¶ Technical data
- Manufacturer: NEC (with Hudson Soft)
- Year of release: 1989
- CPU: Hudson HuC6280 (65C02-derived) @ 7.16 MHz
- RAM: 32 KB (4× the PC Engine's)
- VRAM: 128 KB
- Video: 2× HuC6270 (VDC) + HuC6202 (VPC) + HuC6260 (VCE)
- Resolution: 256x239 to 512x242, 512-color palette
- Sound chip: PSG built into the HuC6280, 6 channels
- Media: HuCard
- Controller: mandatory
¶ Presentation
The PC Engine SuperGrafx is a hardware evolution of the PC Engine, launched by NEC in Japan in December 1989. It keeps the same central processor but doubles the graphics processor — two HuC6270 chips driven by a compositing chip, the HuC6202 — quadruples the work RAM and doubles the VRAM. The result: two independent background layers and far more sprites on screen.
Presented as NEC's answer to the Mega Drive and to the upcoming Super Famicom, the SuperGrafx arrived too late and too expensive. Support collapsed almost immediately: only five games actually make use of its extra power — Battle Ace, Daimakaimura (Ghouls'n Ghosts), Aldynes, 1941: Counter Attack and Madō King Granzort. The machine was dropped within months and remains one of NEC's biggest commercial failures.
The SuperGrafx is backward compatible: it reads every PC Engine HuCard, and the CD-ROM² add-on can be connected to it. That is why the Mednafen_SuperGrafx emulator serves the PC Engine and the PC Engine CD just as well on Recalbox.
On Recalbox the three machines of the family are separate systems and their roms are not interchangeable: the five SuperGrafx games (
.sgxextension) go intoroms/supergrafx/, regular HuCards intoroms/pcengine/and CD images intoroms/pcenginecd/. A SuperGrafx game stored underpcenginewill not display correctly.
¶ Emulators
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro Mednafen_SuperGrafx | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro FBNeo | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro Geargrafx | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
The SuperGrafx is available on every board supported by Recalbox.
Mednafen_SuperGrafx is the default emulator: it is the reference for this system, with excellent compatibility, netplay support and CRT video modes. Geargrafx is a recent core that adds softpatching (an .ips or .bps patch placed next to the rom is applied automatically) and CRT support. FBNeo only covers the titles included in its romsets and expects unrenamed .zip files.
Netplay is only available with Mednafen_SuperGrafx.
¶ BIOS
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
gexpress.pce |
Game Express card (optional — unlicensed games) | 6d2cb14fc3e1f65ceb135633d1694122 | Mednafen_SuperGrafx, Mednafen_PCE_Fast, Geargrafx |
No BIOS is needed to play SuperGrafx games. The optional file goes into the PC Engine folder:
/recalbox/share/bios/pcengine/
└── gexpress.pce
¶ Roms
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/supergrafx/
Supported extensions per emulator:
| Emulator | Extensions |
|---|---|
| Mednafen_SuperGrafx | .pce .sgx .zip .7z |
| FBNeo | .zip .7z |
| Geargrafx | .pce .sgx .zip .7z |
Roms in No-Intro format are strongly recommended. SuperGrafx games normally carry the
.sgxextension: keep it, as it is what tells the emulator to enable the second graphics processor.