Giten Megami Tensei PC-9801 Version Game Dump and Scan Archive
Game Dump Download Link
Printed Media Scan Archive Download Link
It’s been long promised, but after much Yahoo Japan Auctions shipping finangling, I finally own a physical copy of Giten Megami Tensei for the PC-9801. For readers of the blog who were here the last time I got a rare copy of a PC Megami Tensei game by way of Megami Tensei for the PC-8801, you know what this means: a whole boatload of goodies included in the package archived and uploaded by yours truly so that series history may be forever preserved.
Unlike last time, this release comes with two distinct links up top. The first is my own personal dump of the game itself, while the second is the actual archive of my scans with all of the game’s printed materials included. This is to allow those who only want one or the other to have the choice to download just what they want, rather than get everything in one big package and potentially waste bandwidth.
I’ll get to what’s included in the scan archive in the next paragraph, but I briefly want to cover why I’m also releasing a proper dump of the game itself since I haven’t often done that on this blog. In essence, the reality as it generally stood until now was that while you could find the Windows port of this game circulating online with some detective work, in my experience, a downloadable version of the original PC-9801 version was basically impossible to come by on either English or Japanese sites. That’s not to say someone else hasn’t dumped it already, but, like many Japanese PC games from the 80s and 90s, I suspect it’s been relegated to obtuse Japanese P2P filesharing systems. While it took a lot of time to research and figure out by trial and error how to install the game and properly archive it, I feel it was important to do so partly so that, again, history can be preserved, but also to give people the option to play a version of this game that shouldn’t be necessarily prone to compatibility issues. Although the Windows copy can still run in today’s operating systems, it’s also very, very old at this point and may well not play nicely on some current computers. Either way, the end result is that now you’re able to play the original version of the game in an emulator of your choice. (Make sure to consult the readme for instructions on how to run it since it’s a fairly specific procedure.)
Anyway, as for the scanned materials, that 7-Zip archive includes the following things:
Map (although it’s pretty rough since I had to piece together multiple scans in Photoshop given how big the thing is)
Other miscellaneous paperwork
Essentially, you can check out everything you could possibly see and read in the physical package if you bought it yourself. Aside from the really nice super high resolution box art, the most important part of this archive is easily the manual. Not only does it include a good amount of character art (albeit in black and white), there’s a lot of critical information about the game in terms of story/gameplay content that the game proper doesn’t cover, as well as technical stuff. As such, it’s very much so worth keeping close by if you intend to play or even, god forbid, install it from scratch. (You really shouldn’t do it if you don’t know what you’re doing, though. Just use the preinstalled hard disk and floppy disk images I’ve included in the dump and follow my instructions on how to run it.) Of course, that given the age of all this material, there are visual blemishes here and there, but it should all still be very readable.
And if you do want to give the game a serious shot, I can’t recommend the PDF guides published on this Japanese site here enough. (Obviously, Japanese literacy required.) They’re extremely thorough and very well laid out; I don’t think I’ve seen a fan guide with better presentation and production values, especially for a game with as dubious of a reputation as this one.
That should be just about everything I want to cover. Do note that you’re free to repost the contents of these archives to blogs, wikis, forums, etc, but I would greatly appreciate a credit and a link back to the Atlus Atlas if you do so considering it took a lot of time and even more money to bring to fruition.
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