Damn those were the good old days… Setting up my PC as a run through to fool the Dreamcast into thinking my DSL was dialup internet. I played PSO and Shenmue so much my family hated it.
I did some shenanigans back in the day to fake a local network for my xbox 2001, so we could ‘LAN’ with others over the internet, mostly 2v2 deathmatches. I remember you neede cross-over UTP cables, and we had to learn what that meant. What did your DSL/Dialup switcheroo give you ins PSO and Shenmue? Just regular old multiplayer?? or something like pokemon trading over the link cable?
Dunno where op was but in the UK at least it wasn’t possible for the longest time to get the Dreamcast to use a flat rate dial up because Sega did a deal with British Telecom. This made multiplayer pricey af… I know this because my dad was not amused at the £230 phone bill I racked up in the first month of PSO 😅
I did similar for the Xbox lol, and I live in the states, so everything worked fine in both DC games for me.
I was surprised it was that simple, because these days it wouldn’t be as easy. I remember being super safe trying to avoid the save corruption called NOL.
For anyone reading not sure what NOL’ing was:
When the code is enabled, you withdraw a certain item from your bank depending on which slot you want to target. The victim’s character then reloads as one of the game’s NPC characters. NOL is NPC 00, so she was the default chioce and thus became the generic name for all NPC overwriting. The victim would then have to turn off his Dreamcast to avoid having his character destroyed permanently, and doing so would instead cause him to lose all his unequipped items, since he didn’t save.
Auto-save NOLing could either be accomplished by waiting to NOL somebody until he had already entered a teleporter, so that his game would automatically save at the end of the loading screen and destroy his character permanently on its own, or by combining a NOL code with a teleportation code that would forcibly send the victim to another floor after overwriting his data. Once the save is complete, the victim has to delete his character and start over, since his class, level, and inventory are forever replaced by that of the NPC. It was quite common on Oberon, which is why most people would play in locked teams on other ships to hide from the people who used those codes.
Various other codes were also created to improve the efficiency of NOLing other players, such as the “bank reach” code that allowed you to merely face the direction of the bank counter and press the A button to access it, which would allow you to immediately NOL other players after entering a team, instead of having to spend time running from the Hunter’s Guild to the Check Room. Other codes would allow you to load your character data at the Telepipe locations instead of the Hunter’s Guild when joining a team, so that you would be closer to the bank and not have to run as far.
Ultimate Dark Falz was one thing (3rd form putting your buddies voodoo doll in its mouth so damaging it damaged the player), but Ultimate Olga Flow, yeesh. My brother and I loved that first form, then that second one was always rough.
Walz is the guy who will join your 3 man group in Phantasy Star Online at 2 AM to go take down Dark Falz.
Walz manages to save your quarter from getting stuck behind the frame for the top display of the arcade cabinet, and lets you have next.
If “I was born in the 80s” were a comment…
Born in the 80s is more the NES and SNES times. That’s gotta be born in the 70s.
What? I was born mid-80s and spent a lot of time in the arcades growing up.
But how much time did you spend at the drugstore?
Damn those were the good old days… Setting up my PC as a run through to fool the Dreamcast into thinking my DSL was dialup internet. I played PSO and Shenmue so much my family hated it.
I did some shenanigans back in the day to fake a local network for my xbox 2001, so we could ‘LAN’ with others over the internet, mostly 2v2 deathmatches. I remember you neede cross-over UTP cables, and we had to learn what that meant. What did your DSL/Dialup switcheroo give you ins PSO and Shenmue? Just regular old multiplayer?? or something like pokemon trading over the link cable?
XBConnect! I 'member!
Dunno where op was but in the UK at least it wasn’t possible for the longest time to get the Dreamcast to use a flat rate dial up because Sega did a deal with British Telecom. This made multiplayer pricey af… I know this because my dad was not amused at the £230 phone bill I racked up in the first month of PSO 😅
I did similar for the Xbox lol, and I live in the states, so everything worked fine in both DC games for me.
I was surprised it was that simple, because these days it wouldn’t be as easy. I remember being super safe trying to avoid the save corruption called NOL.
For anyone reading not sure what NOL’ing was:
OMG yes. I loved PSO.
Ultimate Dark Falz was one thing (3rd form putting your buddies voodoo doll in its mouth so damaging it damaged the player), but Ultimate Olga Flow, yeesh. My brother and I loved that first form, then that second one was always rough.
My god, you have incited my urge to pick up that game again
Been emulating it on the Steam Deck all week. :)
Walz the kind of VP to join the ARMA 3 session and play medic
ig man, I lived that game. maybe I should return to it at some point