OK guys, this topic needs dusting off. It' sunny in London right now, I have a headache from internet authoring so I'm gonna sit back and recount some hardcore PC engine memories from the 80s and 90s.
I consider myself 'Generation Engine' as I was about 15 1/2 when the Engine was first talked about on these shores. C&VG was the first mag I came across that featured it - a 2 page spread if I remember. The reviews posted elsewhere on this thread, are also familiar.
There were at least 3 kids in our school who had bought one - two got them direct from HK through a Chinese guy called 'Chi' at school. One other had ordered his from PC Engine Supplies. He turned out to be a very good and long term friend of mine- PC engine was the catalyst.
Anyway, for some reason I decided to mail order a PC Engine - with my good parent blessing and sponsorship :oops: from Mention Technical Services. It was a little bit more expensive (about £200?) but it seemed a bigger company. I think they were based in the Scottish borders.
The thing arrived - with Vigilante, Dungeon Explorer, Tails of the Monster Path (a free game!) and Galaga '88. I think it was a 4 HuCard deal or something.. The four still remain in my collection. With the White Engine came the ubiquotous Colour Booster, which as you probably all know, screws up a lot of the colours and puts out greens instead of pinks etc....anyway flesh never looked very good and it started to bum me out, especially as my mate's one from PC Engine supplied worked fine on PAL as it had been modded.
So I ended up sending mine away to - guess who - Console Concepts - to repair....and the f****rs went bust, taking my PC Engine with them. I never saw it again..!
Another annoying thing was I threw away the box etc - what a berk! I was only 16 and boxes didn't seem worth keeping.
So, a little later, with my games and hobby intact, I managed to convince my - very annoyed - parents to buy a Core Grafx from some other supplier - I forget who - and it arrived, unmodded. I used the AV out for video signal but things were still far from perfect - after about 10 minutes of play, the screen would flash pink-red intermitently, due I think to the heat, as blowing across the vents seemed to ease it off. Not great when you're in the middle of a Formation Soccer match though....Anyway I could still use the AV booster for stereo sound, which was the best part about that ugly beast. It has since been thrown away - I should have kept it cos its still a dinky little add on . Never mind.
Anyway, my collection grew between 88 and 90 - and I amassed about 35 games. By the time the CDROM was brought out I (a) didn't have the money to get it (b) convinced myself it was a draft gimmick and (c) was getting more into rather less healthy persuits than gaming, or should i say the typical adolescent guy things.... anyway the collection reached its peak, with a couple of purchases from Computer Exchange on Whitfield Street ( I am intrigued by the other London shops mentioned here - now I think about it though I do remember vaguely something in the Middle of Tottenham Court Road!!) and then the hobby lay dormant. But before I skip to the 'Second Coming' I will give a couple of prices I paid - £40 for Don Doko Don (worth less now!!) and £30 for Outrun (ditto!!). The very last game I bought in that era was an unboxed version of Barunba for about £12 and it has stopped working since. Games were expensive cos we only had a few importers to buy them from. Talking about HuCard failures I have only ever had two but a couple are known to still be 'awkward' and take a few boots!
OK, well before I get to the return of the Engine, I will also say that I had an XE1-PC joystick, and a 5 way etc etc. This is important cos my first foray into buying new stuff for the engine, was after a ten year hiatus and on my return to London in about 1999 to work. There I found Computer Exchange, shortly to move to its current location of Rathbone Place, and its amazing little retro museum, which also went with it (for the first couple of years anyway, before they went mainstream...!)
An in CE I bought a XE1-PC Pro - still the best joystick for the engine IMO. Recently I picked another up - new and boxed this time!
As I didn't know about ebay then - one guy in my office was trading on it, but it meant nothing to me - I bought a few games from CE as well as starting my Sega Dreamcast and Saturn collections (but largely on ebay by that time).
I found a number of CHEAP! HuCards in CEX - Final Blaster £20, for example, but they also had some very expensive ones - I remember seeing Super Star Soldier there for £60 for like a whole year!! And of course, I didn't even LOOK at the Super CD ROMs!! What an idiot! I have in my head the idea that they were selling like Sylphia for £50, or Spriggan for a tenner. Was that the case???!!
Anyway, my collection grew at the tail end of the 90s into about 50 Hueys, and has since grown only a little more to about 70. I prefer shooters and some platformers / RPGs but nothing like the whole set. And anyway I have Magic Engine and HuE for the PSP to play anything!
Pulling this rather long story back into present day, to conclude, I was looking at stuff on the net and discovered Nexzr. I thought - sh*t that shooter looks good - and did a bit more research into the Super CD Rom setup. I ended up getting a boxed IFU-30 with SCDROM for about £85 off ebay, which I was very pleased about. CD drive is sketchy though. Since then I have built up a collection of about 20 of the 'must have shmups' for the system - Spriggan 1&2, Psychic Storm etc etc.....and recently acquired a boxed GT, then a boxed LT, then a Super CD ROM 2.
I'm really impressed by all the PCE resources on line - this being a PRIME example - just love the hardware compatibility chart for example! And the Bible PCE Daisuken etc etc ..... and You Tube of course, where I now have a channel (see link!) and have met some awesome PCE gamers like Dankss, Nectarsis, PhatPhunk, Lorfarius, the list goes on and on.....
Retro love people.
