2024 PCEFX Newsletter (Archive)

[NightWolve]

Subject: PCEngine-FX.com: 2024 Newsletter and Happy New Year!

Hey everyone, happy new year! Before beginning, I'd like to reflect on the retro newsletter concept, old as it is. When I first started PC Engine localization projects in 2001, it was because I met Steve Harris (before he left for RPGFAN.com) who had formed a PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 ROM/CD file share group and used to publish a newsletter every quarter! He was pretty good at it, and it was something I always appreciated quaint as it now is. It's with that in mind that I decided to continue the tradition with PCEFX membership for those who still care despite there being so many other news sources nowadays to keep up with the community!

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's begin. Unfortunately I can't say there was too much going on for 2024, but here we are. Feel free to fill me in on anything I missed that ideally should've been included!

1/15/2024 - PC Engine Localization for The Tower of Druaga is released! This patch is by a better team and complete unlike the previous one.
https://www.gamingalexandria.com/wp/2024/01/tower-of-druaga-pc-engine-translation/
https://x.com/ElCaminoOscuro/status/1746962560207761801

1/20/2024 - PC Engine Localization for Chouzetsu Rinjin Bravoman is released!
https://www.gamingalexandria.com/wp/2024/01/bravoman-pc-engine-english-translation/
https://x.com/ElCaminoOscuro/status/1748804843324518512

3/14/2024 - PC Engine Homebrew News: The duo that brought you FX-Unit Yuki returns! A demo for "Nyanja!" is available, an action platformer akin to games like Bubble Bobble & Snow Bros in gameplay style.
https://youtu.be/SY3gOx6YIbU
https://x.com/SarumaruVG/status/1784534638901481930
https://sarupro.itch.io/nyanjademo

10/15/2024 - David Shadoff has pivoted away from PCE projects in favor of PC-FX lately! He's built a PC-FX USB dev cart and published a Blox game.
https://x.com/Shadoff_d/status/1846381594807808319
https://github.com/pcfx-devel/PC-FX_devcart
https://github.com/dshadoff/PCFX_Blox

12/7/2024 - Partial PC-FX Localization for "All Japan Female Pro Wrestle - Queen of Queens" is released!
https://archive.org/details/pauldaniel-PCFX-english-translations
https://www.facebook.com/groups/200651373653518/posts/2234570133594955/

12/23/2024 - PC-FX Localization for Team Innocent is released, a pre-Christmas gift!! In a twist, it feels like the NEC PC-FX got more attention in 2024 than any other time I can remember! Caveat: The localizers consider the "v0.9" patch a BETA as it still faces technical hurdles to eventually subtitle the FMV scenes, but they consider it very much playable.
https://x.com/DerekPascarella/status/1871285334329499739
https://github.com/DerekPascarella/TeamInnocent-EnglishPatchPCFX

2024 - General PCEFX updates/maintenance.
* More forum images have been recovered!

* Thread/forum-viewing on mobile phones has been slightly improved. Also for the best Brothers Duomazov articles I downloaded (hopefully will finish all of them eventually).
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/

* The PCEFX catalog and radio have new tracks (Double Dragon II thanks to esteban's taste) and a gem from the Legend of Xanadu OST.
https://catalog.pcengine-fx.com/ or https://www.pcengine-fx.com/catalog/

* All the defunct PCEFX radio broadcastings Aaron made in the early 2000's can be downloaded and easily played with VLC! The last ones included a shuffling of images for content, so I wrote some JS to show that. I also discovered the best Falcom arrangement of Legend of the Wind from the Xanadu OST! Worth checking out! You'll also get to play the PCE Greatest Hits jukebox player here (which is also on the catalog page):
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/main/radio.html

* I undeleted the TurboStation-16 feature which Aaron N. removed in 2003 using a Perl script I made to download lost sites from Wayback. I intend to improve the script so I can completely download The Brothers Duomazov site eventually, so it was a pretty good test run (thanks to Filler for helping). Check it out:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/TS/
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/TS/?dir

X/XX/2025 ?? - FG_Software has been working on a PC Engine ninja game and plans to release a demo soon. So it wasn't ready for 2024, but just another homebrew project to keep an eye out for!
https://x.com/FG_Software/status/1874498420339277883

X/X/2025 ? - Keep an eye out for Galland Regis and several of his PCE/PCFX hardware projects! Very interesting.
https://x.com/GallandRegis
https://github.com/rgalland


Well, that's about it. I got a little sick by the time I wanted to ready/write this, it was hard to stay vertical, but an Alleve is helping. Anyway, as always, feel free to send feedback or offer help if you're interested. I'd still like to maintain PCEFX legacy for as long as I can. : )

Special Thanks:
Filler/Matt and David Shadoff for contributing some news items this year given my procrastination.

Regards,
-NightWolve

[NightWolve]

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!

[NightWolve]

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.com

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.