Tag: pcengine

Some Good News, and…… – Part 2

So as you know, yesterday I managed to score myself quite a large haul of retro gaming goodness. The only trouble was that the store I got them from seems to be abandoning their retro gaming section – this totally sucks, but I am not here to talk about at the moment.

I am here to show you the games that I got yesterday all spread out! 😀

First off here are the Saturn games. Not a huge lot, but there are a few that I didn’t have before.

sega-saturn

Next up, Dreamcast. Some interesting titles in this bunch, but the pick would have to be the three Pop’n’Music disks for me.

dreamcast

Sega MegaCD. I love getting my hands on MegaCD games for some reason. I think it’s because I wanted one so badly back in the day, but I sort of missed the boat and jumped straight to the PS1.

sega-megacd

Loose NEC HuCards. I was a little surprised by how many doubles of the HuCards I snagged – that’s what happens when it’s a feeding frenzy I guess.

nec-hucard-loose

Now to the cased HuCards.

nec-hucard-cased

NEC SuperCDRoms. Fighting Street made its way in there for some reason, but that should have been in the regular CDROM photo. Turns out there are two Fighting Streets though.

nec-super-cdrom

NEC CDROMs.

nec-cdrom

NEC Arcade and one lonely SuperGraphics card.

nec-arcade-and-supergraphx

NeoGeo CDs. I am always asked to get these so I bought pretty much all they had left. The ones I missed out on that I saw last week though will give me nightmares for months though!!! 🙁

neogeo-cd-snk

Panasonic 3DO. I was really hoping to find a stray RoadRash in the frenzy, but it wasn’t ot be. I did expand the 3DO collection pretty well with this bunch though.

panasonic-3do

Playstation 1 and Playstation 2. Some great titles in this lot – specially for the PS1. *Click on the thumbs to enlarge.

playstation playstation-2-ps2

Missed these yesterday when I took the pics. A Gameboy Pikachu printer, some NeoGeo Pocket games, and a lonely VirtualBoy cart.

pikashu-gameboy-printer neogeo-pocket-virtual-boy

Finally another one that didn’t show in the pics yesterday – an Epoch Hang-On. I actually got this for HairballNick as I thought he might like to have a matching pair. Let me know if you’re keen Nick.

epoch-hangon

Well, it was fun actually having the time to dig through this latest haul today. I must have been glazed over judging by the amount of doubles I picked up though. I am sure there are those of you out there thinking six SFII HuCards are a bit much, but then I am sure there are those of you out there that are thinking why stop at only six. 😀

Some Good News, and……

Well, some of you may remember the post in which I talked about a retro gaming mega-store here in Japan with one of the biggest ranges I have seen anywhere. If not you can take a look at it here:

Retro Gaming Store in Japan

Anyway I had a few minutes over lunch today, so why not head out before the golden week rush for a “junk” run right? I am extremely happy I took the time, as it seems that this shop (the mega-store of all mega-stores in my area) had reduced the prices of all the retro games to sell – this is the good news if you’re wondering. Prices were all the same regardless of titles too! Knowing the stock of this place, the bargains people would have gotten before me would have been insane.

The bad news is that it looks as if they are taking focus away from retro all together. 🙁 Shelving has reduced in size, with some shelves even have disappeared since I was last there. This is sad, sad news for the long term as this place was (past tense used with great sorrow) a goldmine…..

So today I went out in a blaze of glory with over 300 games purchased in one go. Here are a few pics:

Japanese games 1

Japanese games 2

Japanese games 3

I did speak with the guy behind the counter asking why there were reductions in prices, and he answered “they were always this price”. Um, no they weren’t. I was there only a week or so ago and they weren’t this cheap. I will go in again soon and ask someone else. I seriously hope they are just making space for more stock, but unfortunately it doesn’t look like it. 🙁

Japanese games 4

Japanese games 5

So as you can see I cleaned up on PCE, MegaCD, 3DO, NGCD, Saturn, and DC. The amount of cool DC and NGCD games I would have missed out on though….

It really is a time of great sadness even though I got so many great games. I feel totally torn – on the one hand I got some great games that I have been after for a while, but on the other hand this place may cease to exist!

I will keep you posted….. 🙁

PC Engine Shuttle – Space, the Final Frontier!

The PC Engine Shuttle was released in 1989 for around 18,000yen, thus making it a cheaper alternative to the original PC Engine which was closer to 24,000yen at the time.

Coming before the Core Grafx, the Shuttle was the only stand alone PC Engine to have an AV output, but due to the Shuttle having a different expansion slot to the original PC Engine, it could not use the CD add-on. Needless to say, it didn’t really take off (bad joke intended). 😀

Who cares if NEC was 30 years too late to cash in on that whole ‘man on the moon’ thing, the PC Engine Shuttle still kicks arse in my opinion!

pc-engine-shuttle

As the Shuttle did not have a standard expansion slot at the rear of the unit, there was no way to store save game data using the available add-ons for the regular PC Engine. NEC did release a memory backup unit only for the Shuttle (pictured bellow), but these are quite rare to come across unfortunately. If you want to store game saves they are a necessity, so keep that in mind when thinking of your PC Engine budget.

pc-engine-shuttle-memory-backup pc-engine-shuttle-backup

Although the Shuttle was a complete failure in the market place, it is quite sort after today by most PCE collectors. If you have the PC Engine Shuttle with the memory backup, original controller (not pictured with mine), and box, they can command quite a hefty sum of money – no where near what an LT would bring in of course, but too expensive for most casual buyers.

pc-engine-shuttle-1

HuCards (the credit card sized game cartridges) would slot into the front of the unit just the same as the other PC Engines, but of course this one has a little window. Does this window help protect anything, or make the machine perform any better? Nope is the long answer for that. 😀

pc-engine-shuttle-hucard

pc-engine-shuttle-adapter

pc-engine-shuttle-screen-shot

Definitely the PC Engine Shuttle is worth having, but I would say if your plan is to have only one PC Engine unit, you might want to look at something else – specially if you can’t find the memory backup unit, or you feel that you might want to play PC Engine CDs at some point. 😀

Update:

I finally found myself a Shuttle controller! I had to buy a heap of other gear with it, but it was well worth it. 🙂

dscf8735

NEC PC Engine Multitap

There comes a time in every PC Engine owners gaming life when they would like to have more than one controller plugged into their console. Why have only one port to begin with NEC?

When the time comes, this is what you’ll need: The NEC PC Engine Multitap.

pc-engine-multitap-1

There isn’t a great deal to talk about when it comes to multitaps. You plug them in, and then suddenly that single controller port becomes 5 controller ports – that pretty much sums it up.

pc-engine-multitap-2

Being that Hudson and NEC built the PC Engine as a collaborative effort, we should talk about the game series that arguably gave Hudson the most recognition, and also the game series that probably pushed most people to buy a multitap for their PCE – the Bomberman series. If anything, these 3 HuCards are the reason to buy a multitap.

pc-engine-multitap-3

PC Engine multitaps can be picked up for around $15, but if buying loose they can be had even as low as one third of that. Well worth investing in. 🙂

PC Engine Memory Base 128

Misspent youth? Need memory? Well this won’t help with that I’m afraid, but it will help with game save storage. ?

The PC Engine Memory Base 128.

pc-engine-memory-base-128

Games for the PC Engine in the first few years didn’t really require a huge amount of storage space for game saves, but by the mid 90s that all began to change. Games were requiring more and more storage, and also collections were building, thus the issue of storage was becoming something that PC Engine owners were very mindful of viagra en andorre.

You’d think the logical choice would be to increase the internal storage within the consoles themselves, but the PC Engine Duo for example had only 2kb of built in memory with which to store save files, and as there were games released that could pretty much fill that whole thing something had to be done.

That’s where this guy comes in.

pc-engine-memory-base-128-a

pc-engine-memory-base-128-b

One interesting thing is how this connects to the console. As you can see above, basically it is connected between the controller and the controller port on the console itself.

And now to a piece of advice for buyers. As I’m sure you’re aware the unit runs on batteries, and these batteries actually sit inside a housing within the Memory Base 128 itself, they don’t sit in the actual body of the unit directly. This means that if the little housing is not with the unit when you buy, you will not be able to put batteries in the device. The picture bellow shows in more detail what I mean.

pc-engine-memory-base-128-c

In use this device is a little on the tricky side. First of all, the game itself needs to be able to support the device, and any saving or loading of data will be done within the specific menu with the game – again only if it supports it. Nothing like the options of today that’s for sure.

Anyway, if you own a Duo and play many games that require large saves then this device is a must. Sorry it won’t help with your misspent youth, but you can’t have everything. ?

One last note. The Duo-RX did somewhat rectify the issue by including 192kb of internal storage. Just remember that if you want the poor-man’s RX (the Duo) then this is probably something that you will need to buy.

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