¶ Technical data
- Manufacturer: NEC (with Hudson Soft)
- Year of release: 1988
- CPU: Hudson HuC6280 (65C02-derived) @ 7.16 MHz — the host console's
- Buffer memory: 64 KB (CD-ROM²) then 256 KB (Super CD-ROM²)
- Video: HuC6270 (VDC) + HuC6260 (VCE)
- Sound: 6-channel PSG plus ADPCM and CD audio tracks
- Media: CD-ROM
- Controller: mandatory
¶ Presentation
The CD-ROM² is the CD-ROM add-on for the PC Engine, released by NEC in Japan in December 1988. It is the first consumer CD add-on for a video game console, two years ahead of Sega's Mega-CD. It consists of a disc drive and an interface unit onto which the console is docked.
The CD medium changed the nature of the games entirely: CD-quality music, digitised voices, long cutscenes and huge text adventures suddenly became possible. Because the drive's buffer memory was very limited, NEC released a succession of System Cards — HuCards containing the drive's BIOS plus extra RAM: System Card 1.0, System Card 2.0, and then the Super System Card 3.0 in 1991, which raised the buffer to 256 KB and created the Super CD-ROM² format. An Arcade CD-ROM² card followed in 1994.
In North America the set was sold as the TurboGrafx-CD, with its own System Cards. NEC eventually merged console and drive into a single machine, the PC Engine Duo (TurboDuo in the United States). The CD library holds a few absolute classics such as Ys Book I & II, Snatcher, Rondo of Blood and Lords of Thunder.
¶ Emulators
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro Mednafen_SuperGrafx | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro Mednafen_PCE_Fast | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro Geargrafx | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
The PC Engine CD is available on every board supported by Recalbox.
Mednafen_SuperGrafx is the default emulator: excellent compatibility, netplay support and CRT video modes. Mednafen_PCE_Fast is a lighter alternative, also netplay-capable, but without CRT support. Geargrafx is a recent core that supports CRT and only accepts .cue and .chd images.
¶ BIOS
The PC Engine CD will not run without a System Card: that card is the drive's BIOS. The Super System Card 3.0 (syscard3.pce) is mandatory and is enough to launch almost the entire library, including first-generation CD-ROM² games.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
syscard3.pce |
Super System Card 3.0 — mandatory (three revisions accepted) | ff1a674273fe3540ccef576376407d1d 1e47a1780aaa7e277a3896c1ba00e317 38179df8f4ac870017db21ebcbf53114 |
Mednafen_SuperGrafx, Mednafen_PCE_Fast, Geargrafx |
syscard1.pce |
System Card 1.0 (optional) | 9f770275393b8627cf9d24e5c56d2ab9 | Mednafen_SuperGrafx, Mednafen_PCE_Fast, Geargrafx |
syscard2.pce |
System Card 2.0 (optional) | 424f1d6bf93259bf255afa7d1dc9f721 | Mednafen_SuperGrafx, Mednafen_PCE_Fast, Geargrafx |
syscard2u.pce |
System Card 2.0 US / TurboGrafx-CD version (optional) | 94279f315e8b52904f65ab3108542afe | Mednafen_PCE_Fast |
syscard3u.pce |
Super System Card 3.0 US version (optional) | 0754f903b52e3b3342202bdafb13efa5 | Mednafen_PCE_Fast |
gexpress.pce |
Game Express card — unlicensed games (optional) | 6d2cb14fc3e1f65ceb135633d1694122 | Mednafen_SuperGrafx, Mednafen_PCE_Fast, Geargrafx |
Place your BIOS files like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/
├── pcenginecd/
│ ├── syscard3.pce
│ ├── syscard1.pce
│ ├── syscard2.pce
│ ├── syscard2u.pce
│ └── syscard3u.pce
└── pcengine/
└── gexpress.pce
Careful:
gexpress.pcegoes intobios/pcengine/, not intobios/pcenginecd/.
¶ Roms
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/pcenginecd/
Supported extensions per emulator:
| Emulator | Extensions |
|---|---|
| Mednafen_SuperGrafx | .ccd .chd .cue .m3u .toc |
| Mednafen_PCE_Fast | .ccd .chd .cue .m3u .toc |
| Geargrafx | .chd .cue |
Images in Redump format are strongly recommended. The
.chdformat is the most convenient: it packs data tracks and audio tracks into a single compressed file.
For a game spread across several discs, create an .m3u file listing the images in order, one per line, and launch that file from Recalbox instead of the individual .cue files. The .m3u format is only supported by the two Mednafen cores.