THE PC ENGINE ROCKS! - Happy Console Gamer

so welcome back to another episode and this is amazing over the years I've covered a few things turbo Graphics a few things PC engine but I've never done a full dedicated PC Engine episode and I'm a I'm a mega fan and I'm going to go right back to the beginning and explain what got me into this crazy hobby of collecting for the PC engine in Japan first of all here it is the small the Beautiful the PC engine now this got released in Japan in 1987 and at the time it was supposed to compete with the famcom and the Master System or also known as The Mark III in Japan and I I didn't know anything about it back then I was just playing my regular Nintendo Living in America having a good oldfashioned time I had no idea that this was released not until 1988 89 when I got a video game magazine and I was looking through it it was a game pro magazine and I saw this advertisement for the Next Generation systems in Japan the Mega Drive and this beautiful little machine here the PC engine and I was looking and I was mesmerized I'm like what the is this small little machine over there and they were showing that you didn't just put cartridges into it you put in here we go credit card size video games Hue cards right here and you just grab your machine and you just click it in like so unbelievable and I was fascinated that you could play these video games this is a video game I I I'm I got to say this again I couldn't believe this was a video game I was like oh my God and I had all these fantasies back then of having a PC engine and having about five or six games that I could just put in my pocket and walk down to my friend's place I didn't have to bring over you know a big bag full of NES games or Master System games it could be so Compact and I I thought it was it was so next Generation it really was at the time and uh I I just led the credit card sized games they were so cool now the weird thing is is I've never talked about this on the show back when I was like it must I must have been about 14 15 years old we took a boss which was a big deal back then up to a local mall it was called Guilford mall and it was near Christmas time I'll never forget it with some of my friends and there was a store that some guys had rented out you know a store space and they were selling all kinds of electronics and they showed uh and they were trying to sell a brand new video game machine out of Japan called The Core graphics and me and my friends we walked into the store and I'm like oh my God that's the PC engine I I already kind of knew what this was and they were showing Batman playing on it and a few other games I remember armed F was another game and we all just were blown away with the graphics of this thing it was like you know we're just coming off the NES which looked nice and honestly this is a you know an 8 bit machine as well but it was giving you kind of a a pseudo 16bit feeling to it and we were like oh my God this is fantastic so I remember and this is stupid I don't know why we ever did this it was like a couple of weeks later we I I don't even know why I'm telling the story but some of my friends was hanging over their house we always used to skip school back then they prank called this store and I'll never forget they phoned up and they're like hello do you have the CH graphics and the guy's like yeah we we got the cor Graphics what games do you have for the CH Graphics I don't know why we did that it's the stupidest thing ever we were so into it we still wanted to be a part of it but we had no money when we were kids so we were just idiots so I don't know why I brought up that story but that's that's I just want to show you the times now eventually the PC engine came over to America and they called it the turbor graphic 16 they completely changed the look of it and I don't think for the better I love this design this design is just fantastic but they changed it and try to make it more American I guess I don't know but it wasn't it was a very big failure uh unfortunately and and I love the turbo Graphics I did I've done an episode on that but anyways this is the PC engine there's a core Graphics version as I talked about which is gray and then we have this and I did an episode on this a long time ago this is the PC engine shuttle this I believe was to appeal to children and you put your Hue cards right here let's take it out of here in the front just like that and then it flies off into the sunset no this is it this is really it you hook it up through the back here your controller Port is here that's another thing to play multiple player games on these machines you need a multitap to Puck up uh other controllers to it but this is another unusual design totally uh cosmetically created for the Japanese market and for kids to appeal to to children I I always loved this I saw this in video game magazines back in the day with the super Graphics which was supposed to be the successor to the PC engine which failed even more miserably than the turog graphics did in America but I always loved this design very very cool now the card games for the PC engine weren't bad at all they were great great things but the PC engine was about to do something that nobody had done before and that is released a cdrom attachment just like that here's your cdrom and this just opened up the world to incredible cinematics incredible music music that was just so unbelievable you could have Symphony music while you're playing an RPG and did they use that yes they did so a lot of RPGs and fighting games had these incredible soundtracks that were bigger than the [Music] games now this is one such unit here I got this from luk Moors one years ago and what's really cool is click that on look at that you got a little suitcase a little PC engine suitcase and you can go over to your friends places with about 100 games in your pocket back then so I think what has always fascinated me about the PC engine is all the games that we never got over here and as you can see this is a very small portion of the PC engine super CD ROM uh Library it is a huge library of games I I can't even begin to imagine collecting them all nor do I try these are some of the games I've collected over the years that really have meant something to me something that I've wanted to own but PC engine collecting now has gone astronomical some games are three to four to ,000 in price it's really a hard system to collect for nowadays but if you're going to get into the turbo Graphics or the PC engine I'm telling you the PC engine is the way to go because you can get a lot of games uh on the PC engine that they're exact duplicates on the typographics but they're cheaper on the PC engine they're cheaper so remember that if you're thinking about getting into it think about the kind of games that you want to get into and think hey you know what like which is the cheaper alternative do you want to collect for the turbo Graphics which is insane I can't even collect for the turbo Graphics anymore it's just too too expensive but PC engine is a great way to start out you can get one of these units for maybe $30 to $40 and you can get some games for like $10 plus shipping on eBay honestly for a lot of cool older titles now speaking of titles I'm not going to go through all of these today that would be impossible and I'm also not going to go through all the super CD ROM games today that would be impossible I'm going to save those for the future but I thought I'd look at some of the games that I really have liked on chip form on Huard over the years so first up is volume one of the PC engine collection it is legendary reacts I mentioned it before we got this on the turbog graphics this is the Japanese version and it's a sid scrolling action game where you play as a caveman fighting your way through like hordes and hordes of enemies and bears and bats and thousands of things that want to knock you off Ledges it's it's a great game though the PowerUp system for your axe is really really good it's it's one of those games that when I got on the Tober Graphics I play this religiously I really did it's it's definitely hard in the latest stages though and here we go we got it over here as Bon it was known as PC kid in Japan here we go here's PC kid a great classic another side view action game for the PC engine and let me just say there's a lot of platforming games on this side view uh action platforming games there's also a lot of Shooters side view Shooters I'm not talking about first person shooters I'm talking about sidescrolling uh Shooters with spaceships and stuff like that that was the term that we used back then we call them Shooters nowadays they call them schms I've never been a fan of the word schms but huge amount of Shooters on the machine huge amount of platforming action games a great amount and also another reason why I love this collection a huge amount of RPGs I mean you I mean in America we got maybe like 10 or 20 back in the early days these guys got hundreds honestly there was that many another great game Jackie Chan this is a fantastic side view game I really really like this really big characters really good animation for the time good sound effects and a really catchy soundtrack and you can't own a PC engine or a turbo Graphics without having a copy of the classic splatter house the arcade game now there's been a few PS of this this is not the best port out there but it is a faithful adaption and it this is what we played when I was younger this is the only way to play Splatterhouse it really was I my friend Andrew down the street had the American version version of splatter house and he brought that over Christmas morning when I got ease and so we had a pretty good double header that morning for video game action you got to get Splatter house it's really good final Blaster not a bad side view shooting game there was a lot of these as I say speaking of shooting games one of my favorite on the system besides you know obviously the you know loads of thunder and all that kinds of stuff was Soldier blade Soldier blade this is arguably one of my favorite Shooters on the system I also like Arrow blasters a hell of a lot okay another shooter and this one's a kind of a cutesy style one where he plays a little helicopter Mr heli I like this because you can go multiple different ways through a level you can go straight down left right uh very imaginative really fun uh I I really like the graphics of it very cartoony now when I was younger I used to go to a comic book store all the time and they had this great Capcom arcade game called tiger Road God damn it little that I know that people in Japan were playing this at home while I was playing it in the arcades back then and this is a a conversion uh of it for the PC engine tiger Road really good side view action game and one of the best on the PC engine is double dungeons no no it's not no it's not but if I need something else to hold up one of my shelves I know where to look now I played this with my friend Swagger all the time military Madness this is the Japanese version nectaris the same game just in Japanese and the first to come out now when I get a tuber Graphics I think one of the very first games that I ever played I bored it of a friend of mine was rype AR type was probably one of the biggest shooting games in the arcades back then and we all were blown away with it we just liked the side view shooting elements of it uh you know the the one bit that you can get that flies around your ship and also the Giger uh kind of aliens in the game as well that just kind of brought it to a different level now one of my favorite arcade games was the Ninja Warriors and the Sega CD got a really fantastic Port of the Ninja Warriors and the PC got a port of it we'll call it it's not it's definitely not the best version of it but at least you can play it it is ninja warriors on the PC engine it's it used to be three screens now it's one the animation's not quite there yeah it's the most inferior version but I like having it some people have complained about this version but for me this is the only way I could play the original Shinobi and I thought it was the closest to Arcade uh to have at home back in the day for the PC engine uh Shinobi the original arcade Shinobi and I think this was a really competent Port of it I I love this I've been this multiple times it's hard I actually I did a playthrough of the arcade version uh halfway through actually near to the later levels until I went insane now not a lot of people know about this game Ninja giden yes there's a version of Ninja giden for the PC engine and it is a beautiful playing really great version of it so it's expensive though I I don't know what this is up to I bought this a long time ago it's a beautiful version though I really really highly recommend it oh I was talking about this earlier I played this I think in Oregon when I was younger at this 5-cent arcade and that was Arrow blasters and that's a great arcade game and a really really nice Port it also got brought to America as well yeah when I was checking out the choreog graphics uh in that store back then they also had a copy of armed F and to have a look at the this the box art there this blew my mind I was like I think it was so cool because I was just really into anime and I was starting to see all these Japanese anime s games at least uh you know anime style artwork for the Box arts and I I loved it I love the cell shading and that's what I always got me about arm def the game is okay it's not bad but it was always the cover art that I remembered now every every single machine has had a port of this the PC engine was no different and you know it got ported so many times because it was such a wonderful treasure game out of the arcade and that is fantasy Zone fantasy Zone it's a really fun side view shooter uh where you can go uh buy weapons upgrade your weapons fight through the levels get to the end bosses destroy them and rinse and repeat but let me tell you holy it's hard it drives me crazy this game now this was a big hit in America and I mean a big hit that everybody who played this game loved it and they would rant about it and we talked about it in our circles at school it was a a cherished game on the turbog graphics and here we go the Japanese version ninja Spirits wow one of the best ninja games back in 1989 1990 let me tell you it is a really really fun game with the most catchiest soundt track of any turber graphics game that's on [Music] card now that is a small selection of games from the PC engine library but you can see there's so many wonderful games for this machine and I haven't even touched this entire library that I personally collected over the years it's one collection that I do collect for once in a while without I'm at a convention I'll buy one or two games here and there but I can't afford the really really expensive ones I'm usually like oh that game's 10 bucks that's 20 bucks and that's the thing there is a lot of low priced PC engine games if you're curious they're not all super expensive most of these games I got for cheap back in the day now I look at the prices and I'm like man what the hell has happened to PC engine collecting it never used to be like this for sure but I've Loved this machine I've always really really loved it I think I love it so much that it just it's so Japan it really is so Japan it's one of those machines that we never got to explore back then we didn't we got the turo graphics and the selection that they presented to us but look what was out there I'm telling you there's hundreds upon hundreds more games than this it'll it would blow you mind it really it really would and I'm going to cover them I'm going to cover most of these games in the next two to three years of the show really if I'm still alive if I'm still alive I'll still be covering the PC engine and it's vast incredible library of incredible games incredible Shooters incredible RPGs incredible Platformers so anyways guys until next time

Channel: HappyConsoleGamer

Views: 157,248

Keywords: TurboGrafx-16 (Video Game Platform), PCエンジン Pī Shī Enjin, Hudson Soft, NEC, TurboGrafx, pc engine review, japan gaming, video game review, system review

Id: 5MnzDiVFS-k

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2015