A-train: from A-III to A-7/A-8

[Guest ___]

Anyone played A7 or A8 ? I have the original A-Train (A1) for the PSX, but can't find A7 or the new release of A8 anywhere.

 

A7/A8 is jsut like playing Railroad Tycoon, Traffic Giant or Transport Tycoon. Or better still, it's basically a video game sim wherer you control a Japanese railroad company.

[stevenh]

I do remember acquiring A7 (or was it A6?) when I was in Japan over the Christmas Holidays. I do believe I still have it on a DVD here somewhere. My main concern was that my Laptop could not handle the Japanese characters (default system fonts, etc...) and even with codepages selected I had a hard time with it. If only I had a better grasp on Kanji.

 

I might actually try and find it again tonight and install it. It looked like an amazing program... I think the only thing I didn't like about the entire A-Train series was the anti-fluid motion... vehicles moved in large steps instead of using real acceleration, etc.

 

And now, the shameless plugs... I've helped contribute to the FreeTrain Project which is an English port of FreeTrain by Kohsuke. All fun and games but I never thought .Net was a platform for gaming... it's all dark over there now as well.

 

Other than that, playing with the Japan Set (Dev Forum here) for OpenTTD is great fun... I might start another thread on this if anyone is interested.

 

Anyway... back to A7... I'll update if I have any luck finding my CDs :)

[Guest ___]

I saw an add in Japan Railfan for A8. But anycase, I don't see why a laptop would have an issue with the kanji. Granted, it is a beast to read it.

 

I ahve the original A-Train for the PS1 and it was very fluid with the movements of the trains considering the game is now about 13 years old. From what I saw of A7 on a demo, it looked very smooth. But to play A7 or A8, I would assume one would need a pretty beefy PC and graphic card to handle it. I recall playing SimCity 4 and it had troubles with the graphic card I had.

[stevenh]

As for 'issues', I just mean the fact that default fonts on English Windows XP that I had installed would show Japanese characters as blocks making everything impossible to read. This was in the installer and after going through blind I got the game installed but then had error messages on load (they may have only been warnings) that were just strings of blocks and therefore I had no idea what was going on... I do believe I got the game to load but then with everything in Japanese, I gave up.

 

As for requirements... My laptop was brand new but had a boring intel gfx chipset. The intro menu was sluggish but I suppose it might've been playable. Now, seeing as that I have new hardware to test on, I do want to give it a try again.

[Martijn Meerts]

Windows by default doesn't install support for Asian fonts. In the language setup you can turn those fonts on and off somewhere, they take about 250mb of harddisk space to install.

 

And running any 3d on anything other than the latest intel integrated gfx is a no go, and even on the latest one it's bad. Heck, even many nVidia and ATI integrated graphics are bad since they use regular system memory in stead of dedicated video memory.

[Guest ___]

I've had Japanese fonts installed by default on my last 5 PCs so I gave no thought to that.

[stevenh]

Having the fonts installed is one thing.... Web browsing, IME Japanese input, etc is all great... I'm usually talking to my friends on msn in Japanese... the issue is that the standard fonts in the windows theme do not have the Japanese characters in their sets and therefore when messages popup during installs, actually usually the whole install process, is a series of blocks instead of Japanese characters.

 

And since I couldn't find the DVD last night, I'm all outta luck... might have to install Share10 again :P

[Guest ___]

I'm not sure then, I don't seem to ever have run into that issue with the fonts art any point.

[disturbman]

I don't know if here has ever play this game, but as for myslef it might have been my first encounter with japanese train. I really like it and try, without any success (I had technical problems) to play the other ones. And, if I could, I will be playing the seventh in japanese but I didn't figur out how to do it.  ::)

[Guest ___]

Yeah, I started a thread on this guy ages ago, but it died. On my first trip to Japan, A7 just came out, but now A9 is out. I have the original A-Train (A1) for the PS-1 as it was a US Release back in 1995 I think. I almsot bought A8, but at ¥6500 for a game, inwhich was heavy with Kanji, I thoguht better of it.

[disturbman]

I digged out the old thread: http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,358.0.html

 

I have the original A-Train (A1) for the PS-1 as it was a US Release back in 1995 I think.

 

The original game for the PS-1 back in 1995? Not really possible' date=' the first game was published in 1985. As for myself I only played the third version back in 1992, I guess that's the one you are thinking about. As a matter of fact I'm still playing it from time to time as I have find it as an abandonware and still pocess my old discs from back then.

 

[img']http://image.jeuxvideo.com/images/jaquettes/00022295/jaquette-a-train-mac-cover-avant-g.jpg[/img]

 

It was really an addictive game, too bad that the computer was not making any more progress after 5 in-game years. What I really like was the notice, it was allmost 200 pages thick and had a part on railroad history. I read it countless times.

 

But, when I think about it again now that I'm in Japanese modelling is that I can recognize real japanese train in the in-game design of trains. Playing you could spot some EF64 or 65, kiha40, series 485...

 

I will give A-7 another shot even though I don't understand Japanese at all. :D

[Guest ___]

[disturbman]

Looks like the same to me. :)

[Guest ___]

PSX graphics are pretty bad. I was playing last night. I bought my copy back in the mid-90's long before I ever thoguht about going to Japan or become in a J-fan.

[Mudkip Orange]

I thought this thread was gonna be about NYC.

[Guest ___]

Nope, just the coolest darned Japanese train simulator ever. Better than Railfan, better than Densha de Go!

[disturbman]

I digged out the old thread: http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,358.0.html

 

Topics merged.

 

If anyone ever want to try the olde version I can provide the file trhough Email.

 

That's how it look on windows:

[Guest ___]

What version is it?

[disturbman]

The third, or the first that was realeased outside Japan. I do think the one you used to play on your PS1 is this one.

[Guest ___]

The third, or the first that was realeased outside Japan. I do think the one you used to play on your PS1 is this one.

 

It looks really different than the PSX version, so I would have to assume buy the GUI it's the PC version in the image.

[disturbman]

Totally, the Mac portage was much more nicer, user-friendly and good looking.

[Guest ___]

Now only if I could find A7 or A8 and a Japanese gf who likes trains willing to hover over me and translate the game during game play for me.  8)

[Martijn Meerts]

Djeez you're demanding.. Just the Japanese girlfriend would be enough for me ;)

 

 

On the other hand, girlfriends cost a lot of money.. Money better spent on trains  ;D

[Guest ___]

Djeez you're demanding.. Just the Japanese girlfriend would be enough for me ;)

 

 

On the other hand, girlfriends cost a lot of money.. Money better spent on trains  ;D

 

Good point, but I'm 34 and really like to get some of the fringe benefits of having that gf. Though I do like the trains too. Don't make me choose damnit.

[stevenh]

So, I just found my A7 ISO... drop me a PM if interested.