In the world of video game consoles, some failures are as interesting as successes, and among them is the PC Engine SuperGrafx, which never left Japan. With only 75,000 units sold and five official games, the SuperGrafx is particularly rare in the West, but Tito from the channel Macho Nacho Productions managed to bring one from Japanese lands, and decided to follow the path of preventive maintenance and modding. After all, its hardware is almost 35 years old…
In an attempt to repeat the local success of the PC Engine (read TurboGrafx-16) and not cede ground to Nintendo and Sega, the people at NEC launched their PC Engine SuperGrafx console in December 1989. From a technical point of view, the SuperGrafx was an upgrade rather than a new platform: NEC quadrupled the amount of RAM available for the CPU and added a second video chip with its own memory, always maintaining backward compatibility with PC Engine HuCard cartridges.
Available information suggests that NEC rushed too much when launching the SuperGrafx, that the few exclusive games available were very expensive, and that the hardware improvements turned out to be much more conservative than expected. The SuperGrafx only had five official games (1941: Counter Attack, Aldynes, Battle Ace, Daimakaimura and Madö King Granzört), and with an insignificant 75,000 units sold (the Super Famicom sold more than 17 million in Japan), NEC gave it the thumbs down.
Restoring and modifying a 1989 PC Engine SuperGrafx
And so we come to Tito from the channel Macho Nacho Productions, whom we already know from his work with the GC Nano. Tito managed to acquire a SuperGrafx in Japan recently, but beyond its perfect functioning, he decided to do two things: on one hand, maintenance and cleaning (this includes changing capacitors), and on the other, installing the TurboNanza RGB mod to get the best possible video quality.
A detail that definitely catches the eye is the impressive excess of flux on the PCB, perhaps as a product of certain time constraints in its quality control, but all that material disappeared with a good bath in an ultrasonic cleaner (I want one… although they are expensive and noisy), and a second immersion in isopropyl alcohol. The main audio and video port is very similar to the keyboard connector on old AT computers, however, it must be removed with the RGB mod. Its installation requires minimal surgery, and the best part is that it is a reversible mod.
The final result? Excellent. Some comments recommend cutting one of the plastic supports in the case (it can damage the PCB) and replacing the voltage regulator, but Tito has the appropriate tools, and the documentation for the TurboNanza is quite extensive, minimizing the possibility of an error.
