1up.com: Saving the System - TurboGrafx-16

[DragonmasterDan]

Who knows for certain? It could have competed against the likes of the Sega CD version and stomp the piss out of it with more colors to display! We all know how much better looking the pce port of Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition compared to what the likes of the Genesis and the SNES had at the time, so why not considering Nintendo took the blood out of Mortal Kombat, changed the finishing moves and made it all wussified. We may never truly know..

By April of 1992 TTI was running the show, and they had a very limited budget and had narrowed their intended business plan to appealing to a niche audience. By the time TTI was running the show it was already too late for the Turbo to make a run at the other two big 16-bit consoles.

One other note, I suspect Mortal Kombat wouldn't have been nearly as popular if it were a Turbo exclusive.

[sheath]

I think that Mortal Kombat's influence on Genesis sales is almost entirely over stated.  But if it had come out on the Turbo without censorship and in at least as good form as the Genesis version I would bet it would have moved more systems than actually sold that year.  We really are talking about 1993 though, so we are in retro-fantasy land to think that a major third party title could be Turbo exclusive.

[SignOfZeta]

Mortal Kombat didn't come out in US arcades until 1992, by then it would have been too late.

Who knows for certain? It could have competed against the likes of the Sega CD version and stomp the piss out of it with more colors to display!

First off; Mortal Kombat is shit. I wouldn't want a TG-16 that was identified with that crap series.

Leaving that aside though, I really don't see a TG-16 ver of MK being all that great. It is a very atmospheric game and the TG-16 sound chip...while its pretty good at beeps and boops, it can't really do anything very "ambient". The SNES excels in this area, and frankly I think even the Genesis is more well equipped. Of course they could have put it on CD and had great music, but then you just wouldn't have enough RAM. Even the Sega CD one loads mid-fight for when the boss changes into other characters.

We all know how much better looking the pce port of Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition compared to what the likes of the Genesis and the SNES had at the time,

Yeah, maybe you know that. Most of us know that all three systems did about the same job. The biggest difference was the sound, and that's more of a preference thing. The most impressive thing about SFII' on PCE was just the fact that it ran at all, and held up so well in comparison to not only the MD and SFC versions but also the arcade board, which itself wasn't even developed until the PCE was a year old.

so why not considering Nintendo took the blood out of Mortal Kombat, changed the finishing moves and made it all wussified. We may never truly know..

Nintendo forcing censorship on the SNES version of MK mainly achieved one thing; it sold a lot of Genesis systems. This, combined with Sonic and EA Sports, put the Genesis on equal footing with Nintendo sales-wise, which is pretty amazing, honestly. In Japan, where nobody gave a f*ck about EA or MK, the Genesis barely even existed, easily a distant fourth place in sales and in appeal.

A PCE exclusive on MK would have cost serious money for TTI. MK was on Genesis, SNES, GB, GG, and Sega CD. In order for TTI to have exclusivity they would have had to shell out millions of dollars for it...and for what? One game? MKII was already in the pipe, and there is no way TTI could afford to keep it exclusive forever. Eventually the TG-16's lock on the system would have relented, just as Sega's did when all subsequent versions of MK, even the Nintendo ones, were reverted back to full on interactive snuff porn. The same thing would have happened; the best version of MKII would have been the SNES one, and TTI wouldn't have had the money to translate the few remaining games that were released after that.

Seriously, the TG-16 was doomed. It couldn't succeed in the US unless it somehow became something it wasn't (ie: something with a lot of MK and sports shit on it) and personally I would have no appreciation of. I'm not saying NES and TTI couldn't have done a better job than they did, they sure could have, but they would always be third place.

Another thing: Nintendo having a lock on third parties...this was not a factor. Maybe Aklaim and Midway, but nobody decent. Was that shit even in effect anymore? I though it was mainly a US-only, NES-only thing. I confess to not having much knowledge about that.

[spenoza]

http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/

I agree with this fellow, almost absolutely. The lack of tactile input, combined with input MASKING the damn display, which is giving you the information you are supposed to be reacting to, is really poor UI design. Then again, UI design is as much about what people want (or think they want) as it is about what works and is good for them. If you test a user interface convention and it materially saves people time and effort, but they don't like, you might as well scrap it unless you are in a position to make people use it, because if they don't like it they won't seek it out on their own.

[DragonmasterDan]

Another thing: Nintendo having a lock on third parties...this was not a factor. Maybe Aklaim and Midway, but nobody decent. Was that shit even in effect anymore? I though it was mainly a US-only, NES-only thing. I confess to not having much knowledge about that.

It was a US only thing for certain.

Nintendo imposed restrictions on how many titles third parties could produce, the turnaround time for games to be manufactured (since in the US Nintendo required all licensed games to be manufactured by Nintendo) and a had rules designed to prevent companies from publishing games on multiple systems. Example, Activision had a much harder time in the days of the NES getting carts produced in a timely fashion because Nintendo wanted to make an example of them for publishing games on the SMS and 7800. By 1992 Nintendo for anti-trust related reasons started to become more lax on these restrictions and a number of third parties started publishing for the Genesis. But by 1992 it was already too late for the Turbo in the US.

[KingDrool]

I agree with Zeta, for the most part. By the time the big fighting game craze came around, and those games (SFII and MK) were being released on consoles, Sega and Nintendo had already pulled away from the Turbo. TTi was formed just as the Duo was released, and I remember at the time having the distinct impression that they were already on the way out, despite my love for the Duo and the games that were out at the time.

NEC, IMO, basically had to have done things better from the very beginning. TTi had a nice marketing scheme, but by then it was too little too late. If NEC had been as aggressive from the get-go, and done a better job of getting big-name third-party publishers on board right away, the fate of the Turbo might have been, at best, a cozy second place.

[Arkhan]

Im glad we dont have MK on the Turbob.  That game f*cking sucks.

The real problem is they brought over some stupid shit.

JJ and Jeff shouldn't have come since we lose the Kato and Ken of it all

We didn't get all the shooters we should've got

and no HuCard RPGs, at all. 

[KingDrool]

Yeah, I never wept over the lack of MK back in the day. I wanted that bad ass Street Fighter 2, though! I had to settle for my shitty copy of "Fighting Street".

[DragonmasterDan]

Im glad we dont have MK on the Turbob.  That game f*cking sucks.

The real problem is they brought over some stupid shit.

JJ and Jeff shouldn't have come since we lose the Kato and Ken of it all

We didn't get all the shooters we should've got

and no HuCard RPGs, at all. 

It's not just what they brought over, it's that the Western developed games weren't going to impress anyone either.

[Arkhan]

who cares?  The best NES games weren't even made by Westerners.  Konami isn't round eye.

TTI should have just translated all the shooters and called it a day.

[DragonmasterDan]

who cares?  The best NES games weren't even made by Westerners.  Konami isn't round eye.

TTI should have just translated all the shooters and called it a day.

They weren't but people bought lots of terrible LJN games and they helped sell systems regardless of quality.

[Arkhan]

so what youre saying is we just needed a ton of shitty round-eye games, instead of just 2?

[spenoza]

Im glad we dont have MK on the Turbob.  That game f*cking sucks.

If MK had been released as a Turbo exclusive, reviewers and critics would have started focusing more on how crappy the play mechanics were and how frames of animation were missing and how if the game had been on the Gen or SNES it would have been much better, but since those consoles had a better game in SF2 it was no big loss.

We didn't get all the shooters we should've got

Shooters don't sell systems, unfortunately. I'm not sure I know of any shooters that were hot-selling titles.

and no HuCard RPGs, at all. 

I'm not convinced any of the HuCard RPGs released in Japan would've put up good competition for SNES or GEN RPGs.

[DragonmasterDan]

so what youre saying is we just needed a ton of shitty round-eye games, instead of just 2?

It wouldn't have hurt, licensed games sell.

[Necromancer]

TTI should have just translated all the shooters and called it a day.

Wouldn't have done much good, as we got many of the best shooties anyway.  If people won't buy a console to play Gate of Thunder, Lords of Thunder, Soldier Blade, and Blazing Lazers, they weren't going to hop on board for Nexzr and Spriggan.

so what youre saying is we just needed a ton of shitty round-eye games, instead of just 2?

They needed more 'shitty round-eye games' like Beyond Shadowgate, Order of the Griffon, Shadow of the Beast, Might & Magic III and Camp California.