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PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16 Architecture

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111 pointsmarkus_zhang32 comments

The TurboGrafx and the Sega Master System were both hurt by terrible, terrible package artwork.

I was googling some examples but I see someone else has already written an interesting article on this very topic - http://timewarpgamer.com/features/tg16_box_art_disparity.htm...

Why didn't they just use the Japanese artwork? As a kid, the TG-16 looked amateurish to me because of the box art.

I'd like to know this myself.

Sega of America was really tiny at the time. I wonder if they just didn't have the resources to do the little bit of localization that would have been needed to reuse the Japanese box art. So maybe somebody just got their cousin who could kinda draw to sketch a few things on grid paper, and boom, done.

The reason was most likely because they justified their existence (and funding from the parent company) by saying there was a need to adapt the artwork to the tastes of the local market. That may or may not have been true. The reality, however, was that a lot of the artists they contracted with had tight deadlines and were not well-informed about the games they were making cover art for.

There was an interview somewhere with lots of the street fighter 2 team, including marketers in America, the snes Japanese box art is really cool the USA and euro is awful. They felt that the manga style jap art work would put USA kids off. These days kids are used to manga style art, back then they wouldn't have been. I'm assuming similar reasons apply to pc engine and master system

I used to scour the list of screenshots on the various boxes, and the ones that came on the back of those VHS size game boxes, the plastic ones you could cut onions with. That is how I found out about Vectorman, a game which to this day, I still wonder who picked the golden cartridge that was the winner of that contest they had where you had to beat the game to see if you got the right cartridge. Golden Axe and I think Altered Beast were also games I found this way.

I have a Turbo Graphics and had the Turbo Express Portable (blew it out with a variable voltage adapter accidentally set too high... Still have the TV tuner though). I blame the quality of games themselves, not the art work.

Aside from the slight novelty of Bonks Adventure or hype of R-type, the games we played on the TG16 were pretty generic platformers, side scrollers, shooters or adventure games. They just didn't have the library to compete with the NES. Walking down the video game aisle of Toys R Us you'd see 20 TG16 games and what felt like 100 NES games. I have no memory of great game play from the TG16 and I don't even think we tried beating Bonks adventure, let alone care about Keith Courage, Splatterhouse or a lame racing game, Monaco something I think. Maybe it had good games, but we never crossed paths with them.

The TurboExpress was really ahead of its time. In the same era when Nintendo and Sega had portable consoles that played smaller, less detailed games built just for their portable systems, NEC's handheld could play the same full-sized games as its home console. And anecdotally, it wasn't much more of a battery eater than the Game Gear.

The express was an awesome little system and the fact that it played the same games as the console was a great idea. The TV tuner really enhanced it and featured two 3.5mm jacks: external antenna and AV input. You could hook a VCR, cable box or other console to your turbo express and use it as a tiny video monitor. I distinctly remember hooking my NES to it and playing SMB 3 for a few hours while my parents watched a movie on TV.

If you didn't like shmups, it was not the right system for you, and the shmups were very close to their arcade counterparts too. There were still some great games though, off the top of my head, Splatterhouse, Devil's Crush, Neutopia 2, Ys, Cadash (which was better than the Genesis port!). Most of the classics weren't brought over from Japan, though (and you couldn't play them on an American system).

Agree. There was almost no RPG's or puzzle games.

However - the Japanese library was significantly larger. I would recommend buying an everdrive or similar which supports Japanese ROM's and exploring that catalog. The Japanese catalog is massive.

Welcome to marketing... on the one hand you do need local offices to get a hand on distribution etc, on the other somebody shows up to work and tells you that magical girls as the theme of a puzzle game in America is no good so now you're putting Yoshi in.

I think localization work tends to be a full package deal (because sometimes it _is_ a good idea to tweak stuff) but it means you're up to the nuances of whatever team got built up. Especially given that the late 80s were all about trying to not end up like Atari & co.

Loved my TG-16. Bomberman with the five controller turbotap is still a tough experience to beat.

Military Madness is also an underrated example of turn-based strategy. Granted, the computer would just outright cheat in places, but it was a very fun game.

I feel like it has this sweet spot where the games feel fast like on the NES (unlike the SNES or Genesis which can feel clunky) but are more sophisticated than the NES I’m also a big fan and really enjoy the pc-engine mini.

Sonic games feel you cluncky ?

There are times in Sonic games with a lot of sprites on the screen (e.g., when you get attacked and drop 100 rings) where the game temporarily slows to a crawl.

sonic is extremely clunky, for a game that is supposed to be about going fast the responsiveness of the title character is a bit scuffed.

Mario surprisingly is actually a much faster and responsive character and the gameplay feels much better for it.

Not sure what Sonic you played, but Sonic 1, 2, 3, and Sonic & Knuckles were widely heralded for their smoothness when they came out on Genesis in the early ‘90s.

It is the physics, I think, sonic(1, 2, 3) is all the time being stopped, or slowed, or jumps weird.

In all honesty sonic movement is pretty good, my take is exaggerated in order to compare it to mario, a game,I feel, that plays and flows slightly better than sonic(a surprisingly slow game despite the main characters name). That being said, younger me played the hell out of both of them.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fJosaT1sCfs

Might be noticing key frame animation in 8 bit games. It can have a really nice subtle effect.

I got the TG-16 with the CD for Christmas one year, and a copy of Cosmic Fantasy II.

That was probably the first RPG I beat on my own with no help from anyone else.

Wish I still had them as the console now sells for $1000 or more, but I replayed the game on an emulator not too long ago and it really didn't stand the test of time.

I also had Lunar Silver Star Story and Popful Mail for the SegaCD, those were great games and have stood the test of time.

My friend got the CD-ROM and we played Fighting Street (aka Street Fighter I) at his home so we didn't have to ride our bikes to the arcade and pump the game full of quarters. Memories.

If only the turbografx version was able to meet RF requirements without nearly doubling the size of the console. Took a beautiful design and made it totally unattractive.

The Japanese PC Engine Shuttle and NEC's follow up SuperGrafx console are two of my favorite console designs along with the PC Engine.

Reading this collection of console breakdowns I saw SMS had region locking so I looked up the Megadrive. When I was a kid I had a Japaneese Megadrive in Europe. I had this Japan exclusive space shooter game bough in France because they shared secam with Japan and I borrowed it out to a store in exchange for one other cartridge of my choice in return = I could play any and all games for as long as the japaneese game was in demand from kids in my hometown.

So that cart could be pushed into a european Megadrive (but not the other way around as easily the corners where half circle vs. quarter circle and the Japaneese Megadrive had a plastic latch that I removed to be able to use European carts without friction) but the version checking is something I never saw in those years. All games worked on all machines.

Region-locking was optional on Mega Drive cartridges, meaning publishers could choose whether or not to include it on their games. That's why so many Mega Drive games are region free. Sega started to implement it after a certain point on games they published. It could be bypassed with some kind of pass through attachment.

Do you know when Sega started using it? I traded my Megadrive for an old Atari 800XL with a diskdrive and Basic book! :D

Honestly the Atari was way better because it had a keyboard and you could program it!

So my whole retro hardware history (with trades):

  1986 C64C -> 1987 SMS -> 1993 Gameboy
  1989 Megadrive -> 1992 Atari 800XL

  1995 Mac Classic!?
  1997 Sun Solaris (at uni.)

20 year break using mainly PC and Raspberry

  2017 C64 (with RR-Net and Nunchuck64)
  2022 Amiga 1200

I have promised myself to stop hoarding devices now. :P

Looking back the sadest part is how most kids never got to learn assembly on their devices back then, even if we wanted to the barrier was too high without cartridges, internet and interested parents!

I coded basic on both my C64C and Atari 800XL but I always knew it was too slow.

Games started having region checks around 1992, although it isn't consistent which ones do and don't have it.

Japan used NTSC, not SECAM. Are you sure you weren't using a multisystem TV or that your MD wasn't modded for SECAM?

Probably RGB signals over SCART?

All I know is France imported Japaneese consoles because all their TVs had SCART in 1989, while Sweden got SCART a little later and never imported anything.

Possibly, but then you have the issue of refresh rates to deal with. That said, Japan has a very odd electrical grid. Or rather it has _two_ grids, with one in the west running at 60Hz and the other in the east running at 50Hz.

SCART didn't really see much adoption in Japan, and they even had their own incompatible variation in it - same connectors, different pinout - for reasons, but if you had a suitable cable, that wouldn't matter as the signals were the same, just in different places. I'm guessing the grey importers would substitute the Japanese A/V cable with something that would work in Europe.

It's somewhat surprising to see a 6502-like CPU in a gaming console from 1987, but, as a 6502 fan, I find it fantastic!

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