alt Hacker NewsThe PC Engine CPU is highly underrated. People like to go "haha, it was the TurboGrafx-16 but its CPU was 8-bit" like that makes it a joke, but that clock speed boost on top of the 6502 architecture is a big deal. (The S-CPU on the SNES still has an 8-bit data bus too, so the 16-bit advantage isn't as strong as it seems)
The Arcade Card add-on was designed specifically around using the transfer instructions to rapidly transfer graphics into VRAM, something it was very good at. Made some really good Neo Geo ports possible.
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The amazing Street Fighter II' port didn't even need any add-ons! (Well, aside from the 6 button controller)
>"haha, it was the TurboGrafx-16 but its CPU was 8-bit"
Amusingly, TurboGrafx-16 is a US-specific name, so is the huge shell.
In Japan, the console was called PC Engine and was really compact. Later revised as CoreGrafx and CoreGrafx II, both still the same fundamental hardware.
I own the later variant. Very solid little box that sips power and produces stable a/v output.
The PCE (and by extension, TG16) proved that outside of games that relied on high processing speed (3D games like Elite, or sports games), 8-bit CPUs could give every bit as compelling an experience as 16-bit chips.
Wonder what a good programmer could do with a modern 6502-based ISA clocked at 20+ MHz but otherwise identical hardware to <insert favorite 6502-based platform here>. Imagine being able to hit I/O registers on every single hardware cycle because your CPU blows that out of the water (see: SuperCPU on C64/128 which can very much meet the demands of "write a new value each 1MHz cycle")