You nailed it, the system was good but they never brought any of the good games over. NES had a similar problem of some games taking 3+ years to get translated and released in the west.
Around 9:32 you say that the turbo grafx 16 has no role playing games. Thats not true at all. It had neutopia (a great rpg in the same style as zelda a link to the past), it had neutopia 2 (an even more epic follow up to the first one), then we also got cadash (almost arcade perfect port!), dungeon explorer (awesome music and fun game play), and on the cd you got dragon slayer and ys book 1 & 2. You call blazing lazers mediocre? It beats the hell out of most shoot em ups you could find on the super nintendo. Thats for god dam sure! Beside that amazing game you also goot r-type (an almost arcade perfect port), air zonk, and soldier blade. If you had the cd you could also play gate of thunder and lords of thunder (just two of the best shoot em ups ever made). For platform games you got not just one, not two, but three amazing bonk games. With catchy music, massive amount of colors and fun game play. Or how about legendary axe, a game so good it even won awards back in the day. Legendary axe 2 and jacky chan action kung fu was also a blast to play. How about alien crush and demon crush? Just two of the best pinball similator games ever made (not just my opinion, everyone thinks that). Aero blasters, Air zonk, Alien crush, Blazing lazers, Bloody wolf, Bomberman, Bomberman 93, Bonk 3, Bonks revenge, Bonks adventure, Cadash, Cybercore, Dead moon, Devils crush, Dragon spirit, Dungeon explorer, Legendary axe, Legendary axe 2, Military madness, Neutopia, Neutopia 2, New adventure island, Ninja spirit, R-type, Sidearm, Soldier blade, Splatterhouse, Super star soldier, the list goes on and on and on of great titles!! The turbo grafx 16 didnt have many good games? Biggest lie of today.
Does nobody remember Final Lap? An rpg style racing game where u gotta go to diff locales to race the champ in each city to collect parts for your car that are needed to beat the ultimate boss race? Loved it! And hell yeah Legendary Axe 1+2 and R-Type and also there was a cool Pac-Man game with him in red boots, and also Fantasy Zone!
I grew up in Greece during the late 80 and early 99s. Even in our small European country, more than half of my classmates had NES in elementary school, few had mastersystem and one or two only a mega drive (snes came much later). I even remember the local video game store showcasing a single NEO GEO and later sega cd and Atari Jaguar. No need to mention the countless cases of older brothers of friends who had the pre-console gaming computers like Amstrad, Commodore, Spectrum and Amiga. Yet....in all my years as a gamer (even now with the explosion of international commerce) I HAVE NEVER witnessed with my own eyes a TurboGrafx or a PC engine up close. I never even knew anyone in Greece who owned one or who claimed that he knew someone else who had it. Very rare console...
There was only a very limited release in Europe of the TurboGrafx thru Telegames. Otherwise people had to import the Japanese version. There seems to be quite a bit of popularity in France and possibly Spain and to some degree England when it comes to the original PC Engine. But I don't know what the import prices were like.
Sadly did not have back in the day. oh you know the typical story, I didn't know anyone who had one and didn't want to be left out. I barely would see it anywhere as well but one day a friend and I rented it from a local video store, came with Keith Courage and I think we also got Devil's Crush. I admit the large colorful sprites were pretty cool, I did like the system but didn't have a lot of options for getting one myself. Today I have TWO as well as a Turbo Everdrive which is great because it also plays all the PCengine roms patching them on the fly and both have composite output I use on a sharp little Toshiba CRT I use with all my retro systems. I wish it had been bigger here back in the day but I definitely appreciate it more today.
I saw another video about the TG-16 a while back which mentioned that the wasted space inside it was due to a redesign they decided to do before it was released in the US: apparently they thought the PC Engine being small was a problem because it seemed too toy-like (never mind the fact that some people don't have tons of space or that getting it out a significant amount of time before the Genesis in the US could have resulted in more people buying it; the console actually came out in America a couple of weeks after the Genesis despite being released in Japan a year before the Mega Drive).
Classic case of executives being out of touch with the consumer. You are making something to appeal to kids and kids love toys. So naturally you're worried that it is toy like! ^_^
@@dtester That's a good point. Personally my priority would have been to try to get it out in the US and Europe before Sega could get the Mega Drive out so that people would hopefully go for the TG-16 instead of waiting (mind you, the fact that it only had 4 games available when it was released in the US suggests they had bigger problems on their hands; having such a limited launch line-up doesn't bode well).
Great video! You should give dungeon explorer another shot.. once you get through the first 2 areas it turns into much more of an RPG where you level up your character and rerun areas for experience. It's a lot of fun and not super long so easy to enjoy
Dang, I wish I had the chance to buy a TurboDuo on clearance back then. They’re almost impossible to find today. Value of the entire TG16 line has jumped so much now.
Can't talk about Turbografx without Splatterhouse. I miss playing that in arcade, but I do remember Vigilante being very briefly in my local corner store down the street. Tough but fun classic beat em up.
I had a TG-16 for christmas of 89 and I had to sell it with many games to get a Genesis later because of games like Ghouls n' Ghost, Phantasy Star II, Strider, Thunder Force III, Gaiares, Super Shinobi Golden Axe and a couple more. I have found memories of a couple of games like Blazing Lazers (probably as good as TF III), Neutopia and R-Type (looks really good, not as good looking or playing as the Genesis alternatives), but the number and quality of the games that were coming out on the Genesis was just unbelievable back then... A friend got a Duo when that came out and it was a pretty impressive system, but again, not enough software to bother if you were a kid that had to make choices with where he spent his money.
I think you ended up playing with the worst of the system. I had a blast with my TurboGrafx 16 and TurboDuo. I enjoyed playing for hours the following games: Keith Courage, Bonk's Adventures, Soldier Blade, Blazing Lasers, Neutopia, Neutopia 2, Legendary Axe, Legendary Axe 2 & Bomberman. As far as CD games I played the hell out of Gate of Thunder, Lords of Thunder, Ys Book I & II.
Great video I am a huge nec pc engine fan and had a turbduo back in 93 i agree w some of your points but Nintendos monopoly banning 3rd party devs such as konami etc from releasing TG16 games in the us along w marketing for nec America was done by x atari pc executives who designed the tg16 and had no idea what they where doing and wasted the 2 year headstart on the design & ported or made horrible western games such as the wrestling game u mentioned gunboat etc instead of just porting all the amazing pce games from japan which was out selling the famicom in japan at the end of the day there were only 750 000 turbografx 16s ever made and only a tiny amount of cd attachments along with only 25 thousand turbo duo systems that came w 5 games packaged w the super cd 3.0 such as gate of thunder ys books 1&2 bonk 1 & 2 ninja spirit etc was amazing back in the early 90s i loved the system and The pce port of SF2 proved it had power the cost was alot but it was better than sega cd att i just wish it had been able to succeed in the west even in 94 the arcade card upgrade w ports of SNK fighters could have been so much better which is why its my favourite 16bit gen system
My sister owned one. I remember her showing my brother and I JJ and Jeff as a joke. I don't remember anything other than that, but she must have shown us more, as ever since than, we were englamoured with the system. It was a neat-looking system, together with the obscurity of it probably made it cooler than it actually was. Sure, some of the games sucked, but they were still fun to see. Of course, we bought our duo and games when they had been on discount.
First negative story / experience I heard from anyone in that tone without finishing on a high note. But your experience and thoughts are very justified. Can't say I blame you. I recently picked one up and had it RGB modded and bought an ever drive with all American and Japanese games on it and I absolutely love it ( of course this is 30 years later )
Over the years, I got to know various people connected to the whole situation with NEC and TTI. Apparently a lot of the decisions and problems with its release and advertising go back to the Japanese branches of NEC and Hudson soft. A lot of games we're turn down to be brought over. A good example is Tengai Makyou 2 Manji Maru. Recently one of the people involved at Hudson in Japan released a book, and it got into why the US version never came. One of the main reasons being way too many things that they would have censored when brought to the West. Licensing cost was another reason, as when that game came out in Japan it was considered to be at that time the most expensive game ever made. But going back to the various problems, like I said the majority of people that I knew connected to NEC and TTI all have the same complaint about tons of games being shot down by the Japanese branch. One problem that I believe was on the North American side of things was producing far too many systems at the beginning which reduced their budget for advertising. I'm pretty sure that was a North American decision. And of course the system itself taking a year or so to be redesigned certainly didn't help. There was the idea that the system needed to be larger which is the main complaint I hear from people involved at the time. There were other things that had to be done during that time to try to build up the brand, but it seems like making the system so large for the West was a major factor.
Bonk’s Adventure and Revenge - excellent Ninja Spirit - excellent and BETTER than Shinobi, what are you even talking about? Neutopia and Neutopia II - excellent Legendary Axe I and II- excellent Air Zonk - excellent Dungeon Explorer - excellent, and while it shares Gauntlet mechanics, it is a much deeper game. Do you level up stats in the original Gauntlet? Nope is there a story? Nope, can you unlock new classes and characters? Nope. Blazing Lazers - excellent, not generic in the least. Power ups are iconic, bosses are big and levels are of good length. Challenge is fair, and music is top notch. Super Star Soldier - excellent Soldier Blade - excellent R-Type - excellent (and still the best port of that game that isn’t a straight arcade port) Bomberman ‘93 - excellent Cadash - excellent Parasol Stars - excellent Galaga ‘90 - excellent You completely dismissed the fantastic games because you were mad that the console didn’t live up to your lofty expectations. Not to mention this was an easy console to import games for, it just took a simple converter.
I gotta add my personal favorite games, cause I had this as a kid and u didn't mention them, which bothered me. Legendary Axe 1 and 2. You never mentioned R-Type for shooters which, I think, was phenomenal. Also Fantasy Zone, and my personal favorite - Final Lap, which was like an rpg style racing game. I think that's the name of it. I actually hunted this game down on emulation to relive some childhood memories. Oh, also there was a pac man game with him in red boots that pretty cool. It was called Pac-Land. I loved my tg16. Bonk's Adventure and Bonk's Revenge as well!
It's funny you mentioned how the system didn't get many games for it. I remember seeing it and the games in a Sears catalogue and thinking the games looked good but not very many being showcased.
To be fair the attachments for the Genesis were to enhance and extend the life of the hardware. The TG-16 needed attachments just to get a complete system! I remember looking at the Turbo booster and wondering what's it was for and was shocked to realize that it a big @$$ attachment just for stereo AV out! ^_^
The turbo booster was such a piece of shit they could have put those AV plugs on the system for like a few bucks per console. Now the TG16 MINI doesnt even come with a power cable want to fucking kill them
Correct, it's based on the Japanese version of the booster for the PC Engine. It was a later addition in Japan that they should have just included in the base TurboGrafx instead of just having the RF connection. There was also the turbo booster plus which included a battery backup to save all your games onto. I never bothered to get that, since the CD attachment did the exact same thing. So I just waited until the price dropped on the CD attachment.
Yeah, somehow in Japan it was incredibly popular even though it had just the one controller port. So for some reason when NEC Japan wanted to bring it out west, they kept it that way thinking that they would have no problem selling the system the same way they did in Japan.
NEC no doubt had misunderstood the Western demographic. They did everything wrong when they launched TG16. I grew up in the greater Detroit area, and I remember only a handful of retailers carried it. The local K-Mart up the road had a really cool display for it, but I remember them being really over priced with very little stock of games. I was interested, but that kind of wained once I got Genesis for Christmas. Epic screw up on the part of NEC, for sure, and I think you nailed it for the most part. I would add that NEC should have launched a year earlier too to get a leg up on Sega. And I would also have to disagree on the CD games. Yes the hardware add-on was expensive, but the games library is definitely well worth it. I bought an imported PC Engine CD-R about 6 years ago, and really enjoy it. If you don't really care about collecting but just really like retro gaming, Everdrives and burned ISO images aren't a bad alternative.
The TurboGrafx 16 should have the Supergrafx parts inside and three button controller to go up against the Sega Genesis. What was NEC thinking when they release an under power system. Games like R-Type shouldn't have flicker in it and they should have release better games. Look at Battle Royale it looks like shareware that you play on a computer.
I have a Turbo Express and an krikzz everdrive for it. Like mentioned in the video, there were very few games made for it that were actually good that are North American. I mostly play Japanese games/translations on it. I wish that someone would invest time into programming NES roms to work on a TG16. There's NES2PCE roms but besides the megaman games they're pretty buggy/beta stage. Mainly if NES roms could be played on the turbo express, that would make it an era appropriate NES portable, just made by NEC =) I already modified my express to use NES controllers plug into an 8 din socket, so that would be amazing, not just for me, but for anyone with a tg16 portable
They needed good games on Turbochip like Madden, NBA Jam, Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat and a good racing game.Also multiplayer games you can play with family. NEC had a good thing going if only they had better games. Maybe one day some fan programmers will make those games.Who in their right mind is going to pay $400 for the CD attachment when they can get both a Sega Genesis and a Super Nintendo with that price.
I waited until the price of the CD was 150 and save my allowance for it. Thankfully I wasn't really into sports games so it didn't bother me that there wasn't very many. Although there were tons of games with multiplayer, we regularly would have friends over to play multiplayer games like Bomberman, Dungeon Explorer and Battle Royale among others. Eventually there was one John Madden game that came out via Hudson soft, and it was pretty decent. But apparently when NEC was presenting the TurboGrafx in 1988 to various 3rd party companies, the representative for Electronic Arts got upset when NEC asked if they were "up to the challenge" of making games for the Turbo. I don't get why the representative got so upset at that comment, it was obviously not meant to be an insult. Interestingly, recently I discovered evidence of EA making big plans for the PC Engine in conjunction with Victor Musical/JVC. They had a joint effort where they were planning to bring over somewhere around a ridiculous number of games. Well over 100 that were mostly on the Amiga and Genesis. However only one game was specifically mentioned by name. It was some sort of racing game on the Amiga but I forget the name at the moment. In any case apparently that deal fell through, since I'm not aware of them doing any games with that joint project. I would imagine a lot of those games could have potentially been released in the west as well so that there could have been more games like Madden and such, because the system definitely needed games with real teams and real players. That was wildly popular an important for the market. All my friends that were in the sports games were super thrilled that they were playing real teams Etc
Wow.......what a change from your enthusiasm for the PC Engine vs the T-16.... That is a debate wether NEC should have just brought over the pc engine directly or redesigning it for the west. They should have saved time and money by immediately bringing it here.NEC lost 2 years redesigning and porting it over. Valuable time lost. Also as you said, limited library in the west. I would assume it was due to licensing,.but not always. They could have brought more over. Back in the day I was a Sega fan. I scoffed at the T-16 as a Nintendo and Sega wanna be. I laughed at the games as third party knock offs of Sega and Nintendo games. It wasn't till I bought a brand new t-16 for 50$ at EB that I took the dive...in 93? . The T-16 had gone in clearance to make way for tne Duo coming out. But I will say, I was impressed. There is a charm to the system. Sharper video, brighter colors, unique sounds that came out of that thing. The system grew on me and I began to respect it tremendously. Today I am a Turbo fan! I bought many games back when they were cheap. I have the CD system with Arcade card, Super Grafx, Turbo express, all of these that I couldn't afford as a teenager or young adult. I love the system frankly and plan on keeping mine as long as possible.
It wasn't bad. The marketting for it sucked. Half the games made in Japan were never imported to north America. Its versions of street fighter 2, Outrun and Hit the Ice were superb. Falcon was a really cool simulator. Bottom line is it needed more games.
It was disappointing that NEC didn't release the Japanese games. It wasn't all their fault, though. Nintendo was a giant asshole and cock blocked the market. Sega was fortunate in that they had a large library of their own arcade games to port to the Genesis. That said, I had a blast with my TG. I loved Dungeon Explorer, Ninja Spirit, Bonk, Aero Blasters, etc... Anyway, I have a TG and a Turbo Duo that is modded with a region switch, so I can play Japanese ports. It's a fantastic system.
I’m almost 100% sure i’ve never consumed my man’s content her but he looks so familiar to me…. I know … Bizarre yea ? I think i’ve narrowed it down to 3 or so possibilities 1. You look like someone else .. like Ethan Klein or something. 2. You were/are a Tommy Tallarico sympathizer and … 3. You were featured on To Catch A Predator. Can anyone help me out here?
That damn CEO of Sega japan hurt Sega with his anti West attitude towards American division CEO Tom! Tom wanted rare to build components that would have boosted what Sega of Japan had created grainy graphics and choppy 3d elements. Don't get me wrong it had great 3d games (daytonA,virtual fighter,outrun,virtual racing) but it did the best with 2d games! No other console could perfect 2d gAmes like Saturn! But just think what Saturn could do in 3d with rares 3d graphics chips!!!
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Blazing Lazers (aka Gunhed) is not "OK", it is possibly the GOAT of shooters! Sad that you couldn't appreciate its greatness!
You nailed it, the system was good but they never brought any of the good games over. NES had a similar problem of some games taking 3+ years to get translated and released in the west.
Around 9:32 you say that the turbo grafx 16 has no role playing games. Thats not true at all. It had neutopia (a great rpg in the same style as zelda a link to the past), it had neutopia 2 (an even more epic follow up to the first one), then we also got cadash (almost arcade perfect port!), dungeon explorer (awesome music and fun game play), and on the cd you got dragon slayer and ys book 1 & 2.
You call blazing lazers mediocre? It beats the hell out of most shoot em ups you could find on the super nintendo. Thats for god dam sure! Beside that amazing game you also goot r-type (an almost arcade perfect port), air zonk, and soldier blade. If you had the cd you could also play gate of thunder and lords of thunder (just two of the best shoot em ups ever made).
For platform games you got not just one, not two, but three amazing bonk games. With catchy music, massive amount of colors and fun game play. Or how about legendary axe, a game so good it even won awards back in the day. Legendary axe 2 and jacky chan action kung fu was also a blast to play.
How about alien crush and demon crush? Just two of the best pinball similator games ever made (not just my opinion, everyone thinks that). Aero blasters, Air zonk, Alien crush, Blazing lazers, Bloody wolf, Bomberman, Bomberman 93, Bonk 3, Bonks revenge, Bonks adventure, Cadash, Cybercore, Dead moon, Devils crush, Dragon spirit, Dungeon explorer, Legendary axe, Legendary axe 2, Military madness, Neutopia, Neutopia 2, New adventure island, Ninja spirit, R-type, Sidearm, Soldier blade, Splatterhouse, Super star soldier, the list goes on and on and on of great titles!! The turbo grafx 16 didnt have many good games? Biggest lie of today.
Amen brother
Does nobody remember Final Lap? An rpg style racing game where u gotta go to diff locales to race the champ in each city to collect parts for your car that are needed to beat the ultimate boss race? Loved it! And hell yeah Legendary Axe 1+2 and R-Type and also there was a cool Pac-Man game with him in red boots, and also Fantasy Zone!
I grew up in Greece during the late 80 and early 99s.
Even in our small European country, more than half of my classmates had NES in elementary school, few had mastersystem and one or two only a mega drive (snes came much later).
I even remember the local video game store showcasing a single NEO GEO and later sega cd and Atari Jaguar.
No need to mention the countless cases of older brothers of friends who had the pre-console gaming computers like Amstrad, Commodore, Spectrum and Amiga.
Yet....in all my years as a gamer (even now with the explosion of international commerce) I HAVE NEVER witnessed with my own eyes a TurboGrafx or a PC engine up close. I never even knew anyone in Greece who owned one or who claimed that he knew someone else who had it.
Very rare console...
There was only a very limited release in Europe of the TurboGrafx thru Telegames. Otherwise people had to import the Japanese version. There seems to be quite a bit of popularity in France and possibly Spain and to some degree England when it comes to the original PC Engine. But I don't know what the import prices were like.
Sadly did not have back in the day. oh you know the typical story, I didn't know anyone who had one and didn't want to be left out. I barely would see it anywhere as well but one day a friend and I rented it from a local video store, came with Keith Courage and I think we also got Devil's Crush. I admit the large colorful sprites were pretty cool, I did like the system but didn't have a lot of options for getting one myself. Today I have TWO as well as a Turbo Everdrive which is great because it also plays all the PCengine roms patching them on the fly and both have composite output I use on a sharp little Toshiba CRT I use with all my retro systems. I wish it had been bigger here back in the day but I definitely appreciate it more today.
I have all the games on my Pi3 system.
I saw another video about the TG-16 a while back which mentioned that the wasted space inside it was due to a redesign they decided to do before it was released in the US: apparently they thought the PC Engine being small was a problem because it seemed too toy-like (never mind the fact that some people don't have tons of space or that getting it out a significant amount of time before the Genesis in the US could have resulted in more people buying it; the console actually came out in America a couple of weeks after the Genesis despite being released in Japan a year before the Mega Drive).
Classic case of executives being out of touch with the consumer. You are making something to appeal to kids and kids love toys. So naturally you're worried that it is toy like! ^_^
@@dtester That's a good point. Personally my priority would have been to try to get it out in the US and Europe before Sega could get the Mega Drive out so that people would hopefully go for the TG-16 instead of waiting (mind you, the fact that it only had 4 games available when it was released in the US suggests they had bigger problems on their hands; having such a limited launch line-up doesn't bode well).
Great video! You should give dungeon explorer another shot.. once you get through the first 2 areas it turns into much more of an RPG where you level up your character and rerun areas for experience. It's a lot of fun and not super long so easy to enjoy
Dang, I wish I had the chance to buy a TurboDuo on clearance back then. They’re almost impossible to find today. Value of the entire TG16 line has jumped so much now.
Can't talk about Turbografx without Splatterhouse. I miss playing that in arcade, but I do remember Vigilante being very briefly in my local corner store down the street. Tough but fun classic beat em up.
Yes you can, bonks adventure, gate of thunder
@@hpickettz34 I never had those. I remember seeing bonks adventure being advertised though in gaming magazines.
I had a TG-16 for christmas of 89 and I had to sell it with many games to get a Genesis later because of games like Ghouls n' Ghost, Phantasy Star II, Strider, Thunder Force III, Gaiares, Super Shinobi Golden Axe and a couple more.
I have found memories of a couple of games like Blazing Lazers (probably as good as TF III), Neutopia and R-Type (looks really good, not as good looking or playing as the Genesis alternatives), but the number and quality of the games that were coming out on the Genesis was just unbelievable back then... A friend got a Duo when that came out and it was a pretty impressive system, but again, not enough software to bother if you were a kid that had to make choices with where he spent his money.
I DID have it back in the day, and I loved it. But I did always have the feeling that it was being mismanaged. There just... wasn't enough.
I think you ended up playing with the worst of the system. I had a blast with my TurboGrafx 16 and TurboDuo. I enjoyed playing for hours the following games: Keith Courage, Bonk's Adventures, Soldier Blade, Blazing Lasers, Neutopia, Neutopia 2, Legendary Axe, Legendary Axe 2 & Bomberman. As far as CD games I played the hell out of Gate of Thunder, Lords of Thunder, Ys Book I & II.
Great video I am a huge nec pc engine fan and had a turbduo back in 93 i agree w some of your points but Nintendos monopoly banning 3rd party devs such as konami etc from releasing TG16 games in the us along w marketing for nec America was done by x atari pc executives who designed the tg16 and had no idea what they where doing and wasted the 2 year headstart on the design & ported or made horrible western games such as the wrestling game u mentioned gunboat etc instead of just porting all the amazing pce games from japan which was out selling the famicom in japan at the end of the day there were only 750 000 turbografx 16s ever made and only a tiny amount of cd attachments along with only 25 thousand turbo duo systems that came w 5 games packaged w the super cd 3.0 such as gate of thunder ys books 1&2 bonk 1 & 2 ninja spirit etc was amazing back in the early 90s i loved the system and The pce port of SF2 proved it had power the cost was alot but it was better than sega cd att i just wish it had been able to succeed in the west even in 94 the arcade card upgrade w ports of SNK fighters could have been so much better which is why its my favourite 16bit gen system
My sister owned one. I remember her showing my brother and I JJ and Jeff as a joke. I don't remember anything other than that, but she must have shown us more, as ever since than, we were englamoured with the system. It was a neat-looking system, together with the obscurity of it probably made it cooler than it actually was. Sure, some of the games sucked, but they were still fun to see. Of course, we bought our duo and games when they had been on discount.
As cool as it looked the PC Engine was 100x cooler.
Unfortunately JJ and Jeff had quite a bit of censorship. In Japan it was known as Kato and Ken and was based on a popular TV show in Japan.
I love Splatterhouse!!!! I hope you remake it...
I do have a Splatterhouse 3 version in the works.
@@r3games1985 Awesome!!!!!
First negative story / experience I heard from anyone in that tone without finishing on a high note.
But your experience and thoughts are very justified. Can't say I blame you.
I recently picked one up and had it RGB modded and bought an ever drive with all American and Japanese games on it and I absolutely love it ( of course this is 30 years later )
Agree with all your points, had the implemented your suggestions I think it would have been more accepted. Ah well.
Over the years, I got to know various people connected to the whole situation with NEC and TTI. Apparently a lot of the decisions and problems with its release and advertising go back to the Japanese branches of NEC and Hudson soft. A lot of games we're turn down to be brought over.
A good example is Tengai Makyou 2 Manji Maru. Recently one of the people involved at Hudson in Japan released a book, and it got into why the US version never came. One of the main reasons being way too many things that they would have censored when brought to the West. Licensing cost was another reason, as when that game came out in Japan it was considered to be at that time the most expensive game ever made.
But going back to the various problems, like I said the majority of people that I knew connected to NEC and TTI all have the same complaint about tons of games being shot down by the Japanese branch.
One problem that I believe was on the North American side of things was producing far too many systems at the beginning which reduced their budget for advertising. I'm pretty sure that was a North American decision. And of course the system itself taking a year or so to be redesigned certainly didn't help. There was the idea that the system needed to be larger which is the main complaint I hear from people involved at the time. There were other things that had to be done during that time to try to build up the brand, but it seems like making the system so large for the West was a major factor.
Bonk’s Adventure and Revenge - excellent
Ninja Spirit - excellent and BETTER than Shinobi, what are you even talking about?
Neutopia and Neutopia II - excellent
Legendary Axe I and II- excellent
Air Zonk - excellent
Dungeon Explorer - excellent, and while it shares Gauntlet mechanics, it is a much deeper game. Do you level up stats in the original Gauntlet? Nope is there a story? Nope, can you unlock new classes and characters? Nope.
Blazing Lazers - excellent, not generic in the least. Power ups are iconic, bosses are big and levels are of good length. Challenge is fair, and music is top notch.
Super Star Soldier - excellent
Soldier Blade - excellent
R-Type - excellent (and still the best port of that game that isn’t a straight arcade port)
Bomberman ‘93 - excellent
Cadash - excellent
Parasol Stars - excellent
Galaga ‘90 - excellent
You completely dismissed the fantastic games because you were mad that the console didn’t live up to your lofty expectations. Not to mention this was an easy console to import games for, it just took a simple converter.
I gotta add my personal favorite games, cause I had this as a kid and u didn't mention them, which bothered me. Legendary Axe 1 and 2. You never mentioned R-Type for shooters which, I think, was phenomenal. Also Fantasy Zone, and my personal favorite - Final Lap, which was like an rpg style racing game. I think that's the name of it. I actually hunted this game down on emulation to relive some childhood memories. Oh, also there was a pac man game with him in red boots that pretty cool. It was called Pac-Land. I loved my tg16. Bonk's Adventure and Bonk's Revenge as well!
Maybe your Splatterhouse 4 project could have some of the elements that you incorporated in your Friday the 13th remake - jump scares I suppose?
It's funny you mentioned how the system didn't get many games for it. I remember seeing it and the games in a Sears catalogue and thinking the games looked good but not very many being showcased.
To be fair the attachments for the Genesis were to enhance and extend the life of the hardware. The TG-16 needed attachments just to get a complete system! I remember looking at the Turbo booster and wondering what's it was for and was shocked to realize that it a big @$$ attachment just for stereo AV out! ^_^
The turbo booster was such a piece of shit they could have put those AV plugs on the system for like a few bucks per console. Now the TG16 MINI
doesnt even come with a power cable want to fucking kill them
Correct, it's based on the Japanese version of the booster for the PC Engine. It was a later addition in Japan that they should have just included in the base TurboGrafx instead of just having the RF connection. There was also the turbo booster plus which included a battery backup to save all your games onto. I never bothered to get that, since the CD attachment did the exact same thing. So I just waited until the price dropped on the CD attachment.
The fact that the TG-16 only had one controller port was a blatant cash grab.
Yeah, somehow in Japan it was incredibly popular even though it had just the one controller port. So for some reason when NEC Japan wanted to bring it out west, they kept it that way thinking that they would have no problem selling the system the same way they did in Japan.
NEC no doubt had misunderstood the Western demographic. They did everything wrong when they launched TG16. I grew up in the greater Detroit area, and I remember only a handful of retailers carried it. The local K-Mart up the road had a really cool display for it, but I remember them being really over priced with very little stock of games. I was interested, but that kind of wained once I got Genesis for Christmas. Epic screw up on the part of NEC, for sure, and I think you nailed it for the most part. I would add that NEC should have launched a year earlier too to get a leg up on Sega. And I would also have to disagree on the CD games. Yes the hardware add-on was expensive, but the games library is definitely well worth it. I bought an imported PC Engine CD-R about 6 years ago, and really enjoy it. If you don't really care about collecting but just really like retro gaming, Everdrives and burned ISO images aren't a bad alternative.
Good Work Ed.
Rondo of blood end of story
"Dungeon Explorer is a Gauntlet clone". You say that like it's a bad thing.
The TurboGrafx 16 should have the Supergrafx parts inside and three button controller to go up against the Sega Genesis. What was NEC thinking when they release an under power system. Games like R-Type shouldn't have flicker in it and they should have release better games. Look at Battle Royale it looks like shareware that you play on a computer.
I have a Turbo Express and an krikzz everdrive for it. Like mentioned in the video, there were very few games made for it that were actually good that are North American. I mostly play Japanese games/translations on it. I wish that someone would invest time into programming NES roms to work on a TG16. There's NES2PCE roms but besides the megaman games they're pretty buggy/beta stage. Mainly if NES roms could be played on the turbo express, that would make it an era appropriate NES portable, just made by NEC =) I already modified my express to use NES controllers plug into an 8 din socket, so that would be amazing, not just for me, but for anyone with a tg16 portable
They needed good games on Turbochip like Madden, NBA Jam, Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat and a good racing game.Also multiplayer games you can play with family. NEC had a good thing going if only they had better games. Maybe one day some fan programmers will make those games.Who in their right mind is going to pay $400 for the CD attachment when they can get both a Sega Genesis and a Super Nintendo with that price.
I waited until the price of the CD was 150 and save my allowance for it. Thankfully I wasn't really into sports games so it didn't bother me that there wasn't very many. Although there were tons of games with multiplayer, we regularly would have friends over to play multiplayer games like Bomberman, Dungeon Explorer and Battle Royale among others.
Eventually there was one John Madden game that came out via Hudson soft, and it was pretty decent. But apparently when NEC was presenting the TurboGrafx in 1988 to various 3rd party companies, the representative for Electronic Arts got upset when NEC asked if they were "up to the challenge" of making games for the Turbo. I don't get why the representative got so upset at that comment, it was obviously not meant to be an insult.
Interestingly, recently I discovered evidence of EA making big plans for the PC Engine in conjunction with Victor Musical/JVC. They had a joint effort where they were planning to bring over somewhere around a ridiculous number of games. Well over 100 that were mostly on the Amiga and Genesis. However only one game was specifically mentioned by name. It was some sort of racing game on the Amiga but I forget the name at the moment. In any case apparently that deal fell through, since I'm not aware of them doing any games with that joint project. I would imagine a lot of those games could have potentially been released in the west as well so that there could have been more games like Madden and such, because the system definitely needed games with real teams and real players. That was wildly popular an important for the market. All my friends that were in the sports games were super thrilled that they were playing real teams Etc
Great video! Which game is on 0:09 (The Alex kind of ninja game)?
Thank you!
It's Vigilante.
Wow.......what a change from your enthusiasm for the PC Engine vs the T-16.... That is a debate wether NEC should have just brought over the pc engine directly or redesigning it for the west. They should have saved time and money by immediately bringing it here.NEC lost 2 years redesigning and porting it over. Valuable time lost. Also as you said, limited library in the west. I would assume it was due to licensing,.but not always. They could have brought more over. Back in the day I was a Sega fan. I scoffed at the T-16 as a Nintendo and Sega wanna be. I laughed at the games as third party knock offs of Sega and Nintendo games. It wasn't till I bought a brand new t-16 for 50$ at EB that I took the dive...in 93? . The T-16 had gone in clearance to make way for tne Duo coming out. But I will say, I was impressed. There is a charm to the system. Sharper video, brighter colors, unique sounds that came out of that thing. The system grew on me and I began to respect it tremendously. Today I am a Turbo fan! I bought many games back when they were cheap. I have the CD system with Arcade card, Super Grafx, Turbo express, all of these that I couldn't afford as a teenager or young adult. I love the system frankly and plan on keeping mine as long as possible.
It wasn't bad. The marketting for it sucked. Half the games made in Japan were never imported to north America. Its versions of street fighter 2, Outrun and Hit the Ice were superb. Falcon was a really cool simulator. Bottom line is it needed more games.
It was disappointing that NEC didn't release the Japanese games. It wasn't all their fault, though. Nintendo was a giant asshole and cock blocked the market. Sega was fortunate in that they had a large library of their own arcade games to port to the Genesis. That said, I had a blast with my TG. I loved Dungeon Explorer, Ninja Spirit, Bonk, Aero Blasters, etc... Anyway, I have a TG and a Turbo Duo that is modded with a region switch, so I can play Japanese ports. It's a fantastic system.
No mention of Bonk? It’s true that the Turbo sucked compared to the Genesis and SNES but Bonk is one of the few games on it worth mentioning.
Soooooo shit, Doug Demuro gonna be mad lol 😅
I’m almost 100% sure i’ve never consumed my man’s content her but he looks so familiar to me…. I know … Bizarre yea ?
I think i’ve narrowed it down to 3 or so possibilities
1. You look like someone else .. like Ethan Klein or something.
2. You were/are a Tommy Tallarico sympathizer
and …
3. You were featured on To Catch A Predator.
Can anyone help me out here?
nec tried to make money on the hardware, a big no no. You lose money on hardware, make money on software.
That damn CEO of Sega japan hurt Sega with his anti West attitude towards American division CEO Tom! Tom wanted rare to build components that would have boosted what Sega of Japan had created grainy graphics and choppy 3d elements. Don't get me wrong it had great 3d games (daytonA,virtual fighter,outrun,virtual racing) but it did the best with 2d games! No other console could perfect 2d gAmes like Saturn! But just think what Saturn could do in 3d with rares 3d graphics chips!!!
Takes too long to get anywhere.
LOL.
shit