Those computer mag adds were to blame

John Bennett

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I wonder if it could actually be recreated /realised properly in this era of cheap circuit boards and 3D printing 😀

Dunno if you can reset the Megadrive from the cart slot though…
 

Body pop

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Yeah, if you were minted. 14" CRT would've let it down a bit, mind.

It has got me thinking about back then - that lot plus an arcade PCB would've set you back around a grand in today's money.
...Utterly no one I knew would've had anything like that. No I knew imported a PC Engine, no one could afford a Neo Geo.
I don't think I was in a particularly poor area either.

I wonder a bit of it is is because the parents spent any disposable income on other stuff as they weren't the video gaming generation, so it would've seemed an absurd expense just for the kids.
I remember them running an article ,where the prices of pcbs at the time were listed
It was like 25 quid for ghosts n goblins etc
This is when I really got drawn to superguns and stuff
It didn’t matter that the games were dated ,out of fashion
They had never ever been converted properly so this was the chance
40 years later ,still chasing the same buzz
A friend of mine imported the pc engine
Those adds had me tortured
That was the first proper arcade like machine for homes
 

John Bennett

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I remember them running an article ,where the prices of pcbs at the time were listed
It was like 25 quid for ghosts n goblins etc
This is when I really got drawn to superguns and stuff
It didn’t matter that the games were dated ,out of fashion
They had never ever been converted properly so this was the chance
40 years later ,still chasing the same buzz
A friend of mine imported the pc engine
Those adds had me tortured
That was the first proper arcade like machine for homes
At the time of the late 80's it never really registered with me that you could buy actual interchangeable arcade PCBs.
It was 1997 when I properly twigged (and you could research via the internet, MAME and newsgroups like here) and me and the little brother bought most of our PCB stash (everything we loved as kids).
I had it in my head the PC Engine was expensive, but reading up now, it looked to be around £150 in 1989 money, which is less than half an Amiga and ST price. Games-wise, you could see it wiped the floor with them for anything sprite related, amazing little thing. Even the tinny sampled sound was good.

Wish they'd named it differently though - I had an actual PC, so I'd initially get all excited and confused seeing 'PC Engine' and these amazing looking games.

Of course NEC never bothered to release it here, they just got annoyed when people came to them with issues...
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I’m almost sure that they did have a distributor eventually for the pc engine
They were definitely on sale in a shop in Belfast
I got an Atari st at the time ,which though not as good ,was easier to accumulate a huge collection of games .which I still have
Years later I started collecting pc engine games ,but they are all gone now ..
As great as they were ,nothing replaces the arcade games
I just find a lot of console games to easy to play .
 

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Telegames ,now there’s a name I hadn’t thought of in years
They always had the latest games ,pc engine ,then the grey imports ,of megadrive and snes
Exciting times indeed ,just obtaining something you shouldn’t have

There was a video club that rented all the grey import stuff close to me
A quid a night and he had adapters and all sorts.
Was great for getting your fix

He helped a lot of people build up amazing collections of spectrum games too 😉 prior to this
 

SIE

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What I wanted and what I got
I had the spectrum version which I enjoyed
So with the master system being the dream system for me at the time,surely it could be like the spectrum ,but with colour and music
I couldn’t wait
I think I completed it on first go or second
I got my dad to take it back to Woolworths and changed it for fantasy zone 2 ,paying an extra couple of pounds
It was superb and gave many hours of fun
i remember doing something similar with Vigilante on SMS. It was £29.99 and I got my Dad to buy it just a few weeks after xmas, took it home and completed it within the first hour. He was not happy 🤣
 
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