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Fearsome Engine
After the release of the PC Engine and the CD-
ROM², NEC then embarked on a bewilderingly
broad series of upgrades and alternate
designs, ranging from the aforementioned
SuperGrafx, the portable TurboExpress and
PC Engine LT systems, and the Duo series,
designed to play both HuCards and CDs. Our
favourite, at least from a visual standpoint,
was the PC Engine Shuttle, a stripped-down
version of the system aimed at a younger
market. With its rounded front and fins, it looks
like something out of an eighties sci-fi movie. Japanese developer M2, who worked on the
Mega Drive Mini, is handling the Mini’s
emulation, so we can hopefully expect a
similar level of quality here. The PC Engine (left) and its US incarnation,
the TurboGrafx-16 (above). Radically different
designs, but both used Hudson Soft/NEC’s
proprietary HuCards as media.output from Konami, Hudson Soft – who
collaborated with NEC on the console’s
development – and Namco, whose
president had a public falling out with
Nintendo over its business practices, and
decided to shift its loyalty to NEC and
Sega as a result. Much-loved Castlevania
sequel Rondo of Blood,
Hideo Kojima’s cult
favourite Snatcher, and
Bubble Bobble/Rainbow
Islands sequel Parasol
Stars all got their start
on the console, and are
just three highlights
from a broad spectrum
of around 680 releases.
It was the quality of those games
that saw the PC Engine glimmer for a
short while in the US under its wider,
heavier-looking TurboGrafx-16 guise;
unfortunately for NEC, the rest of the
games industry was catching up with
it by 1989, and the system found itself
struggling against the ever-popular
Nintendo Entertainment System and
the hugely popular Sega Genesis, which
hit the States that August. We can only
wonder what might have happened had
NEC opted to roll the PC Engine out in
Europe first, where Nintendo had less of
a stranglehold on the market in the late
eighties, and where the Mega Drive didn’t
launch until September 1990. Instead,
NEC’s missteps with the enhanced but
slow-selling SuperGrafx, and the rapid
ascent of the Super Nintendo, launched
in 1990, hastened the system’s decline.
All of this makes the
imminent UK release
of the PC Engine
CoreGrafx Mini an
unusual proposition.
Unlike, say, the
Nintendo Classic Mini,
it isn’t necessarily
tethered to nostalgic
memories of a console that a generation
of gamers once owned and then sold on.
Rather, it’s a chance for many of us in
the UK to finally sample what’s akin to a
plastic Holy Grail – an enigmatic console
long described by excitable journalists,
but only owned by the most dedicated
of import gamers. Fittingly, the “finest car
racing game in the world”, Victory Run, is
included among the Mini’s 50-or-so titles.
Inevitably, it’s not quite as good as we
were led to believe.“At the height of
its powers, the
console captured
50 percent of its
home market”