it was a great time to be a teenage gamer, that's for sure, dreaming about being able to afford imports, reading gaming magazines, going to arcades, going online for the first time and hitting up gaming chatrooms, those days will forever stand alone
Interesting hardware from the very short era where the industry was still deciding if FMV or real-time 3D games would become the dominant format. NEC had envisioned titles that would seamlessly blend FMV powered by a multi-stream hardware MPEG decoder with high color 2D sprites. The idea was that background layers could be made up of different sections of a video stream, while things like characters would be handled as sprites by the 2D engine. The reality was the unpredictable nature of CD-ROM access and the lower quality drive shipped in the unit made it practically impossible to achieve that goal. Even though the high end hardware MPEG decoder did all the work for video rendering, the files buffering and seeking required to access multiple streams took a huge toll on the CPU, resulting in hiccups and stalls to the sprite engine. In the worst scenario you would have sprites running at low FPS *and* half rendered video in the background as the CPU struggled to read data from the CD-ROM. Even NEC never managed to produce a proof of concept to showcase the PC-FX intended ability. Developers were stuck with either mostly FMV based games or entirely sprite driven 2D games. A few games like the cancelled FX Fighter did manage to use multi-stream video to some effect but it was pretty clear after launch that the PC-FX wasn’t equipped to take on the newer real-time 3D consoles like Saturn or PlayStation. The PC-FX catalogue ended up being dominated by interactive FMV titles and a handful of traditional 2D sprites based games that didn’t offer anything beyond what was already available in the previous console generation. It’s still a really interesting piece of hardware that was designed with an entirely different idea of what the future of games could be, but it just couldn’t match the freedom and variety that real-time 3D offers,
One of the games appeared in the video without the name. The game that comes shortly after "First Kiss * Monogatari." For those who want to know the name is: Fushigi no Kuni no Angelique, and was released in October 1996.
This is such an intriguing console. It has so many really cool looking RPGs on it. If i could speak japanese fluently i would shell out the money for one and collect the games. Id love to own one.
I own all the games, complete full set. The system has some charisma in a way and the very games where japanese is not that needed are actually good and unique. The only shooter ZEroigar has an interesting gameplay that few shooters have.
@@steve5123456789 no sadly...the funny fact is that the very first demo games (which were never relesead) were in 3d...I think it was in the very early stages of the system, way before it got released.
@@johnwinthrop214 Not surprised it got murdered by the PS1, and Saturn. I'm kind of shocked a machine of its period could not do 3D at all. Is the 32X and Atari Jaguar packing more power than this? What about the 3DO?
@@steve5123456789 the 3do banked on movies-like games...but it had some fun 3d games. The pcfx was all about cute anime stuff, it was too "niche" for its own good. That said, quite a few exclusives on the system
with arcade 2d ports from neogeo, cps2 and taito this could be an awesome console. Also, the best seller games in pc for late 90s were in 2d: baldur's gate, sanitarium, c&c, warcraft, starcraft, worms...
Every 2 years i forgot why i never downloaded the sega cd , pc engine cd and pcfx entire sets... then i watch "top games" of said platforms and remember that i'm ok with the 15 games i have from all combined lol.
I was wondering why the PC-Engine didn't have a successor thinking it died with the Super Graphx and PC-Engine cd add on. Boy was I wrong. It did! The failed PC-Fx.
Unfortunately I gave up studying Japanese, otherwise this console would be very interesting for me. As it is, 90% of these games are unplayable for people who don't understand Japanese. Most of them are RPGs or anime-style games with lots of dialogs
Yup, and there are no translation patches pretty much or anything of this sort. Guess this is one of those consoles which will always remain a mystery, like Wonderswan, a good chunk of SNES RPGs or the Japanese PCs.
62 games and 5 are Mahjong....why create a powerful console with tons of potential and then make board/card games for them. It would be like if PS2 only had 62 games and 5 were solitaire and dominos.
Aren't you glad this console remained Japanese-only? Don't get me wrong, anime based games are great, but most of American society during the 60's to 1990's had no idea what the hell anime was. That's why it had to be plagued by censorship because most people in America at the time presumed that anime watchers were no different than cartoon watchers which was a lie by the way.
@@thatrandomdude4143 Make no mistake, this console had too much anime content, so this is why it failed in comparison to the Saturn, PlayStation, and even the Nintendo 64 at the time.
I love 2D games, but not supporting 3D games was such a mind numbingly stupid choice that doomed the PC-FX from the very start with competing with the PS1 or even the Saturn.
I believe this console would have been much more successful if released in 1993 or early '94. It was too outdated by the time the Saturn and PlayStation came out. I heard they actually were targeting '93 but had some issues so they delayed it. If they had released it on time and then released their 3D add-on card in 1995, it could have been just as successful or more than the original PC Engine and they could have swayed a lot more people away from the Saturn, PlayStation, and N64. But releasing it after the Saturn and PlayStation was a total fail and they probably should have just canceled the thing.
@rick hunter Some of the RPGs look like they could be pretty good but not knowing Japanese I'll never know. If they haven't been translated by now there isn't much hope they ever will be.
doubtful on your point about it being successful after releasing an addon 3D card. after the 32x/segaCD/PC Engine CD add-on wars, people were done buying expensive add-ons that would eventually lose support by developers
Thx alot for the vids will check them out .The project of all Video Games is very interesting but wouldn`t it be better if every game would have been shown in 5 miniutes showing different stages and other stuff from the Games instead of 15 seconds?
Hi htdmc2010, I understand that, that's why we are making "longplays" of the games, if we put 5 minutes each game, some videos would have more than 350 hours (like PS2 that has more than 4500 games). We think that 10 seconds for each game is a good time for you to find out how the game works and if you want to play it. But thanks for the suggestion :)
@@VirtualGamingLibrary Thx for the Answer. i can see why the vids are very short. Longplays are good but they are sometimes several hours long. For example 4500 Games in longplays are just way too long that is why i think a middle solution would be interesting. But i am happy that this project exists.
@@computersandgaming6664 Seeing the obscurity and failure the NEC PC-FX was, that could have been why international gamers never got to see games from this console outside of Japan.
Man, apart from that 1 shmup game. Nothing in this console's library caught my interest. It makes sense now why only like 3 games were ever bothered with English fan translation patches so far. Most of these games look overall meh & demand to play these PC FX games is little to none.
@@ravengaming4143 True, but at the same time they marketed it towards 90s otaku which is pretty lame because now there's nothing cathartic in terms of gameplay to actually...play.
@@DonnyKirkMusic It was like Japan's version of the Philips CD-i. It shouldn't have been though as it had a lot more potential but their biggest mistake was releasing it too late after the Saturn and PlayStation so developers weren't really interested in it other than playing around with their JPEG video feature.
Graphically this console is abysmal, on the level of Mega Drive and SNES that was released half a decade earlier. The PC-FX seems good (very good, indeed) only at reproducing full motion video...
On the 04:33 the title is missing, the game is Fushigi no Kuni no Angelique (Thanks for the correction AlexandreBR)
I miss the 90s Japanese video game scene!!!! it will never ever come back!
it was a great time to be a teenage gamer, that's for sure, dreaming about being able to afford imports, reading gaming magazines, going to arcades, going online for the first time and hitting up gaming chatrooms, those days will forever stand alone
Timepoints (from 0-Z) of the PC-FX video. (0-9, I, N, U, X, and Y are missing because there are no games in this list that contain the first letter in the game titles).
A: 00:03 - 02:02
B: 02:03 - 02:32
C: 02:33 - 03:32
D: 03:33 - 04:02
F: 04:03 - 04:42
G: 04:43 - 04:52
H: 04:53 - 05:02
J: 05:03 - 05:12
K: 05:13 - 05:42
L: 05:43 - 06:02
M: 06:03 - 06:52
O: 06:53 - 07:52
P: 07:53 - 07:32
Q: 07:33 - 07:52
R: 07:53 - 07:52
S: 07:53 - 08:52
T: 08:53 - 09:42
V: 09:43 - 09:52
W: 09:53 - 10:02
Z: 10:03 - 10:22
This is the best console ever released! :P
Only 3 games from this list that had english fans translations.
-. Choujin Heiki Zeroigar
-. Farland Story FX
-. Pia Carrot e Youkosou
And one of them is eroge, PC-FX fans have their priorities in check I see!
Also known as the anime box. Haha.
No i called it the NEC Anime Engine
@@cysper479 More like the NEC Hentai Engine
Rocks Box
Interesting hardware from the very short era where the industry was still deciding if FMV or real-time 3D games would become the dominant format. NEC had envisioned titles that would seamlessly blend FMV powered by a multi-stream hardware MPEG decoder with high color 2D sprites. The idea was that background layers could be made up of different sections of a video stream, while things like characters would be handled as sprites by the 2D engine.
The reality was the unpredictable nature of CD-ROM access and the lower quality drive shipped in the unit made it practically impossible to achieve that goal. Even though the high end hardware MPEG decoder did all the work for video rendering, the files buffering and seeking required to access multiple streams took a huge toll on the CPU, resulting in hiccups and stalls to the sprite engine. In the worst scenario you would have sprites running at low FPS *and* half rendered video in the background as the CPU struggled to read data from the CD-ROM.
Even NEC never managed to produce a proof of concept to showcase the PC-FX intended ability. Developers were stuck with either mostly FMV based games or entirely sprite driven 2D games. A few games like the cancelled FX Fighter did manage to use multi-stream video to some effect but it was pretty clear after launch that the PC-FX wasn’t equipped to take on the newer real-time 3D consoles like Saturn or PlayStation. The PC-FX catalogue ended up being dominated by interactive FMV titles and a handful of traditional 2D sprites based games that didn’t offer anything beyond what was already available in the previous console generation.
It’s still a really interesting piece of hardware that was designed with an entirely different idea of what the future of games could be, but it just couldn’t match the freedom and variety that real-time 3D offers,
I wish there was an English translation for Miraculum The Last Revelation. That looks awesome! Console showed great promise. A shame
At least this console has better video quality compared to a 32X
One of the games appeared in the video without the name. The game that comes shortly after "First Kiss * Monogatari." For those who want to know the name is: Fushigi no Kuni no Angelique, and was released in October 1996.
I put an observation, thanks for the correction bro! :)
@@VirtualGamingLibrary xD
I just wish someone would translate some of these gems.
Farland Story and God Fighter have been.
This is such an intriguing console. It has so many really cool looking RPGs on it. If i could speak japanese fluently i would shell out the money for one and collect the games. Id love to own one.
0:03 A
2:03 B
2:33 C
3:33 D
4:03 F
4:43 G
4:53 H
5:03 J
5:14 K
5:43 L
6:03 M
6:53 O
7:03 P
7:33 R
7:53 S
8:53 T
9:43 V
9:53 W
10:05 Z
7:46 Link, is that you???
I own all the games, complete full set. The system has some charisma in a way and the very games where japanese is not that needed are actually good and unique. The only shooter ZEroigar has an interesting gameplay that few shooters have.
Is the machine capable of 3d?
@@steve5123456789 no sadly...the funny fact is that the very first demo games (which were never relesead) were in 3d...I think it was in the very early stages of the system, way before it got released.
@@johnwinthrop214 Not surprised it got murdered by the PS1, and Saturn. I'm kind of shocked a machine of its period could not do 3D at all. Is the 32X and Atari Jaguar packing more power than this? What about the 3DO?
@@steve5123456789 the 3do banked on movies-like games...but it had some fun 3d games. The pcfx was all about cute anime stuff, it was too "niche" for its own good. That said, quite a few exclusives on the system
@@johnwinthrop214 Which 3d games did it have?
It was a nice machine, but it was released too late. If it had been released two years earlier, it could have had a different history.
with arcade 2d ports from neogeo, cps2 and taito this could be an awesome console. Also, the best seller games in pc for late 90s were in 2d: baldur's gate, sanitarium, c&c, warcraft, starcraft, worms...
A relentless anime nightmare. Also, here's Return to Zork.
I had no idea they made a cutie honey game for this thing
Thank you for the video.
Every 2 years i forgot why i never downloaded the sega cd , pc engine cd and pcfx entire sets... then i watch "top games" of said platforms and remember that i'm ok with the 15 games i have from all combined lol.
Cuáles son? Creo que pienso como tú!
Gracias
Good console!
My Favorite😍 Games🎮:
2:44 Chip-Chan Kick!
5:14 Kishin Douji Zenki FX: Vajra Fight
Someone should make homebrew games for this. I see potential in this console.
i got given one of these, played it once now its a nice display pce lol
I really wish these got fan translations... so many anime games!!!
Тот случай, когда не знал о существовании такой консоли... и хорошо что не знал)
I was wondering why the PC-Engine didn't have a successor thinking it died with the Super Graphx and PC-Engine cd add on. Boy was I wrong. It did! The failed PC-Fx.
Stupendo!
Grazie!
Unfortunately I gave up studying Japanese, otherwise this console would be very interesting for me. As it is, 90% of these games are unplayable for people who don't understand Japanese. Most of them are RPGs or anime-style games with lots of dialogs
Yup, and there are no translation patches pretty much or anything of this sort. Guess this is one of those consoles which will always remain a mystery, like Wonderswan, a good chunk of SNES RPGs or the Japanese PCs.
0:03: 1. Aa! Megami-sama! (1997)
0:13: 2. Akazukin ChaCha: Osawagase Panic Race (1996)
No game looking better than on PC-Engine :P
62 games and 5 are Mahjong....why create a powerful console with tons of potential and then make board/card games for them. It would be like if PS2 only had 62 games and 5 were solitaire and dominos.
Por eso fracasó y por eso no es buena opción retro.
A pretty interesting console,but should’ve had more variety when it came to the games
Aren't you glad this console remained Japanese-only? Don't get me wrong, anime based games are great, but most of American society during the 60's to 1990's had no idea what the hell anime was. That's why it had to be plagued by censorship because most people in America at the time presumed that anime watchers were no different than cartoon watchers which was a lie by the way.
Timmy Menard imagine it coming to us or europe,it would’ve just been stomped on honestly
@@thatrandomdude4143 Make no mistake, this console had too much anime content, so this is why it failed in comparison to the Saturn, PlayStation, and even the Nintendo 64 at the time.
Crazy to go from the PC Engine to this....
32 bit... looks 16 bit but it's 5° gen nonetheless. One of the weirdest, most obscure consoles ever
Looks like this is the console to get if you like Anime
When you just can't get enough mahjong.
Fullset 62 cds. 30gb 1 blu-ray ou uma conta mega. Cabe tudo
Zenki is the most expensive PC-FX game.
What a disappointing follow up to the TGFX16! TGFX was the SHIT back in the day! I had a friend who had one when they first came out, in 1990.
I love 2D games, but not supporting 3D games was such a mind numbingly stupid choice that doomed the PC-FX from the very start with competing with the PS1 or even the Saturn.
Zenki and Zeroigar (Y)
The Otaku Console
6:28 That's one serious case of :3
I believe this console would have been much more successful if released in 1993 or early '94. It was too outdated by the time the Saturn and PlayStation came out. I heard they actually were targeting '93 but had some issues so they delayed it. If they had released it on time and then released their 3D add-on card in 1995, it could have been just as successful or more than the original PC Engine and they could have swayed a lot more people away from the Saturn, PlayStation, and N64. But releasing it after the Saturn and PlayStation was a total fail and they probably should have just canceled the thing.
@rick hunter Sad part about FMVs and lack of 3D, but anime instead....... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
@rick hunter Some of the RPGs look like they could be pretty good but not knowing Japanese I'll never know. If they haven't been translated by now there isn't much hope they ever will be.
doubtful on your point about it being successful after releasing an addon 3D card. after the 32x/segaCD/PC Engine CD add-on wars, people were done buying expensive add-ons that would eventually lose support by developers
Way better then Nintendo's crappy online joke of a service
And it's only getting worse.
Biggest console let down in video game history! And that includes the Super Grafx!
Thx alot for the vids will check them out .The project of all Video Games is very interesting but wouldn`t it be better if every game would have been shown in 5 miniutes showing different stages and other stuff from the Games instead of 15 seconds?
Hi htdmc2010, I understand that, that's why we are making "longplays" of the games, if we put 5 minutes each game, some videos would have more than 350 hours (like PS2 that has more than 4500 games). We think that 10 seconds for each game is a good time for you to find out how the game works and if you want to play it. But thanks for the suggestion :)
@@VirtualGamingLibrary
Thx for the Answer. i can see why the vids are very short. Longplays are good but they are sometimes several hours long. For example 4500 Games in longplays are just way too long that is why i think a middle solution would be interesting. But i am happy that this project exists.
Console actually looks good. Too bad it's library was too niche and lacked variety.
If you liked Anime FMVs, text heavy RPGs and vertical scrolling shooters, PCFX was for you!
A vertical scrolling shooter. As in one.
what emulator can load this games ?
retroarch with proper core; you'll need the bios file too
It looks like this computer didn't do so well compared to the superior consoles such as the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn.
@@computersandgaming6664 Seeing the obscurity and failure the NEC PC-FX was, that could have been why international gamers never got to see games from this console outside of Japan.
surpassed Atari Jaguar as the worst library
Thanks for this videos, I will not add the fullset to my recalbox, to many japanese and so unplayable games
PC FX More like Visual Novel System
cry about it
Man, apart from that 1 shmup game. Nothing in this console's library caught my interest. It makes sense now why only like 3 games were ever bothered with English fan translation patches so far. Most of these games look overall meh & demand to play these PC FX games is little to none.
04:22 look at the size of the foreheads on those waifus
Oh god
Macrocephaly
Big head waifus •
Big brains and big hearts. Good combo.
感謝分享。
いう
1994 year game 😁
0 good games, awesome console!)
nada que una PC engine no pueda hacer...
English:bored. Español:qburrido
👍
So basically more or less 66 different anime based text based games. Duh. This system seemed to have potential. What a missed opportunity :(
It was wholly aimed at the Japanese market.
@@ravengaming4143 Yeah but still. I'm sure that the japanese customers expected something more than just loads of text based anime games.
@@ravengaming4143 True, but at the same time they marketed it towards 90s otaku which is pretty lame because now there's nothing cathartic in terms of gameplay to actually...play.
@@DonnyKirkMusic It was like Japan's version of the Philips CD-i. It shouldn't have been though as it had a lot more potential but their biggest mistake was releasing it too late after the Saturn and PlayStation so developers weren't really interested in it other than playing around with their JPEG video feature.
Anime box
Very good vidéo for a very bad console
10:21 Byee!!
美少女アニメオタクのためのゲーム機です😂
1:14 tenchi muyo.
Não é um videogame bom, até o idioma é complicado !!
like
Graphically this console is abysmal, on the level of Mega Drive and SNES that was released half a decade earlier. The PC-FX seems good (very good, indeed) only at reproducing full motion video...
The only games missing (my opinion) are Policenauts and Snatcher. I love those wacky and lucky Japanese!
F
kino