PC-FX and why it sucks

[smokey]

This guy made a pretty great video on how the PC-FX was bottlenecked.

Still strange how NEC and Hudson dropped the ball on this so hard. It should have been aces but it wasn’t.
I got one in 2015 for like 2000 yen in the junk section of a hard off. I got 4 or 5 games for it. I basically never touch it. I was glad when somebody translated zeroigar .
But that is probably the last time I played on it.

 

[terry.330]

It sucks because there are only two games worth playing on it and even those are mediocre. Technical specs even don't matter when 95% of the library is dating sims and visual novels.

It ranks up there with the most disappointing systems of all time. I remember getting a good deal on one with a few games on eBay back in the day and thinking "it's the follow up to the PCE/Duo there's gotta be some hidden gems". But nope.

 

[kernow]

Great purchase mate I didn't need to buy one to know it sucks
Noone bought it when it was released hardly

 

[terry.330]

Great purchase mate I didn't need to buy one to know it sucks

Yeah well we're talking the early 00's back before info on obscure consoles from other countries was easily accessible. Sometimes you just had to learn the hard way. At least it was cheap and I was able to resell it to some other sucker.

 

[Penis Fart]

I've never owned a PC-FX and recently watched some Youtube documentaries on it.
Was surprises me is that the chip generated audio sounds just like the PC Engine. Kind of surprising to me.

 

[herb]

I standby my view that Zenki FX is an awesome game. Shame it's stuck on the pc-fx

 

[GutsDozer]

All the game magazines hyped the heck out of this thing ahead of its release. It's sad it couldn't live uo to the hype. Did they ever release Snatcher or any other good games? Or was it just all anime visual novels? One interesting thing is they had a fighter being designed for SNES with the FX chip called FX Fighter. It got canceled but showed up again on PCFX.

 

[Tarma]

Why did that guy need 45 minutes to explain that the FC-FX was fucking wank?

TL;DW - the PC-FX is fucking useless and not worth your time, unless you like big plastic paper weights, then, and only then, it may be worth your while tracking one down at a Tokyo landfill.

 

[JoeAwesome]

Why did that guy need 45 minutes to explain that the FC-FX was fucking wank?

TL;DW - the PC-FX is fucking useless and not worth your time, unless you like big plastic paper weights, then, and only then, it may be worth your while tracking one down at a Tokyo landfill.

Pretty much. If I want to hear a high schooler’s perspective while he uses PowerPoint, here it is, though.

 

[smokey]

Great purchase mate I didn't need to buy one to know it sucks
Noone bought it when it was released hardly

I can get obsessed over a platform for a while. Back then it was the PC FX. I also have a GX 4000 , mega duck , I even have a Super A’can.
……. I know I know……

 

[smokey]

All the game magazines hyped the heck out of this thing ahead of its release. It's sad it couldn't live uo to the hype. Did they ever release Snatcher or any other good games? Or was it just all anime visual novels? One interesting thing is they had a fighter being designed for SNES with the FX chip called FX Fighter. It got canceled but showed up again on PCFX.

There are basically 3 decent games if you don’t know Japanese: Zenki, Chip Chan kick and zeroigar. But all are not better then the best on the PC engine

 

[smokey]

Pretty much. If I want to hear a high schooler’s perspective while he uses PowerPoint, here it is, though.

He is a well respected developer in the homebrew scene.
I thought the video was very informative. The PC FX is basically a SuperGrafx with a 32bit processor that has a control chip that limits it to no end.

 

[smokey]

Why did that guy need 45 minutes to explain that the FC-FX was fucking wank?

TL;DW - the PC-FX is fucking useless and not worth your time, unless you like big plastic paper weights, then, and only then, it may be worth your while tracking one down at a Tokyo landfill.

For us it is wank because there weren’t any great games. He explains why it is technically wank. Not commercially.

 

[greedostick]

Yeah well we're talking the early 00's back before info on obscure consoles from other countries was easily accessible. Sometimes you just had to learn the hard way. At least it was cheap and I was able to resell it to some other sucker.

I remember when I first met you around 2003 and you had a PCFX with Puchi Carrot. I had no fucking clue what was going on. Then I played Last Blade for the first time and it became my favorite fighting game ever.

I think PCFX has Zeki, which is just decent. Battle Heat is more of a tech demo. Some of the mech games looked cool, but probably not playable as well.

Fun fact:

There was a video card made that can be installed on a legacy Windows PC to play PCFX games on your computer. You need a dual monitor setup though.

 

[ChuChu Flamingo]

 

[smokey]

There was a video card made that can be installed on a legacy Windows PC to play PCFX games on your computer. You need a dual monitor setup though.

The PC FX Card contains the 3D chip that was supposed to be in the PC FX but wasn ‘t ready in time

 

[Jon]

I remember enjoying mine. One game people haven't mentioned is Team Innocent: The Point of No Return. Really liked this one, the tank controls do take a while to get used to, though. Still remember trying to find guides for the game circa 2003, which were very bare bones, and beating the game. The anime cutscenes were very well done and the opening was very catchy. IIRC, one of the fansubbing groups responsible for subbing Fist of the North Star was going to subtitle/translate the game but, it was never released.

I ended up owning every good game for the system, including Zenki, Zeroigar, Chip Chan Kick, Miraculum, etc. Sold all of them for a US Matrimelee AES from 16-bit about 15 years ago.

If I could say anything negative about the system, it would be that the disk drive was very temperamental, sometimes not loading music and/or crashing.

@wataru330 was able to snag a free copy of Zenki, supposedly, because someone threw it away? Would love to hear that story.

Jon

 

[Penis Fart]

Was the the PC-FX the end result of that Project Titan technology that EGM magazine previewed in the early 90's?

 

[HellioN]

I remember reading about this and thinking it was going to kill everything else.
Then, nothing.
It just vanished.
Years later we find out why.

 

[wataru330]

@Jon not much of a story.

I lived in Japan, there was more than one trash night (burnable trash, recycling, unburnable trash, etc.).

The neighborhood my classmates and I were placed in was pretty upscale. jiyugaoka reminded me of Los Altos & Beverly Hills CA or Society Hill PA.

Unburnable trash night in this neighborhood was a winning slot machine over the years. Neo home carts, systems, PC•FX system and stack of games, manga and mooks galore.

We scooped often. The yard sales/farmer’s market scenes on weekends had hella inexpensive things. Chris from superfami.com got a lot of his games this way.

Well off middle aged empty nesters aren’t taking their grown kids’ stuff to trade in at Hard Off.

 

[snes_collector]

The system itself is super neat, which I think it what draws people in (including myself.) Too bad there is so little to play on it. One of these days I'll get around to burning copies of Zenki and Zeroigar to try out. It is crazy to me they did not make in backwards compatible with PC Engine CD games

 

[Jon]

@Jon not much of a story.

I lived in Japan, there was more than one trash night (burnable trash, recycling, unburnable trash, etc.).

The neighborhood my classmates and I were placed in was pretty upscale. jiyugaoka reminded me of Los Altos & Beverly Hills CA or Society Hill PA.

Unburnable trash night in this neighborhood was a winning slot machine over the years. Neo home carts, systems, PC•FX system and stack of games, manga and mooks galore.

We scooped often. The yard sales/farmer’s market scenes on weekends had hella inexpensive things. Chris from superfami.com got a lot of his games this way.

Well off middle aged empty nesters aren’t taking their grown kids’ stuff to trade in at Hard Off.

Superfami.com. Haven't heard that name in 20 years, did a ton of business with Chris before finding Yasuo aka Yawara on eBay and, later, 16-bit.

Jon

 

[BlackaneseNiNjA]

I had no idea the system was this hated among western retro gamers after all these years. Though always destined to die against the Saturn and Playstation, I always saw it as a console that just never got to realize its true potential due to the fmv and license game mandate. We never got Lords of Thunder FX, Super Star Soldier 3D, Hi-ten Bomberman, etc so the system always seemed like lost potential as those games simply never materialized.

Zenki, Team Innocent, Battle Heat, Zeroigar, and Yuna FX (for those who followed that series on PC Engine, Saturn, and eventually the Playstation for Yuna 3) are all that seemed fit for play for most, but as someone already stated, even all of those aren’t games you can earnestly recommend.

As an oldschool Fist of the Northstar fan, it primarily runs Battle Heat these days, but I always thought older gamers saw the console and its library in the same light as the Wonderswan: a quirky japan-exclusive system with only a limited offering of titles for gamers looking for something outside of the usual consoles.

 

[Penis Fart]

I mean, the focus was on all this crazy fmv and anime to be included in every game.
Even today, there's no real way a non-Japanese speaking gamer can properly play 95% of the library.
You have to wonder what NEC/Hudson were thinking when they green-lighted the PC-FX.

 

[Gentlegamer]

In rebuttal: Queen of Queens