The Exigent Duality
PC Engine Retrieved - 18:19 CST, 10/28/21 (Sniper)
I've lately been doing a lot of work with RetroArch, HDMI-to-S-Video, with 8bitDo controllers-- but there are days when I wake up and just want the real thing. On a whim I pulled my PC Engine out of storage and hooked it up.

Still works! Here it is playing Yngwie Malmsteen's "Trilogy"-- an original 1986 press of the CD-- using its 1988-era optical mechanism. While this specific Duo-R came from 1993, to think that a Japanese dude may have sat in 1988 staring at this exact same user interface, listening to this exact same CD (Yngwie was very popular in Japan), on the exact same optical assembly tech, is mind blowing.

Heck, the fact that an 8-bit system can play audio CDs and even has a user interface like this is insane enough. Craziest platform in the history of the medium: everything from primitive NES-style games on ROM cards to almost 32-bit quality shmups with Redbook audio, and everything in between.



In other news, I'm doing a bunch of reading on NFTs. H wants to try her hand at selling some of her art digitally. The problem is that the big NFT marketplaces all run on Ethereum, and apparently the "gas" prices are insane on that bogged down network right now. I'm investigating a couple of options at the moment.