Messages

[PC-FX Discussion / Re: PC-FXGA emulation is now here !]

Hey gameblabla, good to cya around here again sharing some content! Thanks!

Even less PC-FX fans around, but might as well for google search results to spread the word in case someone sees it!

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: core grafx II issue after recap]

Hm, I don't trust ceramic capacitors as replacements for electrolytic models, it's above our pay grade... You shouldn't have done that.

I would clean the PCB thoroughly around the capacitor area, and check for trace damage. Check for corroded vias too.

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

Adol from the Ys series enters the recent DLSS 5 off/on debate...

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: duo full of problems]

In the meanwhile..Have you guys ever used a usb-c converter board to power your pc engine duo? I'm thinking about trying a circuit like this https://hackaday.io/project/187112-ch224k-usb-pd-decoy to get rid of the noise I get from my cheap PSU (my original one doesn't output a safe voltage anymore). I would love to know and maybe design a new board to replace the one the duo uses since its very easy to replace

Yeah, I tried to convert my SNES to USB 5VDC, but it was pretty bad. I didn't understand about the noise in modern PSUs, so there were weird artifacts in the video... I had no luck with that idea!

Interestingly, I just fixed an internal Pioneer CD/DVD reader (made in 2000) where the laser body and pole were stuck tight together, it couldn't slide at all! Got cooked, the grease was dried up, really bad! I had to grab the end of the pole after unscrewing it and twist it with a pair of pliers using a lot of pressure! Once it got slightly free, I'd spin/twist it back'n'forth, and then applied the fresh grease after cleaning with auto brake cleaner! It works again!

The tray mechanism is garbage though, can't be saved; some plastic parts holding the springs broke, so I had to throw it away. I'm just using it for development/testing of the new TurboRip version due to be released soon that finally supports INDEX 2-99/PREGAP scanning, so accurate CUE files/ripping for 100% NEC/PCE/PCFX discs, and it'll have BIN/CUE <> ISO/WAV/CUE conversion built in!

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Popful Mail Localization Project]

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7517/
https://archive.org/details/magical-fantasy-adventure-popful-mail-english-dub

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: duo full of problems]

My biggest problem now is the cd :/
EDIT: Captured the problem https://1drv.ms/v/c/4b0117f8503301c7/IQCYNZaGSsuzQrV3zSFFDksLAR8HLqT9rehHggXNk4e36SU?e=oVUlTG

BTW, this is one of the few times I think I can contribute a solution to these sorts of problems: The grease on the laser slider pole is 33+ years old, well, what's left of it; it's mostly gone, dried up... You need to thoroughly clean up the pole/all moving parts with alcohol or something stronger, then apply fresh new white lithium grease!

When my US Turbo Duo started doing this - cutting off a BGM Redbook CDDA track halfway - I'd apply petroleum jelly which is all I had at the time, and it'd work a little longer. Not an ideal lubricant, but it worked. Anyway, it *might* be as simple as that for this, but obviously you had worse problems with that unit!

Protip: It helps if you unmount/free the motor & sprockets so you can freely slide the laser back'n'forth once you start applying new grease, then you can fully cover/spread it all around far better! But those screws are glued/tight, might be hard to free them, and something could break. Beware. But yes, this CDDA cutoff problem happens because the laser unit has lost its agility moving across the pole without any grease! The friction is much higher! So try this before replacing the whole laser/motor assembly.

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: duo full of problems]

Hm, alright, I'll forward that to @thesteve (a PCE EE) and Keith Courage.

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: duo full of problems]

Yeah... I see the VR102 damage, like someone took pliers and bent 2 ends together... Weird that someone felt the need to tamper with it... Can't imagine they even knew what it's for, what they thought they were gonna accomplish.

Anyway, sounds like there are too many problems and you're gonna have to hire a repair specialist if you wanna save it. Try @Keith Courage.

[NEC Console Resource / Re: New user looking to dive deeper into the TurboGrafx]

Hey Otaking_Enos, been a looong time since we got an introduction thread! I didn't think I'd see one again...

Welcome!

Both great CD games to have started. My Turbo Duo arrived with Ys Book I & II which I guess eventually led me to localize Ys IV!

Dracula X was recommended to me by store owners on the back of EGM/GameFan magazines so I bit the bullet and paid the $85 to get it! It was a leap/tough decision into imports because the US library ran out and it exceeded my normal pricepoint/range for what I was willing to pay for a game past $50, but I enjoyed Castlevania on NES, so I really wanted to experience the upgrade in PCECD! I rented all the US HuCards available, I was only left with buying options if I wanted to continue making use of the system.

I think its underdog status made it more appealing to me since I was the only one in the neighborhood for miles that knew about/had it. If not for the contest winning me a TG-16 with Bloody Wolf, I would've just stayed on the NES/SNES path. I didn't have the money to be chasing every new console on the scene, so I skipped Sega output for example with the exception of a friend once letting me borrow a Genesis for a bit.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: TurboRip v1.46: The PC Engine/TG-16 CD ISO/WAV/CUE Ripper [2026]!]

News: Well, I guess I should update this thread too. Firstly, TurboRip went open source, in time for its 20-YEAR anniversary - you can find it at its new, permanent home here:

https://github.com/NightWolve75/TurboRip

Secondly, I learned from user feedback very recently that there were many custom PREGAPs, including for Emerald Dragon and Ys IV, that prevented TurboRip from working! Given the Emerald Dragon patch release, I hustled for a temp fix so it works, but for many years I always wanted to finish proper PREGAP/Q subchannel detection/scanning so I could bring TurboRip closer to CloneCD/ReDumper. That day has FINALLY come! If you download the new TurboRip 2026 build it will now be 100% compatible with all PC Engine/TurboGrafx CDs, and can also be certified for SegaCD and NeoGeo game CDs since those use PREGAPs as well for audio/data track type transitions!

Code Select Expand

Last Armageddon with an odd/pointless 6:03 PREGAP/INDEX 00!

FILE "01 Last Armageddon {BRCD0001-7-0904-R1D} (J).wav" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "02 Last Armageddon {BRCD0001-7-0904-R1D} (J).iso" BINARY
  TRACK 02 MODE1/2048
    PREGAP 00:03:01
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "03 Last Armageddon {BRCD0001-7-0904-R1D} (J).wav" WAVE
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    PREGAP 00:06:03
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
Just an example, but the point is TurboRip will accurately detect/record that sector/time value in the CUE, and determine the true start/end LBA of such tracks so they're ripped/sized correctly! It was about time this feature was added. In the past I had to assume the standard PREGAP 3:00/2:00 Yellowbook guidelines were followed, most cases that was true, but a "guideline" isn't something burning software had to follow 100%... I dunno why some of the people mastering these CDs decided to pointlessly play around, but they did! Anyway, it was about time to learn how to detect/deal with these cases.

_{► /audio/Last-Armageddon-07.mp3}

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: Pc Engine Super CDROM2 - ZD301 issue]

Sorry I can't be of help here, sounds pretty bad!

[News / 2025 PCEFX Newsletter Archive]

Hello everyone, happy new year!

Well, not much to report for 2025, I've always had trouble with the email system (sorry if you received this twice) and it didn't prove a popular idea, BUT, there is BIG breaking news which hopefully you may hear first from PCEFX! Supper the Subtitler has struck again after Far East of Eden/Tengai Makyou: Ziria by completing an Emerald Dragon English patch 100% by himself!!! He timed it for a New Year's Eve release!

5/3/2025 - PC Engine Localization for Zero4 Champ is released by Supper the Sniper!
https://stargood.org/trans/zero4.php

10/16/2025 - I joined Forrealsyalls' ambitious plan to localize Popful Mail by porting my Ys IV Dub Kit on his behalf. He has made great progress, so keep a look out on this project!
https://www.castingcall.club/projects/popful-mail-pc-engine-english-dub
https://x.com/NightWolve75/status/1978706948032696480

10/18/2025 - My TurboRip source code for ripping PC Engine/TurboGrafx CDs to ISO/WAV/CUE format went open source to whom it may concern. Thank you to everyone that helped over the years.
https://github.com/NightWolve75/TurboRip
https://x.com/NightWolve75/status/1979743400539910329

12/13/2025 - PC Engine Localization for Fortress of Necros localization is released! This is the quirky one with the psychedelic flashing colors during battle animations that requires an epilepsy warning!
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7454/

12/31/2025 - Limited Run Games announced they're localizing Tenshi No Uta I & II for the Switch console! They're working for Edia, so expect similar quality to the Cosmic Fantasy Collection!
https://x.com/LimitedRunGames/status/2006077951024955701

12/31/2025 - PC Engine Localization for Emerald Dragon is released by Supper the Subtitler having gone turbo mode by spending every waking minute of the last 6 months to do it for a New Year's Eve release! Simply unstoppable, NOTHING can prevent him from TOTAL PCECD localization domination!!!!
https://stargood.org/trans/emdr.php
https://x.com/NightWolve75/status/2005181632693813576

Regards,
The PCEngine-FX.com Team.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Emerald Dragon Localization Project!]

BUMP
https://stargood.org/trans/emdr.php

I decided to share a pre-patched English CD image (BIN/CUE format) of Emerald Dragon after requests for help and then seeing how tough it is to patch it yourself (wow, even I had a lot of trouble!)! Feel free to share the ZIP link around:

Protips: Don't use the BizHawk emulator with this patched game! The the voice-acting/lip-movement versus animation/cutscenes is wildly out of sync! I can confirm MESEN, MagicEngine work correctly. Analogue FPGA Duo does the same thing as BizHawk whether you use a SD card & ripped image via the jailbreak firmware or a burned CD-R via normal firmware, just badly out of sync... And I don't think Analogue cares about the product anymore, I doubt it'll get future updates.

pcengine-fx.com/downloads/
pcengine-fx.com/downloads/EmeraldDragon(T-Eng).zip

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: Duo Monitor - Capacitor C528 capacitance value]

I looked around for you via reverse Google-image searching and found that iFixRetro also bought one and did a capacitor replacement job on it! He made posts on X/Facebook/Instagram, so here ya go. I already asked him for you but you should too.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by IFixRetro (@ifixretro)

https://www.instagram.com/p/DLd-DX4R6kf/
https://www.facebook.com/ifixretro/posts/pfbid0bQieaWjmbZvjuEYXs4YDgT1ATcWXpjExEAzu3YJfh6JwxZSfdUr6HESG1Mc8AH7Dl

This is a high res photo, but overhead so not much help in identifying cap values unfortunately:

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: PC-FX Capacitor maps]

Thanks.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: 1989 Turboplay Brochure scans.]

Ah, nice. I remember the manual at least. I'll have to check what TurboPlay/TurboForce magazines I have some time.

[General Gaming / Re: Heroine Anthem II]

Wow, I can't believe this post motivated someone to register and reply to it!

Yeah, hard to believe but I knew about that link because a veteran localizer shared it with me a long time ago given his English localization projects!!! The company removed the DRM protection from the 2000's era and let the world have the games for free, yeah, it's surprising! He also has a sitting nearly finished Magna Carta localization project but wanted help for final finishing touches so it's not getting released until then or maybe never unfortunately...

You must be pretty old skool to remember Heroine Anthem and the Chinese RPG PC era! Anyway, welcome, I know I've seen your name before, it's familiar!

EDIT: I looked at my old RIGG PC Engine forum offline copy, I found a member Gilgamesch / rocco.hilton (at) gmx, was that you or coincidence ?? Were you a member 20 years ago ??

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: 1989 Turboplay Brochure scans.]

Hm, I think a magazine issue was included inside my Turbo Duo box, but it wasn't that one with Keith Courage on the cover, it was the one below.

And while I won a TurboGrafx-16 (and lost the box, the console broke, I threw it away), I don't remember a free magazine inside the box for sure, though it makes sense they wanted you to have an issue so you could potentially subscribe for others.

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: PC-FX PSU resistor indexing]

Glad we could help!

For capacitor info, check console5 too since they sell capacitor kits.

console5.com/store/nec-pc-fx-tamura-power-supply-psu-cap-kit.html
wiki.console5.com/wiki/PC-FX

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: PC-FX PSU resistor indexing]

Hi @Ptolomey I, welcome to the forum!

Darn, so you missed @Keith Courage by 2+ weeks ago, and @thesteve was here a month ago. They are our EE/repair experts for PCEFX hardware. I'll have to ping them to take a look at your problem since this forum is very slow. I'll also ask at the PCFX Club.

(Your image links were broken but I patched them to work, FYI)

EDIT: @dshadoff thinks https://x.com/zaxour on Twitter/X has reverse-engineered the PSU in order to make a new one and maybe he's got the values and/or a schematic. So I'll ask!

UPDATE: After some reverse Google image searches, I found you your model (2P-P1-2316):


UPDATE: I got a HiDef photo of the PSU from Dave, so if you just wanna try resistor replacement here you go. But upon comparison, I notice it's slightly different than yours. So you got the other model, there are 2 with slight differences.



Plan B: You're in luck! How about a new/modern, efficient model designed by a fan ??

willsconsolemodifications.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&language=en-gb&product_id=92



There's also this if you wanted to build it yourself, another universal PSU design:
https://github.com/Unstablewarpfield/PC-FX-Uni-PSU


Lastly, someone found a YouTube video for you where lucky enough YOUR PSU model is liberated from the system for some repairs. Several times it's being moved back and forth, giving you a better chance to see the resistor color-codings. Good luck!

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: bad apple for PCE]

Hi all. A guy called stef, has made a technical demo on genesis/md, based on badapple video..
This demo run in 320*224 with 4 gray shades and with a frame rate of 30 fps ..
You can see, the original video here :

Someone can do the same on PCE ??

Hey I was digging around for this and found the old thread on it. Did anyone ever convert this video?

No idea, but you can reach TurboXray/Tom and ask if he did more work on it here: https://x.com/turboxray or https://www.youtube.com/@TurboXray

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: IFU Backup Memory corrupted?]

Congrats man, sounds like you sure worked hard on it, very glad to see repair success stories!

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Turbo Gouging on Ebay ( r.i.p. - gouging much )]

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: RAU-30 Supergrafx to CD Rom Adapter - For Sale]

Hey @poponon, good to see ya again! Never forgot your unique avatar. Wish I could say there were more eyeballs here to help sales move along but I did my best to rebuild PCEFX, make it viewable on phones, etc.

Admittedly your best bet is any of the PC Engine/TurboGrafx Facebook groups if you can't sell this on eBay.

Just in case, gonna tag @elartur77 since he's been buying/fixing NEC hardware lately and is active.

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

About the only Duo memorabilia I own is this TTi CD case (fits 12 CDs) which I bought together with my Turbo Duo in the 90's, though a piece of it cracked off on the other side, needs plastic repair glue. Can't find photos of it online, I even tried an image google search but found nothing. I could swear I've seen it shared on Facebook years ago though. Anyway, I thought I'd log my photo here. I keep my best games in it like Ys Book I & II, Ys III-IV, Cosmic Fantasy 2, Exile 1 & 2, Dracula X, Dragon Slayer, Gate/Lords of Thunder, and Valis II-III.

[Buy/Sell/Trade / Re: FS: New Turbografx CD-Rom /PC Engine case latches]

It looks like he's active on YouTube, that might be another way to contact him besides email: jelloslug@gmail.com

https://youtube.com/@jelloslug

[News / [MERGED] PCEFX Reviews, Preservation of The Brothers DuoMazov!]

This topic has been merged into The Brothers DuoMazov 2.0 Returns - 100% Rebooted/Restored!!!!.

[News / Re: The Brothers DuoMazov 2.0 Returns - 100% Rebooted/Restored!!!!]

Progress: Last night I finished a decent Wayback download Perl script to download the whole Brothers DuoMazov website to finally move forward in totally rebuilding/rehosting it here on PCEFX 2.0!

There are 5,814 images / screenshots, 100% uploaded to PCEFX:
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/images/?dir

It's live!!! Presenting "The Brothers DuoMazov 2.0" - 100% Rebooted/Restored!!!!:
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/


The next step is another script to clean up the HTML and decide the basic template for which to upgrade all the review body/content, etc. Some new basic ideas like appending a @ChrisBucci TurboViews video will be considered for extra benefit when time/progress permit.

But yeah, seeing/realizing that ~7 years elapsed (WOW!) from when I first made these threads and manually downloaded/patched about a dozen reviews gave me some motivation to finally continue since nobody else cares or has done so, etc. I did mention somebody is working on rebuilding pcecp.com though, nice to see.



More Ideas:
* New Github entry to share the Wayback Download script.
* Full Offline copy of Brothers DuoMazov. A simple ZIP/7z file that you download and works 100% locally letting you browse/see everything. And we can send it to WayBack for final/guaranteed backup/preservation in the end. I do tend to think about the inevitable, if something happens to me, what happens to my work ? So I'm gearing up to eventually share my projects/code to Github, Wayback, or to friends, etc.

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: IFU Backup Memory corrupted?]

Oh wow!

Before Chris/Keith sees this and maybe can offer advice, how about Covell himself who made that BRAM tool ? You can also ask him on X/Twitter: x.com/covell_chris

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / General Localization News]

December 31, 2025 - New Year's Eve

https://stargood.org/trans/emdr.php

I decided to share a pre-patched English CD image (BIN/CUE format) of Emerald Dragon after requests for help and then seeing how tough it is to patch it yourself (wow, even I had a lot of trouble!)! Feel free to share the ZIP link around:

Protips: Don't use the BizHawk emulator with this patched game! The the voice-acting/lip-movement versus animation/cutscenes is wildly out of sync! I can confirm MESEN, MagicEngine work correctly. Analogue FPGA Duo does the same thing as BizHawk whether you use a SD card & ripped image via the jailbreak firmware or a burned CD-R via normal firmware, just badly out of sync... And I don't think Analogue cares about the product anymore, I doubt it'll get future updates.

pcengine-fx.com/downloads/
pcengine-fx.com/downloads/EmeraldDragon(T-Eng).zip

February 13, 2025

Rather earth-shattering news in the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 community: Cosmic Fantasy 3 & 4 has been officially localized to English by Edia 30 years later! Hard to believe! I know their script quality is poor given the 1&2 port but still good to see.

nintendo.com/us/store/products/cosmic-fantasy-collection2-switch/

[PC-FX Discussion / Re: Space Patrol Luluco lays a sick burn on the PC-FX!]

/lulucopcfx.jpg

How dare they call it worthless garbage! But at least they're rethinking it.

Man, I can't believe I just saw a PC-FX reference in a 2016 anime. What a time to be alive, haha.

-We Blackholeians have shoplifted all kinds of things that hold value.
But because we shoplifted too many valuable things, we instead
ended up wondering if worthless garbage was actually more valuable.

-Huh? We made light of this stuff until now, but maybe it's actually amazing!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Patrol_Luluco
https://www.animerealms.org/watch?id=21637&ep=10&prv=prime
https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G63VM514Y/space-patrol-luluco

Admin Action: I noticed the image capturing this PC-FX anime reference was lost, so I took a research excursion to find out what Aggie was talking about, restore the image, or even better, make an animation .avif. I downloaded 13 subtitles of this (there were only 13 episodes) and began reading until I found "garbage" in the 10th one. Sure enough, that's what I was looking for, what Aggie was talking about. I then used ShotCut and ezgif.com to create the above animation and preserve/embed it.

For some reason, or reasons, I don't seem to understand, diehard NEC PC-FX fans are growing in number from 12 up to 24 these days (go figure) , so I thought they might appreciate this little bit of history if it could be recovered.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is only thanks to PCEFX 2.0 that you could learn about the mysterious "Blackholeian shoplifters" so I'm proud to have made that possible for you...  Guess that helps explain why PC-FX prices are skyrocketing over the years...

[General Gaming / Heroine Anthem II]

This is a temp placeholder post, I just wanted to upload/share these Wayback screenshots to someone. It's a 2004 thread on my offline backup of RIGG/Retro ISO Gaming Guild, an ancient PC Engine forum primarily. I hope to rebuild it and upload it again here to keep the threads/history shared. Anyway, this post may be deleted, so I wouldn't bookmark it or anything, I just temporarily want the screenshots.

I came across chinese rpgs about a year ago and been addicted to it since! Well maybe me being chinese also had something to do with it XD

Chinese RPGs are probably never heard of by USA rpg lovers and here is a preview of some of the biggest titles.

here is a popular title in China Heroine Anthem 2










Heroine Anthem 2.; its a sequel to Heroine Anthem: The Elect of Wassernixie (or bride of Mermaid if you will). Heroine Anthem is a story follows the girl Edda, who drowned at sea trying to save this boy while on board a slave ship. She was saved by the mermaid prince, who turned her into a mermaid intending to make her his bride. She fled the palace of Mermaid under the help of a lobster named Bedin, wanting to find her lost sister; who was also sold into slavery. During her advanture in the mermaid world, she finds out that Ragnarok is upon the world, and the Dark Ark of Noah has also returned (the Dark ark of noah has monsters trapped in it since the time of the great flood). So bascially she is trying to stop it from happening and finding her sister. The game is split into two parts that tells one whole story which is an interesting way for an RPG to present itself(like the way Matrix's 2 and 3 presented itself).

The entire game takes place in a 2D world (well 3D pre-rendered background) and there is no world map, so going from place to place takes alot of walking or running around through forests, dungeons and moutains etc.

Music wise I think its very well written here is couple of music samples hope you'll enjoy.
http://www.rit.edu/~wqd9695/HA2/mus...les/Track01.cda
http://www.rit.edu/~wqd9695/HA2/mus...les/Track04.cda
http://www.rit.edu/~wqd9695/HA2/mus...les/Track17.cda
http://www.rit.edu/~wqd9695/HA2/mus...les/Track20.cda
http://www.rit.edu/~wqd9695/HA2/mus...les/Track29.cda

graphic wise it is 2gb of pure 2D graphics. I would show some frames, but I can't seem to get this tool working right, so maybe at a later time.

Battle system wise it is also quite different from many of the traditional rpg battle system. Each character has special moves that takes up SP(SP can only be gained from being attacked) and then each takes a certain amount of time and when u select a move it is allocated onto his or her action bar; certain moves take alot of the time and certain takes very little and you can do this for all characters and these characters will excute all the list of actions you have allocated onto their action bar. So timing is definitly a very important element in this game, it could mean wining and losing an important mission. and all the characters can be attacking at the same time causing an effect of linear motion battle system like Tales of Destiny. Once a characters action has ran out you'll be prompted to select more actions. Character placement are also up to u, u get a 3X3 grid to form your formations. Characters in the front actually do get attacked more than characters in the back and also ur spell has ranges so how u place ur character can also mean whether or not ur spell will effect them in battle to save them.

Magic system is also quite interesting. Through out the game you find rune stones that has certain vocabulary attached to them individually. To create magic spells u need to learn the enchantment of it to get the spell to form properly. You can also form summon spell, which I've yet to be able to do so, since u can only learn certain enchantments at a certain stage of the game.

Cutscenes in this game is done with real nice anime and decent CG and converted into Bink Video. Some reason WindThunder never makes HIGH res CGI movies for their game, so some of the movies seems blocky. I guess the intention is let the game speak for itself rather than having high res cutscenes to speak for it.

here is one movie. u need divx to watch it, quality is bad but I'm no coding expert so there
Gameplay movie for HA2 FEAST YOUR EYE ON THIS BEAUTY!

And the second game I'm here to present is a game called Fantasia three kingdom!!!  losely based on the story of Romance of Three Kingdom several important events of that story were taken to formulate this amazing game. I wrote a review for it but the site is under construction so I'll link it when its back!!! :p

here is a preview for you all who loves RPG

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

FIGHT‼

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: Emerald Dragon Localization Project!]

Hey Tom, good to see an OG PCEFX veteran stop by our fledgling "PCEFX 2.0" reboot! ; )

- Legend of Xanadu I & II: These projects are inactive/hibernating, nothing new to report. Sam went on to have a family, still wants a 100% day-one localization patch with dubbing, and since that's on hold the team won't release a text patch (which they said they finished). elmer fudd did say if enough years/time go by and no movement on dubbing happens, he'll go ahead and release said text patch.

- Emerald Dragon: Same. I don't have any active fan/hobby projects at present.

About the only occasional hobby project I sometimes work on if I power on my desktop PC (I mostly migrated to my Android phone for all social media/video consumption) is this: "PCEFX 2.0" I'll recover images or upgrade the CSS to make sure this forum is readable on a phone's resolution/constraints.

* Just the other day I recovered 2+ image(s) here thanks to Wayback (it's the classic thread of Saber Riiiiders...ridin' off with all yo money cuz riders gonna riiiiide! ):
pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?msg=488647


* And if you look at a PCEFX thread on a phone, the posts now show the avatar and I eliminated excess spacing, so more posts can be seen vertically.



Still not as good as Facebook or XenForo forum software, but quite a bit of improvement for viewing old threads.

Anyway, it's hard to justify all the time needed for a localization project and I just have other priorities, so I dunno when I'll resume. I actually thought maybe this winter but I was tied up with offline projects/work.

[News / Re: 2024 PCEFX Newsletter (Archive)]

The email queue finished...today, that is, all PCEFX newsletter emails finally finished being sent out to the 5k legacy membership! My host is annoying, has 300 daily email limits, that sort of thing, which I had to work around by slowing down the email queue process...

Anyway, one interesting development thanks to publishing the newsletter is it turns out that someone else also tried to archive pcecp .com similar to me! He successfully downloaded all the images and passed along a copy, and I in turn gave him a raw MySQL copy of the pcecp database that Bt Garner gave me in 2021 before he passed away. I'll report the progress if he actually does rebuild pcecp soon on his site:
http://gamezero.online/special/pcecp/

Other than that, I noticed a few extra visits, but not much new posts in response... Sadly my hopes for this PCEFX revival project didn't live up to expectations, but oh well. I'm just glad we can save/archive as much of the site/forum as possible even if we'll never get back some decent active membership. Have to accept reality/circumstances.

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: TurboFont]

Just everything you see here I suppose. We'd have to track down @2X4 and ask. Like many he's MIA, and I dunno if his email is still valid either.

Confirmed - His email address is expired/bad/invalid:

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<strandc@unk.edu>
SMTP; 554 5.4.14 Hop count exceeded - possible mail loop ATTR34 [SN1PEPF0002636D.namprd02.prod.outlook.com

You'll have to find another way to contact him.

[News / Re: 2024 PCEFX Newsletter (Archive)]

OK, the 2024 PCEFX newsletter is shipping out (late as it is)!

It feels like 2024 saw more significant localization projects like Team Innocent than what was published for PC Engine! Let's hope that changes for 2025!

Happy New Year!

[Off-Topic / Re: Random Pictures Thread]

Made from a deleted PCE/TurboGrafx YouTube video I extracted out of WayBack.
See: pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?msg=208700
(ep: Retro Hardware - TurboGrafx-16 via youtube.com/user/TheGameStation)



Big Wayback TurboGrafx-CD Surprise! ; ) To illustrate how big the original TurboGrafx-CD box was, I guess this YouTube content creator had a friend hide behind it and then stand up to say "Surprise!" Unless he found the clip from someone else. And I dunno why he deleted the video, pretty well edited and short, to the point about Hudson/NEC legacy...

[News / Re: The Brothers DuoMazov 2.0 Returns - 100% Rebooted/Restored!!!!]

pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/ys-book-i-and-ii.html
pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/ys-iv-dawn-of-ys.html


I took a quick excursion tonight to make my small collection of DuoMazov reviews format better on mobile (Android phone in my case). : )

Here's how it looks on my Samsung Galaxy OLED. Quick'n'dirty CSS dynamic media resizing I learned, good enough.

The way that Nat coded the pages made it pretty easy to work something up in a few hours. So the width is changed to 100%, all images to 49%, and the title & side bars made invisible when the window/screen width is < 720-860px using dynamic support in CSS (JavaScript not necessary).

Future: Yeah, I'd still like to build a script to download/process the whole site some day from WayBack, or if Nat has all the files in a local HDD to share, that'd be nice too!

P. S. In case I didn't mention here, I did start a preliminary Perl script for such a purpose to work with Wayback and used it to download the TurboStation-16 PCEFX section that Aaron deleted in 2003:

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/TS/


Also, try the "?dir" command option I added to the site to access all media/images:

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/TS/?dir

Not everything was saved in Wayback, most of the videos and audio files were lost unfortunately. But lots of manual scans were recovered, nearly all - I patched some missing ones and ~2 Falcom audio tracks.

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/TS/mp3_selections_-_ys_collection.html

_{► /mp3/Ys Piano Collection 2 - 06.mp3}

_{► /mp3/TOWER OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH-04.mp3}

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: Turbo Duo CD-Rom issue]

I got a hold of Steve on that, the PCE EE expert, he says:

That sounds like no response from the Sony chips. Odds are it's a bad via again... Could be anywhere between the card slot and the motor controller. This time it's likely data bus, not power.

Sounds like you need to go on a via repair-spree! Clean and repair as many vias as you can. Between the card slot and motor controller helps narrow an area down but I'd go further since others are likely to fail and cause unpredictable symptoms/problems.

So sand, flux, maybe push clean copper inbetween the via where you can see it stick out both sides and then solder it. And of course check continuity from both sides to make sure the traces are restored when finished to be 100% it's repaired.

Good luck!

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: Turbo Duo CD-Rom issue]

You want a photo of the area? Do you not know what a via looks like?? It's a drilled hole to divert a trace from one side to the other, top to bottom. If it's corroded you can shine it up with sand paper, both sides, add flux and then apply solder both sides! That should restore full conductivity/continuity. Once finished, check continuity with a DMM that you get 0 to low Ohms.

[Off-Topic / Re: Audio Interview with Victor Ireland & John Greiner (former head of Hudson Soft).]

I got a special one for ya retro fans and figured I might as well append it here!

GameSack @Joe Redifer, Coury of My Life in Gaming, sat down to chat today with none other than Victor Ireland of Working Designs!

They're discussing the recent Lunar remasters by GungHo America (AKA exXSEED Part Deux).

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/881c616e-7520-4271-9913-814372d1d165?t=120

https://retrohangover.captivate.fm/episode/interview-with-victor-ireland-ft-coury-of-mlig-joe-of-game-sack

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: PC-Engine Duo-RX CD-Rom Issues (Looking for Advice on how to repair)]

I'm also looking forward to any good games that have been released since FX-Unit Yuki I should check out or any new noteworthy translation projects that have come out since then as I've not really been paying attention to the scene, for example did the Kaze no Xanadu I&II trans/english dub ever come out?

Same story with the Legend of Xanadu projects unfortunately: SamIAm got too busy with a growing family so that hobby work was put on indefinite hold/hibernation... The FX-Unit Yuki team however is working on a new PCE homebrew I noted in the forum news/chat modules.

Anyway, congrats on fixing your CD laser, that's the type of DIY success stories I like to see!

[Localizations, Games, Apps, Docs / Re: NEC PC-FX Homebrew (Alpha) - Cascade FX (3D graphics !)]

Hey @gameblabla, thanks for stopping by and sharing your PC-FX work!

For some reason I actually didn't see this thread till a week later! I need global email notifications turned on as admin to know if ANY post is made since our forum here is slow and I don't check up on it as often.

Anyway, yeah, I remember this demo from the discord, it's PCFX 3D Tetris!

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: TG-16 Manual Scans]

What do you think happened? You think it was showing how rushed these ports and releases were being churned out in the US towards the near end of the TG-16's life in the US?

Yeah, all of the above. They were rushed, had to totally rely on human editors to catch typos like that as built-in Grammar/Spell Check didn't exist just yet in Word Processor publishing software (whatever was used to design/publish magazine/manual/booklet pages back then, early 90's).

[Console Repair/Mod Center / Re: PC-Engine Duo-RX CD-Rom Issues (Looking for Advice on how to repair)]

Hey Tom, thanks for stopping by!

I'll forward this to @Keith Courage when I get a chance.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Joined the Duo club.]

Re: Joined the Duo club.
WELCOME!

https://www.foromtb.com/attachments/clubduo-jpg.1702681/
_{disco-insider,de/images/locations/ClubDuo.jpg}

Special Thanks to @Tak-MK for figuring out how to get activated in this random Spanish forum (foromtb.com) to save/recover this particular "Club Duo" image (the LAST one!) that served as a "PCE Turbro" meme, so to speak, when @turboswimbz shared it!

This happened a few months ago when I wandered into this thread as part of my PCEFX image-recovery task/project which I believe has now saved/preserved 20,000+ PCEFX images from its ~20-year history mostly with Wayback, and a custom caching system for Photobucket and 2 other hosts (I'm considering caching IMGUR also before it's too late but I need a .webp image conversion layer)!

So the story around "Club Duo" is it was a night club in Munich Germany, but as best as I can tell it was closed during COVID-19 lockdowns and subsequently went out of business, so its websites expired and most of any shared images were lost. Another casualty of lockdowns... The image was shared from a general club website, link below, that showcased billboards/photos of many clubs in general, but it too was expired and Wayback didn't save the particular image:

_{disco-insider,de/images/locations/ClubDuo.jpg}

Anyway, as you can discern, it doubles in usage as a "Club [Turbo] Duo" in this context/forum, and with the extra work/help put into obtaining the ONLY copy of this image left on the Internet, I logged the story. I have manually rescued dozens of images like this when my automatic Wayback plugin can't help, so I don't bother to log the work, but this is the one I wasted the most time with waiting around for another forum admin to approve my account, and finally getting help (from Tak-MK who is Spanish) to make progress.

I can't believe I finally wrote this post, I really didn't feel like it, it's just one image, but it became something of a little hobby of historical excavation to find lost PCEFX history/images like this! Most forum archives/rebuilds have lost their images/assets, so I wanted to do a better job if at all possible with my PCEFX clone.

[General Gaming / Re: VG Box Art Dejavus]

Bloody Wolf was more "inspired" (AKA ripped-off) from Arnold's 1985 Commando. I honestly didn't make this exact connection all this time, I figured general 80's action muscle-bound movie star influence, sure, but that they literally stole the EXACT pose/copycat from a movie poster/promo I really didn't expect!



I made this one for fun, sized-up side by side after reviewing these threads some more and patching a few lost images. I'm not sure there was a fuller poster of Arnold where his arm isn't clipped off or I would've used that instead.

A more extensive collection happened in another thread by @Tatsujin:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=8501.0

And HG101 has the most here:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/tracing/tracing.htm

Before I forget, I asked a very talented Bloody Wolf fan to make this for me to illustrate the point because he made some similar animated Bloody Wolf covers in the past. This was supposed to be included in the original post, I waited until I could try/learn to do the animation better, but I guess I didn't find the time/motivation to try, so might as well share his original before it's lost/forgotten. I compressed it to the modern/superior .avif format which is a high-color GIF alternative to animate images (a GIF would be 1.7MB while this is only 62KB!):



Thanks again to castle_zotz.

When there was confusion about the source of Arnold's pose being either from Predator or Commando, he made this too (but it's Commando, so this mockup is inaccurate):



Henceforth let it be known as "Bloody Predator".

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: TG-16 Manual Scans]

Did you guys ever notice that New Adventure Island's manual has some strange typo and grammar issues?

Check out page 8-9, the heading reads "Be Sure You Know How These Items"

That's it. Hahaha! Was there a slip in quality control? This late into the conversion efforts, did TTi staff start getting sloppy? Hahaha! That heading ends so abruptly.

Huh, you're right, never knew about it! The correction would be something like, "Be Sure You Know About These Items" or maybe with more words, "Be Sure You Know How To Use These Items" ?

And then at the back cover, the word "Adventure" is spelled "Adventyure".
 

Hm, another one...

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Mysterious Chiptune... (can you identify it?)]

_{► /GameBox/TurboGrafx-16_GameBox_(iOS)_Title_Theme.mp3}

12 years later, and we still haven't the slightest idea who composed this stellar track or where this track may have come from.

Beautiful track nonetheless.

Still happy I was able to rip it when I did, as the app is delisted and gone.

I see, thanks for revisiting this memory, it makes all the trouble rebuilding this site/forum worth it!

I remember this thread and tune! Esteban still cares about his legacy tg-16.com site so all his links work and I coded a decent audio/video embed module so mp3 files can be played instantly in-thread (as you can see/test).

Trying to make classic threads here more viewable/accessible on mobile phones has been part of the point. Might as well be the best PCEFX archive even if we can't revive much membership activity!

Can you identify the chiptune? It's a damn catchy tune that sounds like it is ripped from an existing PCE/TG-16 game...but I (and many fellow pcefxers) can't figure out what title (if any) the song originates from. What are the chances that Hudson commissioned (created) a new chiptune for the GameBox emulator?

_{► /GameBox/TurboGrafx-16_GameBox_(iOS)_Title_Theme.mp3}

I have a hard time believing that Hudson would have taken the time to create a brand-new tune. Call me cynical.

Special Thanks! to @farankoshan for providing the .mp3!

Ah, so esteban credits you for providing the mp3. It's protected/mirrored by Wayback here as well, don't worry about it ever being lost even if he closes his site. Maybe I'll also mirror it on my /audio best of PCE collection folder:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/audio/

Anyway, take care.