The Luxury All-In-One PC Engine from 1988 | Tech Nibble

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The NEC PC Engine is a games console that most agree has an great library of games and is well worth exploring, but what was the best way to enjoy the system? Today we look at a very special version of the system that aims to deliver just that, but it comes at a price.
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● Episode Links
Jaz Rignall article on screenshots: www.usgamer.net/articles/back...
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● Chapters
00:00 Intro to the PC Engine
01:30 Who are PCBWay.com
01:56 The NEC PC-KD863G PC Engine Monitor
06:15 How gaming magazines took screenshots
11:23 The not so good things about the PC-KD863G
14:30 Other games consoles built into TV's
16:02 Final thoughts on the PC-KD863G PC Engine
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[@besotoxicomusic]

This combined with a PC98 would’ve been peak NEC gaming back in the early 90s.

[@CptJistuce]

And you've found the reason it exists. As a monitor for PC88 or PC98 that ALSO gives you a TurboGrafX, it gives you an all-NEC gaming setup in a much more compact space.

[@ZaPpaul]

Can confirm, 5 player bomberman is a blast with your friends. Me and my pals would gather round mine on the weekends and play for hours on end. The smacktalk and laughs were legendary :)

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Sounds like me and my gang of online friends playing classic LucasArts Star Wars games together

[@Hellwyck]

Now imagine it on Saturn with 10 players.

[@stevebriggs6469]

Seriously. 5 player bomberman on the PC engine makes all other games look like screen savers.

[@suspeh]

I love the aesthetics of the PC engine in general, looks from a sci Fi movie from the 80s

[@joonglegamer9898]

All the stuff I messed around with in my life and childhood, and yet you and other youtubers manage to find units I've never heard of or ever seen, yet another golden find.

[@RMCRetro]

I’ll bring you back to earth with a bump next week don’t you worry 😂

[@joonglegamer9898]

@@MightyistheRCGamer Your point is? I don't get what you're trying to say here, please enligthen me.

[@joonglegamer9898]

@@MightyistheRCGamer I'm 54. And I checked out your channel it's very interesting and that makes me even more puzzled over your comment. I really don't get your question at all.

[@joonglegamer9898]

@@MightyistheRCGamer Your mindset puzzle me a lot. Now lets hypothetically say I was a 25 year old prentending to be one of the hip retro kids from the 80s (god this is funny, but I'll go with it), what exactly would I win? What would be the incentive?

[@geoffreychauvin1474]

@@MightyistheRCGamer what is your problem man? Why are you calling someone out over something so trivial. Sure most people didn't have any inkling of what a turbo grafx-16 was in the nineties but they were out there and they even advertised. I remember TV commercials, and I have a bunch of old DC comics from the 90s that have ads for the system on their back covers. Just because you think someone has never experienced something doesn't make it so. Heck the big reason so few did is because of the Nintendo stranglehold on gaming back then.

[@joncarter3761]

I remember that SF1 SNES/TV combo being on Bad Influence when I was in primary school! It was a Christmas episode and they were doing a parody of the twelve days of Christmas and the SF1 was 'a cartridge in a TV'.

[@Grinder2112]

I am simultaneously inspired and repulsed by your commitment to cd-rom-rom as word play. Well done.

[@RMCRetro]

Thank you :D

[@nickiebanchou]

i discovered the PC-Engine super late thanks to emulation, and ever since it amazes me how many sprites and colors were displayed, while i was playing the NES .... this is what 8bits can do!!

[@WINTERMUTE_AI]

I loved TurboGrafx 16. I found a video rental shop that was importing the TurboExpress. They required you to buy a whole complete system, the home system, express and accessories to get it, and I bought the whole kit. NEC was way ahead of their time, its too bad it didnt dominate the American market

[@adamkwalczyk]

And they made some successful attempts at making innovating phones in the early 00s. Such an underestimated (or poorly marketed) company.

[@drunkensailor112]

Nec were masters of hardware. The pc engine and pc engine cd are state of the art engineering. Even when just opening up the systems. Also very efficient hardware that could give snes and megadrive a run for its money although it was 4 years older than the snes.

[@marcellachine5718]

​@@adamkwalczyknec was, is way more than mere video games. It still healthily exists today.

[@DaveByrdUK]

"business around the back, gaming for the front". OK!

[@dazrael5658]

I still maintain that the screenshots for SNES Streetfighter II in Mean Machines back in the day are the best gaming images ever taken. The crispy RGB on display was amazing.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

It's like the reverse-mullet of games consoles... business round the back, gaming at the front. 😂

[@gregx5096]

I'm a simple man. I see deep PC-Engine content, I thumbs up and subscribe. 😎👍

[@PXAbstraction]

That is a gorgeous display indeed. I find these display/console hybrid devices fascinating. It's interesting that this was never really a thing in the west, aside from maybe the LaserActive, for the handful of people that owned those.

[@meetoo594]

There was a tv with a Playstation 2 built in sold in the UK for a while. It had a glorious picture, iirc it was the best picture quality available to the PS2 at the time being a direct rgb connection to the display. It wasnt that expensive either.

[@cameralabs]

Great video, and really nice filming of all those screens. Love Julian Rignall too, although I think he meant 25fps for PAL, not 24. The whole refresh rate thing and shutter speeds is still an issue when filming anything with a screen, like a phone or tablet. And some of the screens we have in our phones can refresh at unexpected rates. As a UK KZbinr, I generally film in 25p with a shutter speed of 1/50, to keep the 180 degree rule. But my Galaxy S20 screen refreshes at non PAL rates, so if I film it at 1/50, I get flicker. But if you adjust your shutter speed in 1/3 EV intervals either way, you're often able to reduce or eliminate flicker. For my phone screen, I find a filming shutter of 1/40 successfully eliminates flicker while crucially still being faster than the actual capture frame rate. Of course I could alternatively just make an internal screen recording, but I often like to see the actual phone and fingers in the video! Same technique can be used for pesky LED lighting, which is often at 60hz, even sold in the UK. So if your lighting is flickering in videos, just try adjusting your filming shutter speed a little.

[@earlbrown4398]

Thoroughly enjoyed that video. Love your work, tuning in from Thailand.

[@googleboughtmee]

Sometimes they'd pause the game to take the shots without the motion blur. This wasn't possible for the arcade games though, so you'd get the blur like your E. Honda showed. I quite like the effect, it reminds me of seeing a hot new arcade game that I couldn't wait to find one day in person 🤣

[@TechWithSean]

I've just been emulating my PCE/CD games on my tablet lately, they look and play great on an OLED.

[@MrButtonpresser]

These videos are very well produced and presented, thanks guys.

[@Dr.D00p]

Interesting to remember the economic climate in Japan at the time which allowed such high end luxury tech like this to find a market..in the 1980s Japan was at the height of its economic power, with a booming domestic economy and soaring exports. Even the Americans were worried that Japan would overtake them as the Worlds top economy. Even reflected in the movies as well such as Die Hard.

[@fungo6631]

Now people are worried China is gonna actually do it...well, at least before the Сhinа virus they were. But I guess we now all realize that totalitarian regimes cannot be trusted for truthful reporting of their actual condition.

[@mikeg2491]

I saw this copy pasted from another video weeks ago lol

[@faustinuskaryadi6610]

Today China have similarity with market is flooded with high end smartphones produced by Chinese companies.

[@fungo6631]

@@faustinuskaryadi6610 Naah, there's a big difference. Japan actually makes quality stuff, while China makes trash quality stuff that is also copied from other companies.

[@faustinuskaryadi6610]

@@fungo6631 not really. I am using Xiaomi smartphone and Huawei tablet now, and I can't say their smartphone and tablet are trash. Also, Japanese electronics used to be known as copy of Western technology with lower price and lower quality. My father was born in 1950a, and he told me that when he was young in 1970s, people in Indonesia refer Japanese products as crap cheapos dubbed as baranga KANEKO (I don't know the literal meaning in English, but that is being used to describe how crap was Japanese products back in 1970a), China just follow this step. Just search about high end smartphones that exclusive to Chinese market, and you will understand what I said on comment above.

[@Rendarth1]

The screen capture discussion was fascinating. I never stopped to think what went into all those images in Nintendo Power, etc.

[@davidlefley7782]

One of my fave vids of yours thus far. I have the PC Engine Duo and it's easily my fave console out of the 24 I have in the house. I'd never seen the all in one before. Really hoping I can get down to visit the cave next year.

[@brianh9358]

I lived in Japan at the time and owned a PC Engine with the CD Rom unit. It was a great game console. I had a lot of games that were Arcade ports like Altered Beast, Golden Axe, R-Type, Street Fighter, etc.

[@verficationaccount]

Two things about screenshotting in the old days come to mind: it must have been very tedious to fill a whole film of scenes from a game just to find out later after development that the best scenes are unusable because the action you wanted to show was to fast for your shutter speed. Then second thing: I would have taken a broadcasting screen, because it often has quite a flat crt and has a button for underscan - both of which reduce the problem of cushion distortion. I guess many publications in the 90s also had early "screen printers" that could freeze a frame as well.

[@Majikal_Mike]

I watch a lot of this channel, to be clear, but never have I wanted so much stuff in a single video. That B&O! The Dreamcast Combo! The AIO PCE. I need it all!!!!

[@skeggjoldgunnr3167]

oh! OH! Don't let it stop! It's so beautiful!

[@WhatAboutZoidberg]

Welcome to the Dave!

[@MarkShepherdson]

Great video as always

[@MaskedGEEK]

RMC, now being broadcast on Dave.

[@martinmayhemsretrorundown]

Thanks, I never knew this existed. Cheers for the video and keep on gaming 👍

[@davidbanner9001]

That's how I remember the pc engine as a kid. An amazing console that I only ever saw in the magazines of the time and originally only available in Japan. I never saw one in the UK, even at the many, many computer expo's I attended as a kid. The same can also be said of the Sharp X68000 as well.

[@meetoo594]

I got one from the Virgin megastore in 1988. It was a Japanese console modded with a scart cable and a UK power supply. It cost £225 with a bundled rpg that was totally unplayable due to it being in Japanese (pretty sneaky as they probably couldnt sell the game separately due to the language barrier so they offloaded it as a free game with the console). I bought a load of games with it, Bloody Wolf was the best of the bunch, spent hours playing that one. The store had a display with a bunch of games and systems, I wonder where they got them from?

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

I've seen one of these in the flesh, and I was amazed at how clean the image is. Absolutely lovely bit of kit.

[@f1reb4ll77]

15:00 Before the NES TV there was an MSX TV - General Paxon PCT-55.

[@DavidDatura]

Still can’t get over how good the graphics of the PC Engine are! Truly 16bit quality on an 8bit system. The graphics seem even better than an Amiga here. And give the SNES a run for its money too. My new favorite vintage games console!

[@ResurrectionRetro]

When we tested and tried out the NEC a few weeks ago on that bench I was quite taken by the form factor and the internals. Well built and the convergence and geometry looks pretty decent. Far better and easier to service than that Sharp monitor that i dreaded opening up. This is something that I would def have in my collection if i had room!

[@Dr.Quarex]

Well I for one am contractually obligated to be excited about you having a working CD-i.

[@DavidWhitley]

great video Neil, really enjoyed it thankyou

[@RMCRetro]

My pleasure, thank you for watching it

[@td4dotnet]

Very nice gear once you got the schmoo off! Thanks for the video RMC!

[@vectrex28]

So incredibly jealous of you haha, that's certainly the one item that I really want but is a questionable investment both in terms of money and space. Also I love to see that the Japanese Laserdiscs I sent you years ago are still put to good use :D:D:D

[@bpelectric]

Would be super interested to confirm that this is displaying the linear RGB palette that the community now considers 'wrong'. RetroRGB did a post on it a while back; the HuC6260 video chip in the PCE does a lookup from RGB to YUV to get slightly different values for composite output.

[@snowman5020]

Great vid once again, and what a fantastic console. Would love to see that CD-i setup working for when I finally get to make a visit there, no need to play anything :p , but what a beautiful looking machine.

[@pagb666]

That bit with the magazine screenshot replicating was great

[@MichaelStClair-uo7id]

PAL CRTs did not run at 24fps, rather they ran at 25 fields (50 frames) per second. In fact, Hollywood films shot at 24fps were slightly sped up for PAL presentation, typicall causing a pitch shift in the audio.

[@ArcadeAzrall]

What a beautiful display! Thanks for covering this :) Also, not sure I'd put the words "CDI" and "Enjoy" in the same sentence😅

[@sinanayenigul8731]

What a fantastic channel, what kind of geniuses are you people? (have learned about you from BigCar)

[@gamesbloke]

Been wanting a cost effective way to play Turbografx/PCE legit for some time. Big time Falcom/Hudson fan. Some of their finest games are on PCE-CD. Hudson did some truly amazing ports to the PCE/TGCD. Ys Book 1 and 2 has amazing graphics and utterly captivating music. Would love to see the game running on that crisp display. The intro gets me every time. So much respect for the work and dedication with the museum and the attention to detail. Surprised at the ever growing collection of Japanese Exotics you have amassed. I want to get a PCE-CD/Sharp X68k/PC9801/FM Towns before I die. I've emulated for so long I'm kinda used to emulation quirks. Especially with the X68k emulation. I'd love to see the differences between the real and the emulated. All the best. Amazing work.

[@TheInfiniteMiseryJumper]

In 20 years of collecting, I've never been aware of this, a great watch. Hats off to you sir!

[@ageary07]

Time is the great leveller, the CDI was maligned back in the day, but now we can appreciate the work that went into those products, especially thanks to folks like yourself who preserve these fantastic machines. As a kid I had hardly even saw PC Engine metioned in magazines, but when you did it was amazing, it was almost legendary, its fun to see what those machines were like and how gorgeous the displays were.

[@weepingscorpion8739]

Sounds like Dave from TWiR has taken over the cave so now it's not RetroManCave but rather RetroManDave! :D Great video as always, Neil.

[@SanithDemil]

Thanks man, I absolutely love it. My cousins had a Turbo Grafx, Turbo Express and the Cd add-on. So I loved spending a Summer at thier house. I Enjoyed Bonk, Gate of Thunder, and Valis.

[@chrisdanks2296]

Best times of my life as a child seeing new arcade games every summer. Dragon's Lair wow that did it for me,n the likes of Moon Cresta and Phoenix.

[@Rik-fl7wy]

This pce tv along w pc engine lt r the ultimate nec pc engine collectables great video

[@christianb7398]

Here in Brazil the PC Engine was not very famous, I only went to buy it about 4 years ago, but when I was a child I played with pc engine at my neighbor's house, here in Brazil Sega, Nintendo and MSX were very successful in the 90's

[@Evercade_Effect]

This would have been hot stuff back in the day. Thanks for sharing this geeky goodness.

[@rustymixer2886]

Great video

[@bkslsh]

I always wondered how magazines took screenshots! As a kid I just assumed they had TV-style equipment to capture the feed, but later I realized that would have been way beyond the budget. It's trivial now, but such things used to require thinking outside the box.

[@seanmcbay]

It’s crazy how many PC Engine/TG16 variants there were.

[@haydengittins2836]

Always good to see Neil get a tent on for a new bit of fancy kit :)

[@Septer_Sever]

Getting freaky in between the sheets with the PCE 😍

[@milk-it]

I had no idea CRT screens back then had such anti-glare measures. Great insight, Neil.

[@merman1974]

I find these displays with built-in game systems fascinating, and I loved the look back at how screenshots used to be taken.

[@COBOL]

I can't believe you managed to get that Bang & Olufsen set. Must be incredible rare. About TV/Console combo, the last one should be the Sony BRAVIA KDL-22PX300. Btw, this concept is "the future": more and more TVs will let you play without a console.

[@bitdigital8052]

Awesome little CRT! It looks super crisp and might go toe to toe with some of the usual suspects.

[@evertonshorts9376]

I remember seeing that telly-with-builtin-snes on Bad Influence in a 12 days of christmas song. "...And a cartridge in a tv..!"

[@MSmith-Photography]

Watching tech channels cleaning/retrobrighting is the visual equivalent to ASMR. 🤣

[@walterwhite1]

Wow, amazing video just learned something new ❤

[@andrewfryer6187]

And yet it still only has one controller port. Thanks for sharing Neil. I'd love to see a run-down of that Bang & Olufsen unit when it is working.

[@rockkiall]

So no joke I am sitting around all day, thinking to myself "if I were to get a pc engine of anykind, what would I want to get? Like do I go more cost effective, etc. Like I should go all out, right??!" and then bam I get on the internet and you bless me with this video. Going to watch now to find out if that is a possibility or you are about to tell me that this thing is a one off or like super rare.

[@SunnyE_Mechwarrior]

That's a unicorn if I ever saw one, actually I did see one before in Akihabara in the late 1990's and it was ridiculously expensive then

[@beasthunt]

Man that is beautiful. I'm glad I was into sports back then and not video gaming or else I would have sold my brothers toes and fingers to get one.

[@odinian6244]

The Japanese made some amazing tech! All that is shown in this video is so cool. And yeah, the first thing I reacted to was how clear the picture was. Amazing

[@patrickfurlong4276]

Great video! It would be interesting to note that photographing TV screens was pioneered by the late John Cura back in 1946/7 and made a career photographing TV shows until his death in 1969.

[@xxxYouTunesxxx]

This is something I only read about in EGM back in the day. Where I lived, you had only Nintendo and Sega to choose from.

[@snesfan8935]

My Holy Grail PC Engine hardware.

[@Am77vids]

That Dreamcast tv gave me Space Channel 5 vibes, so perhaps they were inspired by the wackiness of that game 🙂

[@CallousCoder]

I still can’t believe that the PC Engine basically used a 6502 (HuC6280) because it looked and scrolled like a 16 bit machine of the time. It’s shows that 8 bit, with the right hardware, you could achieve miracles.

[@chrissre7935]

NEC was a known brand for great monitors.

[@mychickennotraw1136]

Great video but that Raleigh Street Wolf bike though!

[@timeforbikes]

Enjoy the Street Wolf video here😉👍: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bpLMo2murr2eqrs

[@exidy-yt]

All-in-one units were very popular in the mid-90s. I used to sell computers for a (now defunct) major electronics retailer in Western Canada in 94-95 and among the brand-new Pentium class machines that were coming out, Compaq sold a low-powered 486SX-33 based all-in-one unit that included a VCR and sharp quality playback on it's monitor. I sold SO many of those units by running a 'Beyond the Mind's Eye' VHS tape displaying eye-catching CGI art and music projects created with supercomputers. I never directly told anyone that the PC was displaying this awesomeness on it's own hardware, was honest that it was a videotape to all that asked, but MAN did I sell a ton of those Compaqs. I even came in 2nd place in all of Canada in a contest selling them over December one year. Got a $500 prize (about 2 grand today) and JUST missed winning my own PC of the same model. (I still think the store in Calgary 'fed' all their sales to one guy. grrrr.)

[@qster]

Thanks Dave

[@Ametisti]

I remember as a kid having to put a sheet over the computer and hide under it go get rid of glare, but that was cuz the computer was in the conservatory for some reason. By God that room got bloody hot as well.

[@deeiks12]

Interesting! For some reason I always thoguht they used some CRT's for screenshots that would expose the image straight to photgraphic film, to be developped.

[@pajordan]

Would be interesting to see the screenshots you took from this compared to if they had been taken from a regular tv connected to a console, to get a sense of image quality comparison.

[@relo999]

It's weird that it only supports 15kHz, considering NEC's PC98 use 24kHz by default so a 15kHz only pc monitor is kinda shooting themselves in the foot. (and while the PC98 does have a 15k mode, as far as I'm aware most software doesn't support it, and accidentally running 24k or 31k on a 15k CRT can give troubles)

[@eijentwun5509]

Um.. 15khz is what all NTSC and Consoles run on...why the heck should it need to run at 24khz?

[@willrobinson7599]

That looks great all built into tv.the japanese got all the coolest systems I picked a grey turbo graphics up last year with av mod already done. Hooked up to my amiga Phillips monitor . Loving r type and street f8ghter 2 on it

[@alexsnow8894]

I saw your flash card:))))) BUSTED:)

[@FoxbatStargazer]

With the direct RGB tap on the PCE, is this missing the color correction added to composite, just like if you RGB modded a standard PCE? Many games are missing shades of color or appear more garish than intended. This was first addressed in Mister and has since extended to emulators and the super hd system 3 pro.

[@dragonmac1234]

Thankfully back in the day I was writing reviews for the games not taking the screenshots (I worked on Crash and ZZAP! 64), although I do remember hearing the occasional swear word coming from the room used by our photographer 😄

[@venenareligioest410]

Best console ever made for shoots em ups!

[@ryn5671]

Got the TurboGrafx the day it came out. Tied for favorite system of all time w/ Dreamcast. Blazing Lazers, Both Legendary Axe'e, Dungeon Explorer ( w the TurboTap addon )

[@wyldride]

"... And next week on the cave, we build a pillow fort ..."

[@hi_tech_reptiles]

I love the PC Engine and it's quirky history. I really need to get my original hardware up and running as I have a broken TG16 and a PCE with no games lol. Considered and Everdrive but that means no CD games. The SSDS3 is tempting, but I wish Krikzz had a version. Emulation for now I guess. Thanks for showing this awesome piece off!

[@AfterBurnerTeirusu]

The original Pong on a chip was actually comissioned by Salora, most likely making it the origin of the concept. Their Pong consoles; Playmaster and "Pip-Peli" did take a bit longer to come out though.

[@fredsmith1970]

Blanket forts from the 1980's Yay!!

[@TheMrpatter]

wuhuu Bang & Olufsen commercial right here :-D

[@SammyRenard]

Hyperdyne: Side Arms; a man of good taste I see

[@callindocorleone5435]

Very nice video, can you add the games names to description ?

[@julianobitsgen]

The TV set with a SEGA Dreamcast built-in's design was actually inspired by those TV Sets from the game Space Channel 5.

[@radiodasantigas9607]

the most powerful 8-bit console ever released!! Unfortunately it was very restricted to Japan...

[@gamingbytetv665]

There was also a ps2 TV from Sony themselves, available only in the UK through a retailer known as richer sounds. The weird thing is it came out in 2010, long after the ps2 heyday. Rare as a cats ballsack too.

[@Marc_Araujo]

As someone that used a TurboBooster-Plus with his TurboGrafx-16 back in the day, I can say that the picture quality on that monitor is really crisp and clean. It's just a shame you couldn't get the attachable speakers that came with to have the whole set-up, really curious as to how good the native sound quality is on it.