[I ♥ The PC Engine] X-HE2

X-HE2

Maker: Dempa Shinbunsha
Release Date: November 1988 sometime
Price: 1600 yen

As licensed PCE accessories go, this one is pretty rare — a two-port multitap that came out to little fanfare in 1988 and was available for just a short time in the market.

Dempa Shinbunsha, a Japanese publisher named after the electronics industry newspaper they were founded to run, released this peripheral under the “MICOM SOFT” brand. This was inspired by MICOM BASIC Magazine, a pioneering hobbyist computer mag — arguably, the first one to achieve popular support among the general public — that Dempa published in Japan from 1982 to 2003.

A month after this, Dempa used the “X” label again for the XE-1 PRO HE, a sturdy joystick that cost the near-unimaginable sum of $100-ish in 1988 dollars. Dempa wanted to get in on the ground floor with the PCE, there’s little doubt about that — they even worked on some of NEC Avenue’s early releases as a subcontractor.

If you’re the sort of person who thinks a 5-port Multitap has too many “unused components” (like that 5-CD changer that you only listen to one CD with) then why not use this instead and save yourself a few hundred yen? This isn’t the only two-port adapter, either — there’s Sur de Wave’s Twin Tap (1992), along with Hori’s unlicensed Twin Commander (1989).

You’d think that more PCE gamers would’ve been interested in a two-port multitap, but in the end NEC-HE’s 5-port model was by far the most popular accessory in the genre, followed (not too closely) by Hudson’s three-porter.