Review: PC Engine GT

[Please keep in mind that the GT’s screen is about 3 inches on the diagonal and like Sega’s Game Gear doesn’t exactly photograph well, so viewing the images below at max size on a modern monitor is going to exaggerate various flaws and quirks that aren’t half as obvious in person]

A non-technical review of a sleek slab of old technology may sound about as useful as packing a pair of flippers for a trip to the moon, but I’m going to stick my neck out and insist otherwise. Yes, partly because I’m the one writing this article and I really need to keep you on my side, but also because the non-technical side of things is how we actually experience our games and gaming hardware, isn’t it? I could talk about screen types and internal gubbins all day long, but that doesn’t change how something feels to hold or use. Tech talk is about the product, and I want to talk to you about how the PC Engine GT feels to play. We are supposed to be having fun, after all.

And on a related note: the below is all based on first-hand experience with my very own PC Engine GT. It’s been recapped, as many old portables from any manufacturer now need to be, but otherwise left untouched and as far as I can tell only lightly used at best before I got my covetous paws on it. I should probably also mention here that I’ve owned four or five PC Engines in my time, and have an RGB-modded Duo-R connected up to a PVM at the moment. The point being that:

• Yes sorry I’m a nerd who shouldn’t be trusted with a credit card.
• Any comparisons made between the console/handheld and anything are based on my own personal experiences with the hardware. You’ll read no blindly regurgitated “internet truths” here.

By any commercial measure the PC Engine GT, released in the US as the region-locked TurboExpress (HuCards and TurboChips are sadly not cross-compatible), was a resounding flop. It was vastly more expensive than any other portable gaming device available in 1990, and by what vague (yet believable) accounts I can find online it was outsold by Atari’s Lynx. The Lynx. You know, the machine that once tried to promote California Games of all things as a head-turning pack-in title.

What’s so fascinating about the GT is that many of the reasons why it sold so badly are the exact same reasons why it’s such an impressive technology to play with once you’ve got hold of one. This is just about a full PC Engine—the only significant things missing are the ability to connect it up to a CD unit and AV connectors—encased in a gorgeous matte black form that’s a touch longer (and chunkier) than an original Game Boy, but not quite as broad as a Game Gear. Using the PC Engine’s beautiful HuCard format certainly helped to keep the size down: those little bank card sized slices of gaming weigh virtually nothing and are so thin they can literally fit in a wallet—for comparison, a standard Game Boy cart is three HuCards thick. 

Every part of the shell only reinforces the idea that this is a high quality machine. The joypad and buttons (two, as was always standard for the PC Engine) feel as tight and responsive as any official controller made for the original console, and even retain the home hardware’s distinctive multi-speed autofire switches—a feature that’s very much appreciated when playing one of the system’s numerous shmups. There’s a headphone jack on the side, located just above the volume and brightness wheels, making it easy to enjoy sweet stereo chiptunes in private, and the mono speaker embedded into the front does a fabulous job of belting them out in public. Wherever you’re playing the slight hood around the screen offers not only slight shade from any surrounding light but also a little physical protection from general mishaps, as whatever’s assaulting the GT is more than likely going to come into contact with that before it does the one part that really needs to stay pristine. Overall it’s feature-rich bit of tech, without the fragile unreliability that sometimes goes hand-in-hand with being a pioneer in the field.

And then there’s that screen. It’s… let’s call it divisive. In many ways it’s one of the very best 1990 had to offer: the backlit display is crisp, bright, and even, and the blurry ghosting that plagued its competitors is remarkably absent. I play a lot of Super Star Soldier and Final Soldier on my GT (Caravan Mode—think of it as a bespoke score attack mode with a much sweeter name—is the perfect handheld game) and although I die more often than someone who likes shmups probably should, I’ve honestly never thought the display was to blame. The colours are vivid, the bullets are clear, and what is shown appears clean and sharp.

But in one significant way that screen’s also the worst. As I’m sure you’ve noticed it outputs at a lower resolution than PC Engine games were designed for, resulting in slightly scrunched-up graphics. It’s simply incapable of showing every pixel that’s supposed to be there. How you feel about this look is largely down to personal preference. For me, I’m so in love with the idea of using real PC Engine HuCards anywhere I please I really don’t mind, and ’90s tech looking like ’90s tech is part of the “point” of GT ownership for me—it’s not like I’m unaware the Analogue Pocket or a dozen standard emulators exist. For others—and they’re certainly not wrong for thinking this way—this limitation means not a single game is ever displayed as intended.

However you feel the screen naturally takes a heavy toll on the six AA batteries needed to power it, which only last… oh. They last quite a while, actually. You’ll get a solid afternoon’s play out of the GT before you need to recharge a modern set of AAs, and the commonly-held notion that all of the backlit handhelds from that time drain batteries flat before you’ve reached the end of any game’s first stage is once again proven false. Does a Game Boy last longer? Yes, of course it does. Nintendo’s unstoppable brick of joy was designed from the silicon up to be cheap(er) to make, buy, and run. In contrast NEC’s stab at the portable market was an attempt to squish contemporary console gaming into a premium handheld. To try and emphasise the gulf between the two: if Nintendo had done that, they’d have released a portable SNES in 1990. 1990. Before the world was gifted Sonic The Hedgehog. Thinking about it like that, it’s something of a minor miracle the GT exists as anything more than a mere proof of concept at all.

The PC Engine GT is a bundle of contradictions in handheld form. It is excellent. It is utterly obsolete. Nobody needs one of these. I couldn’t be without one. By definition it has absolutely no exclusive games to its name, yet there’s no denying the strength of the library available to it. There is nothing it can do that isn’t done better by its console counterpart… bar the ability to play it in bed, or in the garden, or while out and about, all things a regular PC Engine definitely can’t do.

If you do want one, and can stomach the frankly ridiculous prices they go for these days, then I feel confident saying reality will live up to the hype. And the best thing is if you don’t you can still enjoy the exact same games on a standard PC Engine instead. Just this once, everybody wins.