Any SegaCD/Turbografx-16 fans here? Recommendations welcome

Darksavior

@mortalwombat How big is your microsd card? I recommend a minimum of 128GB but I personally have a 256GB though it's not full. The pi4 does not run ps2.

Compress your cd games. Chd is supported on most cd-based emulators. Not sure if the chd batch converter is on this forum, but it's on the retropie subreddit. For ps1, I convert multiple-disc games to eboot/pbp since the process merges them to a single file.

Mame2003plus supports the arcade version of final fight with the sega cd audio.
Lords of Thunder is a bit easier on the sega-cd I think, the menu girl has a voice, and the soundtrack was completely arranged to be more power metal. The pc-engine version is a bit more "dirtier"but I prefer it.
Snatcher on pc-engine is only in japanese.
The arcade version of Road Avenger is now supported in daphne.
Working designs games are much harder than their japanese versions. Someone went ahead and patched them back. https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=23436.0

MortalWombat

@darksavior Appreciate the reply! (and especially for acknowledging some of the specific games listed, hopefully there are others here who can attest to some of these lesser-known ones). Will try to take this one point at a time.

The biggest what-if? solved is hearing that I might not be able to play PS2 games (which I probably should’ve already suspected; I remember someone saying that the Pi had difficulty even playing N64 games). I’d mainly been hoping to get Katamari Damancy working for the missus, but unless I buy an actual PS2, I suppose that may have to wait until the Pi5, Pi6, or whatever upgrades are capable of running it. :/

So yeah, knowing that, I can expect to have quite a bit more space for PS1, Turbo-CD, Sega-CD etc games (or any other good ones I may have missed; hell, I already have some 400+ arcade games, and it STILL feels like there are some overlooked ones I may have missed, heh).

I actually DO have a 128gb MSD as well (I think I read somewhere that the 256gb and above versions could have issues, and I figure at that point, you’re probably better off just getting a 2nd MSD). Last I checked, I think I did have about 100gb of space left, but considering how large some of these CD rips are, AND considering how long those 2 lists above are (AND how many good PS1 games there are), I can see all of those games eating up the remaining space pretty quickly.

So I think it would be worthwhile to learn about compressing these CD games. I take it someone just finds, downloads, then uses an outside program to compress a working CD-ROM/7z archive?

Haven’t really gotten around to checking out the Retropie forums on Reddit much yet, I did Google the following links; I am unfortunately a Mac guy so I know it’ll be a bit more of a challenge for me to find a CHD batch converter.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/72kh6q/stepbystep_guide_how_to_convert_sega_cd_or_pc/
https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=1788
https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/gzirdu/converting_bincue_to_chd_for_mac/

As far as your other points:

If the only real difference w/ Final Fight CD is the audio, unless there’s some huge improvement over the arcade version, I may just skip it for the arcade version for the sake of saving MSD space.
Never even played Lords Of Thunder, but I am a fan of shooters. Guess this is just a matter of personal preference/which the small ROM is.
I forgot that the Turbo Snatcher was Japanese only, guess that resolves that (I’ve been having these same issue for some of the FDS games/having to find English patched versions).
I actually wasn’t even aware that Road Avenger was an arcade translation, so normally that’d be my go-to. Anyway, I found this doc & thread about Daphne, is that similar to another experimental experimental package I’d have to install?? I’ll have to check back which exact version of Retropie I currently have, but there’s currently no Daphne folder in ROMS.
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Daphne/
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29450/daphne-bin-fails-to-build?_=1614402637119

That aside, I guess the bigger issue/question is how large both the Daphne software and arcade ROM are, if it’s less than the Sega-CD version (and again, never having played it, if it’s worth all the trouble; I may have to look for a Youtube walkthrough of it, if there is such a thing).

And for those Working Design games— hadn’t even heard of the company, but by the sound of things, that’d include the Lunar games, Popful Mail, and Vay— but unless they’re REALLY good, I may skip ‘em… a couple of them look like RPGs, which I normally love (Zelda and FF4 being 2 all-time favorites), but considering that I’ve mainly been playing quicker shooter/platformer/fighting/puzzle-type games on the Pi so far, I’m not sure when/if I’m gonna get around to playing something more complex/time-consuming like an RPG. :/

Zering

@mortalwombat You will never run PS2 on a pi 4. Sorry.
Other than that, my only real suggestion if you're going to delve into CD based platforms is to hook up an external hard drive to your Pi. That way you don't have to worry about space so much.

Darksavior

@mortalwombat

Again, no ps2. The ps2 support in retropie is for x86 computers. I wouldn't hold my breath for a future pi to support it anytime soon. Get a computer or the real thing.
Yes, in the retropie subreddit link asking about a chd converter for the mac, one of the retropie devs posts the command line example on how to convert. There is no batch file for it so you'll have to do it manually. Use the chdman app from the intel 64bit build of mame https://sdlmame.lngn.net/
Final Fight arcade has better colors. Not sure if it has better framerates too. I recommend the arcade version with the segacd audio.
Yes, install the daphne emulator from retropie-setup just like any emulator that's not pre-installed.
I'm not nostalgic for the sega-cd lunar games, so I'm perfectly fine with the ps1 remakes. They are RPG's.
I haven't tried many working designs games but people seem to like them.

I have over 300 cd games converted to chd or pbp and that alone is under 100GB.

PC-Engine has a lot of great shooters. Look them up on youtube. This one goes into detail on a few:

barbudreadmon

@mortalwombat said in Any SegaCD/Turbografx-16 fans here? Recommendations welcome:

unless I buy an actual PS2, I suppose that may have to wait until the Pi5, Pi6

What about using a pc ? Realistically speaking, pi5/6 won't be able to run ps2 hardware either. The fastest ps2 emulator i know, pcsx2, requires a 3+ Ghz x86/x86_64 cpu, with the frequency flea jumps pis have been doing, we might be at 3+ Ghz by pi10 ? Assuming by that time, pcsx2 is compatible with arm/aarch64 (i wouldn't bet on it, afaik x86_64 compatibility had been in the works for over a decade and only got finalized a few months ago). I'll avoid talking about pi's gpu case, which is just a disrecpectful joke imho.

MortalWombat

Hey gents, appreciate all the replies, apologies for my delayed one, wanted to go over every thing one-by-one if you don’t mind…

@Zering : yep, I have heard of others using an external drive— I’m guessing a SSD would be best— to connect a larger library of games to their Pi (especially for ones they’ve connected to arcade-style standup cabinets). I may look into that at some point. For the moment though, I’m hoping to keep this thing as portable as possible! ;)

But yeah, to all of you— @Darksavior & @barbudreadmon included— knowing that I can’t run PS2 games on ANY existing Pi does actually simplify things, since that’s that much space I’d need to potentially allocate for those games. So we may have to look into just getting an old PS2 at some point (or as you’ve suggested, figure out how to get those to run on a PC emulator).

Darksavior, out of curiosity, how much smaller on average do those compressed CDROM games tend to be from the original rips? Like how small would a 600mb game be (thinking of this Castlevania rip as an example) after you’ve compressed it?? The Mac thing definitely does complicate matters, but hopefully I can figure out how to do so using command line.

MortalWombat

Anyway for the time being/until I can figure out how to compress any of these CDROMs, I’ve just been using GameFaqs (though if anyone has any other game databases they’d recommend, I’d appreciate it) to see if any of the games listed above are available on other consoles/platforms. I haven’t been able to search all the Sega-CD titles, but here are the titles that seem exclusive to the Turbografx-CD, w/ an estimate of about how big the rips are (in the off-chance that anyone else stumbles across this thread and finds this info helpful)... in other words, the ones I'm probably going to have to get (I may have to track down a MB/GB calculator online to see how much space they're gonna take, who knows...).

GAMES EXCLUSIVE/UNIQUE TO THE TURBOGRAFX-CD (and approx. rom sizes):
• Beyond Shadowgate (TURBO-CD rip = 304mb approx.)
• Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (TURBO-CD = 326.6mb. Also on PS Portable)
• Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari/River City Ransom (1993) (TURBO-CD = 281.3mb)
• Dungeon Explorer 2 (TURBO-CD = 387.09 mb- 535.5mb)
• Gate of Thunder (TURBO-CD = 390mb)
• Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire (TURBO-CD = 257mb)
• Godzilla (TURBO-CD = 315.6mb)
• Image Fight 2 (TURBO-CD = 386.7mb)
• Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman 3: Ikai no Princess (TURBO-CD = 451.9mb)
• Lords Of The Rising Sun (TURBO-CD = 261mb - 281.7mb)(console exclusive, also on Amiga)
• Seirei Senshi Spriggan (shooter) (TURBO-CD = 414.8mb)
• Splash Lake (puzzle) (TURBO-CD = 260.8mb)
• Strider Hiryū (TURBO-CD = 336.3mb) (port of arcade version, but different/with added animation & levels)
• Super Darius (TURBO-CD = 364.7mb)
• Super Darius 2 (TURBO-CD = 443.3mb)
• Super Raiden (TURBO-CD = 317.2mb)
• Syd Mead’s Terraforming (shooter)(TURBO-CD = 279.5mb)
• Tengai Makyou II: Manji Maru (RPG) (TURBO-CD = 352mb)
• Valis II (TURBO-CD = 308mb - 379.9) (console exclusive, also on MSX, X68000)
• Valis IV (TURBO-CD, SNES version different)
• Vasteel (strategy/action)(TURBO-CD = 361.2mb)
• Ys Book I and II (action/RPG) (TURBO-CD = 633.6mb, also on Playstation Portable, Nintendo DS)

Zering

@mortalwombat You don't want to play Rondo of Blood on PSP, it's locked away behind a remake that you have to play through first and which I think is very poor. Likewise Ys on PCECD and PSP aren't exactly the same thing, but both are great (although be warned those games are crushingly difficult).

Darksavior

@mortalwombat They don't compress much if they have a lot of cd audio. Rondo = 327MB, Valis 2 = 278MB, Valis 4 = 278MB, Darius 2 = 347MB, Spriggan = 326MB., shubibinman 3 = 336MB. These are just examples, I'm not posting them all. Just get a large card and call it a day.

MortalWombat

@Zering , yeah I figured there would be differences with all of them... frankly in the case of Strider, normally I'd just go w/ the much-smaller arcade ROM, but am kinda curious to check out the extra content. Never really played the PSP and am a bit skeptical to do so if the Pi already has trouble/can't play the PS2 (on a related question fellas, I saw in the Docs section that they do have a bit on the PS2; I assume the "only for x86/x86_64 builds" part refers to emulating it on a PC? Surprised that they don't mention any of the technical limitations for why we can't yet get it working on the Pi).

Anyway @Darksavior , yeah I just found/listed those ROM sizes along with some files I saw on a download site that will remain nameless, so it sounds like the CHD/compression method doesn't shrink them that much more than that, and I assume that most of the files I've been seeing (which are coming up as 7s, which have .ccd, .cue, larger .img, and .sub files when I open 'em outta curiosity) may already be compressed for all I know.

In any event, of the handful of CDROMs I've tried testing so far-- namely Rondo Of Blood, Gate Of Thunder, Double Dragon 2 (mainly wanna compare it to the arcade version) and Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari/River City Ransom haven't been working at all, even with the syscard3.pce BIO I DL'd (unless that's the wrong Bio?).

Whereas the games didn't load at all before/just returned to the PC Engine menu, now it just loads a "PC ENGINE SUPER CD-ROM 2 SYSTEM VER 3.00" screen that prompts "PUSH RUN BUTTON," and when you do, you either get a "Load Error" message, or the game just never loads... so, I think now I may have to transition/escalate what was originally just a question about good Turbo/Sega-CD games over to the Help section. C'est la vie!

quicksilver

@mortalwombat said in Any SegaCD/Turbografx-16 fans here? Recommendations welcome:

Never really played the PSP and am a bit skeptical to do so if the Pi already has trouble/can't play the PS2

A pi 4 handles many psp games surprisingly well. Even more performance can be gained by overclocking and setting the display resolution to 720p instead of 1080p via the runcommand menu. Some games will require a little frameskipping and others will be fine without it.