Pushing the PC Engine (aka Turbo GrafX 16) to its Absolute Limits

As I run out of older consoles, I've been moving forwards, generation by generation. It's an interesting progression to witness, but I've realized in the process that the more advanced and capable the hardware becomes, the less impressive the demos and game graphics are.

If you have powerful hardware, it's easy to get good looking results. It's only difficult to get good looking results if the hardware is weak. To that end, it's my intention to now go back and cover some of the more obscure machines I've skipped over.

The PC Engine, as it was called in Japan (It's the Turbo GrafX 16 in the US) was actually an 8 bit console, just very souped up. It's almost unfair to call it 8 bit, even though technically it is, because it had capabilities which in some way outstripped many 16 bit machines.

The color palette for example was 482 onscreen colors at once (typically constrained to 256, same as the SNES, for ease of ports and game speed). This was vastly greater than the paltry 64 onscreen colors of the Genesis. It did not have built in support for multiple layers of parallax scrolling however, as the SNES and Genesis did.

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In usual Japan to US fashion, just like the SNES got a boxier, bulkier US redesign, the PC Engine was simply made larger. It was believed consumers would mistakenly think the PC Engine was inferior to competitors just because it was smaller. So even though the larger case of the US redesign (the TurboGrafX 16) was mostly just empty plastic, that's what they went with:

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It was a remarkably capable machine given that it came out in Japan way back in 1987. That's just 4 years after the Japanese release of the Famicom, and 2 years after the US release of the NES (the American version of the Famicom, also made larger and boxier for the US market.)

It was another one of those consoles like the Dreamcast or Jaguar that was a "half-generation" leap, looking to get a head start on competitors waiting to put out more powerful, refined machines. That strategy worked wonders in Japan, where the PC Engine was massively popular. Not so much in the US, where it flopped.

The few who got their hands on this wonderful little device back in the day remember it fondly, and it retains a cult following in the present. So it is that demos like "Strange Games" by DamageX were made:

Then there's "Meet the SuperGrafX" by Punkfloyd, an ode to an even shorter lived upgrade to the PC Engine platform which gave it hardware support for multiple layers of parallax scrolling. Very few games supported the SuperGrafX, as it wasn't much of an improvement over the original PC Engine.

The real star of the show was the PC Engine CD. The first CD addon, and the only successful one. The reason it's remembered so fondly is that, simply because the PC Engine didn't have the necessary power for FMV, it dodged the bullet of all those awful live action "choose your own adventure" FMV games like the Sega CD got.

Instead, the CD space was used of course for CD quality music, and the cinematics were lovingly drawn using pixel art. A much more visually appealing and timeless way to go, which gave us such visual treats as the intro to Lords of Thunder:

Gate of Thunder was made by the same developer, and accordingly, also has a rad intro. It's more of a traditional sci-fi shmup and as a consequence not as innovative as Lords, but as far as spaceship shooters go, it's among the very best:

Also stunning is the intro to the famously sought after title, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. Considered by many to be the best title for the PC Engine CD, it's as beautifully artistic as it is brutally difficult to beat:

Cinematics aside, probably the most graphically impressive PC Engine game from a technical standpoint is Magical Chase. It's another highly sought after title by collectors because of how cute and fun the game is, as well as how hard it pushes the PC Engine hardware (faking a parallax foreground by making it out of sprites for example):

That's all for this time. If you know your way around emulators, PC Engine has a lot of great games to try out. I recommend Ninja Spirit, Magical Chase, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, Super Star Soldier, Bonk 3, Neutopia I and II, and Devil's Crush to get started.