[ Rare Items ]

4.1 PC Engine PC-KD863G

This page is dedicated to items/peripherals/systems that are less well known to people outside of Japan.

Back in the late 80's, almost a year after the release of the PC Engine came a monitor which can be easily mistaken for a normal 14" for your 286's.  (I picked this up recently in HK from a worker at HKEMS (The DC Nexus guys). TWO have been seen at the same time on the Japanese auction site both hitting over 50000Yen. I do know someone who picked one up at a Tokyo Junk shop for 200Yen though. I bet he spent more on travel costs getting it back home too.)

Fig. 4.1 NEC PC-KD863G front view.

On closer inspection, near the botton right hand side (to the left of the Power Switch) is a small slot for hucards (It's like the slot seen on the Sharp Twin X-1). The joypad connector is near the centre of the bottom and two whopping speakers hand on either side near the top (not shown cos it's still on it's way from Japan). The monitor has an inbuilt amp and so any speakers with the right rating will work and the monitor has magnetic shielding so no worries about tinted edges and panic degauss buttons =).

4.2 Sharp X1 Twin

I don't know much about this machine since I do not have it. It seems to me that it's a personal computer with a built in PC Engine with loads of flashy buttons. I do not own this item though I'd love to have it along with my other PC Engine collection.

Fig. 4.2 Sharp X1 Twin.

4.3 Virtual Cushion

Okay, anyone seen with one of these will think they need to go out and meet people more. Come on, who would want to vibrate their own *cough* when playing a game? I wish they did have a rumble pack on the pads though. I heard someone who bought a virtual cushion solely for playing shooters cos he sucked on those games (either that or he deliberately crashed his ship at every opportunity.)

4.4 Darius 3D Glasses

I only know of it's existence as George Palamara has it. From his page, he states that it was made by Sony for Darius and looking at his picture, it seems that it was not made for the general public. No idea when it was made or how much it cost as it was bought from a bulk deal he made. Since the item was "Not for Sale", I guess if there was a demand from collectors, it could go for as high as people are willing to pay.

4.5 PC Engine Copiers

Back in the early 1990's, a company called Bung (Hong Kong) produced a device called the MGD2 which along with the backup pcb board allowed one to make backups of hucards onto ROM format saved onto 3.5" floppies. This backup board is rarely seen if at all nowadays since the purpose of the MGD2 was for people to become cheap and play pirate games on their systems (The MGD2 also allowed one to play pirate games on the Megadrive and Super Famicom). Nowadays, although the MGD2 unit can still be found for around 50 pounds, the backup board is nowhere to be seen.

Below shows the picture of the MGD2 with it's original box new from HK. I have shown the hookups to a Duo-R as shown. The normal procedure is to put a floppy disc into the MGD2, put the SRAM into the MGD2 unit (slot on the right of the MGD unit), transfer the data to the RAM cart and then porting the RAM cart into the grey connector and slotting the end into a PC Engine.

Fig.4.3 Multi Game Doctor 2 from Bung (HK).

Fig. 4.4 The MGD2 connecting to the Duo-R.

The only alternative is to find the PC Engine Griffon (At last I found one).
The Griffon is dedicated for the PC Engine and one end of the system plugs into the hucard slot port and a cable connects to the white floppy drive in order to dump or upload roms with. One point I'd like to make out is the design of the Griffon. As can be seen in the picture, the hucard end attached to the Griffon is very badly designed in a way that is easily breakable (accidents do happen). Why they didn't have a cable to connect to it separately like the MGD2 has, I will never know.

Fig. 4.5 The Griffon shown connected to the PC Engine as a device for backing up roms.

4.6 Communication Booster

Not alot is known regarding this piece of hardware. Looks like it won't work unless dedicated software is used.

Fig. 4.6 The Tsushin Booster.

4.7 PC Engine JAMMA Kit

No idea which company made this but this kit I got has the JAMMA part connected to the exit bus of the PC Engine taking the power, controls and RGB signals only (which is what the arcade cab needs). I'm planning to add a cd-rom2 to it and play Dracula X on an arcade cab!!!!

Fig. 4.7 The PC-Engine JAMMA kit.

4.8 Bee hucard set

Fig. 4.8 A Selection of Bee hucards along with an adaptor/card reader?

It seems that this has nothing to do with the PC Engine after all. The cards don't exactly fit into the PC Engine slot and is probably used from another system in Japan which has similar sized game cards.
 
 
 

Fig 4.9 The hardware writing kit in its full glory.

Fig 4.10 Selection of different memory cards, S-RAM, MASK ROMS and EEPROMS.