El-Hazard the Magnificent World: PC-9821
From EHOL
-- The History and the Hunt --
Part I: Introducing the PC-9821
The El-Hazard game first arrived on the PC-9821 personal computer. According to NEC's website, the manufacturer of the computer system, the "NEC PC9800 series are Japanese personal computers. This product is ONLY designed for and sold in Japanese domestic market."
I originally thought this was a computer system strictly written for games. However, it appears to be a pretty vanilla computer line like anything else you'd buy from Intel-using, IBM-compatible lines. A quick history of all models is available at this site which specializes in trying to emulate some of these systems. However, for the curious, here's a quote from that page on specifically the PC-9821 to get a better idea about its hardware:
"... The new model was named 'PC-9821' ... and had SVGA-level graphics (640x480 with 256 colours). Apart from graphics, this had CD-ROM, SCSI, 40MB of harddrive, and 4MB main memory. Since its CPU was i386SX, running Windows seemed to be bit annoying."
Anyone who ever worked with a i386SX, like myself, will have a pretty good idea of what the power of this machine was. It's not incredibly high. Just having the "SX" version of the processor instead of the "DX" was a lower-price crippling effect. It does sound about right to run a less-than-Saturn version of El-Hazard, however. And this is what appeared to have happened.
Part II: El-Hazard for the PC-9821 is Released
El-Hazard was apparently a highly anticipated game. Marketing for it had begun promptly and at least one full size
advertisement poster for it was made. We have never seen it, it was only briefly mentioned on a Japanese auction
site.
Alas, it was a market failure. It sold horribly and was overpriced. (Something around ~$100 USD on initial
release.) No clear reason for this was ever presented to us, but we suspect the primary failure on PC-9821 was simply
it was being sold to the wrong type of market. Specifically, the PC-9821 was well known for hentai games. And many
other sites seemed to have verified that perhaps 90% of all games made for PC-9821 were of this type. So for
El-Hazard to have a pretty vanilla release and a hefty pricetag probably made it falter in both directions.
The
Saturn version was released only six months after the PC-9821 game... this was probably some marketing scheme to try
to save the title be enhancing it -- adding movies, full voice acting, and taking advantage of the Saturn's enhanced
graphics processor -- and it must've at least got more dealers to buy it. After all, the Saturn game can be readily
purchased by a few import games resellers and surfaces on eBay every week or so. Even more promotional materials appeared in various publications, including such strange things as "Noble Mask of Jinnai the Dictator". Eventually the
Saturn title suffered generally the same fate as its brother, though in a more lingering fashion that still is present
today.
Part III: "We want this game!"
The PC-9821 game eluded us
for a very long time. What did it look like, minus all the proposed Saturn additions? How did it sound? It was
supposed to be worse, we knew that, but we want to know how it was worse! But having nothing to go on, we
eventually figured it wasn't really worth worrying about. It probably didn't even look all that different than the
Saturn one anyway, right? But then...
Our first glimpse came to us via a screenshot printed in halftones inside one of the artbooks. We noticed the obvious
differences; an interesting screen design -- often referenced as a "boxed in" effect by the very few who ever described
the title -- and party members on the left. (Entirely replacing the options screen?)
For comparison, here's a shot from our PC version.
The screenshot was nice, but it didn't tell us much. In fact, it certainly looked like a lower resolution than the
Saturn, certainly cementing the "poorer graphics" concept. After all, the handdrawn art we came to love apparently
had been scaled down even moreso on the original than the Saturn. Or so we thought.
Part IV: "Why didn't someone tell us about this?!"
Futile internet searches that got us nowhere eventually caused us to give up looking until suddenly, on a random
abandoned El-Hazard character shrine, there appeared a simple stamped graphic...
Any casual browser would've ignored it, not seeing anything special about it. But it was a very important artifact to
be discovered. Of course, you'll notice it's the same Fujisawa standing proudly in the halftone screenshot! Someone
casually took it and then carelessly turned it into a logo! Note that the pixels are "real", so it's not a screenshot
from a foreign capture device that would've certainly blurred it, such as what might appear in a magazine or something.
This came from either the disc or a system that was actually running the game at the
time. Either way, someone owned it and was kind enough to provide this person with the graphic! Later on the site a
clean version was also found.
Please note this is not the same as the Saturn version which looks like this:
This temporarily refueled a desperate search for the game, but again we came up empty handed. Later, during a
non-related El-Hazard search using "El-Hazard" spelled out in Katakana, we came upon a single MIDI on a site of many
game MIDIs claiming to be from the PC-9821 game! Well, it certainly wasn't the same version as the equivalent one we
had done for our PC game! Once again, a small artifact had been left behind. (It turns out later that it was a
recomposition.) This fueled one more desperate round of searching using every misspelling of El-Hazard we could
think of, various combinations, and whatever else. But still, nothing. It wasn't until Tim decided to try just
searching for PC-9821 downloads that he accidently came across someone who was VERY RECENTLY (as of late October 2003)
giving away the CD to the PC-9821 version in several hundred RAR files.
The site is apparently a PC-9821 enthusiast site. (Note:
Check out some of their screenshot collections if you don't believe the part about the hentai games.) Apparently they
will schedule a period where they are distributing a particular CD, but only have bandwidth and/or space to do it
roughly 200 files at a time. Sadly, since this was only found in November by us, the El-Hazard distro was already 100
files in! We missed the first 100! Without those we'll never be able to complete the CD image! At this time, the
sour luck of the draw has not been solved, unfortunately. However, we DID get four new, full-color, actual-size
screenshots to finally see the game in its glory. Click on any to see the full size, unadulterated
It's funny. We knew the graphics would be dithered slightly to 256 colors. But no one told us that it ran in HIGH
RESOLUTION. (640x480 vs. Saturn's 320x224!) Note the very unique interface with the interesting borders and
decoration. While it may look like the background images are indeed smaller, they actually measure slightly LARGER
than the Saturn's full screen projection! I guess this would've been hinted if I had ever actually bothered
beforehand to put the PC-9821 Fujisawa and the Saturn Fujisawa in close quarters before as seen above. Note how
miniscule the Saturn version appears.
Screenshot #1: This shot is pretty comparable to the Saturn version, ignoring all the borders and other PC-9821
specific stuff. Equivalent shot from the PC
port.
Screenshot #2: This image was during the intro, where we usually saw the video clip of Nanami talking to Makoto... just without the animation.
I can absolutely guarentee the background image being used here does
not exist in the Saturn version. (After all, I decoded all the graphics files!) This suggests that some graphics
from the PC-9821 version didn't make it to the Saturn version. Who knows what goodies may lie within? There are
several unused background images in the Saturn version, however, such as these:
Notes: Normally, the ELx_yy.B16 files are a series within in a specific game chapter, specified by the "x" number
of the filename. It is lightly suspected only by us that the EL0's may be additional graphics intended to beef up the
Saturn version, but did not want to disturb the original order of the existing graphics. But this is only
speculation. The EL1_01XJ file has a regularly used background from Chapter 1, but there's never a moment where you
casually encounter Jinnai face-to-face as displayed. There's also a similar graphic in the Chapter 5 collection with
Jinnai standing in front of Ifurita's tomb. These were both possible PC-9821 or maybe just development hangovers
before they illustrated more detailed art for specific events.
Unlike the Saturn Version, the PC-9821 version used a multi-panel intro that emulated the Wanderers First Opening
intro. The Saturn Version used an actual recording of the Wanderers Second Opening intro, complete with all the music
and sounds... and without the credits.
