j^aws wrote on 2021-05-08, 19:45:

Uka wrote on 2021-05-08, 17:05:

Well, good news! Someone has recently shared a whole bunch of REALmagic games :) […]
Show full quote

Well, good news!
Someone has recently shared a whole bunch of REALmagic games 😀

I am updating the list.

I. The games that certainly exist.

Ia. DOS games
1. Dragon's Lair.
2. Space Ace.
3. Return to Zork.
4. The Horde.
5. Entity.
6. Flash Traffic.
7. Crime Patrol.
8. Drug Wars (Crime Patrol 2).
9. Lord of the Rings.
10. Man Enough.
11. Space Pirates.
12. Conspiracy.

Ib. Windows games
13. Prince Interactive.
14. The Psychotron.
15. Silent Steel.

All games are available on the web, except 10, 11 and 12 (but their owners have promised to share the images).
'Entity' (#5) is a strange case as the disk image is not original and the game does not seem to work for me in MPEG mode.
'Silent Steel', while produced by Sigma Designs, is not RM-exclusive - it does support any MPEG drivers, including software ones.

II. The games that probably or possibly exist (there are pictures and trailers), but it is not proven by disk images or testimonies of the owners.
16. Cowboy Casino.
17. Video Cube - Space.
18. Return to Cyber City.
19. Brain Dead 13.
20. The Last Bounty Hunter
21. Dragon's Lair II.
22. 11th Hour.
23. Dune.
24. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.
25. King's Quest VI.
26. Police Quest 4.
27. Under a Killing Moon.

I am almost certain that numbers 16 and 17 were actually published - they are just not found yet. Numbers 18 to 21 probably exist as well.
The rest are more dubious.

III. Not games.
Well, and there are 37 more titles that are not actually games! There are three interactive movies for kids, a couple of encyclopedias, but the rest are multimedia titles - collections of movie clips, professional education videos etc. I have actually bought several of them - and yes, just like 'Silent Steel' they are NOT ReelMagic exclusives and could be run on any PC with software MPEG decoder. So I won't even list them here 😀

Nice detective work and compilation!

BTW, Silent Steel also has an MPEG2 version released in DVD-ROM.

I was going to say that also - and given the DVD version, the MPEG version is much less interesting to me.

What is the Lord of the Rings game?

I don't know that I was aware of Man Enough having a reelmagic version - do you have any scans of the box or CD?

j^aws wrote on 2021-05-08, 19:45:

Nice detective work and compilation!

Thanks 😀

j^aws wrote on 2021-05-08, 19:45:

BTW, Silent Steel also has an MPEG2 version released in DVD-ROM.

Hammer wrote on 2021-05-09, 05:16:

I was going to say that also - and given the DVD version, the MPEG version is much less interesting to me.

No 😀 I have played the DVD version, and what do you know - the MPEG version is actually better!
In DVD, they have somehow messed with the scenes, so it is abridged and incomplete comparing to the CD versions (both MPEG and non-MPEG).

j^aws wrote on 2021-05-08, 19:45:

What is the Lord of the Rings game?

It is a 1994 MPEG REALmagic version of 'The Lord of the Rings Enhanced CD-ROM' from 1993, which is in turn an enhanced version of "J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I" RPG.

j^aws wrote on 2021-05-08, 19:45:

I don't know that I was aware of Man Enough having a reelmagic version - do you have any scans of the box or CD?

Yes, there are some scans! I will send you a PM.

If anyone is interested, I've made a couple of video for the two newly found REALmagic games:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkP5VDL-exI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c54mcvQ54NQ

Uka wrote on 2021-05-09, 09:42:

No :) I have played the DVD version, and what do you know - the MPEG version is actually better! In DVD, they have somehow messe […]
Show full quote

j^aws wrote on 2021-05-08, 19:45:

BTW, Silent Steel also has an MPEG2 version released in DVD-ROM.

Hammer wrote on 2021-05-09, 05:16:

I was going to say that also - and given the DVD version, the MPEG version is much less interesting to me.

No 😀 I have played the DVD version, and what do you know - the MPEG version is actually better!
In DVD, they have somehow messed with the scenes, so it is abridged and incomplete comparing to the CD versions (both MPEG and non-MPEG).

I believe there are actually 2 DVD versions of Silent Steel. There's a DVD-Video version that works on DVD players. That version is indeed very cut and bad. However, there's also a DVD-ROM version, and I believe that one is complete. I never actually got it to work though, so I'm not sure.

Impressive the amount of material that has been rescued from Real Magic! Now let's party and play a bit of Dragons Lair.

Damn ! That's a very nice setup !

Hello people!

I hope there are experts in video encoding/decoding among you...
Now we will talk about the game The Horde (RealMagic MPEG CD)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403123/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

This game was very popular in the old days =)
Great plot and nice staged videos scenes...
But the game has always suffered from the quality of the video clips themselves (((
The best quality was presented in the version (RealMagic CD, DOS).
A few lucky people had the pleasure of playing this version of the game (lack of hardware for most)
Now, after so many years, I decided to play the game again in maximum quality...
But I found out that there is still no software emulation of hardware RealMagic (((
So I decided to experiment with this game.
As a result, I found out that modern codecs/players(Win10) do an excellent job of playing MPEG videos from CD (RealMagic).
But only with files recorded according to MPEG standards [MPEG1 Video 352x240x29.97fps]
On the disks of games (RealMagic) there are non-standard files with a frame rate of 12 or 15 FPS.
Such files are reproduced by modern software codecs with errors and image artifacts.
The DOS players (mpeg.exe , QV.exe ) reproduce these files better, but frames rate at the same time 1-2 FPS (there are no image artifacts).

The examples of one video from different platforms:

- PC RealMagic MPEG DEMO CD_ [MPG](best quality) [MPEG1 Video 352x240x29.97fps 1150kbps] - good software playback
- PC RealMagic THE HORDE CD _ [MPG](normal quality) [MPEG1 Video 352x240x12fps 1015kbps] - poor playback
- PC THE HORDE CD________[VDX](low quality) [unknown codec (presumably Cinepak)] - not played
- SEGA SATURN__________[AVI](average quality) [DUCK TrueMotion 144x200x15fps 1657kbps] - good software playback
- 3DO________________[DUK](low quality) [unknown codec (presumably Cinepak)] - not played

DOWNLOAD SAMPLES: https://www38.zippyshare.com/v/fzwlt40W/file.html

Can someone help with the experiments?

1) You need to find a way to play files with RealMagic THE HORDE CD (programmatically, without artifacts and FPS drops).
2) On RealMagic hardware, play the video RealMagic THE HORDE CD and capture it as lossless (352x240x29.97fps not compressed).
3) Find a way to play videos from 3DO and PC THE HORDE CD.
4) Upload the files of the RealMagic video card installed on your PC (Autoexec.bat, Config.sys and other files).

If someone is able to help, please respond.

Bobbytoz, are you CnC CURATOR? 😀

Uka wrote on 2022-02-11, 17:56:

Bobbytoz, are you CnC CURATOR? 😀

Yapp

BTW, there is no progress in ReelMagic emulation in Dosbox/ScummVM?

No. No one has ever started working on making one, as far as I know.

I think emulation of this is better suitable for PCem, 86Box or VARCem projects

KainXVIII wrote on 2022-02-12, 07:58:

BTW, there is no progress in ReelMagic emulation in Dosbox/ScummVM?

Uka wrote on 2022-02-12, 08:22:

No. No one has ever started working on making one, as far as I know.

How did I miss this discussion!? We literally started working on the emulator about one week before these posts. I guess all of a sudden people are thinking about ReelMagic for some reason 😀

Bobbytoz wrote on 2022-02-11, 16:08:

Hello people! […]
Show full quote

Hello people!

I hope there are experts in video encoding/decoding among you...
Now we will talk about the game The Horde (RealMagic MPEG CD)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403123/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

This game was very popular in the old days =)
Great plot and nice staged videos scenes...
But the game has always suffered from the quality of the video clips themselves (((
The best quality was presented in the version (RealMagic CD, DOS).
A few lucky people had the pleasure of playing this version of the game (lack of hardware for most)
Now, after so many years, I decided to play the game again in maximum quality...
But I found out that there is still no software emulation of hardware RealMagic (((
So I decided to experiment with this game.
As a result, I found out that modern codecs/players(Win10) do an excellent job of playing MPEG videos from CD (RealMagic).
But only with files recorded according to MPEG standards [MPEG1 Video 352x240x29.97fps]
On the disks of games (RealMagic) there are non-standard files with a frame rate of 12 or 15 FPS.
Such files are reproduced by modern software codecs with errors and image artifacts.
The DOS players (mpeg.exe , QV.exe ) reproduce these files better, but frames rate at the same time 1-2 FPS (there are no image artifacts).

The examples of one video from different platforms:

- PC RealMagic MPEG DEMO CD_ [MPG](best quality) [MPEG1 Video 352x240x29.97fps 1150kbps] - good software playback
- PC RealMagic THE HORDE CD _ [MPG](normal quality) [MPEG1 Video 352x240x12fps 1015kbps] - poor playback
- PC THE HORDE CD________[VDX](low quality) [unknown codec (presumably Cinepak)] - not played
- SEGA SATURN__________[AVI](average quality) [DUCK TrueMotion 144x200x15fps 1657kbps] - good software playback
- 3DO________________[DUK](low quality) [unknown codec (presumably Cinepak)] - not played

DOWNLOAD SAMPLES: https://www38.zippyshare.com/v/fzwlt40W/file.html

Can someone help with the experiments?

1) You need to find a way to play files with RealMagic THE HORDE CD (programmatically, without artifacts and FPS drops).
2) On RealMagic hardware, play the video RealMagic THE HORDE CD and capture it as lossless (352x240x29.97fps not compressed).
3) Find a way to play videos from 3DO and PC THE HORDE CD.
4) Upload the files of the RealMagic video card installed on your PC (Autoexec.bat, Config.sys and other files).

If someone is able to help, please respond.

I think I can help you with that... Once I finish up understanding the proprietary MPEG format that ReelMagic assets use, the same test-tools I am using can be used to convert those files in a lossless manner to whatever format you want.

Uka wrote on 2021-05-08, 17:05:

II. The games that probably or possibly exist (there are pictures and trailers), but it is not proven by disk images or testimon […]
Show full quote

II. The games that probably or possibly exist (there are pictures and trailers), but it is not proven by disk images or testimonies of the owners.
16. Cowboy Casino.
17. Video Cube - Space.
18. Return to Cyber City.
19. Brain Dead 13.
20. The Last Bounty Hunter
21. Dragon's Lair II.
22. 11th Hour.
23. Dune.
24. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.
25. King's Quest VI.
26. Police Quest 4.
27. Under a Killing Moon.

For Under a Killing Moon you could try contacting Big Finish Games, it's possible they'll remember if it actually released (though probably not since it's been almost 30 years!).

I've never seen Dune for RealMagic, and I searched a lot on eBay over the years to get every copy (Dune for the Amiga, Dune for the SegaCD, all variants of Dune for the PC Floppy (DUNE21, ...) , Dune for the PC CD (DUNE37), Dune for the PC CD with Tandy support (DUNE38), Dune Collector Edition)

I highly doubt its existence. But I might be wrong.

Hi guys ! , a new one ???

Another news, DOSBOX Reelmagic Support

https://github.com/jrdennisoss/dosboxrm

thierry wrote on 2022-04-02, 17:53:

Hi guys ! , a new one ???

No, it is not a new one, and sadly it is not a game, nor a Reelmagic exclusive:

Uka wrote on 2019-11-09, 10:52:

OK, I could try to make an iso of 'Power Rangers', but a little bit later! It is not a game though, just some movie (that could be run on any MPEG player, not just ReelMagic).

thierry wrote on 2022-04-02, 17:55:

Another news, DOSBOX Reelmagic Support
https://github.com/jrdennisoss/dosboxrm

No news either 😀
The author of the emulator has a thread on this forum and has recently written just above here:

jrdennisoss wrote on 2022-03-05, 01:43:

How did I miss this discussion!? We literally started working on the emulator about one week before these posts. I guess all of a sudden people are thinking about ReelMagic for some reason 😀

Well, some news is that "Return to Cyber City" is said to definitely exist! So I move it from Part II to Part I of the list: Re: Reelmagic/Realmagic MPEG games

Sadly no more games have been found yet.
I only keep finding multimedia projects, but they are not games and not RM-exclusives (and not even listed in Part III by names).
Here is my small collection so far 😀

Collection looks good. Any news on Conspiracy? Ive not seen anyone test it on the dosbox fork.