YS 1 is a RPG published in 1987 by Falcom. MSX blue comes with a directly auto-executable HD version ! It uses the excellent tool RUNIT, created by the dutch Near Dark team. Following my tests, RUNIT works on any MSX2 and higher machine with at least 256 KB RAM. One exception : RUNIT is incompatible with the Korean MSX2. A tip for the Arabic MSX2 : press on CTRL when booting to start in the European mode.

This game includes a main disk (YS1.DSK) and an user disk (YS1.USR). RUNIT emulates a virtual disk on the harddisk ! 2 useful keys concerning the user disk : F1 (loading) and F4 (saving). To switch disk : “0″ for the user disk and “1″ for the main disk. Note that it’s the Japanese version of the game, as the English translation comes with an annoying bug that prevents to enter the tower …

This HD version can be used on blueMSX and openMSX (3 Mo). You must know that blueMSX uses the same routine for the “normal” disk images and the HD images. Advantage : it’s really more simple to load a HD image with blueMSX. As security measure, to avoid any confusion in the handling of the disk images, blueMSX requires HD images with a minimum size of 3 Mo.

Near Dark