Type: Console
Publisher: NEC
Firstly released in: Japan
First release: Oct 1987
Release and compatibility details: Released originally in Japan as "PC Engine" then in US under name TurboGrafx-16 (August 1989)

Success and unsuccess:

Most popular years: 1987-1990
Most popular countries: Japan
Amount of games in database: 688 (list)
Amount of music records in database: 31 (list)
Amount of downloadable MOD tunes: 2 (list)
Amount of downloadable MIDI tunes: 22 (list)
Importance on the market in the most popular years: High

Characteristics:

PC Engine was 8-bit game console with 16-bit graphics chip, which came to the market as competitor of Sega Genesis. In USA it was released under name TurboGrafx-16 and was much less successful than in Japan. It uses "HuCards" game cards, which stores the games on the card in the size of credit card. Due to the copyright reasons, the Japanese cards cannot be played on US machines and vice-versa, but there was possibility to buy adaptors for $20-30 through many mail order places.

Technical info:

CPU: HuC6280, 3.6 MHz
Resolution: 256 x 256 or 320 x 256
Colors: 512 possible, 482 simultaneous
Sprites: 64 max.
Sound: 6 stereo channels

More info: http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/turbo16/game/22687.html , http://www.gamerland.com/systems/cgi-bin/showsystem.cgi?id=85

Games and music info:

Most common media for storing games: Card
Average packed game size: 160 kB
Music formats: HES

Emulation info:

Emulation of PC Engine is in very good state, almost 100%, which is very promising for such a good games like on PC Engine are.
Magic Engine - long time the best and fast emulator (supports also PC Engine CD isos), but unfortunately not free and other ones are almost as good now and free.
Hu-Go - completely free, with better CD emulation though slower. But I think best choice for now.

This emulation info was written on 18.December 2002. (This time is very important, because emulation info very depends on the time it was written - emulators can improve a lot after this time..).

Record created/updated: 18. July 2004.
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Information provided here may not be accurate and are provided only as an informative resource, without any warranty.