The SEGA SC-3000H was my first ever computer. Distributed by John Sands Electronics in Australia in the early 80's, it was Sega's attempt at competing with the Commodore 64. It was essentially the same internals as the SEGA SG-1000, which was a cartridge-only unit popular in Japan. This same family of hardware would eventually become the "Sega Mark III", better known as the "Sega Master System" to the rest of the word.

The SC-3000H could play games from both cartridge and cassette tape. I found out recently that MESS (from the developers of MAME) could play cassette tape dumps (captured to WAV files). A quick phone call to my parents (who still have our original SC-3000H and tapes), and they very kindly agreed to try and record some of the audio cassettes to WAV file for me.

The first audio capture is a game called "Vortex Blaster" made by Trident Technological Systems (although I've also read somewhere that a company called "Poseidon Software" had something to do with it - email me if you know the real story) in 1984. This was my very first shmup, and holds great memories of staying up late going for the high score.

To play this, first grab a hold of MESS. I use Linux, and compiled RBelmont's SDLMESS. Mac users look here.

You'll need two files. The SEGA SC-3000H BIOS which includes SEGA BASIC V3. And the Vortex Blaster audio cassette dump.

Using MESS from the command line, I run the following:

mess sc3000h -cart Sega_BASIC_Level_3_V1_SC-3000.sc -cass SC3000H_VortexBlaster.wav

MESS should fire up. Type "OK" to get past the various information screens. You'll be presented with the SEGA BASIC Level 3 startup screen. Type "load" and press return, and the system will begin loading the tape. Press SCROLL LOCK, and then TAB to bring up the system menu. Go to "Tape Control", and choose "Play". After a short while a message should appear saying "FOUND VORTEX BLASTER B". You will need to wait a while (3 minutes or so... remember the days of waiting for tape?) and the system should announce the load is complete. Stop the tape, navigate back to the system, and type "RUN".

In game controls are CR (Carriage Return, i.e. "Enter") to start, the keyboard arrows to move your ship, and the left CTRL button for shoot. You can shoot coloured objects for points by putting your cursor over them and firing, Xevious-style. Bumping into the snakes on the walls will cause damage to your shield, as will the other enemies in later levels. You must also keep your fuel up by shooting the fuel cannisters marked with an "F", again by placing your cursor over them and firing.

And yes, this game even included sampled speech! Complete with god-awful nasal Australia accent! :)

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