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Kinda-sorta like a mashup of a DOS PC and a Japanese game console of the SNES / Genesis era.

It's cute and retro-cool but also very Japanese, and thus almost entirely unknown in the west.

What made it interesting to gamers was that its sprite handling was well in excess of that offered by the 16-bit consoles of the time, allowing some very accurate ports of early nineties Japanese arcade games. Combined with the big box packaging, this led to many of these ports becoming expensive collectors items.

Being one of the earlier instances of a fully integrated CD-ROM computer with x86 underpinnings, it also saw a lot of PC ports, some of which were enhanced in interesting ways, such as a fully voiced version of Ultima VI.

Which instantly reminds me of another weird mash up, the Amstrad Mega PC¹. A literal Japanese game console stuffed in to a DOS PC.

I've never seen one in real life, but I find the idea intriguing. Another chunk of Friday afternoon has gone now ;)

Edit: Add also the Sega TeraDrive² which I hadn't seen before.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_Mega_PC 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_TeraDrive

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