which of two games to install: 1. Xanadu Easy Mode and 2. Xanadu 2 Remix. It's a nice package because it contains both scenarios of this famous Japanese dungeon crawler rpg, so it would be great if there were a way for it to work.

It is abandonware in that you can longer find it unless it is second-hand off of Japanese auction. I've gone ahead and uploaded the entire contents of the CD in case anyone would like to try it. If you get it to work, I will thank you profusely! : )

http://www.LINK-DELETED.com

This way anyone who would like to take a look can have access to all the files. Also, as far as I know, the folders on both RXE and RX2 labeled DISK A, is most likely intended to be used in the original PC-98 computer as some type of supplement to fill in the necessary files that the drive A (which was a floppy drive) to look for to launch it as though it were a disk. I've tried doing that with a PC-98 emulator, but the contents of DISK A are not in the correct format for the DRIVE A on the PC-98 emulator to see and play. But as far as I can tell from the manual, there should be three different methods of running the game: Either through DISK A of an actual PC-98 Japanese Computer System, or running it in windows/dos in either Win 3.1 or Win 95.

Thanks again for your help!

Edit: Thanks MiniMax. I just saw your post. I'll do that as well.

-Thomas

You call it abandonware - I call it illegal distribution of an unlicensed software. And we don't like that around here.

FYI, DOSBox displays that message and quits when INT 18h is called. On some BIOSes, INT 18h activates ROM BASIC, which might explain that other message about DosBasic. Anyway, dunno why it would be calling INT 18h... maybe it's supposed to be hooked by a TSR or device driver that hasn't been installed.

Does it work if int18h just returns?

Doubt it, guess like ripsaw said it's trying to use rom basic.

The code sets registers, including what appears to be an AH command code, prior to calling INT 18h, and stores register values to memory afterward, acting very much like it expects some kind of "service" to be active there. Can't find any online docs about known uses of that vector except some old Borland memory management stuff for their compilers and IDEs. According to the installer, the main program to start the game is X_LOAD.EXE, and there's no evidence of anything that should be loaded before it, so it seems the overhead should be native.

All of the text in the game is 2-byte stuff, maybe Shift-JIS Japanese. I'm not familiar with what kind of DOS driver overhead you need for that to work properly. Maybe the INT 18h thing is related to a language driver...?

googling

pc98 int18h

gives some results, but not readable for me xD

Do the register values match the NEC PC-9800 stuff?

http://www.ctyme.com/intr/int-18.htm

That's a possibility, but the program is using many more values for AH than are documented there. It is also using a bunch of low port numbers that don't make sense for a normal PC.

These PC-9800s are not IBM compatible, so bad luck.

Anyone up for machine=pc98? 😉

Seems there are some competent emulators for the system already, but would be easier to work with that stuff if you have a decent grasp of Japanese. 😉

Well thanks for taking a look at it and I apologize for offending the moderator here with the link that I posted. I guess I just figured that it might help look at the problem more in depth.

The most popular emulator for the PC98 system is a Japanese emulator called Neko Project II. It will play most .fdi and .hdi formatted PC-98 diskette rips, but the problem I'm having is that it doesn't support the PC-98 CD drive which came much later in its life and while it does contain the files that would normally be read by the A:\ drive on the system or emu, it isn't condensed into a dumped rom format of either .fdi or .hdi. If I could just make my own dump it would be fine, but I've no real idea about how to go about doing that. I'd love to know how, because there are other Japanese computer games that I own as well for systems such as the PC-8801 or FM-7 that would be great to play as well, even if it was with an emu.

I guess I just figured that since it is supposed to run in Win95 dos, there would be a way to get it to emulated by dosbox.

Thanks for your time guys, I don't want to bother you all much more about it since I feel kind of like I'm being a nuisance. If you do have any other ideas you feel like mentioning of steps to try though, I would greatly appreciate it. : )

-Thomas

I don't think it will work but can you try editing dosbox cofiguration and set:
cputype=386_prefetch

ripsaw8080 wrote:

FYI, DOSBox displays that message and quits when INT 18h is called.

Only when INT 18 is called?

I'm asking because I have another game that does the same thing. This game never worked in DOSBox (I've tried with virtually every option in the config file) but it only gives the "reboot requested, quitting now." message in DOSBox 0.73, in previous versions of DOSBox the game just hangs at random in the main menu.

I've put a breakpoint on INT18 with 0.73's debugger but nothing happened (aside from the "reboot requested, quitting now." message).
I also tried disassembling the executable and searching for CD18 (hex) but to no avail...

So does DOSBox gives this error only on INT 18 calls and the debugger simply cannot intercept it or are there other situation where this error can occur ?

Terminator has this message if you don't set cputype=386_prefetch.

The game is not Terminator and I already tried with all possible cpu types.

I'm not really sure what is the exact name of the game... All that's written in the main menu is "Hugo". The game is in German (which I don't understand) and according to this web site:
http://www.hugoswelt.de/games/klassik/hugo1/screenshots.html
It is simply called "Hugo 1".

I think the engine is based on an earlier game in Danish which is called "Hugo på nye Eventyr" (Google translation: "Hugo on New Adventure"), it's basically the same game except that it's split to two games (part 1 & 2) unlike the later German title which includes all 4 mini-games. The Danish version runs without problems in DOSBox.

I tried to debug the game myself to see what's wrong but I failed miserably... In version 0.72 I can see that the game goes to an infinite loop reading values from memory and comparing them to AL, but the loop is much too long for me to understand it, I also tried to disassemble the EXE and search for the loop that I saw in the debugger but strangely enough, I couldn't find it.