That famous commercial

[hcf]

Yesterday I saw (once again) that famous commercial about the TurbografX-16... My English is very bad, but I understand something like "First, there was Atari... Then, there was Nintendo... NOOOW, the next generation in videogames, TurbografX-16, AAAAH, TurboGrafX-CD... Wide-wide videogames..." and then it says something like "two thousand times more memory"??

I know that the TurbografX-16 was revolutionary, and the CD add-on was impressive, but... what does that "2000 times more memory" mean? Is it speaking about RAM memory? Is it speaking about the MB capacity of the CD-ROM add-on? Comparing to which console? I have make some calculations comparing with the previous consoles (even the Atari 2600) and I don't understand that sentence. Maybe it is a hype? Or maybe I am misunderstanding this?

If anyone is interested, I ask this question because I am trying to expand the Turbografx scene in my country (Spain) where it is not very known... and I am trying to document myself to explain my friends the points in which our console was revolutionary in its time 

[Arkhan]

Its speaking about huge ass numbers that the general public doesnt understand, and used the whole OMG HUGE NUMBERS, method of selling

Thats all it was about back then.  Huge numbers = Better thing.

That was just one of those era's I guess!

corny ass commercial, lol

[hcf]

Thank you! I was begining to be disperated in my calculations, trying to get that "2000"...   

[SignOfZeta]

They are comparing the storage space of CDROM to...some sort of cartridge, any cartridge, the point in the same: the storage space of CDROM back then was basically infinite.

[hcf]

Yes, I did some calculations in that direction... maybe comparing a cartridge of 256k versus a CD of 512 MB, but I didn't find what console used that 256k limit. I think that Arkhan said a great true: that was a commercial, so it is not very important if the comparison is totally "exact". And yes, it seems that they are talking about the CD massive storage capacity, as you are saying. The word "memory" that they used is confusing...

[ccovell]

Considering the majority of NES games are 256K or less and the majority of US Hu-Cards are 384k or less, the "2000 times more memory" is accurate.  It was also the usual comment by the media about CD-ROM back in the '80s/early '90s.

[esteban]

Finally, the voice of reason:

Considering the majority of NES games are 256K or less and the majority of US Hu-Cards are 384k or less, the "2000 times more memory" is accurate.  It was also the usual comment by the media about CD-ROM back in the '80s/early '90s.

hcf, here is an example from U.S. print advertising:

"A TG-CD holds 4400 megabits of information. That's more than 2000 times more memory than a standard cartridge game."

[hcf]

Thank you to everybody who posted here. It seems clear now. I didn't think about that standard size of the cards (as I know that there are cards bigger than that), and of course I was not informed about that comment in the 80s. So, our console is really 2000 times more powerfull!! Long life to the TG-16!!!