In 1989, Hudson Smooth unveiled a peculiar accent for NEC’s PC Engine console, a tool that appears like a time capsule from an period when saving your recreation was a luxurious, not a given. Meet the Ten no Koe 2, a reminiscence financial institution that promised to protect your progress in a world of fleeting passwords and fleeting endurance. Its title, translating to “Voice From The Heavens,” nods to a legendary save system from Hudson’s Famicom traditional, Momotarou Densetsu.
Saving video games within the late ’80s was a messy affair. Most consoles relied on cumbersome password techniques—strings of letters and numbers you’d scribble down, praying you didn’t miswrite a single character. The PC Engine, a compact powerhouse launched in 1987, was no exception. Its HuCard video games, smooth as they had been, lacked onboard reminiscence for saves. Hudson Smooth noticed the issue and delivered the Ten no Koe 2, a peripheral that plugged into the console’s rear enlargement port to offer gamers 2 kilobytes of storage. That’s proper—2kB, a quantity that sounds laughably small in the present day however was a game-changer for titles like Neutopia or Dragon Slayer. The “2” in its title wasn’t a sequel flex; it merely denoted the storage capability, as no “Ten no Koe 1” ever existed.
Bodily, the Ten no Koe 2 is a chunky, utilitarian field that screams ’80s tech optimism. It’s in regards to the dimension of a small paperback, with a gray plastic shell that clips onto the again of the PC Engine. Two AA batteries energy it, preserving the static RAM chip alive to carry your save knowledge even when the console’s off. A purple LED glints to warn when these batteries are operating low, urging you to swap them earlier than your progress vanishes.
As soon as connected, it enabled suitable HuCard video games to retailer progress on to its 2kB SRAM. Video games like Bomberman or Dungeon Explorer may save your excessive scores or marketing campaign progress with out forcing you to jot down a 32-character code. However managing these saves required an additional step: the Ten no Koe Financial institution HuCard, a separate cartridge that acted as a file supervisor. Pop it into the PC Engine, and also you’d get a Japanese-language interface (sorry, no English localization) with choices to again up, restore, or erase saves. This card may even copy knowledge to itself, a safeguard for whenever you wanted to swap batteries or transfer saves to a different Ten no Koe 2.
For collectors in the present day, the Ten no Koe 2 is just not uncommon—eBay listings and Japanese public sale websites like Satakore present it’s nonetheless obtainable for an affordable value—but it surely’s typically misunderstood. Some consumers mistake it for an AV booster or count on it to work with out the Ten no Koe Financial institution HuCard. Others are puzzled over its lack of a save interface, not realizing video games dealt with saves robotically except you used the administration card.
