The Nippon electronics Company (NEC) killed the Turbo GrafX-16 when they chose NOT to bring Castlevania Rondo of Blood, Street Fighter 2CE to the USA and when they told Williams ltd, they didn't want a Turbo GrafX-16 version of Mortal Kombat. Those were 3 of their biggest mistakes but others were releasing the PC Engine hardware instead of the Super GrafX hardware (that was already completed at the time) as the Turbo GrafX16. Why choose the inferior hardware to launch with when the Sega Genesis was already more powerful than the older PCE hardware?? The Super GrafX would've put their tech ahead of Sega and on Par if not better than the eventual SNES. There were also many great games released in Japan for the hardware that didn't make it to the USA. The list is too long. Many mistakes.
I forgot to mention when NEC's reps met with Electronic Arts, NEC's reps proceeded to insult EA by saying they don't want low quality games on their console. NEC arrogantly told EA's reps that they make low quality titles. EA decided not to release any titles for the Turbo GrafX-16 and instead went full force on their main competitor at the time, the Sega Genesis. EA was one of the best and most consistent developers of the 16-Bit era and NEC decided it was smart to insult them at a meeting 🤦♂🤦♂
I have a turbo Graphics 16 mini you have to be careful if you use the wrong USB power adapter you can blow out the USB ports and no controllers will work and the only fix is to desolder and replace the controller chip so if you intend to hunt one of these down second hand be aware of that flaw
Very accurate video! I grew up during the 3rd - 5th generations of gaming, and seldom do I see someone just nail it. I remember when the Sega Genesis and TG-16 launched like it was yesterday. At the time, I had an Nes and Master System.... I wanted and asked for both consoles for Christmas. My mom said she'd get me one, but I would have to make a choice. For months, I weighed the two and couldn't decide. One week, I wanted the TG-16... the next a Sega Genesis. It got so bad that my mother basically said, "Pick one, or I will do it for you." That is when fate stepped in as my best friend got his Genesis with Ghouls n' Ghosts early. Once I saw GnG running, I knew what I wanted. I got my Genesis that Christmas Eve. Addendum- I didn't really get to experience the TG-16 until the mini was released. I wound up getting a Core Grafx Mini as I couldn't find a TG-16 Mini anywhere. It is still my absolute favorite mini console of all times. *Edit- There are 57 games on the TG-16/Core Grafx Mini + 6 secret titles.
Hey Bro, really enjoyed your video!! Growing up as a Turbo Grafx 16 kid was a blast!!! I'm always happy to see content about it. My cousin got a PC Engine from Japan, way before the Turbo Grafx 16 even existed. It was so cool and futuristic!!! I knew this was the console for me. By the way, the iconic turbo switches were not on the first PC Engine controllers.. That came later. I know the PC Engine could have been a success in the United States, if they would have launched the console sooner. Waiting years, was not a good game plan. But it is, what it is... Anyway, keep up the great work.🤩👍❤️👍❤️👍❤️
Certainly I'm just too early, but this video seems just as criminally underappreciated as the console it's covering. My uncle loved this thing and I always found it fascinating, more so as I grew up and realized just how little love the machine got compared to Sega and Nintendo ones. Great video though, hope for the best from here on out!
I rented this console at the local video store along with an RPG/racing game. Final Lap Twin. It was extremely fun. It was the sole reason for me to ever rent it.
I had a cousin with a TG-16 around 1990 (I was 5). We had a NES at home, but let me tell you this machine blew my freaking mind. Only got to play it twice at his place, and then drool over the demo machine they had set-up at the Radioshak at the mall. I wanted one so bad.
I barely played this console growing up. I knew exactly one person who had it. But I'll be damned if Alien Crush didn't make me covet that thing something fierce.
The CPU wasn't based on the Z-80, it was based on the 6502, same as the NES and SNES, only faster than both, but missing the 16 bit features of the SNES one. And well, I wouldn't say it beat Nintendo, but it DID beat Sega in Japan... Wish it got a proper worldwide release...
@@andrewcocosWDC is fabless and only sells cores. As far as I researched it, SNES has an I modified 65816 core, while pcEngine has a core based on 6502, but with all the encoding space filled with instructions. I wonder if the ROM -> VRAM copy circuitry uses the core or has its own registers.
I don't understand why NEC and TTI inc didn't release the Turbo Duo with their best games. If I was selling a game system and I wanted people to buy it. I would release all the best games to go along with it. That's how you sale a game system.
I remember being a kis in 1992, and having a major windfall of cash. Of course I immediately went to the game store. I was eying a new console and it was between the TG16 or the Genesis. One of the store staff members came over and said "Yeah, don't get the TG16. It's actually an 8-bit machine and the games on Genesis are much better". He was the expert so I heeded his advice. I wonder how many other times that happened out there, undercutting the TG16's chances
@@matthewmckinney9348 haha I didnt notice that one! as a jewish person myself i would not blink an eye if i met a cousin named "bomberman" if it was pronounced like that. The real giveaway are things like pronouncing the name of the game Ys (yees) as "why-s" also reading "AA batteries" as "A A batteries" instead of double-A.
@@devilotx its gotten quite good, the generative voices in your kid's content is only obvious because its low-effort. If you spend a lot of time tweaking the settings you can get very good results.
I did not grow up with the TG16 but became quite fond of it when I started collecting. I was quite excited when the Mini was announced with a price point of US$100. It was expensive, for sure. When Amazon finally started selling it was much more expensive than that and I did not buy one. To me, it just wasn't worth the price they were asking for. Now you can only buy those from the secondary market (at ridiculously high prices of course).
I owned on when it was originally released and it never felt like NEC was supporting the console full on. The games they released made it seem like they wanted to console to fail.
All of these failed console retrospectives can all be boiled down to not having enough games for one reason or another. Mainly down to the very different software industry of Japan in the 80s and 90s.
They need to re-release the TG16 Mini the distribution was so poor because of covid it was impossible to get unless you wanted to pay over $200 to a scalper.Even with emulation being the best option I would still pay up to $100 or slightly more to get my hands on one but the last i checked there wasn't many and what i found was around $300-$350.
I wish the super turbo grafix 16 was more succesful because it has 2 background layers as opposed to 1 background layer from the original system. Sure sprites could be used as an alternative way to mimick a second nackground layer but am not sure how many sprites the original system could display atonce. I hardly could believe hudson soft consider it to be revolutionary system because many gamers consider it felt more like an upgraded famicom.
16 sprites per scanline. Amiga repeated a single sprite for background. Background for me means the layer I collide with. Or walk over. NeoGeo and Jaguar did away with any background. I say: single background and sprites of any size . I think that the single tile background in NeoGeo does not scroll.
The TurboGrafx16 needed good multiplayer games and New Adventure Island should have been the pack-in game. Also Madden should have been on Turbochip so everyone could buy it.
I agree that Keith Courage was mediocre, but imo, Bonk's Adventure should've been the pack in. There were too many mistakes, all made by NEC. NEC had everything they needed to win at the time, but they mismanaged it all. Really bad management at the top.
@elgo3556 I heard it was a secretary from TTI inc. that said it wasn't NEC but Hudson Soft of Japan was the one turning down the games TTI inc. wanted to release in United States. I like to see a full interview of what really happen from the former employees of both NEC and Hudson Soft.
I heard the name keith courage was chosen by a lackey trying to suck up to his boss who was named keith. The ads theyd run in comics with a overweight man and his geeky "roomate" always had me scratching my head. Same as tti refusing to have mortal kombat on their system, tho that story might have been them saving face as they might not have had the money to get it.
In my eyes, all the early cd-addons were indeed too early. Important for the history, but not really usable and very expensive. FMV was not possible yet in good quailty (even the Sega Saturn and PS1, also Philips CD-i needed extra compute power to playback VCDs), sound with Midi and a good Yamaha chip were more than okay, so the available space was not needed. Sony's PS1 and Sega's Saturn, maybe Sega's 32x were already on another level with textures and 3D evironments, but for instance the Genesis games never had a real usage for this huge amount of space.
The PC Engine is such a beautiful console. I love the design and look of it. Too bad that they made the Turbografx 16 look so bulky and ugly. They should have kept the original design.
Sega beat the TG16 to market with its "Sega Cards, but I bet that a lot of the original Sega Master Systems had pristine card slots that weren't used in favour of the cartridge slot. I don't like the look of the TG16 with its disc drive add on. I like the Sega Master System Mark 1 over Mark 2, the same with the Mega Drive, & the Sega CD.
It's Adventure Island on the Spectrum by Contrast Software (UK), 1983. How on Earth they made that mistake is a mystery as it took me ages to even find that the game exists. LOL.
"Beat" really depends on the category. 1) The TG16 beat Nintendo Famicom in sales in Japan for a short while 2) The TG16, beat Nintendo in launching the first 16 bit console 3) The TG16 beat Nintendo in launching the optical drive add-on /console first 4) The TG16 beat Nintendo in being able to release a 16bit handheld earlier (although Atari Lynx was first here) 5) the TG16 beat Nintendo in earlier to release a colored handheld
Games looked and definitely sounded better than NES. And people forget the dirty hostile practices Nintendo were doing that made it impossible for North America and Europe to get really good games on TG16. Take a game like Ys IV it's better than the super Nintendo version. So they even beat SNES sometimes. But both are good games.
I miss my TG-16. I saved up my paper route money for three months to buy one back in the early 90s. It was awesome.
there's a special place in designer hell for for the design of the us version...
I hope who ever redesigned the Super Famicom into the Super Nintendo shares their spot in hell too.
The Nippon electronics Company (NEC) killed the Turbo GrafX-16 when they chose NOT to bring Castlevania Rondo of Blood, Street Fighter 2CE to the USA and when they told Williams ltd, they didn't want a Turbo GrafX-16 version of Mortal Kombat.
Those were 3 of their biggest mistakes but others were releasing the PC Engine hardware instead of the Super GrafX hardware (that was already completed at the time) as the Turbo GrafX16.
Why choose the inferior hardware to launch with when the Sega Genesis was already more powerful than the older PCE hardware?? The Super GrafX would've put their tech ahead of Sega and on Par if not better than the eventual SNES.
There were also many great games released in Japan for the hardware that didn't make it to the USA. The list is too long.
Many mistakes.
I was thinking the same thing why didn't they release the Supergrafx in the United States to go up against the Sega Genesis.
I forgot to mention when NEC's reps met with Electronic Arts, NEC's reps proceeded to insult EA by saying they don't want low quality games on their console. NEC arrogantly told EA's reps that they make low quality titles. EA decided not to release any titles for the Turbo GrafX-16 and instead went full force on their main competitor at the time, the Sega Genesis.
EA was one of the best and most consistent developers of the 16-Bit era and NEC decided it was smart to insult them at a meeting 🤦♂🤦♂
The Genesis was faster but tbh i prefer the look and feel of the TG.
@@orlandoturbo6431 What do you mean, they had they same hardware?
@RobertBoston-n4d I never said they had the same hardware.
Didn't know there was a TF16 mini, it flew totally under my radar until I saw this video and doesn't seem to be available anywhere.
The TF16 Mini was affected by the supply chain issues of the peak of the pandemic, and when it was released in 2020, it quickly sold out.
You can still get the PC Engine version pretty easily. Great little console.
@@HumbertoSaabedra The TF 16 mini. Weird.
I have a turbo Graphics 16 mini you have to be careful if you use the wrong USB power adapter you can blow out the USB ports and no controllers will work and the only fix is to desolder and replace the controller chip so if you intend to hunt one of these down second hand be aware of that flaw
@@devilotx I did that with my PCE version. Used a Pi PSU. Was so gutted.
Very accurate video! I grew up during the 3rd - 5th generations of gaming, and seldom do I see someone just nail it. I remember when the Sega Genesis and TG-16 launched like it was yesterday. At the time, I had an Nes and Master System....
I wanted and asked for both consoles for Christmas. My mom said she'd get me one, but I would have to make a choice. For months, I weighed the two and couldn't decide. One week, I wanted the TG-16... the next a Sega Genesis. It got so bad that my mother basically said, "Pick one, or I will do it for you." That is when fate stepped in as my best friend got his Genesis with Ghouls n' Ghosts early. Once I saw GnG running, I knew what I wanted. I got my Genesis that Christmas Eve.
Addendum- I didn't really get to experience the TG-16 until the mini was released. I wound up getting a Core Grafx Mini as I couldn't find a TG-16 Mini anywhere. It is still my absolute favorite mini console of all times.
*Edit- There are 57 games on the TG-16/Core Grafx Mini + 6 secret titles.
Hey Bro, really enjoyed your video!! Growing up as a Turbo Grafx 16 kid was a blast!!! I'm always happy to see content about it. My cousin got a PC Engine from Japan, way before the Turbo Grafx 16 even existed. It was so cool and futuristic!!! I knew this was the console for me.
By the way, the iconic turbo switches were not on the first PC Engine controllers.. That came later.
I know the PC Engine could have been a success in the United States, if they would have launched the console sooner. Waiting years, was not a good game plan. But it is, what it is... Anyway, keep up the great work.🤩👍❤️👍❤️👍❤️
I had a TG-16 when was a kid - I was the ONLY kid around who had one - it was a hand-me-down from my older cousin
Just a reminder: $200 at the end of the 80s is roughly $500 today.
Certainly I'm just too early, but this video seems just as criminally underappreciated as the console it's covering. My uncle loved this thing and I always found it fascinating, more so as I grew up and realized just how little love the machine got compared to Sega and Nintendo ones.
Great video though, hope for the best from here on out!
You're doing great with this channel, so far! Thanks a lot
Really appreciate that! Thanks so much
I rented this console at the local video store along with an RPG/racing game. Final Lap Twin. It was extremely fun. It was the sole reason for me to ever rent it.
I had a cousin with a TG-16 around 1990 (I was 5). We had a NES at home, but let me tell you this machine blew my freaking mind. Only got to play it twice at his place, and then drool over the demo machine they had set-up at the Radioshak at the mall. I wanted one so bad.
We use to buy the Japanese version of games to play here in the States. I’m glad NEC kept the media form factors between different markets.
I barely played this console growing up. I knew exactly one person who had it. But I'll be damned if Alien Crush didn't make me covet that thing something fierce.
Great video! I just stumbled across your channel and I'm glad that I did.
Appreciate that! Thanks so much
Great video. Ys is pronounced a little different tho.
"Eez".
The CPU wasn't based on the Z-80, it was based on the 6502, same as the NES and SNES, only faster than both, but missing the 16 bit features of the SNES one.
And well, I wouldn't say it beat Nintendo, but it DID beat Sega in Japan... Wish it got a proper worldwide release...
In sales no, in quality yeah.
SNES was actually based on modified 65C816 which of course had 6502 emulation mode, but was quite an upgrade.
@@cesaru3619 You mean Nintendo or Sega?
Because it did beat Sega in sales in Japan (8M vs 3.5M)
Quality is subjective though...
@@andrewcocosWDC is fabless and only sells cores. As far as I researched it, SNES has an I modified 65816 core, while pcEngine has a core based on 6502, but with all the encoding space filled with instructions.
I wonder if the ROM -> VRAM copy circuitry uses the core or has its own registers.
I don't understand why NEC and TTI inc didn't release the Turbo Duo with their best games. If I was selling a game system and I wanted people to buy it. I would release all the best games to go along with it. That's how you sale a game system.
I remember being a kis in 1992, and having a major windfall of cash. Of course I immediately went to the game store. I was eying a new console and it was between the TG16 or the Genesis. One of the store staff members came over and said "Yeah, don't get the TG16. It's actually an 8-bit machine and the games on Genesis are much better". He was the expert so I heeded his advice. I wonder how many other times that happened out there, undercutting the TG16's chances
Still own my original one, though I own a PC engine now too, it's been modded pretty heavily, still has some of the best shmups of the era.
You've got a great voice for this, fantastic work I enjoyed the video and I look forward to more.
i got bad news for you...
Yeah, that's AI. If it was really a person, he wouldn't have said "Bomberman" like it was a jewish guy's name. It's Bomber (a pause) Man.
@@matthewmckinney9348 well damn I guess I'm only used to the crappy AI in the UA-cam shorts that my kids watch.
@@matthewmckinney9348 haha I didnt notice that one! as a jewish person myself i would not blink an eye if i met a cousin named "bomberman" if it was pronounced like that. The real giveaway are things like pronouncing the name of the game Ys (yees) as "why-s" also reading "AA batteries" as "A A batteries" instead of double-A.
@@devilotx its gotten quite good, the generative voices in your kid's content is only obvious because its low-effort. If you spend a lot of time tweaking the settings you can get very good results.
I did not grow up with the TG16 but became quite fond of it when I started collecting. I was quite excited when the Mini was announced with a price point of US$100. It was expensive, for sure. When Amazon finally started selling it was much more expensive than that and I did not buy one. To me, it just wasn't worth the price they were asking for. Now you can only buy those from the secondary market (at ridiculously high prices of course).
Imagine paying hundreds of dollars for the cd unit to play Street fighter 1 😂
Wow, never heard about the LT model but thanks for also mentioning the TV Tuner... that add-on almost got me to buy a Turbo Express.
0:08 why does this feel like a threat?!😂
I owned on when it was originally released and it never felt like NEC was supporting the console full on. The games they released made it seem like they wanted to console to fail.
Turbo controllers were not on the initial launch and were released later.
Cool
I enjoyed this, subscribed
Keep up the great work :)
I used to love importing them into the UK and putting RGB out cables on them for our Scart TVs..
All of these failed console retrospectives can all be boiled down to not having enough games for one reason or another. Mainly down to the very different software industry of Japan in the 80s and 90s.
Great video! But my OCD wont' allow you to get by with having pronounced Y's as "Why's" at the 10:51 mark.
It's pronounced, "Ease"!
Thanks for the feedback! My OCD appreciates it
Aaaaaand subbed.
They need to re-release the TG16 Mini the distribution was so poor because of covid it was impossible to get unless you wanted to pay over $200 to a scalper.Even with emulation being the best option I would still pay up to $100 or slightly more to get my hands on one but the last i checked there wasn't many and what i found was around $300-$350.
Should have mention the excellent MiSTer FPGA core. Near perfect FPGA recreation of the system.
no
Nice doc 👌
solid video great editing
Not to be that guy but Y's is not pronounced wise 😜. Fun video
Back in the days I used to pronounce it like that until I play Ys VI and finally know the correct pronunciation for it.
I wish the super turbo grafix 16 was more succesful because it has 2 background layers as opposed to 1 background layer from the original system.
Sure sprites could be used as an alternative way to mimick a second nackground layer but am not sure how many sprites the original system could display atonce.
I hardly could believe hudson soft consider it to be revolutionary system because many gamers consider it felt more like an upgraded famicom.
16 sprites per scanline. Amiga repeated a single sprite for background.
Background for me means the layer I collide with. Or walk over. NeoGeo and Jaguar did away with any background. I say: single background and sprites of any size . I think that the single tile background in NeoGeo does not scroll.
The TurboGrafx16 needed good multiplayer games and New Adventure Island should have been the pack-in game. Also Madden should have been on Turbochip so everyone could buy it.
I agree that Keith Courage was mediocre, but imo, Bonk's Adventure should've been the pack in.
There were too many mistakes, all made by NEC.
NEC had everything they needed to win at the time, but they mismanaged it all.
Really bad management at the top.
@elgo3556 I heard it was a secretary from TTI inc. that said it wasn't NEC but Hudson Soft of Japan was the one turning down the games TTI inc. wanted to release in United States. I like to see a full interview of what really happen from the former employees of both NEC and Hudson Soft.
I heard the name keith courage was chosen by a lackey trying to suck up to his boss who was named keith.
The ads theyd run in comics with a overweight man and his geeky "roomate" always had me scratching my head.
Same as tti refusing to have mortal kombat on their system, tho that story might have been them saving face as they might not have had the money to get it.
Why's books one and 2?
You didn't mention the SuperGrafx! :)
In my eyes, all the early cd-addons were indeed too early. Important for the history, but not really usable and very expensive. FMV was not possible yet in good quailty (even the Sega Saturn and PS1, also Philips CD-i needed extra compute power to playback VCDs), sound with Midi and a good Yamaha chip were more than okay, so the available space was not needed.
Sony's PS1 and Sega's Saturn, maybe Sega's 32x were already on another level with textures and 3D evironments, but for instance the Genesis games never had a real usage for this huge amount of space.
CDs are cheaper than ROMs. 20 tracks for a racing game. Streaming out run track. 20 fighters and stages. Huge RPGs. Shooter with many levels.
Now you can play on a raspberry pi maybe any version.
Yes, emulation has been around for over 20 years. I used HUGO.
The PC Engine is such a beautiful console. I love the design and look of it. Too bad that they made the Turbografx 16 look so bulky and ugly. They should have kept the original design.
great video
My brother took my tg16 and about 20 games to college one weekend and it disappeared. He didn't ask either. Uggghh
Sega beat the TG16 to market with its "Sega Cards, but I bet that a lot of the original Sega Master Systems had pristine card slots that weren't used in favour of the cartridge slot.
I don't like the look of the TG16 with its disc drive add on.
I like the Sega Master System Mark 1 over Mark 2, the same with the Mega Drive, & the Sega CD.
Great video great
Bumbler Interactive
3:10
Adventure Island? uhhhhh...
Hehe I saw that. I'm guessing that was another game named that on some 8-bit Micro...
It's Adventure Island on the Spectrum by Contrast Software (UK), 1983. How on Earth they made that mistake is a mystery as it took me ages to even find that the game exists. LOL.
Nowadays, with the positive connotations of PC gaming would make the PC Engine name work just fine in the United States
Bloody wolf
Lmao your AI voice can't pronounce Bomberman. This whole channel is worthless AI slop. What a waste of my time.
bot
@@alphaomegawolf8365 beep boop, uhhh I mean *genuine human interaction*
to bad there software sucked. it didnt beat nintendo at anything, no one had or even knew about them.
Son consolas para jugar juegos de 8 bits.
Ambas la pc engine y la turbografx 16...
i'm sorry, this headline sucks. Yes it got me to click, but, it makes zero sense that a hidden console beat nintendo...
The Japanese Version actually outsold Nintendo at one point in Japan
Calm down, it outsold the NES in Japan for almost a year.
@ your passion is commendable and I appreciate the response. Famicom sold ~16 million units vs 7 million TG16, so yes it beat Nintendo. Much love.
"Beat" really depends on the category.
1) The TG16 beat Nintendo Famicom in sales in Japan for a short while
2) The TG16, beat Nintendo in launching the first 16 bit console
3) The TG16 beat Nintendo in launching the optical drive add-on /console first
4) The TG16 beat Nintendo in being able to release a 16bit handheld earlier (although Atari Lynx was first here)
5) the TG16 beat Nintendo in earlier to release a colored handheld
Games looked and definitely sounded better than NES. And people forget the dirty hostile practices Nintendo were doing that made it impossible for North America and Europe to get really good games on TG16.
Take a game like Ys IV it's better than the super Nintendo version. So they even beat SNES sometimes.
But both are good games.
boring as hell
Why you no mention Virtual Console?