I remember that in the Classic Technology Research Institute, Xiaohu once introduced the classic host "PCEngine" launched by NECHomeElectronics (referred to as NECHE), a subsidiary of Japanese electrical appliance NEC. At that time, it can be said that it was the same as Nintendo FC red and white machine and Sega MegaDrive, and it was called the three major hosts. Later, with the help of CD-ROM2, the host was able to prolong its life. It was not until the end of super Nintendo and other 16-bit hosts that NECHE finally launched PC-FX, the successor of PCEngine, with an official price of 49,800 yen.

The PC-FX host introduced by NECHE is the successor of PCEngine. The appearance is all white and the shape is simple. The attached handle looks simple, but equipped with six buttons, it feels like a handle that can play fighting games. (Source: link)

Looks like a personal computer. Although it is a successor product, it is not compatible with PCEngine. The origin of the host name "PC-FX" is like this. PC stands for a part of PC-9800 series developed by NEC's own company, F stands for the future, and the letter X stands for unknown possibilities. It can be seen that although NECHE regards PC-FX as the successor of PCEngine, it is still inclined to the interchangeability of personal computers in essence. The best example is that PC-FX can be used as the external drives of PC-9800 PC series products, but PC-FX itself has nothing in common with backward-compatible PCEngine, including accessories.

▲ A complete PC-FX mainframe, attached handles and wires, and an outer packaging box. The appearance of PC-FX is very similar to the common tower computer mainframe. (Source: link)

▲ With an external FX-SCSI adapter, the PC-FX host can be turned into a large external drives and connected to the PC9800 series for use. (Source: link)

1PC-FX introduced at the end of 994 has excellent animation playing ability, but it has no 3D polygon ability. At that time, Sony's PlayStation and Sega's Saturn had taken the lead in igniting the first wave of the next generation of consoles, and PC-FX was catching up quite quickly, but it was a bit reluctant to describe it as the Big Three together with the other two. Although PC-FX is equipped with two HuC6270 display chips, it can compress a large number of animated pictures very strongly and can play 30 animated pictures every second. Playing PC-FX games is often like watching an animation. But the biggest weakness is that PC-FX itself has no ability to deal with 3D polygons, and it happened that the game market at that time was just the time when 3D polygons were about to take off. Unfortunately, PC-FX took a wrong step.

▲ BattleHeat, an animated fighting game launched on PC ー FX, uses quite a few animations to express the fighting process, which feels like watching a fighting animation.

Nevertheless, because PC-FX has powerful animation playing ability, many animation games perform well on it. For anime fans, PC-FX is a console that meets their preferences, so the PC-FX console has launched quite a few beautiful girl-style games, including some * * *, which can be regarded as quite satisfying the market of specific ethnic groups.

Only 2D games can't compete with market rivals, and finally quit. In fact, NEC's initial strategy was to make its PC9800 series family, which is quite popular in Japan, further like PC-FX. Therefore, in terms of sales policy and development, it is considered from the perspective of Japan. Indeed, there are many anime fans in Japan, and PC-FX does exist in such games, such as the beautiful girl game with many animations. In the early days of the console war, there were still many players looking forward to the performance of PC-FX.

▲ Although PC-FX can play many animation-adapted related games and beautiful girls' related games, its demand group is still a minority after all. Without the support of the omnipotent masterpiece, it is difficult for the host to continue. (Source: link, link)

Just to put it bluntly, relying on the two advantages of 2D capability and animation playback, it really can't compete with the 3D polygon frenzy in the global game market at that time. Without polygon processing capability, less than half of the games can be developed on the mainframe, and it is difficult for a third vendor to develop masterpieces on this platform. Compared with rivals Sony and Sega, the angle of view is much narrower. The masterpiece of 3D polygon can go to the game market outside Japan, with a huge gap.

Finally, in June of 1998, NECHE announced to join Sega's Dreamcast development team, and announced that PC-FX had withdrawn from the market. NECHE was later liquidated and dissolved in 2002, which also marked the end of NEC's video game road. The final sales volume of PC-FX is about 1 10000 units (the shipment volume is 400000 units).