FireTV Stick: PC-Engine/TG16 games not working

RetroArch Android devices
#1

Hi everyone. This is my first post here.

I have installed Retroarch 1.6.7 on an Amazon Fire TV-Stick (2nd generation /w Alexa). The user interface looks really awesome on this device and so far everything is okay. I have tried several cores (NES, SNES, Sega Master System and Sega Mega Drive) and they all work fine. This is great and I’m already thrilled by Retroarch.

When it comes to retro, the PC-Engine is also part of it for me. A quick look at the cores list shows that two cores come into question:

1.) PC Engine Supergrafx (Beetle SGX)

2.) PC Engine/PCE-CD (Beetle PCE Fast)

I’m not interested in CD-ROM or Supergrafx games. All I want is an emulation of the standard PC-Engine/Turbografx16.

I’ve took two ROMs “Turrican.pce” and “Bonks Adventure.pce” and placed them into my ROMs folder. I’ve tried both cores with both ROMs but neither of them is working. All I get is a black screen.

I’m sure that the ROM files are valid because I’ve already played through each of them with “Magic Engine” on a windows machine.

What irritates me is that everything works fine except for the two NEC cores. Am I doing something wrong here? Can somebody help?

BTW: Sorry if I posted this in the wrong section. I was not sure if this belongs to “Retroarch.Android Devices” or “Libretro.Cores” or elsewhere.

Greetings, Osimov

#2

Do you have the required BIOS images? e.g., syscard3?

1 Like
#3

No. I thought they are only needed for CD-ROM emulation. I did not know that they are also needed for normal ROMs.

Edit: I’m pretty sure that BIOS ROMs are only used for CD-ROM emulation because in other emulators this is the case.

#4

I have tried the following:

  • Putting the System Card 3 ROM into the System/BIOS Directory. Result: Black Screen when loading a game.
  • Loaded the Syscard3 as a game. Result: The CD-ROM start screen appears and awaits a CD.
  • Tried another game (Neutopia). Result: Black Screen when loading the game.
  • Installed everything on my Fire Tablet. Result: Same as on the Fire TV stick.
  • Checked all paths and filenames twice. Result: No luck.

No matter what I try, it seems to be impossible to run any PC-Engine game. :cry:

#5

replace your roms. most roms if from properly dumped sources should work. most from goodpce does not work and will just result in black screen.

running .pce does not need bios file.

well, thats just assuming that the core itself should be working in your device. else try to get logs.

2 Likes
#6

Yes, that could be.

My guess is that almost all of my PC-Engine ROMs have faulty CRC checksums. And while other emulators (like “Magic Engine”) don’t care and run the games nonetheless, the Retroarch cores just display a black screen.

I have no clue where to get ROMs with proper checksums. Also it would be too much effort to replace all ROMs (that I’ve got and tested over the years).

The only way I could imagine is using a program that fixes the faulty checksums to “repair” the ROMs. Unfortunately I don’t know such a program.

Or when the developers of the cores add an option “Ignore checksum”. Maybe in the future.

Thanks for your help.

#7

RetroArch isn’t artificially blocking them over checksums or anything like that. Dunno why that core is picky about bad dumps, but if you look for No-Intro-verified ROMs, you should be good.

1 Like
#8

@hunterk - its something in the header. i havent had the time to really tinker that and since standalone behaves the same, i never even bothered much :smiley:

@Osimov its not hard to get pce/sgx games. compressed its only about 100MB. or if you have already downloaded GoodPCE sets, try to use clrmame and verify the roms(or use rebuild to just filter out known good rom). if you want to download new set instead, always try to search for No-Intro stuff.

3 Likes
#9

@wertz: Yes, it’s exactly as you said. I’ve downloaded a no-intro romset, extracted “Bonks Adventure” from that and voilà: It works (on the Fire tablet and on the Fire TV stick).

Conclusion: The ROMs are the problem.

Nevertheless I would like to say that “Magic Engine” (another emulator for windows) can run the other ROMs too.

@wertz + @hunterk: Thank you very much for your help. :heart:

3 Likes