On the front of the unit is the light-up power button, HuCard slot, CD eject button, and CD slot. Despite that size, the Analogue Duo has some heft to it at around 1.69 pounds, and feels especially stable thanks to the rubberized design on its underside. Since the Analogue Duo packs in both a CD drive and lots of extra ports, it's not quite as compact, but still an impressive 6.9 x 10.5 inches in length and width, respectively, and just 1.36 inches high, besting even the PC Engine's 1.5 inches. While the original TurboGrafx-16 was released with a lot of extra plastic to increase its size, purportedly because the US market preferred bigger systems, the PC Engine is among the most compact consoles ever released at 5.5 inches for both its width and length. It sports a sleek, streamlined design reminiscent of the PC Engine Duo or TurboDuo. The Analogue Duo is available in an off-white to match the original PC Engine, or black to match the TurboGrafx-16. Fortunately, I wasn't too disappointed, as it's arguably just a few firmware updates away from being Analogue’s best console yet. While not necessarily as flexible as software-based emulation, the Analogue Duo’s FPGA-based design effectively simulates the functionality of the original hardware chipsets with near 100% accuracy, at least in theory.Īs a reasonably satisfied owner of the Analogue NT Mini, Mega SG, Super NT, Pocket, and DAC, I had high hopes for the Duo. Whether it's a HuCard cartridge or CD, or designed for the TubroGrafx-16, PC Engine, SuperGrafx, TurboGrafx CD, PC Engine CD-ROM2, or Super Arcade CD-ROM2 specifications, the Analogue Duo can play it. With the release of the Analogue Duo, you no longer have to work out the best way to play the entirety of the PC Engine library. There are many all-time classics in its library like Bonk's Revenge, Bomberman '94, Dracula-X: Rondo of Blood, Ys Book I & II, Alien Crush, Military Madness, Splatterhouse, and enough great shoot'em ups that you might make 'shmups' part of your vocabulary. Working through all of this confusion is worth it, however, as it's an amazing video game platform, with more than 675 commercial releases, not counting modern-day homebrews. There's even a failed backward-compatible update to the base PC Engine known as the SuperGrafx, with enhanced memory and video processing, but only five exclusive dedicated games. With more than 7 million consoles and handhelds sold from late 1987 to late 1994, but only around 10% of that total in the US as the TurboGrafx-16, the PC Engine platform has a lot of systems to choose from, as well as multiple types of add-on cards that update both the BIOS and available RAM required by select CD-based games. NEC’s PC Engine platform is nothing if not a story of highs, lows, and some confusion.

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