Its sales were so minimal, though, that you’d be hard pushed to find someone who owned one. Some may not realise that the TurboGrafx (minus the 16 in its name) actually made it to Europe.
#NINJA GAIDEN PC ENGINE ENGLISH PC#
Whereas the PC Engine was a tiny little system, the TurboGrafx-16 was significantly bigger: this was because NEC felt American gamers would prefer a bigger, more ‘futuristic’ console. It came to North America in August 1989 with a complete rebranding as the TurboGrafx-16: a name designed to focus more on the console’s 16-bit graphics and make it clear that it was competing with the 16-bit Sega Genesis (Mega Drive), which had launched just 15 days earlier. This meant that when it first launched in Japan in 1987 its games immediately looked more impressive than those on the Famicom (NES), but Nintendo’s system was already so established that the PC Engine never really overtook it. It’s an interesting system because it lies somewhere in between 8-bit and 16-bit: while its processor is 8-bit, its GPU is 16-bit. The PC Engine was designed by Hudson Soft and made by Japanese electronics company NEC. UPDATE: Amazon UK is now finally sending out units to customers.īefore we get properly into this, it’s probably worth giving a brief rundown of the history of the PC Engine, partly because the vast majority of British gamers don’t know much about it, and partly because it had so many different variations. Let’s get stuck in, then, and find out how the CoreGrafx Mini performs and where it fits into the bigger (smaller) picture of mini consoles. The EU version, the PC Engine CoreGrafx Mini, was supposed to launch back on 19 March, but then there was some sort of virus thing – I think I saw it briefly mentioned in one of the papers – and by pure chance one of the tiny handful of buildings shut down as a result was the Chinese factory that was manufacturing them.Īlthough there’s still not a set date, I’m reliably informed a release is now imminent, which is why I was sent one of them for review purposes. Look, it’s confusing, but I’ll explain all in a second. Now it’s time for a dinky do-over of a system I desperately wanted to get the mini treatment, but didn’t actually expect we’d get: the NEC PC Engine. The NES, the SNES, the Mega Drive, the Neo Geo… even the Commodore 64 was miniaturised (until someone saw sense and just re-released a full-sized one with a working keyboard).Įven Capcom decided to get in on the action, clearly revealing that they have no idea what ‘mini’ means by releasing a massive fuck-off arcade stick with a bunch of old coin-op classics on it.
It’s a good job they’re so small, really.Įver since Nintendo launched the NES Classic Mini three and a half years ago, we’ve been swimming in chibi versions of vintage video game systems. You can’t move for mini retro consoles these days.
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