White or grey: choosing between the PC Engine and the CoreGrafx

On 30 October 1987, NEC put the world's smallest console on a Japanese shelf. Fourteen months later, in December 1988, that same little box became the first game system in the world to read a CD — three years before the Sega CD, six before the PlayStation.

And the picture it sent to your television was a radio signal.

The original white PC Engine carries an RF connector as its standard video output. That was ordinary in 1987 and it is the single most awkward fact about owning one today. In December 1989 NEC released a grey version called the CoreGrafx, and the headline change was not the colour. It was a socket.

The two machines play exactly the same games. What they ask of your living room is completely different.

One of them plugs into a modern television. One of them does not.

The CoreGrafx (released 8 December 1989) replaced the RF connector with a 5-pin DIN AV port carrying composite video and stereo audio. With the right cable that reaches the yellow-white-red inputs on the back of almost any television that still has them. Nothing is modified, nothing is opened, and the sound arrives in stereo.

The white 1987 machine gives you the RF connector and nothing else on the outside. Modern flat panels have largely stopped carrying an analogue tuner input, so an RF-only console usually needs a converter box, or an older VCR to pass the signal through, or a modified machine. RGB is present inside the white unit — the signal reaches the expansion connector on the back, and RGB modification kits exist and are well documented. That is a soldering-iron answer, and it is worth knowing that it is available, and worth knowing that the console will not do it for you.

So the honest version of the question is this: are you buying a machine to play, or a machine to keep as it was? If the answer is play, this week, on the television I already own, the grey one is the shorter road.

On the cable itself: the AV lead for these 5-pin machines is widely sold under the NEC part number PI-AN2, and the same lead is normally described as serving the CoreGrafx, the CoreGrafx II and the Duo. Sellers are consistent about it. It is not confirmed against an NEC manual.

The CoreGrafx II is newer, and in one respect it went backwards

NEC released the CoreGrafx II on 21 June 1991, in orange — said to have been matched to the look of the Super CD-ROM² hardware of the day. It keeps the 5-pin AV port, so on the question that opened this page it behaves like its grey predecessor.

Inside, something stranger happened. The 1989 CoreGrafx carried a revised processor, the HuC6280A, which is credited with correcting a minor audio fault. The 1991 CoreGrafx II reverted to the original HuC6280. The model with the higher number, the later date and the fresher colour has the earlier chip in it.

This is disputed. At least one long-standing enthusiast account of the three machines concludes that the differences are cosmetic only, and its author says plainly that he is not certain. The CPU part numbers come from Wikipedia's record of the hardware. Either way, the practical instruction is the same: if a listing tells you it is a CoreGrafx II, that tells you the colour and the year. It does not tell you the machine is better.

Everything that decides your library is identical across all three

This is the reassuring part, and it is why the choice above is a comfort question and never a compatibility trap.

HuCards. The white PC Engine, the CoreGrafx and the CoreGrafx II take the same Japanese HuCard slot. A card that runs in one runs in all three. The wall is not between these machines; it is at the American border. The TurboGrafx-16 that NEC sold in North America uses a TurboChip with eight pins deliberately reversed, so Japanese cards do not run in it and American cards do not run in these. If your collection is Japanese, any of these three is home.

The CD add-on. All three keep the same expansion port, so the CD-ROM² interface unit attaches without an adapter. Two side notes save confusion when you read older listings: the budget Shuttle model has no expansion port at all and can never take the CD hardware, and the SuperGrafx has the port but needs a dedicated adapter because the body is a different size. SuperGrafx-exclusive software — five titles — will not run on the machines on this page.

The library, then, is a single decision made once, and the white-or-grey question sits entirely downstream of it.

The one mistake that can end the machine in a second

These consoles want 9 volts, centre-negative polarity, on a 5.5 × 2.1 mm barrel plug. Repair-community listings give the original white unit a 650 mA rating and the CoreGrafx I and II an 800 mA rating, while also naming the same NEC adapters (PAD-105 and PAD-106) across the family. The two current figures do not agree. Voltage, polarity and plug size do agree, which is why an adapter from a white PC Engine is normally fine on a CoreGrafx.

The PC Engine Duo is a different animal, and this is the dangerous one. The Duo takes 10 volts at 1 A, centre-positive, on a 6.3 × 3.0 mm plug, under part number PAD-124. Voltage, polarity and physical size are all different. A Duo supply near a CoreGrafx is a hazard, and if you are buying a bundled console-plus-adapter from a seller who has owned several PC Engines, the adapter is the item worth asking a photograph of.

What the decades actually look like on one of these

Owners report corrosion on the expansion connector at the back — enough of it that hobbyists 3D-print dust covers for the port and give them away. On a listing photograph that connector is usually visible, and it is the part to look at. Green tinting, dullness or crusting there matters more than a scuff on the lid, because that port is how the CD hardware will one day attach.

The catastrophic electrolytic leakage that haunts this family is documented on the CD units — the CD-ROM², Super CD-ROM² and the Duo line — and that reputation is earned. For the HuCard-only machines, no comparable pattern of leak damage is documented, and they are widely described as the low-risk way into the platform. Repair wikis do carry capacitor pages written specifically for the CoreGrafx and the CoreGrafx II; the contents of those pages could not be retrieved.

Colour. Both machines yellow with sunlight and time, and a photograph is a poor witness to it. Warm indoor light flatters an uneven shell, and a listing shot from the front hides the surface that actually took the sun. Ask for daylight, and ask for the top.

The answer depends on which machine you are actually buying

If you want to play — cards in, television on, stereo sound, no soldering — the CoreGrafx is the machine that meets you where you are. Grey body, blue lettering, 1989, one socket that changes the whole afternoon.

If what you want is the 1987 object itself — the smallest console in the world, the box that got to the CD three years before anyone else — then buy the white one, and budget for a converter or a modification alongside it.

And keep the CoreGrafx II in view. It is the newest. It is the brightest. And its processor is the older one.