Mednafen PC Engine cores

Libretro Cores
#1

There seems to be 2 different PC Engine cores when it comes to mednafen. SGX and PCE Fast. Both SGX and PCE Fast seem to run games just fine and i am wondering if there are any accuracy differences between two.

#2

pcfx is not a pcengine-by design. its meant to run pcfx games,not pce or sgx games.

#3

Yep I just noticed that! My bad

#4

I think the only difference is that SGX can run Supergrafx games while PCE Fast cannot.

#5

I noticed Darius 2 CD has no music if you run it with the PCE core, but it does with the SGX core.

#6

Well it kinda works like this

PCE is the PC-Engine, or TurboGrafx-16 SGX is the SuperGrafx

However, it goes deeper because of the CD system types, from what I’ve seen anyway.

There’s the following types of CD-Games on the NEC family. (excluding PCFC)

CD-ROM^2: This was the initial format for the PC-Engine CD addon, and subsequently the native format for the TurboGrafx-CD

Super CD-ROM^2: While these are playable on a standard CD addon setup, using the supercard memory upgrade; The “ideal” way to play these games with with a SuperGrafx attached to the Super CD-ROM^2 attachment. The equivilent in the US would be the TurboDuo system.

Arcade CD-ROM^2 Only released in Japan, but supposedly play best on the sgx core as they were released later than the rest. (Quite honestly I’ve yet to get these to play AT ALL… so there’s that… but it seems to be just me lol)

#7

Okay that makes sense. Best to stick with SGX core as it works well so far.

#8

Make sure you have a good dump (search for redump). People often has broken .cue files. What audio track are you using?

If .bin files (a piece of the cue sheet):

FILE "Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (Japan) (FABT, FACT) (Track 01).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (Japan) (FABT, FACT) (Track 02).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 02 MODE1/2352
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:03:00
FILE "Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (Japan) (FABT, FACT) (Track 03).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:02:00

If Ogg Vorbis:

FILE "Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (Japan) (FABT, FACT) (Track 01).ogg" OGG
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (Japan) (FABT, FACT) (Track 02).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 02 MODE1/2352
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:03:00
FILE "Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (Japan) (FABT, FACT) (Track 03).ogg" OGG
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:02:00

If you are using wav files, use the keyword WAVE instead BIN or OGG. Remember mednafen is case-sensitive.

1 Like
#9

You make a great point.

I forgot about this, as I go through everything with a fine-toothed-comb as a standard practice.

Many cue sheets (Not just with PCE) are utter garbage. If a game doesn’t work, that’s one of the first places to investigate.

I also recommend converting all cd based games to single bin/cue’s if at all possible. (Some, like Mega Man Legends on PSX won’t compress that far, but 2 bins and a cue is still better than a folder of audio files.)

#10

You can save space in audio tracks (converting from bin to Ogg Vorbis). You can save a LOT of space in PC Engine CD and Sega CD, and in some PS1 games too. I have Akumajou Dracula X in just 98 MB, and Robo Aleste in just 57 MB.

Also, it’s better to stick what redump give us, whatever if it’s a single or multiple tracks. If you are going to verify the integrity of your dump, you’ll have no md5 or sha-1 in redump database, just crc-32. If you converted the audio to ogg, you can at least compare the data tracks hashes.

#11

I don’t have separate audio tracks, i just have a bin/cue.

#12

It’s a Super CD-ROM^2 game, so I’m not surprised the bin/cue runs better on the SGX core.

Honestly, the ONLY time I am aware of that it would be beneficial to have the audio files outside of the bin is if you are doing custom soundtracks.

For instance on Sonic CD, you can replace the level music with other tracks, etc.

#13

Uh, the game taking up little space isn’t a thing for you guys?

There’s nothing to do with that, it’s just this: https://github.com/libretro/beetle-pce-fast-libretro/commit/fc0cf49fe6f301b4958c9960c00a3bf7fcc2e9b6

#14

How does that apply though if it’s a single bin/cue? The cue sheet wouldn’t reference any wave files.

Also space is relative.

I’d rather have 2 large files than 30 mini ones.

#15

I just get Super Darius 2, it’s working in both PCE Fast and SuperGrafx cores. It’s something in your side @butanebob