PC Engine Veterans, I am looking to begin my journey of collecting for the one system I have always been fond of, the PC Engine. I looked over the forums in this section about this topic and could only locate a thread from 2010. Since time has passed, I am looking for insight into collecting for this little gem of a system. Any pointers, insights on what to stay away from, etcetera, would be most appreciated. How long did it take you to collect, are you still collecting? What are some of your favorite games for this system. I am looking to begin with a hardware collection and then move onto games. I do not plan on purchasing any US based games, only Japanese games. Thank you, GAMEFAN
Welcome to this journey it is fun, but can also be very perilous. Now, here is the thing it can be quite cheap collect for depending on how OCD you are. Now, you may ask OCD?! How so?! People such as myself who collect the CD based games sometimes go for the gusto. We go and get them with the spinecard/Obi, and some have a higher degree and go for spinecard/obi and the hagaki/registration card. If you do not go for the spine cards for these cd based games then you will save money, however, it really does make game more complete in the perspective of one's eyes(me being included). Hardware wise I think you should either go with a PC engine Duo R or the RX because these are the machines that are very durable, and have last a long time. There are more issues with the CDrom add ons for the regular small PC engine Hu card machines, and original PC engine Duos have Cap replacement issues. Also make sure to pay attention to the PC engine CD cases because there are CDrom, Super CD, and Arcade. There are some arcade ports on the PC engine such as Art of Fighting and world heroes and they require the arcade card. If you are wanting to collect for these arcade cd games then you need to make sure you are getting the right arcade card. Orange is for the CD addon while Purple is for the Duos. I still am collecting for PC engine til this very day, and quite close to finishing it off. I am just missing a few hu cards, few cdroms/super cd games. The things a lot of people collect for are the shoot em ups such as raiden, super star soldier, rayxander series, and things of that nature. there are also people who collect some of the side scrollers such as the shockman/shubibiman series, pc genjin/bonk, and things of that nature. If anything check on youtube or for the sake of testing out use a pc engine emulator because sometimes it never hurts to test out your wanted game list(s). That way you know you are going to be putting your money to good use. I think that is the best I can do for right now, but ask away if you have any other questions ~Jin
First, you need to get familiar with the hardware. You gotta understand which games will work with which set up. This really only applies to the CD games though. There are only 6 hucards that will only work on the SuperGrafx that won't work on a PC Engine. You know what games you like. There are a metric butt load of excellent shmups for PC Engine. Some are expensive games like Coryoon & Magical Chase, but there are plenty of budget titles available as well. Watch out for bootleg CD games! Expensive titles like Sapphire are a common target for boots. Since the PCE CD can read CD-R's, it's hard to tell if your expensive game is legit. I'm not going to say to stay away from those, but be careful and buy from reputable sellers. Some of my favorite games are: Fire Pro Wrestling 3 Street Fighter 2 Lords of Thunder Magical Chase Bomberman 94 (get the multi tap!) Bonk III Splatterhouse Gekisha Boy Bazaru de gozaru Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
I agree with @tknjin that Duo R or the RX are the best ones to get if you just want something that just works (in terms of CD based PC Engine system). However you will need to spend more for those. If you are handy and is capable of soldering, I would say the black Duo can be a better bargain if you look for someone who sells one with "low" sound output for cheap. Conversely, I don't think it's worth spending a lot of money on a working black Duo unless the seller can confirm that recapping have been performed. Replacing capacitors on those units on your own are not necessary hard, just tedious as there are quite a lot to change out. But the result is rewarding. The Arcade Card Duo for these units are also considerably cheaper to acquire than the Arcade Card Pro for the PCE+IFU30 combo system. The new replacement laser for Duo/DuoR/DuoRX is also in general more readily available and affordable. Unless you have a special fondness for the PCE+IFU30 combo, I honestly don't think it's worth the money and the trouble to maintain one. I recently refurbished one and it's not a fun process at all. It took me a while to source a brand new replacement laser. The notorious "middle" gear is quite expensive for it's size. And replacing the capacitors on the cd rom drive and the IFU30 interface were quite a chore. All the capacitor leads were bent and are a pain to desolder. @blotter: The only bootleg CD games to watch out for is Sapphire and the Mega Man games right? Are there any other known ones out there to avoid?
To answer your questions, yep I am still collecting. I have close to 300 titles so far and I started about a year ago. In regards to consoles, I currently use an IFU-30 + CD-ROM setup. The reason I went this route is because you can RGB mod the IFU-30 and then anything you attach to it will get RGB out. Quite useful if something wears out and you need to swap one piece of equipment for another. Naturally, I have a XRGB-Mini from Yakumo which works great with this setup. I also replaced all those yellow/sticky/terrible vinyl HuCard sleeves with actual archive-grade plastic sleeves. You'll probably want to do something similar since the original vinyl sleeves tend to brake down over time to become a sticky hot mess!
