|
|
| The
CD-ROM Not long after the system's initial release, NEC developed a CD-ROM system for the PC Engine. The CD-ROM itself was the same size as the PC Engine unit. An Interface Unit was needed to connect the two devices together. The CD-ROM could be removed from the Interface Unit at any time – you could hook it up to your home stereo system to play music CDs. When hooked up fully, the entire system, including CD-ROM was about the same size as a Playstation 2. The PC Engine was the first home console to make use of CD Technology. The entire thing operated using a System Card. The system card was a HuCard and basically contained instructions for loading the CD games, and some operating RAM. The System Card 2.0 was the first card for the system, and contained 64KB of RAM. Following a few years later, was the Super System Card 3.0, which contained 256KB of RAM – effectively quadrupling it from the previous system card. A few years after that the Arcade card was developed. The Arcade card boasted an astonishing 2MB of RAM, which allowed you to play with larger sprites and do more graphically with the games made specifically for it. Two flavours of the Arcade Card were made: Arcade Card Pro and Arcade Card Duo. The Pro card was used if you had a standard PC Engine and CD-ROM unit system. The Duo card was used if you had a Duo system (more on that later). Only a few games made use of this card including Sapphire and Fatal Fury Special. Throwing games on CD meant larger, more complex adventures, and a CD music track to accompany at the cost of loading times. The Interface Unit also housed back-up RAM to store your save games. In Japan, a HuCard called Tennokoe Bank was developed. This card let you copy savegame data from the built in RAM to the card to conserve space. In short, the CD add-on was a relative hit in Japan. It’s US counterpart, however, was not. |
Columns
Index: The Competition Gets Stronger |