Basically, I still think that PCE-CD game = PCE game as an unquestionable truth is dubious.
When it comes to any system, game hardware or otherwise, an addition or modification that comes at such an extreme cost and makes such an extreme difference in the system's capabilities could arguably be said to make it a different system altogether.
Sam, my friend, you're really hung-up on the cost of the CD-ROM2 add-on when it came out.
IMHO, a Ferrari is still a "car", even if it costs more than a Ford.
Back in 1989 I had no trouble at all in seeing the CD-ROM as just an add-on.
To me, it was no different from home computers that loaded their games off of cassette, and then you could buy a 3", 3.5" or 5.25" floppy drive as an expansion, and developers often provided "more" on their floppy releases ... and then eventually abandoned tape altogether.
And "yes", back in the early 1980s, a floppy controller and dual floppy drives could easily cost you far more than the original computer.
To me, regardless of how they conceived it, how they built it, or how they advertised it, the way that the end user experienced it is a really big deal.
I didn't have one of these back in the day, so maybe I should just shut up, but I am incredibly skeptical that people who bought the CD system assumed that they were merely getting Hucard games on a hi-fi format. I suspect they thought they were getting something more. You know, like Dragon Quest x1000.
No, of course you knew that you were getting "more", that was the point of buying the add-on!
And that was precisely what developers could afford to deliver with the voice-overs in Ys, or the intro and music in Gate of Thunder.
But ... it's still the same PC Engine that's behind it all, you've just added a huge storage medium to it, and the ability play CD Audio.
Lots of home computers had add-ons, even audio ones.
I just don't see that any huge disconnect that requires classifying the PCE plus CD-ROM as a totally different machine to the PCE without the CD-ROM. That's just factually innaccurate.
Fact still remains there are a lot more working Hucard only systems floating about than working CD-ROMs so not everyone who wants one can have without paying a premium. Law of supply and demand. Some gamers will have to settle without the CDROMs. I unfortunately am one of them.
Am I missing something? I don't see any great shortage of realatively-affordable PCE systems that can play the CD games ... they're the Duo/Duo-R models.
The only real shortage is in North American CD-ROM2 and North American System Card 3.0 units to add onto a TurboGrafx.
If you choose to go that route, and pay the huge premium for those, then that's your choice. The Japanese units play the North American CDs fine without any modification. It's only the HuCards that have any region-protection.
And for that, then you can either region-mod the unit, or just "collect" whatever boxes you like and then play the game on the console with a TurboEverdrive, or you can keep your existing hardware.
I really don't see that you've got much in the way of grounds to complain about the $225 price for a recapped and working Duo when you've just blown a bunch of money on reproduction HuCards.
That's entirely your choice ... but IMHO it pretty-much undercuts your protestations of poverty when it comes to PCE CD units.