The PC - Engine

The console I didn't know existed and wished I had…

Back in the early nineties, when I was a teenager, my ultimate desire was to own one of the 16-bit systems on the market. The SNES and the Mega Drive (aka Genesis), ruled the market. In Portugal, Sega had a bigger share of the market, so their consoles were predominant, thus making almost everything unknown to us back then. Even Nintendo was seen as too rare and expensive because its representation in the country was minimal. But in my particular case, due to financial constraints in our household, my parents didn't allow themselves to provide us with the 16 bits console and we had to stick with the 8-bit option, the Master System, something I don't particularly regret nowadays due to its rather rich library. 

But around 6 years ago, a rather popular retro console gaming system in Japan and unknown in the rest of the world, came to my knowledge. The PC Engine, a joint venture between NEC and Hudson, in the late 80s was on par with Nintendo and above Sega on the Japanese market sales of home consoles. The small factor and sleek design and the proprietary game cards the size of a credit card, along with the internal architecture (8-bit CPU and 16-bit GPU), all of it intrigued me. The most fascinating part was the fact this console was around in Japan since 1987 and I was oblivious to it. Another impressive fact about this device was that NEC developed a CD add-on with composite video the year after, long before the Mega CD. 

The American market got a version of the Pc Engine in 1989 called the Turbografx 16, featuring an appalling redesign, going for a darker color scheme, making the console look bulkier but uglier at the same time, although the innards stayed the same. Some of these eventually slipped onto the European market, despite performing poorly regarding sales outside Japan.

 I started to delve into articles about it and resourcing to the gray area of emulation, to satisfy my curiosity. I managed to play a bit of the library this system had to offer and the conclusion I came to was: why didn't they market it to us back in the day? I wish I had this console! The games look and sound great and the port of my favorite game back then, Street Fighter II, is amazing compared to other systems. And regarding the CD releases, Rondo Of Blood is still one of the best Castlevania games ever made.

If we had this option to choose in western markets at the time, with a good campaign backing it up, I would be less infatuated with the Mega Drive, for sure…it was a shame.