¶ Technical data
- Manufacturer: NEC (with Hudson Soft)
- Year of release: 1994
- CPU: NEC V810 (32-bit RISC) @ 21.5 MHz
- RAM: 2 MB
- Video: HuC6261, HuC6270A and HuC6272 "King" — two background layers, hardware video decoding
- Colors: 16.77 millions
- Sound: multi-channel ADPCM, PSG and CD audio tracks
- Media: CD-ROM
- Controller: mandatory
¶ Presentation
The PC-FX is NEC's last home console, released in Japan on 23 December 1994. Successor to the PC Engine, it comes in a vertical PC-tower-shaped case and drops the HuCard in favour of CD-ROM only. It was never sold outside Japan.
Its architecture is the result of a technical bet that did not pay off: NEC went for full-screen video rather than 3D. The PC-FX decodes compressed animation in real time with a quality unmatched at the time, but has no 3D hardware accelerator whatsoever — precisely when the PlayStation and the Saturn were making textured 3D their number one selling point. Released three weeks after the PlayStation, it was technically outdated on day one.
Its library, limited to around sixty titles, is very distinctive: adventure games, visual novels and anime adaptations, with plenty of video sequences. The console was discontinued in 1998 and marked NEC's definitive exit from the game console market.
¶ Emulators
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro Mednafen_PCFX | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
The PC-FX is not available on RPi3, RPi Zero 2 and OGA/OGS/RG351: those machines do not have the power required to emulate the V810 processor and the video decoding.
Mednafen_PCFX is the only emulator for this system and therefore the default one. Its compatibility is excellent, it supports netplay and CRT video modes. RetroAchievements are supported on this system.
¶ BIOS
The PC-FX BIOS is mandatory: without it, no game will start.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
pcfx.rom |
PC-FX BIOS (mandatory) | 08e36edbea28a017f79f8d4f7ff9b6d7 | Mednafen_PCFX |
Place the BIOS like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/pcfx/
└── pcfx.rom
¶ Roms
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/pcfx/
Supported extensions: .ccd .chd .cue .toc
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.
PC-FX games are large — lots of video — and demanding in terms of disk throughput: prefer a fast SD card or a USB drive, and avoid launching these games from a slow network share.