Marshall's PC Engine emulator for the PC-FX

[gameblabla]

I'm not sure if this has been talked about here as i don't see a mention of it anywhere else.

So almost 8 years ago, Marshall worked on a PC Engine emulator for the NEC PC-FX.
His last commit on it dates back to 2018 and he was trying to get his JIT working but sadly it doesn't compile as is...

But there is still the ASM-based interpreter that can be compiled and used.

The source code was posted here: bitbucket.org/trap15/pcfxengine

Here's a video of it running under Mednafen:

Here's a link to a precompiled build of his emulator provided with a bunch of games :
gitlab.com/pcfx/pcfxengine-homebrew-samples.zip

Note that obviously i can't compile official roms with it so it will be only homebrew games.

So far, it seems to be only suited for slower based games. It was provided with Shangai but other commercial games are playable.
If you are a homebrew developer, this could be potentially used for PC-FX homebrew development as well.

If you do want to make a PC engine game to target the PC-FX however, make sure to force the CPU mode to 1.79Mhz and avoid having too many sprites on-screen.

Anyway, i was surprised no one mentioned this... : P
Btw, the PC-FX and PCE share a lot in common. The major differences are mostly the CPU and the Motion JPEG hardware decoder in the PC-FX as well as the increased color count but you can still find the same PSG, same VDC/VCE...

wayback.twitter.com/gameblabla/status/1483292369176956933

Here's Marshall's PC Engine emulator for the PC-FX. He never provided binary builds of it so i compiled it and provided it with some homebrew games. Speed is slow but some games work OK. Could be used for PC-FX homebrew if targeted specifically : https://youtu.be/WwbEiS3hDyM

— gameblabla (@gameblabla) January 18, 2022

[NightWolve]

Hey gameblabla, thanks for stopping by and contributing with this news/work!

I was confused what you meant at first, but I understand now: So this is a PC Engine emulation layer (albeit WIP, very slow, unfinished) whereby the user can take PC Engine ROMs, burn a CD-R with it, and actually load it on their NEC PC-FX console for play! I'm imagining Bonk's Revenge loading on a PC-FX, and other games people would actually wanna play on it, haha!

A fellow PCE turbro of many turbo names -- Tom/Malducci/Tomaitheous/Bonknuts and now Super TurboXray -- actually did something similar: a NES "hackulation/emulation" layer that allowed running games like MegaMan, Contra, Jackal, Dragon Warrior on PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. It was actually very cool to load Contra or MegaMan on my TurboExpress portable with an Everdrive flashcart, so it was kind of useful beyond a novelty experiment to "see what's possible."



Anyway, I spread the word as you know, your tweet got a little bit boosted after David noticed me/it.

And FYI, I patched the thread with YouTube embedding and attached the ZIP download, looking better! It's been a tiring uphill battle to restore this forum, perhaps I've concentrated too much on image/photo retrieval/retention/preservation... I should've relaunched it by now, but things have taken longer than I had hoped.

EDIT: Oh, I'll just embed your tweet, that'll look cool/better too instead of pasting a link here!

[gameblabla]

I was confused what you meant at first, but I understand now: So this is a PC Engine emulation layer (albeit WIP, very slow, unfinished) whereby the user can take PC Engine ROMs, burn a CD-R with it, and actually load it on their NEC PC-FX console for play! I'm imagining Bonk's Revenge loading on a PC-FX, and other games people would actually wanna play on it, haha!

Yes, this basically allows you to play some PC Engine games on your PC-FX. If people have suggestions for other games to try, i can try those as well.
I probably need to think of a solution to automatically insert roms in the CD image without having the whole compiler suite so people can
actually do it with their own ROMs.

A PCE fellow turbro of many turbo names - Tom/Malducci/Tomaitheous/Bonknuts and now Super TurboXray - actually did something similar: a NES "hackulation/emulation" layer that allowed running games like MegaMan, Contra, Jackal, Dragon Warrior on PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. It was actually very cool to load Contra or MegaMan on my TurboExpress portable, so it was kind of useful beyond a novelty experiment to "see what's possible."

You can also (if they work) play those on the PCE emulator as well

Feel free to play around with it. I just got my PC-FX and intend to do more on it.