Analogue’s re-imagination of the PC Engine Duo is shipping to customers right now. Of course we had to make sure that the new Duo is a perfect match for our releases and so we had a little test run with a bunch of our titles. And… Good news!

We tried a few dozen of our HuCard titles today, including everything we currently have to offer (Magical Chase, Splatterhouse (Chrome), Dinoforce, all the SuperGrafx titles…) and many many other titles and we’re happy to report that every single one of them plays nicely on the new hardware. Some titles aren’t present yet in Analogue’s library system, so they don’t show up by name, but we’re sure Analogue will add them over time.

On the CD side we initially tested round about 20 different titles and everything’s working flawlessly so far. We’ll certainly try to get through our complete library over the next week or so, but so far the new hardware performs really nice. CD titles can exhibit tiny audio hiccups here and there, which are caused by the seek operation of the disc drive (MLiG’s youtube review mentioned them as well) and which will hopefully be fixed in time.

Our HuCards were developed to be run on the classic PC Engine and TG16 systems, so they’re are a perfect fit for the classic hardware. Analogue’s Duo has very narrow HuCard slot (the actual connector inside, not the opening on the case), which can collide with the PCB protection sticker we’re using on our HuCards. On our Japanese HuCards we use a slightly marbled and rather thick protection sticker. These will not fit inside the new Duo unless the sticker is removed.

The following two shots show a HuCard inserted correctly on top and a HuCard not able to make the final few mm because of the sticker on the PCB. At first it’s not easy to tell, that the second card isn’t fully inserted, but if you pay close attention, you can see it protrude a little further from the case than the other one.

Those stickers can easily be removed in seconds and the HuCards work just as fine without them. We will be happy to provide thinner stickers to every customer starting in early 2024. So don’t be afraid to just remove it for the time being. Always start at the top right corner and don’t pull away from the PCB, but across the PCB to the left.

On other titles (e.g. the majority of our Supergrafx HuCards) we’ve been using thinner PCB protection stickers (since the SGX slot is quite a bit narrower than the one of the PC Engines or the classic Duo systems). Those seem to fit alright. You really just have to get a feel for when a HuCard is inserted all the way.

We’re happy to see the Analogue Duo reaching customers eventually and it is indeed a very nice and comfortable way to play physical PC Engine games (of course including all of our existing and future titles on both CD and HuCard). Have fun!