TurboGrafx-16 reaches 25

[Davros]

I know bugger all about this console but I thought it would bring back some memories for some of you
Discuss....
Bit of trivia : Before launch they hosted a developer conference attended by about 30 devs/publishers.
They asked EA's team if it was up to the task of developing great CD-ROM games, EA took offense to that -- they kind of walked out of the meeting and said, 'How dare you question us?'"
What a bunch of Tw@ts

 

[Shortbread]

Bonk's Adventure and Splatterhouse... those were the days.

 

[Rangers]

I rented this...yes back then renting consoles was common (back in the likes of Blockbuster heyday). And I was too young/couldn't afford to buy these systems...

Anyways, had some graphics that blew my mind for the time...With me only coming from NES or arcades.

I remember Legendary Axe, Bonks, some sort of Dungeon crawler RPG thing that looked spiffy but seemed to have little depth...

I knew some guys that were playing Ultima VI (I think) on PC. Which blew my mind. I told them something like, NES was pretty cool. They started mocking the graphics...after that I craved a 16 bit system that could stand up to PC graphics...I thought the Dungeon game looked up there with Ultima on PC, even if it was far more shallow.

Ahh, the excitement of those days...

It always seemed to play a bit of 2nd fiddle to Genesis though, which seemed to be the more powerful system. And the one of the duo I ended up purchasing.

So that said I had limited actual playtime with the TG-16.

I'll always remember the time I was in the video store and some ornery guy started chastising the female clerk (who could have cared less) gesturing at the TG-16 section and asking "why do you even carry that crap?? It's not even 16 bit!"

System wars go back a long way.

 

[London Geezer]

Wasn't the TG16 more powerful than the Megadrive/Genesis?

I think we should have a massive retro console war fight about this.

 

[McHuj]

I got a Genesis, but then proceeded to beat Altered Beat in a day, so knowing that I wouldn't be able to get another game for months, I convinced my parents to return it and get a TG16 instead.

That turned out great.

Back then (at least in the US) the games were $60-70. Same price as now...

 

[Sonic]

My brother had one while growing up while I had a Master System then Genesis. While not as powerful as the Genesis, entirely debatable, it could hold its own....especially for having an 8-bit processor.

But the games, yes had some great experiences on the Turbografx. Splatterhouse was fun at such a young age. The Bonk series was amazing and I so wish someone would make a new game in the series for mobile. Air Zonk was cool.

And I absolutely can't forget Final Lap Twin. Just because of this thread you created I'm going to go back and play this game because I love it that much. A racing RPG at its finest at that era. Fun fun fun. Thank you for creating this thread. Might as well replay the Bonk games while I'm at it.

 

[Shortbread]

Wasn't the TG16 more powerful than the Megadrive/Genesis?

I think we should have a massive retro console war fight about this.

I think a more interesting subject would be to analyze the technology of yesterday... such as Nintendo's unique move of incorporating coprocessors (i.e. Super FX technology) into certain SNES cartridges. Improving the 2D/3D capabilities of SNES (the specific games that used them).

 

[nggamer]

Had a TTi Duo when it came out.. CD games (Gate/Lords of Thunder, Loom, Shape Shifter, Beyond Shadowgate, Y's I&II and some great Working Designs games). It was a pretty amazing experience at the time, I loved that console. I also love that I was able to pick some of those game back up on Wii Virtual console, since I sold off the duo and games a long time ago, in my 20's.

 

[Exophase]

Got on for my birthday in 1994 when it was marked down to $50 in Babbages. Though my family couldn't really afford fancier stuff, it was still nice compared to my NES. Even if I could only get what few games showed up at the used game shop.

It's a shame how badly the system was handled in America. Most of the best games were kept in Japan, despite many of them not requiring much of a localization effort. The promo video before the launch even showcased a bunch of them.

Really interesting how far the hardware was taken, seeing as how the design was very much an enhanced NES. And the CD-ROM add-on only gave it the extra storage, more RAM (a requirement w/o the cartridges, and the first models had way too little) and an ADPCM decoder. Compare with Sega CD that added a faster second CPU and a graphics chip. But the best PCE-CD games were still pretty impressive, even well into the 90s.

 

[Rangers]

Wasn't the TG16 more powerful than the Megadrive/Genesis?

I think we should have a massive retro console war fight about this.

Doesn't seem like it. The fanboy knock on TG-16 was it was an 8 bit CPU with 16 bit graphics, supposedly, thus it was not a true 16-bit system all the way like Genesis. And putting 16 in the name was therefore misleading labeling intended to trick people.

Anyways gamewise that I know of Genesis had better graphics. But I'm hardly claiming to be an expert.

Edit: Dang, forgot about the Hucards, those were neat. But, it did not get many 8 megabit and up games like Sega started getting, although I'm not sure if that was actually a Hucard limitation.

Off topic a bit to this, but anybody remember the megabit races? The first 8 megabit carts were astonishing, later it was pushed all the way to 40 megabits and over!

According to Wikipedia, TG-16 sales

Worldwide: 10 million[1]
United States: 2.5 million[1]

Edit: Was trying to google and came up with this thread, where I learned apparently TG-16 had weaker (some claim nonexistent) parallax scrolling than Genesis. It did seem to have more colors though, always imo a weakness of Genesis. http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?16635-Genesis-vs-TurboGrafx-Parallax-How-do-they-compare

 

[Blazkowicz]

The console may have been cared of badly in the US, but in Europe it was not even launched so we only heard of it in magazines. They carried game reviews (to taunt us?) and the system was a popular import but well, as a kid it was thus as unobtainable as a Neo Geo and I've never seen one. I know there's a City Hunter game on it.

 

[London Geezer]

Yeah in Italy and I guess the whole of Europe, the PC Engine attained a status of saintly, unreachable, holy grail of gaming goodness. All the magazines kept talking about it, not sure for what purpose since we didn't have it and never would, saying that - for example - the Street Fighter 2 port was better than on the Megadrive, this and that.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yeah in Italy and I guess the whole of Europe, the PC Engine attained a status of saintly, unreachable, holy grail of gaming goodness.

No kidding. Nobody I knew had one. Nobody I knew even knew somebody who knew somebody who had one. Nobody I knew had ever even seen it from a distance but everybody knew the PC Engine was the best thing since sliced bread The next machine with such a reputation was the NeoGeo.

 

[joker454]

I always thought the TG16 was overrated. Part of the problem was that they released it here 2 years late so it's hardware didn't impress as much as it could have, and many of the games never made it here either. It had some cool games like Blazing Lasers, but to me the Genesis was far better.

 

[McHuj]

In some aspects it was a head of it's time. It was the first with CDROM games, right?

Do you guys remember the portable, Turbo Express? Same home console games could play on the portable. It's funny in the Nintendo threads this comes up as a way for Nintendo to innovate. Unfortunately for NEC, the costs where prohibitive for it to be successful 25 years ago.

 

[Davros]

Why was it called the pc engine was it related to the pc in any way?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Why was it called the pc engine was it related to the pc in any way?

Nope, at it's core was a customised version of the 8-bit 65C02/6502 processor which had nothing in common with 80x86.

 

[Exophase]

Doesn't seem like it. The fanboy knock on TG-16 was it was an 8 bit CPU with 16 bit graphics, supposedly, thus it was not a true 16-bit system all the way like Genesis. And putting 16 in the name was therefore misleading labeling intended to trick people.

The bit wars were pretty silly anyway. Kind of like the MHz wars of the late 90s. What NEC did could be compared to AMD's performance ratings.

For a 65xx-derivative Hu6280 had a high clock speed, twice that of SNES while having similar (slightly worse) average cycle counts. Genesis's 68k meanwhile had a similar clock speed but much higher average cycle counts. But it could do 16-bit and even 32-bit arithmetic, and it could address memory much more easily. It (and SNES) also had much more RAM. So what was better really depended heavily on what you were trying to do. If your game had a lot of branchy code and referenced a lot of small values TG16 could be fastest.

Graphically, PCE only really had its color palette going for it vs Genesis (and uncommonly, some wider resolutions) That could make a pretty striking difference sometimes, but so could the extra layers, sprites, and effects in the other consoles.

Edit: Dang, forgot about the Hucards, those were neat. But, it did not get many 8 megabit and up games like Sega started getting, although I'm not sure if that was actually a Hucard limitation.

8 Mbit is addressable, for higher you need bank switching. The only game that used a bank switching cart was Street Fighter 2 which was 20 Mbit. The other consoles let you address more before you needed bank switching. On the other hand, the vast majority of NES games needed bank switching, so it wouldn't have necessarily been a big problem.

 

[Cyan]

Some lucky boys in here! :smile2: I've never seen an actual one. TurboGrafx is my most favourite name for a console ever, along with Neo Geo and Megadrive.

 

[nggamer]

Why was it called the pc engine was it related to the pc in any way?

Just like Nintendo Famicom "Family Computer" after the crash of the 80's, marketing people thought it was better to associate a device with computer technology, rather than a gaming toy. That was always my take at least.