NEC PC Engine/Turbografx |OT| – No friends to bring controllers? No problem!

Initial wave of PC Engine stuff has arrived, no Duo-R console yet. Looking forward to unwrapping this lot!

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I’m jealous. I’ve never even played aPCE

Me neither, very exciting! Never too late to pick up one of your own!

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Print your own PC-Engine LT

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Played some PC Engine today, couldn’t wait for my PVM to arrive. But even via the rather imprecise composite output to a mid-2000s Sony Bravia there was a lot to enjoy, heck the backgrounds in Ankoku Densetsu/Legendary Axe II looked really good without razor sharp precision. They must have been designing for that output in the first place.

I was also taken back by how immediate everything is, it’s Famicom immediate. I know I should have been expecting this but you just don’t get the same experience launching a Game Archives title off the PSP, or from the PC Engine Mini which took a few seconds to load each game. Turning the power switch on and immediately seeing the title screen for every game I have put a grin on my face!


Thought it was cool how the Gomola Speed manual basically tells you on the first page to go play the game and ignore what’s beyond if you’re confident enough.

Anyone got any good tips for Final Match Tennis?

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More photos of Gomola please.

Final Match Tennis is my favourite tennis game. Just so tight. See Anyone for Tennis? 🎾

PCE has very very good composite video. Best of all consoles ever probably.

Also got damn at the home made LT.

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Here you go!

HuCARD


Manual

Glad to hear Family Tennis is the gold standard! How does Super Family Tennis stack up compared with it on Super Famicom? Might end up with both if it’s worth doing?

Can’t wait to see it on the JVC, but I really was surprised by how good those backgrounds looked, you couldn’t see individual pixel output but instead something more textured and detailed. Even Dungeon Explorer with its simpler sprites and backgrounds looked really good given the HD TV output.

Edit 19/02

I got a PC Engine Duo-R which was labelled as a ‘junk’ item on Yahoo Auctions. No controller, AV cable or power adapter. Untested.

Unfortunately I got really unlucky, not only does it pop up a dreaded ‘set disc’ message a good 10 seconds after pressing Run upon loading a disc in the tray, but with HuCard games right on the D-Pad doesn’t work at all. I’m guessing there’s a multitude of issues here - capacitors, laser etc?

Right now I’ve got four CD games I really want to play: Pomping World, Kaze no Densetsu, Splash Lake and Spriggan, is it worth still looking for a working Duo-R or should I give up and resort to emulation?

bit late in responding but did you have much success afterwards?

I find my old briefcase set up’s performance somewhat temperamental if there is any dust or smudges on the data side of the discs. I usually have to give give a disc a wipe down and a blast of compressed air at the laser lens in order to get the game rolling again

Thanks for the reminder, I gave it another go!

No luck alas. I’m not even sure if the discs are spinning after I close the lid and hit run, I hear a short noise and then nothing, even when I put my ear up against the console. Then the dreaded ‘please set disc’ message appears. Tried all the discs I own.

hmmm could be a bad gear… or capacitors…

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Agreed for sure. It almost looks like s-video

Just saw this in a video, and thought you guys might want to check it out for your hucards. Suposedly they work really well to replace those plastic sleeves if you’re missing some in your collection.

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It’s insanely good, especially the colour output which just looks perfect. I have no regrets getting an actual PC Engine system on the basis of its video output alone. Just a shame about the Junk Duo R, I really want to play Falcom’s Kaze no Densetsu at some point on CRT.

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Someone shared this with me and I thought it was rather interesting and probably explains why the PC Engine’s Composite output is so beautiful, they didn’t spare any expense at making it so, compared with competing systems at the time:

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Yeah saw that. Covers what we all already saw.

NES has very solid composite too, but SNES they deliberately softened all video for some reason.

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Do you think there might have been a financial incentive beyond saving a bit of money per machine, like maybe high margins up-selling people on S-Video cables etc?