TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine

Check the dumping hardware overview for a list of known preservation hardware.

If you need help, please come chat with us on the VGPC or No-Intro discord servers.

Important Notes

• Unopened games should have their ROM and save data dumped before attempting to play them. This avoids inadvertent modification of the data and helps preserve any possible rewritable data in its unused/“factory” state. This is especially important for types of cart that store the ROM on rewritable media, or games that come with special save data pre-installed. But it is not necessarily possible to know in advance, hence why its advisable to dump first. Note in your submission whether the physical media was sealed and include a photo of the cart/packaging in its sealed state, if possible.
• You should clean the physical media's electrical contacts before trying to dump it, then dump it, clean it again and dump it a second time, checking if both dumps match using a file comparison tool or calculating the SHA256 of each file and comparing those values. This helps ensure that dirt on the contacts is not causing interference, and that dirt was fully removed during the cleaning process.

The specialized wafer-thin carts for the TurboGrafx-16 and PC Engine can be dumped with multiple different tools, some readily available although perhaps a bit expensive.

1. Super System SD 3 (SSDS3)
2. RetroFreak
3. Tototek USB Tengu PC Engine Flash Cart and Dumper

If you have an SSDS3, you can follow this method for dumping PC Engine HuCards / TurboGrafx TurboChips (archive link).

See instructions here for NES / Famicom dumping using the RetroFreak, the same setup applies to dumping TurboGrafx-16 and PC Engine cards.

This neat package (archive link) comes with both a dumper and a flash cart, and uses a super simple Windows application to show information about the cart, dump the cart, and flash the flash cart.

Once you've dumped your games, it's time to generate and submit metadata to a preservation project for validating and cataloging. See the dump submission instructions for more information.