There has been no shortage of mini-consoles since Nintendo kickstarted the trend with its NES Classic, and being a sucker for nostalgia I’ve collected most of them. They’re fine things, all, though they often end up on the shelf after a couple of weeks once I’ve revisited everything. The PC Engine Mini, though, has been plugged into my TV constantly for a month now, and has been played far more than any of its other tiny hardware brethren. Why’s that, exactly? It’s simple, I think – the PC Engine Mini offers the thrill of discoverability.
If you’re a diehard collector maybe that’s not the case for you, though I think for most of us the PC Engine and its original games line-up has been out of reach for some time. Its release in the UK in 1990 was some three years later than its introduction in Japan and, as a result of the system’s failure in America, limited. Many of its very best games never made it west at all, and even if you did want to import you’re looking at some seriously steep prices for essentials such as Castlevania: Rondo of Blood or Ginga Fukei Densetsu: Sapphire. I daren’t imagine how much it’d cost you to assemble the 57 titles included on the PC Engine Mini.
What the PC Engine Mini offers is an instant library, and good lord what a library it is, bound together by a character that seems unique to NEC’s console. Maybe it’s something in how Hudson Soft, purveyors of amped-up shmups such as Soldier Blade and Gunhed – both available here, of course – were heavily involved in the console’s design, but the PC Engine screams . It’s where you can find some of the most stylish, hard-edged thrills of the era.
In fact, the hardware does play into that. The console itself is neat enough, powered by mini USB and managing to be not much smaller than the real thing – the PC Engine always was a diminutive machine. You can switch menus between a PC Engine-flavoured one where you can access the Japanese language games, the background clinical white allowing those beautiful covers to really strut their stuff, or the darker, edgier Turbo Grafx, complete with some more… unattractive art. There’s neat detail too, like how CD read time has been emulated for the PC Engine CD games included, or how there’s a neat little animation and clunk when a ‘cartridge’ is selected and inserted.
PC Engine mini Lineup Trailer Watch on YouTube
Most importantly, the controller is spot on, with a decent amount of weight and the chunky rocker d-pad lending a real fidelity to your movements. There input lag – I can’t quantify how much exactly, but rest assured Digital Foundry will be able to in due course – and while emulation experts M2 are on the case here, providing a neat interface as well as save-states and a small handful of filters, this isn’t as refined a beast as the Mega Drive Mini.