i used to have a pc engine gt, must say though that the battery life and screen quality were rubbish and the speakers broke, but it did have a quirky charm to it, cost me £70 with 14 games, mate told me he knew someone selling a gameboy type thing, so he brought it round and i couldnt believe it.
but its one of the only retro gaming systems i sold, much better to play via emulation than on the original hardware due to the screen. If you could somehow stick in a gba ags 101 screen into it that would be amazing
Yeah, The GT is a battery hog and the screen is a bit odd on early games with a certain font, Galaga '88 for example (awesome game, just can't read the text! but that doesn't make the game play any worse). After 1990 NEC made sure nobody used the specific font that caused issues on the GT screen.
I overcame the battery issue with Eneloop rechargeable batts, they last TWICE as long as Alkalines (so a good 3 to 4 hours which is more comfortable) I recommend these for the Lynx, Game Gear and Nomad too. Amazing batteries.
I was considering making a 3.5" screen mod as seen on pcenginefx.com, but after some time I got used to the screen and now like its old fuzzyness. I mainly favour the PCE GT because I admired how advanced it was comapared to other Handhelds at the time. That and the sheer amount of good PCE games that I can also play on the big screen with my Original white PCE
I recommend the first thing anybody does with a GT (or Express) is replace all caps, they are even worse than Amiga for cap degradation. NEC used some nasty cheap things. I also advise GT over an Express unless you like American games better than Japanese. If you can switch mod it, then no worries, either will do