PC Engine Samples

What can be better to start a new year than talking about PC Engine stuff? Kind of obscure PC Engine stuff? Well I decided to make good pictures of my somehow limited PC Engine sample collection.

Promotional games or sample along with alphas and betas are a nice complement to any game collection. They are quite easy to find for current gen (although I have yet to see one for the Wii) on ebay along with last gen and  32/64 bit era, but anything below that is quite tough to find. Unless you get lucky… 

Eventhough PC Engine samples were given away to retailers to demonstrate upcoming games, they do sell for quite a lot on Ebay or Yahoo Japan and they don’t seem to devaluate at all. The PC Engine had quite a lot of samples produced during its lifespan, but the exact number of titles is not yet known. The PC-FX seemed to have had a good run of samples too and they did pop up on a regular basis for a while on Yahoo Japan but I haven’t managed to grab any yet

At the moment I only have 5 samples for the PC Engine, so here they are in pictures, enjoy:

Ryūko no Ken - Arcade Card (Art of Fighting)

World Heroes 2 - Arcade Card

Garou Densetsu 2 - Arcade Card (Fatal Fury2)

Kaze No Densetsu Xanadu - Super CDrom² (Legend of Xanadu)

Metal Stalker - Arcade Card

On a last note some of the samples bear some differences from the final release, Mad Stalker for example has some differents GFX and missing features over the final release. Insert Credit has just done an article on the differences that exist between versions of Mad Stalker that I encourage you to read, it features the very same sample pictured above. Although they label it as prototype/sample, it is most definitely the same as above.

Nekofan which is a great French PC Engine review site has done a review in French of the Sample of Gradius 2 for the PC Engine, a great article to read too if you understand French indeed with lots of insight on the subject of samples.

Any questions, let me know

Sabre