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[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Collecting PC-Engine in the early 90s in the UK]

"A LOT OF ITEMS IN THIS LEAFLET ARE COLLECTABLE LIMITED STOCK AND BECOMING RARE ITEMS"

telegames was right

Damn right!  Telegames were great, I used them loads back in the day.  They always had an amazing amount of stock across all platforms and a really good service.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: For those who grew up with imported pce in Europe]

...
Everywhere you looked there were Mega Drives, Neo Geos and PC Engines running the best new games that were available. It was an audio visual overload. I remember it was the first time I ever saw a SuperGrafx or Neo Geo in person and also the first time I laid eyes on a Game Boy (also Japanese import) right before they got released in the UK. I clearly recall agonising over whether to buy a SuperGrafx or an original white Engine, but the SuperGrafx was quite a bit more expensive. I bought a copy of Splatterhouse with my PC Engine and the total was around £250 - £275, so definitely not cheap. Import gaming was definitely not for the faint hearted or gamers on a budget. I remember Splatterhouse had just been released and was a red hot title. I was so excited to get home and fire it up and it certainly didn't disappoint.

Great memories of an absolutely golden bygone era!

Amazing. To my knowledge, we had no equivalent in the States. No import "scene" per se, just a few scattered shops that might carry some import games.

As stated earlier in the thread, even folks outside of England/UK love reading about this piece of PCE history because *we don't know about it*.

I just want to REQUEST... if you folks have *any* zines, ads, documents, flyers from any of these shops, I would love to include them here:

https://archives.tg-16.com/magazine_database.htm?col=region&val=uk

It is shameful that there are only two entries for U.K. 

I NEED TO FIX THAT.

Those shows only ran for a handful of years from the late 80's to the early 90's. The ECES event was superseded by the Live '9X event each September, which was more of a general consumer electronics/technology show, but also had vendor areas where import dealers sold their wares if memory serves.  There's few videos from the Live '95 event here, which I'm sure I went to:

http://www.itnsource.com/en/shotlist/RTV/1995/09/19/605230725

They were consumer shows for the general public, as opposed to the ECTS (European Computer Trade Show) which was a bit like the UK E3, albeit on a smaller and less significant scale. That trade show ended in the mid 2000's.

It would be great to get some of those Electric Brain fanzines scanned and uploaded anyway, as it was a prolific publication with at least 40 or so issues published, featuring some fantastic content. With the arrival of HyperPlay RPG and a seemingly renewed interest in old school 90's style fanzines, it would be amazing to see another PC Engine 'zine on the scene along the lines of the brilliant but abortive PCP. I'm sure there would be plenty of interest. The PC Engine was a sorely neglected console back then and there was precious little in the way of fanzine support, which is such a shame.

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: For those who grew up with imported pce in Europe]

Any other Euro users in here?

Well, as a Northern lad, my "local" PCE shop was in Nottingham.

That was one heck of a long distance shopping trip (by British standards) from Manchester.

Had my very first car accident on one of the trips (trying to take a semi-hidden sharp corner way too fast). 

I was going to pick up the SCART-modded SuperGrafx that I'd pre-ordered from the shop as soon as the SuperGrafx was announced. 

I bought a white PAL modded PC Engine from the SUPERVISION guys back in 1990 at the September ECES (European Computer Entertainment Show) at Earls Court. Those guys were great, they definitely offered the best PAL modded systems at the time that actually output a decent picture and didn't require one of those god awful great big ugly colour boosters. I actually still have mine and I even still had the hand written receipt until recently, but it seems to have vanished. I believe they also had a sister company called SUPERGRAPHICS. They were from Hong Kong as I recall and were definitely one of the better import dealers on the scene in those early days. I mostly used PC Engine Supplies though, but I don't think they had a booth at that show. Or if they did, I couldn't find it. I don't remember seeing Raven Games there either, but I'm sure they must have had a booth. The show was massive and quite overwhelming. My head was spinning by the time I left!

Did anybody else go to those ECES shows back then? They were beyond amazing, literally stuffed with booths representing most of the grey import mail order companies in the UK of the era, selling all of the latest Japanese consoles and games. There were lots of live entertainment events going on, but I skipped all of that stuff and headed straight to the vendor area. I was 14 at the time, so it was a golden age for me gaming wise and I was already an absolutely hardcore Japanese import gamer by that point. My brother and I went there with my dad and our tiny minds were utterly blown by what was on display. Everywhere you looked there were Mega Drives, Neo Geos and PC Engines running the best new games that were available. It was an audio visual overload. I remember it was the first time I ever saw a SuperGrafx or Neo Geo in person and also the first time I laid eyes on a Game Boy (also Japanese import) right before they got released in the UK. I clearly recall agonising over whether to buy a SuperGrafx or an original white Engine, but the SuperGrafx was quite a bit more expensive. I bought a copy of Splatterhouse with my PC Engine and the total was around £250 - £275, so definitely not cheap. Import gaming was definitely not for the faint hearted or gamers on a budget. I remember Splatterhouse had just been released and was a red hot title. I was so excited to get home and fire it up and it certainly didn't disappoint.

Great memories of an absolutely golden bygone era!

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: Collecting PC-Engine in the early 90s in the UK]

OK guys, this topic needs dusting off. It' sunny in London right now, I have a headache from internet authoring so I'm gonna sit back and recount some hardcore PC engine memories from the 80s and 90s.
I consider myself 'Generation Engine' as I was about 15 1/2 when the Engine was first talked about on these shores. C&VG was the first mag I came across that featured it - a 2 page spread if I remember. The reviews posted elsewhere on this thread, are also familiar.
There were at least 3 kids in our school who had bought one - two got them direct from HK through a Chinese guy called 'Chi' at school. One other had ordered his from PC Engine Supplies. He turned out to be a very good and long term friend of mine- PC engine was the catalyst.
Anyway, for some reason I decided to mail order a PC Engine - with my good parent blessing and sponsorship from Mention Technical Services. It was a little bit more expensive (about £200?) but it seemed a bigger company. I think they were based in the Scottish borders.
The thing arrived - with Vigilante, Dungeon Explorer, Tails of the Monster Path (a free game!) and Galaga '88. I think it was a 4 HuCard deal or something.. The four still remain in my collection. With the White Engine came the ubiquotous Colour Booster, which as you probably all know, screws up a lot of the colours and puts out greens instead of pinks etc....anyway flesh never looked very good and it started to bum me out, especially as my mate's one from PC Engine supplied worked fine on PAL as it had been modded.
So I ended up sending mine away to - guess who - Console Concepts - to repair....and the f****rs went bust, taking my PC Engine with them. I never saw it again..!   Another annoying thing was I threw away the box etc - what a berk! I was only 16 and boxes didn't seem worth keeping.
So, a little later, with my games and hobby intact, I managed to convince my - very annoyed - parents to buy a Core Grafx from some other supplier - I forget who - and it arrived, unmodded. I used the AV out for video signal but things were still far from perfect - after about 10 minutes of play, the screen would flash pink-red intermitently, due I think to the heat, as blowing across the vents seemed to ease it off. Not great when you're in the middle of a Formation Soccer match though....Anyway I could still use the AV booster for stereo sound, which was the best part about that ugly beast. It has since been thrown away - I should have kept it cos its still a dinky little add on . Never mind.
Anyway, my collection grew between 88 and 90 - and I amassed about 35 games. By the time the CDROM was brought out I (a) didn't have the money to get it (b) convinced myself it was a draft gimmick and (c) was getting more into rather less healthy persuits than gaming, or should i say the typical adolescent guy things.... anyway the collection reached its peak, with a couple of purchases from Computer Exchange on Whitfield Street ( I am intrigued by the other London shops mentioned here - now I think about it though I do remember vaguely something in the Middle of Tottenham Court Road!!) and then the hobby lay dormant. But before I skip to the 'Second Coming' I will give a couple of prices I paid - £40 for Don Doko Don (worth less now!!) and £30 for Outrun (ditto!!). The very last game I bought in that era was an unboxed version of Barunba for about £12 and it has stopped working since. Games were expensive cos we only had a few importers to buy them from. Talking about HuCard failures I have only ever had two but a couple are known to still be 'awkward' and take a few boots!
OK, well before I get to the return of the Engine, I will also say that I had an XE1-PC joystick, and a 5 way etc etc. This is important cos my first foray into buying new stuff for the engine, was after a ten year hiatus and on my return to London in about 1999 to work. There I found Computer Exchange, shortly to move to its current location of Rathbone Place, and its amazing little retro museum, which also went with it (for the first couple of years anyway, before they went mainstream...!)
An in CE I bought a XE1-PC Pro - still the best joystick for the engine IMO. Recently I picked another up - new and boxed this time!
As I didn't know about ebay then - one guy in my office was trading on it, but it meant nothing to me - I bought a few games from CE as well as starting my Sega Dreamcast and Saturn collections (but largely on ebay by that time).
I found a number of CHEAP! HuCards in CEX - Final Blaster £20, for example, but they also had some very expensive ones - I remember seeing Super Star Soldier there for £60 for like a whole year!! And of course, I didn't even LOOK at the Super CD ROMs!! What an idiot! I have in my head the idea that they were selling like Sylphia for £50, or Spriggan for a tenner. Was that the case???!!
Anyway, my collection grew at the tail end of the 90s into about 50 Hueys, and has since grown only a little more to about 70. I prefer shooters and some platformers / RPGs but nothing like the whole set. And anyway I have Magic Engine and HuE for the PSP to play anything!
Pulling this rather long story back into present day, to conclude, I was looking at stuff on the net and discovered Nexzr. I thought - sh*t that shooter looks good - and did a bit more research into the Super CD Rom setup. I ended up getting a boxed IFU-30 with SCDROM for about £85 off ebay, which I was very pleased about. CD drive is sketchy though. Since then I have built up a collection of about 20 of the 'must have shmups' for the system - Spriggan 1&2, Psychic Storm etc etc.....and recently acquired a boxed GT, then a boxed LT, then a Super CD ROM 2.

I'm really impressed by all the PCE resources on line - this being a PRIME example - just love the hardware compatibility chart for example! And the Bible PCE Daisuken etc etc ..... and You Tube of course, where I now have a channel (see link!) and have met some awesome PCE gamers like Dankss, Nectarsis, PhatPhunk, Lorfarius, the list goes on and on.....

Retro love people.

Matt, your channel is awesome. Please make more videos again! I have a fairly similar PC Engine background to those shared in this thread. I got introduced to the scene back in the late 80's by a good friend who's now a game designer. In the very early days of the UK grey import scene there was a notorious outfit called PC Engine Services, run by two crooks who sold shoddily modified systems with the dodgy colour booster. They ended up serving jail time for their fraudulent activities if I recall correctly, as they ripped off a lot of people before going bust. I think that might be the company you got yours from, as PC Engine Supplies were a great outfit that later became Console Concepts and carried on well into the 90's. I believe Colin Diamond was the person behind Console Concepts and he was a really top guy. I bought many of my import games from them back in those days, along with the other companies mentioned in this thread, like Raven Games, Telegames, Rhine Games and Shekhana. I used to go to Shekhana's shop on Tottenham Court Road all the time before I discovered Advance Console Entertainment, or ACE. I spent many, many hours hanging out at ACE through the 90's and early 2000's and got very friendly with Nick and Dimitry who ran the place. Not the cheapest shop, but then none of those places were cheap back then. Import gaming really was a hardcore pursuit and a very expensive hobby. Raven Games in Beckenham was a cool shop too and was one of the first physical import shops in the UK dating back to 1988, the year I started collecting. Tony who ran Raven Games was another top guy. Amazingly, the shop still existed until fairly recently, but sadly I think it's closed down now as their website has disappeared.

I've only just got really back into gaming over the past few years after a long hiatus from the hobby. It seems to be quite a common story that I hear from other people my age who were also serious hardcore import gamers back in the late 80's and 90's. You reach a certain age and then life has a way of steering you away from the hobby as adolescence gives way to adulthood. But life also has a way of bringing you full circle and back to your roots, which is where my journey has taken me. I was very, very into PC Engine collecting through the early 90's, but unfortunately I gradually drifted away from that scene when I got a Mega Drive and Super Famicom, so my collection didn't grow much after around 1994 until recently when I picked it up again. I have a fairly decent HuCard library, but my CDROM collection is still rather lacking. The prices that some games sell for now is quite breathtaking. The same goes for a lot of the sought after HuCards. I once had two sealed copies of Coryoon that I foolishly sold about 10 years ago when I lost interest in gaming and I'm really kicking myself now. I also sold off my entire Japanese Saturn collection too, but that's another story. Suffice it to say that I'm paying dearly now trying to replace it all!


Speaking of UK fanzines, there was an excellent one back in the 90's called Electric Brain produced by a guy called Onn Lee, who was quite a legend in the UK import scene at the time. They're highly sought after nowadays and seem to change hands for quite a bit on eBay when they pop up. It was produced to a very high standard and was even sold in high street newsagents like WHSmith. The Complete PC Engine Guide Book by Richard Gibbs was also very highly regarded. I still have my copy and I actually tracked down Mr Gibbs recently by sheer luck. He has a YouTube channel by the name of GYRUSS. He said he might make a video some day about the making of his legendary PC Engine guide and I really hope he does.

Retro love indeed!

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: PCE Software Bible updates]

I just caught up with all the Wibble and PCEC podcasts.  Amazing stuff, great sense of humour and loads of PCE info.  I noticed a distinct lack of GunHed love though - I always loved the chip music in that one. Please upload the soundtrack!!

I'm not a massive fan of Gunhed. Not even a moderate fan of it. Maybe I'll get round to it now you've reminded me.

Unacceptable.

GunHed soundtrack is fantastic.

I still love you, though.

It was the game that truly sold me on the PCE back in my early days of collecting for the system, along with Dragon Spirit and the amazing R-Type conversion. I think I can safely attribute those three games to kindling my lifelong love for the system and passion for Japanese import gaming in general, so the nostalgia factor is beyond words. Dragon Spirit has by far the better music, but there's still a few great tracks to be found in Gunhed.

[NEC Console Resource / Another new member]

Hello!

Another new member here.  Well, I joined the boards a while back, but just realized when I posted in a thread that I'd actually never posted anything before.

I'm from the UK and have been a rabid fan of all things PC Engine since I started collecting for the system way back in 1988. My collection has grown over the years into a fairly respectable/shameful hoard, but as my love for the system has deepened with age I've gradually come to the obsessive conclusion that I want to own every single piece of hardware, software and accessory for this venerable little box of wonders. An insane, expensive and possibly futile goal perhaps, but I'm prepared to give it my best shot.

This is an amazing community of like minded PCE obsessives anyway, so it looks like I'm in good company. 

[PCE/TG-16|CD/SGX Discussion / Re: PCE Software Bible updates]

I just caught up with all the Wibble and PCEC podcasts.  Amazing stuff, great sense of humour and loads of PCE info.  I noticed a distinct lack of GunHed love though - I always loved the chip music in that one. Please upload the soundtrack!!