I bought a TurboGrafx-16 when Bonk's Adventure released. Soon afterward, I learned of the Japanese PC Engine market, went to my local import shop and picked up a PC Engine and 2 games. Seeing the multitude of amazing games that were left in Japan, it's no wonder TG-16 failed in the U.S.
I only had the (for the time) ridiculously expensive TurboExpress. It was $300 and worse, no rental shops near me had TH-16 games to rent, so all the games I played had to be purchased. I ended up with a decent sized collection that I still have. Eventually, when I was old enough to drive, I drove myself to Funcoland and bought a used TG-16, so I could finally play my games on the TV. The Express took 6 AA batteries and gave you about 4 hours of play. So I spent a lot of time at the end of my living room couch plugged into the wall. My Express had a loose port for the AC adapter so I had to hold the wire pressed against the side of the handheld. If it shifted, the connection was severed and it powered off. I made it all the way through Splatterhouse and Talespin like that, with my sweaty 10 year old hands gripping the console for dear life. When those credits finished I was very relieved. But because of the hassle, I turned my attention and gaming dollars to Genesis and Sega CD. At least those games were available to rent. I still have fond memories, but there aren’t many TG-16 games (besides Alien Crush) that I still go back to. I have Alien Crush on my Wii, I think. And it was included on the TG-16 mini. But I mostly play it on my PS3. My Turbo Grafx-16 is one of my only consoles that is in storage. Most of my consoles are hooked up to CRTs in my game room. But there just aren’t that many TG-16 games that I care to play.
I had almost the exact situation (down to the twitchy AC connector!). Long after owning the Express, I bought the home version and couldn't adjust to how ugly and garish the graphics were on the big screen vs the Express, where they were astounding. (It probably didn't help that the first game I tried on the CRT was pack-in Keith Courage.)
My best friend bought one of these and spent over a year trying to tell me that it was better than my Genesis for some reason. Did he ever have egg on his face when new games slowed to a trickle! NEC should've either released their system as soon as it was kicking butt in Japan or at least included the $400 CD addon for that crazy $200 price. And tying up 750,000 consoles when there was no demand for this albatross? NEC and Hudson clearly didn't know what they were doing. And so few games brought over from Japan.
The problem with the turbo Express power supply is actually the tip on the end of the power supply itself, not the power jack built into the system. I too had the same problem back in the day and would tape my cable to the side of my system so the power wouldn't turn off.
Same. I went through 2-3 adapters. Finally found the universal AC adapter from Radio Shack had a tip that worked. The Turbo Express adapter was an oddball 7 volts, but the 7.5 volt setting on the Radio Shack adapter worked fine.
Bravo for remembering Snatcher for the PC-Engine. And yes, I would have loved an English translation for it. I'm very lucky I got to play the Sega CD one.
Never owned one, but I definitely recall playing a Bonk game on the system at a Toys R Us back in the day. It was the stage where you were inside the the dinosaur.
I would bundle The Legendary Axe in and release the console when it originally came out and then let Bonk release in the US at Christmas, creating a must-have app. And while we're at it, I would've just made the PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16 the SuperGrafx to begin with.
You know there was an entire version of this script that had the Supergrafx the machine that was released in the US. But that thing was what, around $300 at release?
I think they should have gone all-in on the SuperGrafx and released that in North America instead of the TG16, since the SuperGrafx hardware was basically done by the time the TG16 launched. Develop games for North America, then launch the SuperGrafx system to Japan the following year with a full fledged software library. Crazy? Maybe. But it would have been an interesting way to foster two systems and two libraries of games with less market overlap. And the SuperGrafx would have competed beautifully during the second half of the 16-bit console cycle.
@@francofrignani3997 SGX has an update to the audio chip tho, allowing you to do some things you can't do with the original PCE. While no SGX games took advantage of this, it was there.
Keith Courage is actually a localization of an anime tie-in game based on Mashin Hero Wataru, and I feel like it was a missed opportunity for NEC not to push to localize the anime in the US as a Keith Courage Saturday morning cartoon... sponsored by the Turbo-Grafix, of course
NEC had Mall tour introducing the console that summer before it launched, I remember playing Bonk's Adventure for at least 45 minutes straight, I was wearing a Super Mario t-shirt too, must have given the guys from NEC a good laugh. Definitely should have been the pack in.
I love the system. My parents used to travel to a larger city during Christmas time to visit Toys 'R Us & one year I went with them. There was a TG-16 discounted to $50 which I asked for & got. It was just nice to have something different for so cheap.
I still have my Turbografx 16. Bonk's 1 and 2 were quite fun, R-Type was so close to the arcade version - and Blazing Lazers was (and is) still one of the most best shooters I've ever played. The variety of powerups and the soundtrack were amazing. Space Megaforce for the SNES was it's spiritual successor, as was equally as good.
Some of this doesn't take into consideration how competitors will react. Although once Sony (and still much later Microsoft) was on the scene, they were using infinite money to take over the market.
These are really fun thought experiments. I did a deep dive into the TG16/PC Engine during Covid lockdown. That & Animal Crossing took up all of 2020 for me. Sooo many Shmups, I was in heaven.
Absolutely love this. I always wanted to get into this system but back in this era, living in a small town in the midwest... made this almost mythical, just like the Neo Geo console. You'd see it in ads in issues of EGM. I'd dream of being able to order one of these from the back pages where you'd see them for sale but never was a realistic option for me. I was blessed to get both a SNES and a Genesis in the same Christmas and the prior year I had got a Sega Master System (sadly only had the 2 built in games). So I had it better than a lot of my peers, but still wanted to experience more than what the average American did.
I had a TG16 as a kid, I never met anyone else for a long time that also owned one. I enjoyed the hell out of it, an underrated console from that era for sure.
When I saw the video cover, I came here just to say that I am very excited to watch this!! I am looking forward to watch it soon. #1 idea, make The Legendary Axe the pack-in game!
Get yourself a cheaper PC engine from Japan and get a turboeverdrive or the SSDS3 its worth the price of either instead of looking for ultra expensive carts these days.
@@G-zeus_M or just play them all for free on an emulator. it's literally the exact same as using an SSDS3 since that uses FPGA emulation as well. Also a TG16 console isn't that much, it's about $125-150 on Ebay right now. Bonk HuCard only is $30-40, and Splatterhouse is about $50-70 for a Hucard. $250-300 for everything isn't a lot when considering how much kids these days spend on shallow cosmetic skins on Fortnite or Apex etc etc.
I don’t think I ever remember seeing a TG16 in a store or at a friends house until much much later in the early 2000s when people were collecting retro consoles. I started getting really into games when I was around 6 in 1991 so i think I missed the boat. The TG16 looked like an incredible system though, I still toy around with the idea of getting one and an Everdrive since I have never played a single game for it.
I remembered that my best friend at the time got the Turbogrfx-16 at almost the same time that my older brother got me the Sega Genesis, and we argued about the technical details endlessly. As time went on, he was forced to accept that the games, speed, and hardware were better in Segaland. Obviously, the PC Engine won in the Japanese market because it was smaller, came out sooner, had tons of great games, and it was easy to bring sequels and ports over from the Famicom to NEC's entry. The fact that NEC held up the machine for nearly a year to redesign the box with something larger and bulkier--and that forced you to spend $10 more for a machine that nickel and dimed you right out of the box--pissed off value-conscious American buyers something fierce. And their CD add on was $399! By the time NEC finally allowed the price to come down, it was obvious that all of the cool games were coming out for the Genesis, and everyone dumb enough to pay $700 for the full Turbogrfx platform was going to be left holding the bag when the music stopped. If you're going to force people to buy a control adapter for every two player game, you'd better be ready with some cool new games, a lower price, or an earlier launch. NEC-Hudson Soft had none of these things. NEC could've sold the combined CD console for $300, saved millions on those game cards, and courted all of those developers who wanted arcade-sized games and jRPGs on a home console.
Thanks for vidéo. The PC-Engine was indeed released in France, and was distributed by Guillemot, owner of Ubi Soft. It had a moderate success, far behind the Megadrive and the SNES but it still has a cult following.
Living in Kansas I only knew of the TG through gaming magazines and promo tape they mailed me. I wanted one. Bad. Finally had my dream come true when the mini was released.
@@bubbythebear6891 They could have ported the game to the Sega CD or Mega CD as they did with Snatcher. But i guess that would have taken more effort and money and somewhat they tought Castlevania was not popular enough to justify the investment.
I think it was Tectoy that reached Sega for distributing the Master System in Brazil. There is a big reason most game companies avoided that market: ridiculous import taxes and a large population unable to afford such an expensive product.
The audio chip sounded like a beefed up NES one, which is a very good thing if you're into chiptunes. Of course, CD games mostly had redbook audio (CD quality) soundtracks.
it was pretty close to being capable of a lot more. it's a wavetable chip, meaning it works like an nes but you can use your own wave shapes. one of the best tricks for wavetable is being able to swap waves you're playing in the middle of a note, but the tg-16 resets the volume when you do this, causing a click sound. if not for this it could do noticeably richer sounding music. some games ignored the click and still sounded pretty good, like bloody wolf.
I never owned an original TurboGrafx -16 but I did buy the Mini version and among the other mini consoles I have, it's my 2nd favorite behind only the Sega Genesis Mini.
IMO the best bet would have been to get the system released as early as possible. Capitalize on the window you have before the Genesis was released to capture as much market as possible. So, best bet for success IMO: 1. No redesign of the console AT ALL. Make it black, rename it, fine, but don’t waste months working on a new design or stupid rubber covers for the expansion port (which got abandoned anyway). I don’t mind the idea of RCA outs, but RF only is fine. The same geniuses who thought the system needed to be bigger were ex Atari guys who had size issues on the brain. The time and money wasted on redesign could have been used selling and marketing. 2. Package it with some version of a Twin Commander controller. Boom, two players without a re-design. 3. Release it with the best early game you got…IMO that means either translate Bikkuri Man World or use R-Type.
I agree about the fact that it came out in the US just after the Genesis was released being a major issue considering how it was less powerful (the fact that TG-16 was slightly more expensive despite only having one controller port didn't help either).
@@yoman8027It is just a controller with a single breakout box on the cord for another controller plug in (player 2). While I am unsure exactly when they released these for the PC-E, I do believe they would have been available for an early US release.
"Let's save the Atari 7800" "Let's save the Atari Jaguar" "Let's save the 3DO" "Let's save the Master System" "Let's save the Game Gear" "Let's save the Neo Geo CD"
Given how early they were with CDs, it may have been a good idea to make a CD based machine from the start. Add-on CD drives usually failed to pick up steam, but if the base console was CD based, they could build up a large user base and developers would start making games like RPGs that relied on having large amounts of data.
True. But the problem is the cost. With it being an unknown the asking price for something like that out of the gate might have killed it in it's tracks. Kind of like the 3DO asking price of $700 in 93 being a death nail before it made it to market.
@@chaospoet Even if it was more expensive than Sega´s and Nintendo´s machines. They could capitalize with parents being able to play back music cds with the system. And the CD Rom would eventually get cheaper and cheaper to produce with the pass of time. Remember than CD-Rom games with tons of super high fidelity dialog and music, tons of animations,etc, were a novelty back in the day, if marketed correctly they could had taken a good market share.
I never got to experience the Turbo during it's heyday. I would see the games in all the magazines, but much like the Master System, I never saw a single system or any games for sale around me (in an admittedly fairly small town). I got mine in 1999 for next to nothing at a game store I was working at at the time. I was far into my Playstation days during that time, but I made some time to play the Turbo, and it was awesome. I've loved it ever since, and have always felt like the games on it feel like nothing else during that time. They have their own thing going on, and I appreciate that.
@Marc_Araujo You are applying 2024 standards and expectations to a game that was designed in 1986. No one knew the moves were unnecessarily difficult to do in Fighting Street because every fighting game before it had even worse controls. There is no fixing its bad controls short of the porting staff time traveling to the future year of 1991, acquire Street Fighter II's joystick polling algorithm that was written for a faster 16-bit CPU, bring it back to 1988, and reimplement it on a slower 8-bit CPU from 1987.
@@Marc_Araujo Everything Sega Lord X mentioned in the video all involved making smarter decisions on things that actually existed at the time. Your "make Fighting Street good" suggestion involves methods and thinking that haven't even come into existence yet. Street Fighter II turned out the way it did because it was built upon the mechanics of Final Fight, and it also didn't exist when the Fighting Street port was being done.
My childhood best friend had the TG16 where I had the NES, SNES, and Genesis. Getting to experience that system along with the more popular ones was an absolute treat, and I'm so happy that I now have a Turbo of my own. :)
Where I live in Canada, one of the big problems for the TG16 was RadioShack was the only place that sold it and for an over inflated price compared to the Genesis (that you could buy anywhere) and even later the Super Nintendo! Had it been on NORMAL store shelves (which it was advertised in catalogues, but never seem to have inventory) for a modest price it might have sold better over here on the east coast.
"The Genesis has more buttons. A more powerful console should have more buttons" was what I remember thinking about the TG-16. That is what wrote it off in my young mind. (I realize that they both technically have the same number of buttons. I didn't say I was smart.) In all seriousness, though, I think the only thing that would have saved the TG-16 in North America would have been if it launched a year earlier without the nonsense back-and-forth about the the redesign and marketing. And that would have required NEC having marketing sense, which they never did (even in Japan, I would add).
Them Neo-Geo ports ain't fittin on Hu-Cards. Some of the tiny puzzlers and platformers, sure. But the fighters and beatemups need the CD storage space and upgraded RAM cards. Then, would SNK be willing to enable all this competition for their own competing, Neo-Geo CD console? 🤔
These are such fun videos! I just bought a broken CoreGrafx last year and fixed it up and its been a wonderful little machine. I only have Galaga but I'm currently waiting on a Super HD System 3 I got last August and Im pretty excited! :)
Keith Courage was always a weird choice for a pack-in game since it was a localized version of a game based on a anime that never came out in the West.
The TG 16 (PC Engine) was an awesome system that was definitely the Dreamcast of its generation that deserved better and was a victim of poor management and marketing.
The TG16 was in an extremely tough spot with Sega America and Tom Kalinske doing *everything* right at the time. Using the power of hindsight I think there was simply no way for NEC to offer a better value at the same price, so I'd use my time machine to compete for a different market in a different price bracket instead. Their options as I see them were to keep the Japanese shell and drastically slash the price to $99 (or thereabouts) and position themselves as a more toylike affordable 16-bit platform, or go the opposite direction and redesign the shell to go all-in on CD-Rom as the $400 premium high-tech platform. As much as hardcore gamers gushed over the PC Engine shell at the time (and even now), I think NEC America's research was probably more accurate than most of us would care to believe. The mass market would see that tiny little white plastic square and credit card games and conclude that, while cool, it MUST be less powerful than its larger, heavier competitors. That was just how electronics worked before computer chips took over and a lot of people hadn't caught on to the new normal yet. If you're sticking with the Japanese shell the easiest path forward would be embracing that and marketing as a lower-cost option that comes close enough to the big guys to be worth the tradeoff. There was still a market for new NES and Atari 2600 games into the early 90s, so that low-end market that's hesitant to upgrade to a new $200 box was very real at the time. With the all-in CD option they'd skip HuCard entirely and publish Japanese HuCard games on CDs in North America, either with enhanced soundtracks / voiceover where warranted, or with multiple games on a single disc for lower-end titles. In 1989 this would also be many people's first CD player, so they'd also have a bit of a PS2+DVD strategy going on to justify the higher price by including that new music player that you were thinking of buying for a similar price anyway. Either option is risky (and they're both probably undercutting manufacturing costs by about a hundred bucks), but they'd both give the system a personality and an obvious market strength for consumers to latch onto that the game library alone was never going to deliver.
I imagine they sat down kids in a room with a one-way mirror (Simpsons style) and made them choose between the original PC Engine shell and the TG-16 redesign, and went for the latter because larger is better. Atari did precisely that to determine how large the Lynx should be, which is also largely made up of air, defeating the whole 'portable' thing. In hindsight it's amusing to see just how clueless marketers were back then.
Unfortunately, I don't see how the Turbografx would ever have been truly successful in the North America due to 2 major factors: the lack of true killer-app / next-gen software on the base unit compared to its competitors, and the overall cost of ownership once you factor in the CD add on. Having a significant chunk of the system's library only accessible via the CD add on really hurt any chances of mass adoption in the west compared to the SNES and Genesis, which while the Sega CD was a "nice to have" at the time, it wasn't required to really enjoy the system's overall library. One thing I would have done differently with the TG-16 is release it as early as possible in North America. I'd have done a "soft launch" in the fall of '88 in the US to get its foot in the door as the first of the "16-Bit" systems, riding the coat tales of the NES's skyrocketing popularity, and start an advertising blitz during the holidays into '89 to get people buzzing about it, and then pushing as much software as readily possible for it in the 2nd half of '89 as the Genesis is getting ready to launch. While I still think it would have ended up a distant 3rd compared to the SNES and Genesis's sales, this likely would have helped give it a longer lifespan and a healthier library here in NA.
@@gracekim1998its a mix of a small electronics store and electronic parts shop. They were really pushing the Turbo Grafx there and had it on display at every shop as you passed them in the shopping mall. Almost always there was people around it playing the console. They only sold Turbo Grafx and nothing else. Great times!
I remember wanting the tg16 over the genesis back in '89. My uncle surprised me with it for christmas that yr. I still remember all the games i had; keith courage, vigilante, blazing lazers, victory run, bloody wolf, splatter house, alien crush, china warrior and veigues tactical gladiator.
I bought my pc engine from the virgin megastore in London around 1988. They were selling scart modded imported ones along with a ton of Japanese games. From memory the console was £225 and the games about £30 each. The pack in game was a japanese language only action rpg that I never managed to get very far in due to the walls of text. Spent hours playing bloody wolf, the game I bought along with the console. I fully agree that the console needed 2 controller ports as standard, that was one of the only downsides of the machine. It was an aesthetically beautiful machine, still one of my fav console designs.
Imho the two times to strike would be early simultaneous with Japan launch to only compete against nes and sms, or release with Bonk which was a better system seller than Altered Beast on Genesis.
Was the CD add-on available in '89? Imagine if they skipped HUcards all together and released the Duo straight off? Talk about a value proposition, getting a CD player for dad's hifi and cheaper CD media to keep prices low... It would have made the Genesis and SNES look like toys in comparison.
Correct, even in Japan, i think the PC Engine´s success was for the CD Rom System, not the Hu-Cards. If they launched the system with the included CD-Rom in NA they would had a head start against Sega and Nintendo.
As an old man, I was fully there! TG16 & Genesis came out when I was in college. I got the TG16 first, then couldn't stand it and went back and bought the Genesis a week later lol. I can't tell you how blown away we were in my frat house with the TG16 especially with Blazing Lazers.. and even Keith Courage gave us that next-gen feel. I accumulated about 40 TG16 games and some imports before I lost interest in the console. Few things: 1) Software was indeed key. As a consumer, the TG16 had a "slow decline" where it started out so awesome.. but then games just started coming out slower and seemingly less quality. After only 2 years (right before the SNES came out) I was really looking for any new releases on the system and the stuff I ended up getting here in the US were things like Bravoman or Psychosis which were underwhelming at best. It's such a shame so many good games never made it overseas here. Anyway result was for me, once the SNES came out.. I barely looked at my TG16 anymore as the games already seemed dated and flat. 2) The CD add-on was just too expensive and seemed sudden/forced. I balked at the price and the lack of software for it. I liked Ys.. but I had already played a bunch on SMS. Eventually when barely any games came out for it here, not buying it seemed like the smart choice. I wonder if Rondo came out here whether I would have more strongly considered it.. but, it did not. 3) I was so excited about Street Fighter 2.. since I was lucky to go to Japan often back then I bought it excitedly along with a 6 button pad. Only to find when I got back home.. that the controller wouldn't fit in the TG16 lol! There wasn't much info about this kind of stuff back then.. anyway since it turns out playing SF2 with 2 buttons sucked. I never played the game much at all.. and that controller went into storage where I finally broke it out only recently after decades of storage once I got a Duo off ebay ;p
Interesting video, I like these thought experiments. That being said, I don't think your diversification of content would have grabbed me without some rpg attention. The 1st console that I bought "myself" was the Genesis because Phantasy Star 2/3/4. The 2nd console that I bought was the PS1 because Final Fantasy 7/8/9/Tactics. The 3rd was the PS2 cause Final Fantasy 10 & 12...Guess I'm biased toward really good [mostly turn based] RPG's. The NEC Turbografx-16 would have needed a killer RPG at that time(s) to compete for me. Either something really good & original, or an assortment of other [not exclusive to NEC] rpg stuff to pad the library. Dragon Quest 1 & 2, Final Fantasy 1 [+anything else in the series as available] and Ultima IV [or even try for a license of Zelda 2 since it wasn't good anyway but still looks good on a resume for an IP to be included].
Besides the listed changes, I'd also have shipped it with the Shuttle pad so the controllers don't so closely resembled NES ones. Not for legal reasons as PC Engine used them in Japan without issue, but for consumer messaging that this platform isn't just a slight upgrade over what they already had.
I’m not saying I’m some expert on business, but I feel like many of the TG16’s problems in North America could have been prevented by avoiding their one major mistake: delaying the NA release to redesign the hardware. They had the jump on the Genesis, but that delay resulted in the TG16 coming out after the Genesis, stealing their thunder. No one paid any attention to the TG16 when I was in high school, everyone had either a Genesis or SNES. But I got a Coregrafx Mini a couple years ago and it makes me wish I owned one back then. Lords of Thunder is now my favorite shmup ever.
I love the TurboGrafx, I bought a new old stock one here in the UK and I am still blown away by the games on it. Definitely an underrated console and a missed opportunity outside of Japan.
One change that I would've suggested would've been to release a redesign of the Turbografx-16 with the CD player add-on built into the console alongside, or shortly after, releasing the CD player add-on for the original Turbografx-16 model. That way, those who would've owned the older Turbografx-16 models would've found it cheaper to get the CD player add-on than a brand new version of the Turbografx-16 with the built-in CD player, while those who wouldn't've yet owned a Turbografx-16 could've opted to purchase the newer model of Turbografx-16, which, while possibly more expensive than the older model, would've been cheaper than purchasing both the older model and the CD player add-on.
I have a high regard for the TG-16; I sometimes wish as a teenager I had dismissed "popular opinion" and picked one up. But then I might not have had as much fun with my Genesis... anyway it's a great console. Thanks Lordster! SEEEEEEEEEGAAAAAAAAAA!
I had one of these as a kid, system, turbo booster, turbo tap, like 4 controllers and a decent amount of games. I only knew what this was cause my best friend's older brother borrowed one from his friend with bonk's adventure and I fell in love with it. Over the next year the owner of the local video rental place just randomly had one for sell and my mom got it for me for christmas. But that I think is why it failed....I lived in a small town, I was young and lived out in the sticks, we didnt have cable tv or internet at that time. Didnt go into town much so I was lucky if I got a video game magazine monthly. Just know one knew about them. Hell it wasnt until highschool I found another person that owned one which me and him made great friends cause we had someone to talk tg16 with finally lol. There was only one place locally that sold tg16 games and it was a goodyear tire shop, they had that little kiosk you could flip through and the game still had to be ordered.
I was born in 1988 and my earliest memories of gaming harken back to 1992, so I had no idea the TG-16 even existed until years later -- just like the venerable Master System. Looking back at it, it was a pretty cool little device that I wish had done better out here.
I missed the TG16 in its heyday. It wasn’t until about six years or so ago that I got my TG16, and that was the very first time I ever played one. It has quickly become one of my favorite consoles of the generation, with a ton of great games that are obscure, but mostly very good. I love it!
I completely agree, I love my TurboGrafx 16, first game I bought when I finally added the TurboGrafx 16 too my collection was the Iconic SPLATTER HOUSE
I would have released a combination CD and Supergrafx as the Turbo Duo, and as soon as it came out I would have lowered the original Core System to $99 with no game and one controller and begun marketing the Core System for new or younger players. Standalone CD systems would have been upgraded with as the Arcade ROM-ROM with the Arcade Card built-in and would have included many older HuCard games included on CD as pack-ins and possibly “special” versions of HuCard games re-released on CD with upgraded graphics and sound.
We had a TG-16 2.5 years before getting a Genesis. The longest 2.5 years of my life lol. No one else had one until this kid moved to our school in 6th grade and he had one. It was a shock. We ended up trading games and I played some awesome ones I had somehow missed like Splatterhouse and Bloody Wolf. Still got a Genesis a few months later tho lol.
I saw a TurboGraphx 16 display at Toys 'r' Us running "Keith Courage in Alpha Zone" when I was young. It blew me away with the colour, sound, and action. (and price.) Thankfully I wasn't hurting for fun games to play, but that game has crept into my dreams a few times over the years. Oh man, Bonk as a pack-in is inspired. The only thing Bonk really needed that it didn't already have was familiarity/nostalgia. Super Volleyball, I owned that for the Genesis! Pretty playable even for a non-sportsfan, with special moves and a couple silly animations.
I strongly disagree on one point. Rather than pushing the TG16 release back, it should’ve been released much earlier. The US team admitted that they were so confident it would do well that they ended up slow walking it, doing the redesign and other stuff that ended up wasting time. Imagine the TG16 came out in 1988, a year before the Genesis. The games at that point weren’t amazing, but they blew the socks off NES games. The Geneais may have never even gotten off the ground
Blazing lasers is my absolute favourite video game of all time and the TGFX16 my favourite non Nintendo console. It really deserved better as it was marketed so poorly. I got to buy one for next to nothing a few years after its initial release when Radio Shack was liquidating them for $50. The games always reminded me of what I would play on a PC rather than console or arcade games and that appealed more to me at the time.
Hardware wise, I would have like them to release the SuperGrapfx in the USA, and not the base TG16/PCE. I think the extra background layer and RAM would have given them a more 16-bit look to their graphics. Although I've seen some TG16/PCE games that would make you think they didn't have the limitation of 1 background layer. As you mentioned, it would have solved the RCA cable hookup issue as well. I agree about putting the 2nd controller port on the console, and keeping the system the small size of the PCE.
Extra RAM and a second background later is exactly what they did with the SuperGrafx, charging $400 (equivalent of) and then releasing 6 games before abandoning it. The low RAM and only one background layer did kind of gimp the TG16. I remember seeing pics in the magazines and thinking "Wow! Some of these games look better than my Genesis stuff! Why is this not more popular?" Then, I finally played one (Legendary Axe, I think) as was like: "Wow! Why does this look so flat, like an NES game?" I didn't know what parallax was at the time but have grown to expect seeing the effect with 16-bit games, especially after witnessing games like Sonic take it to the next level.
I don't know how NEC's finances must have been at the time, but it sounds to me that to execute a plan of that magnitude they would have had to shell out a lot, a lot of money. 🤑
I'm not sure Turbo could've ever succeeded in North America. Nintendo and Sega's brand presence was so strong by 1990, it feels like a stretch that (unlike today) there'd be a market for a third console option.
The thing about "saving" a retail product is that it often doesn't take much more to do it. In its lifetime the Turbo moved a couple million units in NA. You increase that even just a few more million and you get that hardware to a point where it's really cheap to produce and sell, changing its entire trajectory. 3rd place doesn't have to be an immediate failure. NEC had been making that hardware since 1987, it wouldn't have taken much more to get that market healthier.
I bought a TurboGrafx-16 when Bonk's Adventure released. Soon afterward, I learned of the Japanese PC Engine market, went to my local import shop and picked up a PC Engine and 2 games. Seeing the multitude of amazing games that were left in Japan, it's no wonder TG-16 failed in the U.S.
The TG-16 in a way is like that generation's Dreamcast, a damn fine console that deserved to do way better than it did.
True, but unlike the Dreamcast (which was not successful anywhere) the PC/Turbografx was highly successful in Japan.
Like the Dreamcast the Turbo Grafx was somewhere inbetween two generations. Some games Feeling more like NES games, but looking slightly more 16 bit.
Uhh i owned one when it was new. It was a rip off. Dont get me wrong i liked it but it lied on its actual capabilities.
Too good for American't
It was a success in Japan, just like the Sega Saturn.
@rameybutler-hm7nx I had one, too. It would have been a dominant 8-bit console, but I felt misled about it's 16-bit claims.
It is I, a time traveler from 1988. I have been sent from nec to hire you. Congratulation
God, I hope (and assume) that "congratulation" was intentional. 😂
One singular congratulation
@@Mentherex thank
I only had the (for the time) ridiculously expensive TurboExpress. It was $300 and worse, no rental shops near me had TH-16 games to rent, so all the games I played had to be purchased. I ended up with a decent sized collection that I still have. Eventually, when I was old enough to drive, I drove myself to Funcoland and bought a used TG-16, so I could finally play my games on the TV. The Express took 6 AA batteries and gave you about 4 hours of play. So I spent a lot of time at the end of my living room couch plugged into the wall. My Express had a loose port for the AC adapter so I had to hold the wire pressed against the side of the handheld. If it shifted, the connection was severed and it powered off. I made it all the way through Splatterhouse and Talespin like that, with my sweaty 10 year old hands gripping the console for dear life. When those credits finished I was very relieved. But because of the hassle, I turned my attention and gaming dollars to Genesis and Sega CD. At least those games were available to rent.
I still have fond memories, but there aren’t many TG-16 games (besides Alien Crush) that I still go back to. I have Alien Crush on my Wii, I think. And it was included on the TG-16 mini. But I mostly play it on my PS3. My Turbo Grafx-16 is one of my only consoles that is in storage. Most of my consoles are hooked up to CRTs in my game room. But there just aren’t that many TG-16 games that I care to play.
I had almost the exact situation (down to the twitchy AC connector!). Long after owning the Express, I bought the home version and couldn't adjust to how ugly and garish the graphics were on the big screen vs the Express, where they were astounding. (It probably didn't help that the first game I tried on the CRT was pack-in Keith Courage.)
My best friend bought one of these and spent over a year trying to tell me that it was better than my Genesis for some reason. Did he ever have egg on his face when new games slowed to a trickle!
NEC should've either released their system as soon as it was kicking butt in Japan or at least included the $400 CD addon for that crazy $200 price. And tying up 750,000 consoles when there was no demand for this albatross? NEC and Hudson clearly didn't know what they were doing. And so few games brought over from Japan.
The problem with the turbo Express power supply is actually the tip on the end of the power supply itself, not the power jack built into the system. I too had the same problem back in the day and would tape my cable to the side of my system so the power wouldn't turn off.
Same. I went through 2-3 adapters. Finally found the universal AC adapter from Radio Shack had a tip that worked. The Turbo Express adapter was an oddball 7 volts, but the 7.5 volt setting on the Radio Shack adapter worked fine.
Crazy you made it through TailSpin and those shitty controls! I played that game too much..
Bravo for remembering Snatcher for the PC-Engine. And yes, I would have loved an English translation for it. I'm very lucky I got to play the Sega CD one.
Have always been and still am in love with the Turbografx 16/PC Engine! I still collect games for it current day.
Having Bonk's adventure as a tie in would have helped massively imo. The bonk's series is still one of my all time favorites.
Never owned one, but I definitely recall playing a Bonk game on the system at a Toys R Us back in the day. It was the stage where you were inside the the dinosaur.
I would bundle The Legendary Axe in and release the console when it originally came out and then let Bonk release in the US at Christmas, creating a must-have app. And while we're at it, I would've just made the PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16 the SuperGrafx to begin with.
You know there was an entire version of this script that had the Supergrafx the machine that was released in the US. But that thing was what, around $300 at release?
I love this “Let’s Save The” series!
I want a "Let's Save The Nintendo 64"
@@PaperBanjo64 "Let´s Save the Atari 7800" 🙂
I think they should have gone all-in on the SuperGrafx and released that in North America instead of the TG16, since the SuperGrafx hardware was basically done by the time the TG16 launched. Develop games for North America, then launch the SuperGrafx system to Japan the following year with a full fledged software library. Crazy? Maybe. But it would have been an interesting way to foster two systems and two libraries of games with less market overlap. And the SuperGrafx would have competed beautifully during the second half of the 16-bit console cycle.
To the SG I would have added a 6-button pad, 2 pad ports and a new audio chip
@@francofrignani3997 SGX has an update to the audio chip tho, allowing you to do some things you can't do with the original PCE. While no SGX games took advantage of this, it was there.
@@francofrignani3997 6 button pad wasn't ready until 1994
My all time Favorite system. It was an underdog here in the state.
Mine too
Same here looooved several of the games I had for it
Best system for SMUPS
Keith Courage is actually a localization of an anime tie-in game based on Mashin Hero Wataru, and I feel like it was a missed opportunity for NEC not to push to localize the anime in the US as a Keith Courage Saturday morning cartoon... sponsored by the Turbo-Grafix, of course
Oh wow never knew but it makes sense. Played a lot of it!
My brother had a TG16... I played it before.. The fact that Bonk wasnt the pack in game was crazy cause I thought he was the mascot!
NEC had Mall tour introducing the console that summer before it launched, I remember playing Bonk's Adventure for at least 45 minutes straight, I was wearing a Super Mario t-shirt too, must have given the guys from NEC a good laugh.
Definitely should have been the pack in.
I love the system. My parents used to travel to a larger city during Christmas time to visit Toys 'R Us & one year I went with them. There was a TG-16 discounted to $50 which I asked for & got. It was just nice to have something different for so cheap.
I still have my Turbografx 16. Bonk's 1 and 2 were quite fun, R-Type was so close to the arcade version - and Blazing Lazers was (and is) still one of the most best shooters I've ever played. The variety of powerups and the soundtrack were amazing. Space Megaforce for the SNES was it's spiritual successor, as was equally as good.
I adore what-if/armchair general scenarios like this. Great video!
Some of this doesn't take into consideration how competitors will react. Although once Sony (and still much later Microsoft) was on the scene, they were using infinite money to take over the market.
These are really fun thought experiments. I did a deep dive into the TG16/PC Engine during Covid lockdown. That & Animal Crossing took up all of 2020 for me. Sooo many Shmups, I was in heaven.
Absolutely love this. I always wanted to get into this system but back in this era, living in a small town in the midwest... made this almost mythical, just like the Neo Geo console. You'd see it in ads in issues of EGM. I'd dream of being able to order one of these from the back pages where you'd see them for sale but never was a realistic option for me. I was blessed to get both a SNES and a Genesis in the same Christmas and the prior year I had got a Sega Master System (sadly only had the 2 built in games). So I had it better than a lot of my peers, but still wanted to experience more than what the average American did.
Never played the TurboGrafx-16. I am excited to learn more about it!
I had a TG16 as a kid, I never met anyone else for a long time that also owned one. I enjoyed the hell out of it, an underrated console from that era for sure.
When I saw the video cover, I came here just to say that I am very excited to watch this!! I am looking forward to watch it soon. #1 idea, make The Legendary Axe the pack-in game!
Wish I could afford a TG16. Started playing the games when they came to the Wii's VC and spent hours with Bonk's Adventure and Splatterhouse.
Get yourself a cheaper PC engine from Japan and get a turboeverdrive or the SSDS3 its worth the price of either instead of looking for ultra expensive carts these days.
@@G-zeus_M or just play them all for free on an emulator. it's literally the exact same as using an SSDS3 since that uses FPGA emulation as well. Also a TG16 console isn't that much, it's about $125-150 on Ebay right now. Bonk HuCard only is $30-40, and Splatterhouse is about $50-70 for a Hucard. $250-300 for everything isn't a lot when considering how much kids these days spend on shallow cosmetic skins on Fortnite or Apex etc etc.
@@G-zeus_Mjust get a Wii and mod it. It plays all pc engine games perfectly.
@@G-zeus_M Or an Analogue Duo and jailbreak it.
The PC FX was a great idea, it really needed an add-on that provided more ram and 3D capabilities. Great Stuff, as always.
You contradicted yourself there. How could the PC FX be a great idea if it needed things that basically turns it into a PlayStation?
I don’t think I ever remember seeing a TG16 in a store or at a friends house until much much later in the early 2000s when people were collecting retro consoles.
I started getting really into games when I was around 6 in 1991 so i think I missed the boat. The TG16 looked like an incredible system though, I still toy around with the idea of getting one and an Everdrive since I have never played a single game for it.
I remembered that my best friend at the time got the Turbogrfx-16 at almost the same time that my older brother got me the Sega Genesis, and we argued about the technical details endlessly. As time went on, he was forced to accept that the games, speed, and hardware were better in Segaland.
Obviously, the PC Engine won in the Japanese market because it was smaller, came out sooner, had tons of great games, and it was easy to bring sequels and ports over from the Famicom to NEC's entry. The fact that NEC held up the machine for nearly a year to redesign the box with something larger and bulkier--and that forced you to spend $10 more for a machine that nickel and dimed you right out of the box--pissed off value-conscious American buyers something fierce. And their CD add on was $399!
By the time NEC finally allowed the price to come down, it was obvious that all of the cool games were coming out for the Genesis, and everyone dumb enough to pay $700 for the full Turbogrfx platform was going to be left holding the bag when the music stopped.
If you're going to force people to buy a control adapter for every two player game, you'd better be ready with some cool new games, a lower price, or an earlier launch. NEC-Hudson Soft had none of these things.
NEC could've sold the combined CD console for $300, saved millions on those game cards, and courted all of those developers who wanted arcade-sized games and jRPGs on a home console.
Thanks for vidéo. The PC-Engine was indeed released in France, and was distributed by Guillemot, owner of Ubi Soft. It had a moderate success, far behind the Megadrive and the SNES but it still has a cult following.
I loved my T-16 and my Turbo Duo, Still do
These videos are great. An amazing opportunity for you to flex your knowledge of technology and marketing. Thank you for another banger!
Living in Kansas I only knew of the TG through gaming magazines and promo tape they mailed me. I wanted one. Bad. Finally had my dream come true when the mini was released.
Rondo of Blood would have been the perfect swansong for the North American fans
I would have loved to be in the board room for that decision to not bring one of the best games ever made over to NA looooooooool great job NEC
@@warchild9381 most likely it was Konami's decision.
@@jsr734 makes sense, Konami made plenty of blunders even back in their heyday of the 90s.
@@jsr734I thought the same. Why bother translating and bringing over a game to an already dead console?
@@bubbythebear6891 They could have ported the game to the Sega CD or Mega CD as they did with Snatcher. But i guess that would have taken more effort and money and somewhat they tought Castlevania was not popular enough to justify the investment.
A south america launch like Sega did with Tectoy could be a good idea.
I think it was Tectoy that reached Sega for distributing the Master System in Brazil. There is a big reason most game companies avoided that market: ridiculous import taxes and a large population unable to afford such an expensive product.
This was such a fun video. Thank you!
Yes, I must say the TG-16 sound was great.
some hucards have terrible sounds tho, like cadash
The audio chip sounded like a beefed up NES one, which is a very good thing if you're into chiptunes. Of course, CD games mostly had redbook audio (CD quality) soundtracks.
it was pretty close to being capable of a lot more. it's a wavetable chip, meaning it works like an nes but you can use your own wave shapes. one of the best tricks for wavetable is being able to swap waves you're playing in the middle of a note, but the tg-16 resets the volume when you do this, causing a click sound. if not for this it could do noticeably richer sounding music. some games ignored the click and still sounded pretty good, like bloody wolf.
I never owned an original TurboGrafx -16 but I did buy the Mini version and among the other mini consoles I have, it's my 2nd favorite behind only the Sega Genesis Mini.
IMO the best bet would have been to get the system released as early as possible. Capitalize on the window you have before the Genesis was released to capture as much market as possible. So, best bet for success IMO:
1. No redesign of the console AT ALL. Make it black, rename it, fine, but don’t waste months working on a new design or stupid rubber covers for the expansion port (which got abandoned anyway). I don’t mind the idea of RCA outs, but RF only is fine. The same geniuses who thought the system needed to be bigger were ex Atari guys who had size issues on the brain. The time and money wasted on redesign could have been used selling and marketing.
2. Package it with some version of a Twin Commander controller. Boom, two players without a re-design.
3. Release it with the best early game you got…IMO that means either translate Bikkuri Man World or use R-Type.
I agree about the fact that it came out in the US just after the Genesis was released being a major issue considering how it was less powerful (the fact that TG-16 was slightly more expensive despite only having one controller port didn't help either).
What's a twin commander controller? It's the first time I've heard about it.
@@yoman8027It is just a controller with a single breakout box on the cord for another controller plug in (player 2). While I am unsure exactly when they released these for the PC-E, I do believe they would have been available for an early US release.
@@yoman8027it is just a single controller, but it has a breakout box on the cord which allows a 2P controller to plug in. Pretty handy!
"Let's save the Atari 7800"
"Let's save the Atari Jaguar"
"Let's save the 3DO"
"Let's save the Master System"
"Let's save the Game Gear"
"Let's save the Neo Geo CD"
they should have focused on Castlevania on Hucard and getting 3rd parties to step up
I got one of these xmas 89 and the cd add on a year or two later, my favorite system of all time I was the only kid in the neighborhood with one!
Good luck saving the PCFX!
Wasn't expecting to see you branch into other brands.
Would like to see how you would change Nintendo 64 considering its history.
Given how early they were with CDs, it may have been a good idea to make a CD based machine from the start. Add-on CD drives usually failed to pick up steam, but if the base console was CD based, they could build up a large user base and developers would start making games like RPGs that relied on having large amounts of data.
True. But the problem is the cost. With it being an unknown the asking price for something like that out of the gate might have killed it in it's tracks. Kind of like the 3DO asking price of $700 in 93 being a death nail before it made it to market.
@@chaospoet Even if it was more expensive than Sega´s and Nintendo´s machines. They could capitalize with parents being able to play back music cds with the system. And the CD Rom would eventually get cheaper and cheaper to produce with the pass of time. Remember than CD-Rom games with tons of super high fidelity dialog and music, tons of animations,etc, were a novelty back in the day, if marketed correctly they could had taken a good market share.
I never got to experience the Turbo during it's heyday. I would see the games in all the magazines, but much like the Master System, I never saw a single system or any games for sale around me (in an admittedly fairly small town). I got mine in 1999 for next to nothing at a game store I was working at at the time. I was far into my Playstation days during that time, but I made some time to play the Turbo, and it was awesome. I've loved it ever since, and have always felt like the games on it feel like nothing else during that time. They have their own thing going on, and I appreciate that.
Before releasing Fighting Street, def gotta ask Capcom to go back and fix a bunch of things.
It's already an accurate port, so what was there to fix before its release in the US in 1989?
@@Tempora158 The difficulty in pulling off special moves.
@Marc_Araujo You are applying 2024 standards and expectations to a game that was designed in 1986.
No one knew the moves were unnecessarily difficult to do in Fighting Street because every fighting game before it had even worse controls. There is no fixing its bad controls short of the porting staff time traveling to the future year of 1991, acquire Street Fighter II's joystick polling algorithm that was written for a faster 16-bit CPU, bring it back to 1988, and reimplement it on a slower 8-bit CPU from 1987.
@@Tempora158 Isn't the point of this video to apply hindsight in order to try to "save" the console?
@@Marc_Araujo Everything Sega Lord X mentioned in the video all involved making smarter decisions on things that actually existed at the time. Your "make Fighting Street good" suggestion involves methods and thinking that haven't even come into existence yet. Street Fighter II turned out the way it did because it was built upon the mechanics of Final Fight, and it also didn't exist when the Fighting Street port was being done.
My childhood best friend had the TG16 where I had the NES, SNES, and Genesis. Getting to experience that system along with the more popular ones was an absolute treat, and I'm so happy that I now have a Turbo of my own. :)
Where I live in Canada, one of the big problems for the TG16 was RadioShack was the only place that sold it and for an over inflated price compared to the Genesis (that you could buy anywhere) and even later the Super Nintendo! Had it been on NORMAL store shelves (which it was advertised in catalogues, but never seem to have inventory) for a modest price it might have sold better over here on the east coast.
Thank you for this, watching it now and feeling that exciting when I turned on the system for the first time. Great video!
"The Genesis has more buttons. A more powerful console should have more buttons" was what I remember thinking about the TG-16. That is what wrote it off in my young mind. (I realize that they both technically have the same number of buttons. I didn't say I was smart.)
In all seriousness, though, I think the only thing that would have saved the TG-16 in North America would have been if it launched a year earlier without the nonsense back-and-forth about the the redesign and marketing. And that would have required NEC having marketing sense, which they never did (even in Japan, I would add).
I like any video game console that has great gameplay, big sprites, sound and music that's good.
Well happy Turbo Tuesday to you !! Have a great day
Looking forward to this and I do wish switch would bring this back to the virtual console if it was possible. (Or the Switch online equivalent)
This is one of a few instances where I cannot disagree with a single thing SLX mentioned in a video.
"One of a few"?
@@OhKayEl yes
I also often disagree with things he says in videos. Especially when ranking games.
Them Neo-Geo ports ain't fittin on Hu-Cards. Some of the tiny puzzlers and platformers, sure. But the fighters and beatemups need the CD storage space and upgraded RAM cards. Then, would SNK be willing to enable all this competition for their own competing, Neo-Geo CD console? 🤔
Legendary Axe would've been a better pack in IMHO. That game was awesome!
These are such fun videos! I just bought a broken CoreGrafx last year and fixed it up and its been a wonderful little machine. I only have Galaga but I'm currently waiting on a Super HD System 3 I got last August and Im pretty excited! :)
Keith Courage was always a weird choice for a pack-in game since it was a localized version of a game based on a anime that never came out in the West.
The TG 16 (PC Engine) was an awesome system that was definitely the Dreamcast of its generation that deserved better and was a victim of poor management and marketing.
The TG16 was in an extremely tough spot with Sega America and Tom Kalinske doing *everything* right at the time. Using the power of hindsight I think there was simply no way for NEC to offer a better value at the same price, so I'd use my time machine to compete for a different market in a different price bracket instead. Their options as I see them were to keep the Japanese shell and drastically slash the price to $99 (or thereabouts) and position themselves as a more toylike affordable 16-bit platform, or go the opposite direction and redesign the shell to go all-in on CD-Rom as the $400 premium high-tech platform.
As much as hardcore gamers gushed over the PC Engine shell at the time (and even now), I think NEC America's research was probably more accurate than most of us would care to believe. The mass market would see that tiny little white plastic square and credit card games and conclude that, while cool, it MUST be less powerful than its larger, heavier competitors. That was just how electronics worked before computer chips took over and a lot of people hadn't caught on to the new normal yet. If you're sticking with the Japanese shell the easiest path forward would be embracing that and marketing as a lower-cost option that comes close enough to the big guys to be worth the tradeoff. There was still a market for new NES and Atari 2600 games into the early 90s, so that low-end market that's hesitant to upgrade to a new $200 box was very real at the time.
With the all-in CD option they'd skip HuCard entirely and publish Japanese HuCard games on CDs in North America, either with enhanced soundtracks / voiceover where warranted, or with multiple games on a single disc for lower-end titles. In 1989 this would also be many people's first CD player, so they'd also have a bit of a PS2+DVD strategy going on to justify the higher price by including that new music player that you were thinking of buying for a similar price anyway.
Either option is risky (and they're both probably undercutting manufacturing costs by about a hundred bucks), but they'd both give the system a personality and an obvious market strength for consumers to latch onto that the game library alone was never going to deliver.
let's do it!
@RGT85 wake up Nintendo boy, we got work to do!
I wasn't sure about these 'Let's Save' videos, but they are all in good fun & interesting. Thanks Sega Lord X
I imagine they sat down kids in a room with a one-way mirror (Simpsons style) and made them choose between the original PC Engine shell and the TG-16 redesign, and went for the latter because larger is better. Atari did precisely that to determine how large the Lynx should be, which is also largely made up of air, defeating the whole 'portable' thing. In hindsight it's amusing to see just how clueless marketers were back then.
And in the same Simpsons episode we learned that kids don´t know what they want at all.
Unfortunately, I don't see how the Turbografx would ever have been truly successful in the North America due to 2 major factors: the lack of true killer-app / next-gen software on the base unit compared to its competitors, and the overall cost of ownership once you factor in the CD add on. Having a significant chunk of the system's library only accessible via the CD add on really hurt any chances of mass adoption in the west compared to the SNES and Genesis, which while the Sega CD was a "nice to have" at the time, it wasn't required to really enjoy the system's overall library.
One thing I would have done differently with the TG-16 is release it as early as possible in North America. I'd have done a "soft launch" in the fall of '88 in the US to get its foot in the door as the first of the "16-Bit" systems, riding the coat tales of the NES's skyrocketing popularity, and start an advertising blitz during the holidays into '89 to get people buzzing about it, and then pushing as much software as readily possible for it in the 2nd half of '89 as the Genesis is getting ready to launch. While I still think it would have ended up a distant 3rd compared to the SNES and Genesis's sales, this likely would have helped give it a longer lifespan and a healthier library here in NA.
I fondly remember walking past a Radio Shack in a shopping mall during the early 90’s and seeing these things being liquidated.
Make a video on why the snes was labeled for toddlers 🍼👶
Is a radio shack like blockbuster May I ask?
@@gracekim1998its a mix of a small electronics store and electronic parts shop. They were really pushing the Turbo Grafx there and had it on display at every shop as you passed them in the shopping mall. Almost always there was people around it playing the console. They only sold Turbo Grafx and nothing else. Great times!
That where and when I got my tg16, radio shack when it was like $80+ tax .
Next up: Let’s save the PC-FX
It’s a single screen that says “no porn”
I remember wanting the tg16 over the genesis back in '89. My uncle surprised me with it for christmas that yr. I still remember all the games i had; keith courage, vigilante, blazing lazers, victory run, bloody wolf, splatter house, alien crush, china warrior and veigues tactical gladiator.
As I loved the previous 2 Let’s Save episodes, I can already predict that I will love this video haha 😁
I bought my pc engine from the virgin megastore in London around 1988. They were selling scart modded imported ones along with a ton of Japanese games. From memory the console was £225 and the games about £30 each. The pack in game was a japanese language only action rpg that I never managed to get very far in due to the walls of text. Spent hours playing bloody wolf, the game I bought along with the console.
I fully agree that the console needed 2 controller ports as standard, that was one of the only downsides of the machine.
It was an aesthetically beautiful machine, still one of my fav console designs.
Thanks, you really put your NEC on the line for us fans!
There was something about the Turbo Grafx-16 and I had to have it back in the day. Great memories on that system.
I have such a fantastic story about my adventures with the Turbografx. And some really bad decisions after it's run. Glad you gave it some attention.
I was the guy with the Tg 16 growing up.
me too.
I also was the only kid who had a TurboGrafx 16...
We should start a club? 😅
Imho the two times to strike would be early simultaneous with Japan launch to only compete against nes and sms, or release with Bonk which was a better system seller than Altered Beast on Genesis.
Turbografx-16 is absolutely the one that deserves love and no one can deny that!
Especially Tengai Makyou series, who was able to rival with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest in Japan.
It was an example of a great product that was let down by the people selling it.
Was the CD add-on available in '89? Imagine if they skipped HUcards all together and released the Duo straight off? Talk about a value proposition, getting a CD player for dad's hifi and cheaper CD media to keep prices low... It would have made the Genesis and SNES look like toys in comparison.
Correct, even in Japan, i think the PC Engine´s success was for the CD Rom System, not the Hu-Cards. If they launched the system with the included CD-Rom in NA they would had a head start against Sega and Nintendo.
I’m from NY blessed to see and still have every NTSC console and tons of games from 1980-Now
As an old man, I was fully there! TG16 & Genesis came out when I was in college. I got the TG16 first, then couldn't stand it and went back and bought the Genesis a week later lol. I can't tell you how blown away we were in my frat house with the TG16 especially with Blazing Lazers.. and even Keith Courage gave us that next-gen feel. I accumulated about 40 TG16 games and some imports before I lost interest in the console.
Few things:
1) Software was indeed key. As a consumer, the TG16 had a "slow decline" where it started out so awesome.. but then games just started coming out slower and seemingly less quality. After only 2 years (right before the SNES came out) I was really looking for any new releases on the system and the stuff I ended up getting here in the US were things like Bravoman or Psychosis which were underwhelming at best. It's such a shame so many good games never made it overseas here. Anyway result was for me, once the SNES came out.. I barely looked at my TG16 anymore as the games already seemed dated and flat.
2) The CD add-on was just too expensive and seemed sudden/forced. I balked at the price and the lack of software for it. I liked Ys.. but I had already played a bunch on SMS. Eventually when barely any games came out for it here, not buying it seemed like the smart choice. I wonder if Rondo came out here whether I would have more strongly considered it.. but, it did not.
3) I was so excited about Street Fighter 2.. since I was lucky to go to Japan often back then I bought it excitedly along with a 6 button pad. Only to find when I got back home.. that the controller wouldn't fit in the TG16 lol! There wasn't much info about this kind of stuff back then.. anyway since it turns out playing SF2 with 2 buttons sucked. I never played the game much at all.. and that controller went into storage where I finally broke it out only recently after decades of storage once I got a Duo off ebay ;p
When meeting with Electronic Arts, know in advance they ARE capable of producing outstanding software.
Interesting video, I like these thought experiments. That being said, I don't think your diversification of content would have grabbed me without some rpg attention.
The 1st console that I bought "myself" was the Genesis because Phantasy Star 2/3/4. The 2nd console that I bought was the PS1 because Final Fantasy 7/8/9/Tactics. The 3rd was the PS2 cause Final Fantasy 10 & 12...Guess I'm biased toward really good [mostly turn based] RPG's.
The NEC Turbografx-16 would have needed a killer RPG at that time(s) to compete for me. Either something really good & original, or an assortment of other [not exclusive to NEC] rpg stuff to pad the library.
Dragon Quest 1 & 2, Final Fantasy 1 [+anything else in the series as available] and Ultima IV [or even try for a license of Zelda 2 since it wasn't good anyway but still looks good on a resume for an IP to be included].
Oh yeah, 15:50 gotta have a good showing on Mortal Monday!
Besides the listed changes, I'd also have shipped it with the Shuttle pad so the controllers don't so closely resembled NES ones. Not for legal reasons as PC Engine used them in Japan without issue, but for consumer messaging that this platform isn't just a slight upgrade over what they already had.
I’m not saying I’m some expert on business, but I feel like many of the TG16’s problems in North America could have been prevented by avoiding their one major mistake: delaying the NA release to redesign the hardware. They had the jump on the Genesis, but that delay resulted in the TG16 coming out after the Genesis, stealing their thunder.
No one paid any attention to the TG16 when I was in high school, everyone had either a Genesis or SNES. But I got a Coregrafx Mini a couple years ago and it makes me wish I owned one back then. Lords of Thunder is now my favorite shmup ever.
I love the TurboGrafx, I bought a new old stock one here in the UK and I am still blown away by the games on it. Definitely an underrated console and a missed opportunity outside of Japan.
One change that I would've suggested would've been to release a redesign of the Turbografx-16 with the CD player add-on built into the console alongside, or shortly after, releasing the CD player add-on for the original Turbografx-16 model. That way, those who would've owned the older Turbografx-16 models would've found it cheaper to get the CD player add-on than a brand new version of the Turbografx-16 with the built-in CD player, while those who wouldn't've yet owned a Turbografx-16 could've opted to purchase the newer model of Turbografx-16, which, while possibly more expensive than the older model, would've been cheaper than purchasing both the older model and the CD player add-on.
I have a high regard for the TG-16; I sometimes wish as a teenager I had dismissed "popular opinion" and picked one up. But then I might not have had as much fun with my Genesis... anyway it's a great console. Thanks Lordster! SEEEEEEEEEGAAAAAAAAAA!
I had one of these as a kid, system, turbo booster, turbo tap, like 4 controllers and a decent amount of games. I only knew what this was cause my best friend's older brother borrowed one from his friend with bonk's adventure and I fell in love with it. Over the next year the owner of the local video rental place just randomly had one for sell and my mom got it for me for christmas. But that I think is why it failed....I lived in a small town, I was young and lived out in the sticks, we didnt have cable tv or internet at that time. Didnt go into town much so I was lucky if I got a video game magazine monthly. Just know one knew about them. Hell it wasnt until highschool I found another person that owned one which me and him made great friends cause we had someone to talk tg16 with finally lol. There was only one place locally that sold tg16 games and it was a goodyear tire shop, they had that little kiosk you could flip through and the game still had to be ordered.
I love this "let's save" series!
You should seriously do one for every console
(or at least, every console that didn't do very well lol)
That would have been a stellar start up for tg16!! I still love this system, and I always love the controllers, they feel great when you use them.
I was born in 1988 and my earliest memories of gaming harken back to 1992, so I had no idea the TG-16 even existed until years later -- just like the venerable Master System. Looking back at it, it was a pretty cool little device that I wish had done better out here.
Im a perfect world this is how all of this would have went down!
I missed the TG16 in its heyday. It wasn’t until about six years or so ago that I got my TG16, and that was the very first time I ever played one. It has quickly become one of my favorite consoles of the generation, with a ton of great games that are obscure, but mostly very good. I love it!
I completely agree, I love my TurboGrafx 16, first game I bought when I finally added the TurboGrafx 16 too my collection was the Iconic SPLATTER HOUSE
I would have released a combination CD and Supergrafx as the Turbo Duo, and as soon as it came out I would have lowered the original Core System to $99 with no game and one controller and begun marketing the Core System for new or younger players. Standalone CD systems would have been upgraded with as the Arcade ROM-ROM with the Arcade Card built-in and would have included many older HuCard games included on CD as pack-ins and possibly “special” versions of HuCard games re-released on CD with upgraded graphics and sound.
We had a TG-16 2.5 years before getting a Genesis. The longest 2.5 years of my life lol. No one else had one until this kid moved to our school in 6th grade and he had one. It was a shock. We ended up trading games and I played some awesome ones I had somehow missed like Splatterhouse and Bloody Wolf. Still got a Genesis a few months later tho lol.
I saw a TurboGraphx 16 display at Toys 'r' Us running "Keith Courage in Alpha Zone" when I was young. It blew me away with the colour, sound, and action. (and price.) Thankfully I wasn't hurting for fun games to play, but that game has crept into my dreams a few times over the years.
Oh man, Bonk as a pack-in is inspired. The only thing Bonk really needed that it didn't already have was familiarity/nostalgia.
Super Volleyball, I owned that for the Genesis! Pretty playable even for a non-sportsfan, with special moves and a couple silly animations.
Would really like this type of video for the Atari Jaguar. That system is underrated and deserved a better fate...
To save the Atari Jaguar would have really requiered a miracle or at least a heavy hardware redesign. But most likely, BOTH. 😆
i only know about this system 5 years ago i was one of those counties that missed out on this system Australia
Magician Lord on the turbo would have been a great move, getting SNK on board sooner would have been awesome
I strongly disagree on one point. Rather than pushing the TG16 release back, it should’ve been released much earlier. The US team admitted that they were so confident it would do well that they ended up slow walking it, doing the redesign and other stuff that ended up wasting time.
Imagine the TG16 came out in 1988, a year before the Genesis. The games at that point weren’t amazing, but they blew the socks off NES games. The Geneais may have never even gotten off the ground
Blazing lasers is my absolute favourite video game of all time and the TGFX16 my favourite non Nintendo console. It really deserved better as it was marketed so poorly. I got to buy one for next to nothing a few years after its initial release when Radio Shack was liquidating them for $50. The games always reminded me of what I would play on a PC rather than console or arcade games and that appealed more to me at the time.
Hardware wise, I would have like them to release the SuperGrapfx in the USA, and not the base TG16/PCE. I think the extra background layer and RAM would have given them a more 16-bit look to their graphics. Although I've seen some TG16/PCE games that would make you think they didn't have the limitation of 1 background layer. As you mentioned, it would have solved the RCA cable hookup issue as well. I agree about putting the 2nd controller port on the console, and keeping the system the small size of the PCE.
Extra RAM and a second background later is exactly what they did with the SuperGrafx, charging $400 (equivalent of) and then releasing 6 games before abandoning it.
The low RAM and only one background layer did kind of gimp the TG16. I remember seeing pics in the magazines and thinking "Wow! Some of these games look better than my Genesis stuff! Why is this not more popular?" Then, I finally played one (Legendary Axe, I think) as was like: "Wow! Why does this look so flat, like an NES game?" I didn't know what parallax was at the time but have grown to expect seeing the effect with 16-bit games, especially after witnessing games like Sonic take it to the next level.
Aaaah. This was great wishful thinking. Why couldn't they think like this back then!?😮💨
I don't know how NEC's finances must have been at the time, but it sounds to me that to execute a plan of that magnitude they would have had to shell out a lot, a lot of money. 🤑
I'm not sure Turbo could've ever succeeded in North America. Nintendo and Sega's brand presence was so strong by 1990, it feels like a stretch that (unlike today) there'd be a market for a third console option.
The thing about "saving" a retail product is that it often doesn't take much more to do it. In its lifetime the Turbo moved a couple million units in NA. You increase that even just a few more million and you get that hardware to a point where it's really cheap to produce and sell, changing its entire trajectory. 3rd place doesn't have to be an immediate failure. NEC had been making that hardware since 1987, it wouldn't have taken much more to get that market healthier.