Thanks for watching! Sorry the lapel mic is a bit janky, this is the very last video we've recorded using them and have now upgraded the kit, so expect better audio on cam in future. Huge thanks to Mike Dailly for sending us this in! Neil
The bit with you talking about long cut scenes would make a great gif of "old people try to play video games." Standing at a weird angle, holding the controller wrong, jabbing at a button with a pecker finger. Good stuff
Mr Bean helping to play 'Chariots Of Fire', 2012 Olympics video. Constantly having to play just one button/key. Seemed familiar to me there, with Neil having to do much the same thing. LOL.
I Kid you not , while you both were talking about bbq smells coming off the power supply, my neighbour was burning some rubbish in his back garden so i got the full effect lol, good job guys!
@@Ori-Retro-Gamer Thank you for the reply, yep I remember them. Some of them smelled like they ought, others perhaps not so. You still get such scratch and sniff things in make-up catalogues on the perfume pages. I'd say they work better today though.
I installed the PC-FX emulator on my RetroPie build and didn't find any games worth keeping it installed. It was kinda cool to see them but that was all I got out of it.
I wasn't really. The western releases really, really, really lacked compared to the japanese releases. And the turbo 16 was really hard to find stateside, let alone the CD system. While sega genesis and cd were everywhere. Around here at least.
It's strange to see someone so prolific in the Antique Tech Scene afraid to open a power supply. I don't understand why people think they need to be experts, there is no such thing as "Power Supply Expert" My equipment may have been more expensive than yours but I can tell you are far more experienced in soldering than I am. Even with my fancier equipment and more buttons, your plug and play equipment did the job faster and you did the job better than most of my soldering jobs!
@@RMCRetro Sorry, I missed that. Pinned comments don't immediately show when I hit comment on my phone. Glad to see there's already a solution though. You always seem to be on top of things ;)
This Machine also got one of the worst imaginable wrestling games (Zen Nihon Joshi Pro Wrestling: Queen of Queens [All Japan Women Pro Wrestling: Queen of Queens / 全日本女子プロレス クイーンオブクイーンズ ]), which is made up entirely of lots and lots of FMV snippets. Maybe it was something of a novelty to design a fast paced fighting game which such an unapt control method, but it's really unplayable. Microleague Wrestling (the first ever WWE game) for C64, Amiga, Atari ST and PC did something similar (but with more of a slide show instead of FMV) but it worked better there, since this wasn't an action game per se but rather some kind of strategy game (the japanese Wrestling Angels series was kinda similar with it's card based strategy gameplay). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LLTG1NjdjoA.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UgLpGRTmRBo.html
Well, that game "without gameplay" where you clicked hundreds of times and never got to a game is probably whats called a visual novel, quite prevalent in japan. It really is just that, basically a book with pictures and music (sometimes voice acting) you experience on your tv or monitor. Lots of them around even nowadays and in english.
@@staticfanatic while there are a huge amounts of trashy ones given how cheap and easy they are to produce; there are also a lot of hidden gems, many of which can be very thought-provoking. Such as ones which take advantage of the CYOA type ability with diverging stories, the best ones will usually have stories that build with epilogues to the originally-available options. Some even play with the form or break the fourth wall, pointing out the player trying all the options just because they can and exploring what that means philosophically (this took the gaming world by storm when Undertale took inspiration from that, but the innovation itself was started in VNs).
Nay. I have the game. You have to hit buttons at the right times to either throw an attack or block. The portraits on the top of the screen show you how close you are from your opponent. If you're further away you can't do just normal punches and kicks and stuff. It plays like a fighting game complete with a character select screen. Another thing is there's switches on the controller. If they're set in the wrong spot it might make the game behave differently.
@@staticfanatic Terrible take. Just, absolutely god-awful. Steins;Gate, Chaos;Head, Clannad, Kanon, Tokimeki Memorial, the Zero Time Dilemma series, Somnium Files, Snatcher, are just a few VN with more than enough gameplay to keep you engaged and deliver top-shelf stories. I could keep going on and on.
The batteries do indeed say "Beaver Aircon", a brand of air conditioner sold by Mitsubishi Electric. The batteries probably came out of the remote control for an air conditioner. I recommend you try more games, maybe with a tablet with google translate running pointed at the screen at all times. The PC-FX's library was very plot-heavy and thus difficult for people without Japanese skills, but many of the games were great. A lot of people are put off by the FMV gimmick, but if the game is still good the cutscenes add to the experience rather than detract. Most of the library are NOT "FMV games", but rather games with FMV added. The PC-FX was a 2D powerhouse, one of the best ever made. It never had time to develop so we never got to see how far it could go. I think the main reason for this -- in addition to the lack of 3D -- is that it was up against the Sega Saturn, which was even BETTER at 2D, and could still do 3D thanks to its advanced sprite warping doubling as a 3D rasterizer. It's important to remember that 2D games were big in Japan in the mid 90's, and that the Sega Saturn outsold the Sony Playstation in Japan by a fair margin until the release of Final Fantasy 7. I think the main reason for this is that Japan was big on 2D animated artwork in a way that the US wasn't, and the not-very-good 3D on the Saturn and Playstation just couldn't copy that aesthetic very well until the late 90's when programmers learned how to make 3D models prettier (this was fixed on the PS2 when they really learned how to make 3D models look good). Even then, 2D games remained solid sellers in Japan to this very day. Basically the PC-FX could've been the standard-bearer of 2D gaming in Japan for years, but the Saturn could do it even better with more flexibility.
“I loved my PC-FX. I think I’ll give it credit by making it the most popular UPS unit ever made for industrial use. And then I think I’ll design its batteries to fail…. Oh let’s call it ~every six months, then emitting the most consistent and annoying ‘BEEP’ ever known to man, forever drawing the ears and eyes of all human beings in the vicinity towards the (hated) object” -fixed
As a PC-FX owner myself, I have to mention that the shooter you played (Chōshin Heiki Zeroigar) has a full English translation patch that adds subtitles even to all the FMVs. Game's bog standard, but it actually has a pretty dope storyline and a leveling system that makes no sense in Japanese. It takes place right after World War II, and apparently aliens attack so they turn a WWII fighter jet into a giant robot that flies out into space to shoot stuff. (it transforms at the stage 1 boss and stays a giant robot for the rest of the game) It's wild. I don't care for stories for shmups but I actually enjoyed it when I could understand it. Also try S-Video with it. The S-Video is surprisingly clean. Probably the best I've seen on a console. It might make Zork playable.
As a Canadian Nerd, I've only ever seen one (which ironically was on a motherfugging Canada day, which surprised me since it was swimming in a brook in a Greater Toronto Area city)
The problem is that there's not a working SDK or toolchain for PC-FX compared to say, something like HuC for the PC Engine. This makes developing homebrew very difficult, especially since there isn't very much documentation around the PC-FX hardware/software in general.
when they were pressing that button 100 times a second i almost died. im a huge pc engine fan and had never seen pcfx games in motion. it was pretty much like i imagined it would be. great vid guys thx
Tip for anyone dealing with NTSC signals: try using the inputs on a more modern VCR. We have a VCR + DVD combo unit, which can play NTSC VHS tapes and also accepts NTSC AV inputs. Very handy indeed.
If using an HDMI compatible screen, a RetroTink can be very handy. They accept PAL&NTSC and generally handle noisy signals rather well. It’s somewhat common to see people beginning to use them on either side of the pond for older micros and consoles without having to worry too much about signal conversion. All that being said, your solution is absolutely one of the best ones for hooking up to a CRT, especially for also gaining DVD and VHS. I loved my dad’s one for giving two SCART and two composite in Europe, which made his good quality but single SCART 24” TV way more easily usable with consoles (this was back in the day, not more recently).
There are TVs (beginning in the nineties I think) that could handle 2 or 3 types of signals, no adapter needed. Not sure if those were available worldwide, but here in Brazil they are more or less standard.
@@magoid True, and that's basically what Neil's looking around for, but people may already have a suitable VCR lying around in their shed somewhere, or be able to pick up a suitable model very cheaply. The VCR mechanism doesn't even need to work anymore, so you might even be doing someone a favour by grabbing one for free. Our two VCR + DVD combo machines are from LG if anyone's looking for something similar.
I hope you still read comments on your older videos. Anyways: I have now had the chance to restore two PC-FX consoles, with both of them having leaky caps in the PSU. Especially the blue ones (Marcon EFM series). And the leakage had already started attacking a diode that is wedged between 2 of the caps. You should really check this in your PC-FX.
Another victim of Sony's sudden entry into the console space, completely changing what was thought possible for the price. Hardware engineers in the established Japanese console labs must have been pulling their hair out in frustration 😁
yeah... having to compete suddenly with a company that could sell their consoles with loss to gain a playerbase to profit only on licenses or take in the losses from other divisions basically put a nail in the coffin on every smaller manufacturers that were console specialized, making for a end of the era. (Nintendo had the handheld market all alone so they survived, and can in a way thank Sony for killing off any other competitors)
@@MrDuncl i know the history behind the PlayStation and Nintendo too had some questionable ethics back then, problem was they pissed of someone with equally if not more questionable ethics but also way more money... aka Sony.
Ah, the Two Ronnies of the retro computer world - intended as a complement. Mmm, the PC-FX. Quite a cool machine today but as this pony's one trick was FMV we all know why it failed so horribly.
Whenever I see a game that is heavy on cutscenes and/or dialog, I'm reminded of a statement Adam Sessler said in a game review on X-Play years ago; "this game is in love with it's own story."
Most of my favourite games are story/cutscene/dialogue heavy, games come is so many different shapes and guises, I'll happily sit through a 30-minute-long cutscene if it's done well and adds to the overall experience, which it often does. I remember Max Payne 1&2 dialogue being so good that I would often stop and stay hidden before I entered the room or wherever to listen to them speaking, those games had such good atmospheres and incredible writing by Sam Lake and Co.
Love the late 80s and 90s PC consoles from Japan, they have so much character, even the beige plastic ones. Easy to emulate now & enjoy what there was of the library. Cheers, love these vids.
Hmm. I remember when I replaced my 386 PC with VGA with a Mac LCIII back in the day and being disappointed with the Mac games. Why? Didn’t it have the games I wanted to play? (no, that wasn’t it - sure, it didn’t have as many games, but it had all the games I wanted to play) Did the games play badly? (No - they all ran fast enough on a 33MHz 030 - although I did have to knock Doom down to a mini window). Simply it was that I’d grown used to the cartoony, blocky, 320x200 res VGA games. My brain rebelled at the crisp, colourful, full 640x480 (and more for some games like Sim City and Civilization) that the Mac churned out. I liked the blocky effect!
I read an old Edge the other day where they interviewed one of the creators of this console at the CES. He basically said it could do an infinite about of polygons by the reasoning that it had no 3D chip whatsoever. So no chip - no limits of polygon rendering power. It was laughable. They obviously had some weird problems at NEC - perhaps they thought a 3D upgrade add-on later could add on the power, like in a PC, but I never heard anything of this ever announced. I guess they bet on FMV and maybe some executive couldn't tell the difference between pre-rendered Starblade polygons and Ridge Racer.... I did buy one of these out of curiosity in the late 90s when the prices bottomed out and had the exact same experience as everyone else since - deseperately trying different disks hoping to get 'something' out of it, and never did. Nice design though.
Maybe yes, maybe no. My impression is that Japan used it's own variation of NTSC, which may have been enough to prevent the text from being readable on any non-Japanese 60Hz monitor.
Looked to me like the text was baked into the video files rather than being overlaid on top. With that much compression there's no hope of it being legible no matter how sharp the signal is.
@@absalomdraconis NTSC-J in baseband (i.e. not using RF modulation) is almost identical to American NTSC. The only difference is that Japanese NTSC has no "pedestal" in its black level. American NTSC sets its black value as 7.5 -- i.e. everything below 7.5 luminance is treated as "black". This was to make mild noise invisible on dark parts of the screen, at the expense of a small amount of dynamic range. On Japanese NTSC, black is 0 -- so any amount of signal will be interpreted as image. The end result is that Japanese NTSC signals work just fine on regular NTSC. Composite, S-Video, component are all fine and all produce an image. The only difference is you'll have to adjust the black level (usually called "brightness") a little bit, and even then extremely (and only the most extreme) dark images will get crushed to black. For almost any kind of normal image this is irrelevant and you will not notice. For those rare instances (say a horror game where you have to see in the dark) if the game has a gamma adjustment you can fix it that way, or you can use a monitor that lets you disable the pedestal. Most mid-90's and later TVs with digital controls let you disable the pedestal from the service mode, as well as any modern TV. Also, computer monitors generally don't have black-level pedestals and only use them if they were meant to work with NTSC as well. Your modern TV will have an adjustment somewhere to crush blacks for watching old NTSC content or NTSC content that was incorrectly converted to digital (modern digital TV has no black crush though it's sometimes inconsistently applied anyway as most people don't understand it) -- you just turn that off if you're using an old Japanese NTSC device.
CRT screens make all the difference, trying to upscale low resolution (by today's standards) FMV video on an LCD is never good, you end up with an eyesore of a blurry mess with artefacts galour. A nice Sony Trinny CRT would have looked as the game was intended and designed and been much more legible.
I'd think that resistor had more than a bad day at work, Mark, the added stress made it explode, it got fired and never worked again! It wasn't able to do any other job, having only been trained to do one particular job. A pretty sad ending for it, I'd say. (LOL, just saying!).
Loved this episode, I really forget I’m watching RU-vid with your videos, such is the high quality editing and brilliant format - this stuff should be on actual TV!!
I wanted a PC-FX ever since seeing DieHard GameFan magazine review Team Innocent, a 1994 space adventure/horror game with some action, that used rendered backgrounds like the early Resident Evil games. It showcased the machine's colour palette quite well, and was certainly atmospheric. Characters were straight out of '90s anime, but mostly existed as blocky scaling sprites. I believe it is just about possible to blunder through it without knowing Japanese. But it's very rough around the edges in terms of pacing, movement, visual consistency and puzzles. If acquired cheaply it might be worth running around the first space station for a bit though. I mean, in its time, those magazine screenshots looked like the best thing ever!
I still have mine plugged up ready to go but there not much worth playing if you cant read japanese but try out Kishin Dōji Zenki FX: Vajra Fight, chip chan kick skip the fmv its a bit dodgie but the game is good, power dolls and Tyoushin Heiki Zeroigar not much else worth playing, there some english tranlations out there but i think its only 2 games.
I generally like this channel but the summary that most games minus the FMV could be run on the PC Engine is overly simplistic and shows a poor understanding of the game library. I would have expected better from you gents. Take Zenki for example, it definitely could not run on the PC Engine, Supergrafx, or any proper 16 bit platform for that matter. Try to dig a little deeper on the less common consoles.
This PC-FX reminds me those NEC PC-9800 Series PC Desktop with floppy discs back in late 80s or early 90s. One of my friends play RPG JP games on these PC rather than Nitendo consoles.
i love how neil was like "i downloaded and burned some cds !!!" instead of "I've made some backups uwu" ashdijashdja i mean who would care abt pirating stuff on this console right? but still neat
Battle Heat is actually incredibly playable, the movements you can do are very reactive just like a "genuine" fighting game. If I remember you tap up twice to get up clsoe and down twice to go away (the portraits will move also to show this), you can dodge and block the attacks and perform special moves. Me and my friend were playing it in versus to understand it more and after quite a session we came to appreciate it a quite a bit.
So, it's the rookie mistake of plugging a 100v device into a 230v power socket. As for the games, well... Japanese RPGs can be like that. Especially Falcom RPGs. It's a 30 minute chapter opening cutscene to 4 hours of gaming with a lot more cutscenes in between, and then a 30 minute ending cutscene for the chapter.. Repeat for 6 chapters.
Very strange that so many companies in the early 1990s made crappy CD-Rom consoles. This wasn't the only one. I still own a Philips CDi, and for the even crappier Commodore CDTV nowadays high prices are paid.
From what I understand there is only a handful of games playable for native English speakers. Battle heat, Chip-chan kick, Shanghai, Super power league FX, Tokimeki Card Paradise, Tengai Makyou, Zen nihon joshi pro wres. Plus a couple of fan translations available like Farland story fx, Ruruli Ra Rura, welcome to pie carrot, God-Fighter Zeroigar which I believe can also be played on real hardware. If anyone knows of any others it would be great to hear, but fairly sure that list is it.
So a console brought out too late isn't really excelling. And that during the crazy of FMV's. Oh my! I wonder with that hardware if you could do more with it...
We take it for granted that modern hardware (pretty much all modern hardware, PC, consoles, whatever) have world compatible power supply boards that can work with anything. I live in the US, but after I ugpraded I sent my old computer to a friend in Australia, she was able to plug it right in and use it.
I spot an Iron Lord poster in Mike's background, I still have mine that came free with Crash magazine back in the 80's 🤓😁 I also want his Ridge Racer machine 🤣
This console is another example of how two years' time matter in terms of technology. Maybe NEC would still have made a killing by releasing it in '93 when the PCE was losing steam, and let Hudson develop whatever they wanted for it. Another thing everyone can notice is this gamepad screams Street Fighter II, it was probably planned but nothing of the sort was released.
The critter on the battery is indeed a beaver. The bottom line of bold text says "biibaa eakon" (a phonetic rendering of the English "beaver" and "aircon", or air conditioning). It's not a battery brand -- Beaver Aircon is a Mitsubishi line of home A/C units. It took some bashing at Google in both languages, but if you can get the right page, it shows that the mascot for the brand is indeed the cute little guy on your batteries there. I would guess those originally came packed in with the remote for an A/C unit, and were rehomed in your memory pack.
That console sure has a pretty design, dang. The bad picture quality almost looked like some kind of incompatibility. Maybe that was some display mode the converter couldnt handle?
What an odd machine for its time. They should have released it a few years earlier, with a keyboard, mouse and OS. Could have been a decent desktop computer.
Sigh... Japanese games. So many are "visual novels" that are really just text you slog through. I did a pretty good dive into a bunch of PCE CD games, and it was just agony. Even able to read it, I didn't *want* to read it. I wanted to play a game, not read a book on a screen. And then there are the ones that aren't visual novels and just have a ton of cutscene crap to get through anyway.
Cut scenes. It's the one thing that really puts me off Japanese games. Movie-style cutscenes, I like. But the button-mashing crap that the Japanese turn out just make me want to throw whatever console it's on across the room.
Neil is right that it is a beaver on the batteries, the batteries are branded "Beaver Air Con" which is a long running line of air conditioners from Mitsubishi... I think those batteries probably were pack in for the remote control that came with air conditioning unit
It's almost a shame that it's in such good condition. The exotic hardware is really the most interesting part of the NEC PC-FX so a tear-down and restoration video would've probably been very interesting.
i like to be able to pay a visit to your cave , sadly though i live in Iran so watching your videos is as close as i get to your consoles , consoles and machines you chose are great but i was born in 1990 so i dont know them all but im sure in future with the help of your videos i will get acquainted with them .
