Video Sport {Hardware} That Was Forward of Its Time

Bymarco_rocchinotti@hotmail.com

Dec 2, 2023 #Ahead, #Audio, #CD-ROM, #CD-ROM gaming, #crystal-clear speech, #Game, #gamewarp, #Gaming, #graphics, #hardware, #Hudson Soft, #microchips, #music, #NEC, #PC Engine, #PC Engine console, #PC Engine games, #PC multimedia, #PlayStation, #ROMs, #Sega Saturn, #storage limitations, #Time, #TurboGrafx-16, #Video, #video game, #Video games

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An American TurboGrafx-16 with the TurboGrafx-CD add-on attached sits on a white backdrop. — Picture: Evan Amos

Within the Nineteen Eighties most video video games, etched onto microchips soldered onto circuit boards, got here encased in massive blocks of plastic referred to as cartridges. Satisfying to slam into slots, however chip-based ROMs have been costly, leaving video games severely size-constrained.

Only a yr after wowing the Japanese market with the arcade-like PC Engine console (TurboGrafx-16 over right here), Hudson Comfortable and shopper electronics big NEC launched a world-first CD-ROM add-on for the system. Goodbye storage limitations, good day crystal-clear speech and music!

PC Engine video games, usually only one to 4 megabits, now had over 500 megabytes with which to pack in extremely detailed graphics, pristine 44.1kHz audio, and all the degrees designers may dream up. CD-ROM Gaming didn’t go massive till the mid-’90s with PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and the rise of PC multimedia, so it’s astonishing that PC Engine pioneered all that manner again in 1988.

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