Poll- Are you a new or old PC Engine/TurboGrafx gamer?

[stinkoman]

I got mine back in 94 so I'm not sure where i fall in it. My older cousinet me and my brother borrow his for a year and and said we could just keep it. It had Bonk, Keith courage, Dungenon Explorer, and R-Type.

This is a true story. I remember going to Video Game Exchange if people remember those, looking for Bonks Revenge and other games. I remember seeing this stupid game with a witch on it thinking it was some game for a girl and quickly passing on it.

[Gentlegamer]

I've been retrogaming since 2002, starting with NES. I didn't know what Turbografx was until the Wii came out. I literally read the Virtual Console announcement and was like wth is a Turbografx? I downloaded a few games and got hooked. Starting in 2011 with the Genesis, and 2012 Atari 2600, I started branching out beyond Nintendo systems (I have every Nintendo system except for Virtual Boy). 2013 brought me an AV Famicom so I could rid myself of using half-donkey converters to play imports on my NES toaster, and 2014 introduced me to three "underdogs," an SMS via an adapter from Stone Age Gamer, an Atari 7800, and a Turbo Grafx-16 base model. One of my first purchases was the Everdrive, seeing how expensive TG-16 games were. I also recently bought an AV adapter from a dealer on Etsy. Very nice to finally get stereo sound output.

Late Bloomer but I have a modest pile of Turbochip games and am building my collection slowly. I joined mainly to read the "hidden" forums but I figure I'll post a few here.

tg-16 is a wonderful if often overlooked system!

Never heard of OBEY until the Wii? How old are you? And you must not have been on emulation and ROMZ sites.

[cr8zykuban0]

Ive heard of the obey sometime around 2006 from a friend who used to own one as a kid. Didnt get my own turbo until early 2013 and been happy obeying ever since! I got a duo r in mid 2014 so ive been late in the game but i realized i missed out on the good stuff for all these years!

[shawnji]

EDIT:  Deleted because I'm an idiot, forgot I posted this, and then posted a better summary further down in the thread.

[Dicer]

Saw it in a kisok in a store called "Child World" Basically a New England version of Toys R US, anyway Blazing Lazers was going and it SPOKE....I heard voice clear as day (in my mind anyway) I was hooked right then and there, needed to have it, sadly I didn't get it sometime later at a JC Penny outlet store, system and Legendary Axe for $99, twas a hell of a deal, and I was amazingly happy...

And there ya go.

[EmperorIng]

even ran across a demo unit running Sherlock Holmes in a mall once, but it failed to grab my interest.

Imagine that, even kids weren't fooled. Johnny Turbo backed the wrong horse.

[Koa Zo]

I'd seen the original US commercials on television, and this was at a time when I had income and was looking to purchase my very own console (had previously had a 5200 handed-down from my older brother)

A new strip-mall had opened nearby and it strangely (next to a grocery store and a Chuck E Cheese) had a "Wall to Wall Sound and Video" store, I think it may have been just called "The Wall" at that time.
I rode my bike up there one day to do some comparative shopping. The audio video store had demo displays of both the Genesis and TuboGrafx-16. A VHS tape reel had me excited for Blazing Lazers, but the playable demo unit featured Keith Courage. Sorry guys! I ended up buying a Genesis.

Luckily (and unexpectedly) within the following year an older kid in the neighborhood I never really hung out with suggested we temporarily trade consoles. Dungeon Explorer and Devils Crush were played for many hours, and I got to complete Dungeon Explorer with a friend.

It wasn't until around 2004 that I purchased a PC-Engine GT, and then a PC-Engine weeks apart from each other, and then soon after a Duo-R and things snowballed from there!
I remember how stunned I was at how small the PC-Engine was. And also how odd I felt that Galaga'88 was my favorite game even among some big name titles.

[ShadowKitty777]

I'd be interested in how many forum members first played the PC Engine/TurboGrafx after the era it was released.
 

Personally I played it around the time it was released and through the console's life cycle and I bought most of the games (all the big ones) back when they were first released too.
A massive part of my interest in the system is purley nostalgia of this time.

I didn't get to play turbo until psone era. I only knew about Nintendo and Sega when it came out.

[ShaneRC51]

When I was deep into Super Nintendo, a friend of mine from school invited me over to his house.  He was playing Exile on a TurboGrafx CD.  It was the first time I had ever heard actual voices being spoken in a video game.  From that moment, I was hooked.  Later that same year, the TurboDuo launched, and I got one.  Gate of Thunder and Lords of Thunder were my jam.

  I remember hating how small the CD library was, and being a broke highschool student, I couldn't afford to buy but one game a month if I was lucky.  To this day I still get pissed that I spent money on a game called Shape Shifter.  Damn I hated that game.

  When I joined the military right out of highschool, I got rid of all of my old games/systems.  I still kick myself for that.  I've been into emulators for the last few years, but I only recently picked up a Duo R to play on original hardware again...

[Stingray]

I picked my TG and CD addon respectively as they were released at Toys-R-Us.  I remember thinking a CD based game was the coolest damn thing.  After I got my drivers license I removed the CD player, picked up a tape deck adapter and it rode with me all the time I'm amazed I never broke it. Over time it got pushed aside by new stuff until recently.  The only issue I had was the usual stuck laser gear, but now all is good 

[Gentlegamer]

When I was deep into Super Nintendo, a friend of mine from school invited me over to his house.  He was playing Exile on a TurboGrafx CD.  It was the first time I had ever heard actual voices being spoken in a video game. 

There were voice samples all over SNES games. I guess you mean longer recorded narration and dialog.

[Ozzy_98]

When I was deep into Super Nintendo, a friend of mine from school invited me over to his house.  He was playing Exile on a TurboGrafx CD.  It was the first time I had ever heard actual voices being spoken in a video game. 

There were voice samples all over SNES games. I guess you mean longer recorded narration and dialog.

Or better quotes than Jago's "endokuken" that comes out as "Hey you puken?" or "electrocution!"

[elderbroom]

I was eager to get my TG16 at launch. Picked it up from Radio Shack (in Canada) with two additional launch titles.  Loved that system, talked two other buddies into getting one .. and my local video rental store into carrying games for rental (not sure that worked out well for them).  But then like most other consoles it eventually got sold at a yard sale. Assuming I was raising funds to build a gaming PC.  Anyway reacquired a TG16 just after graduating college (so 16 years ago).  It was only in the last 3 years that I started collecting heavily and grabbed a SuperGrafx, PC Engine Duo-R, PCE GT, and Turbo Express. So my jump into PC Engine games is fairly recent.

[retro junkie]

Got mine at a local Toys-R-Us back then. Had the Keith Courage pack-in and I purchased Bonk Adventures. Can't remember, not sure what shooters I grabbed, I just know I fell in love. Raiden, Deadmoon, Galaga 90, Aero Blasters, I think those were my first. And when the time came that I desired the CD add on, I ordered it out of the back of a video game magazine, no internet back then. The store was sold out of the CD add on, so they sent me the Turbo Duo as a replacement, $150. Going price was $299 back then. 

First of this year I finally picked up a PC Engine. Fell in love again.

[shawnji]

I didn't get a PC Engine until 2009 after I discovered Ys I&II.  I later sold it before I left Japan in December of 2013, and didn't get a new Duo-R until mid-2014.  Now I'm steadily building my collection back up and repurchasing some of the games I had before I left.  Most frustrating is that I found the Cosmic Fantasy and Valis Visual Collections at a local shop in Tochigi for what amounted to about $3, but I had to sell them off because of my sudden return to the US, along with several other things I regret parting with.

That wasn't the first time I'd encountered the technology, though.  When I was around nine or ten years old there was a demo unit at a Radio Shack or some other place in a local mall.  It was running Sherlock Holmes, which I messed with for a minute before my small, child-sized brain determined that it sucked.  I wish they had actually put something decent in it, as I might have actually started looking into it more.  I did briefly try to get a rip of Dracula X I found online to work after I learned about it, but I couldn't get it to work for whatever reason and gave up without knowing anything about the other titles on the system.  Of course, it didn't help that the only gaming mags I ever read were Nintendo Power and PSM (Anyone remember Howard & NESter and Banzai Chibi-chan?).

I saw the PC Engine at retro stores the first time when I was in Japan as an exchange student back in 2003.  It was at a retro store around Akihabara and I remember playing Youkai Dochuuki and being disinterested yet again.  I was more interested in anime on laserdisc and the Sega Saturn / Dreamcast libraries at the time.

My first system was an Atari 2600, and then I got an NES not too much later.  I've held onto my original NES all these years, actually. I even kept the old box and all the packaging materials, so you can tell it was definitely my first love when it came to gaming.  That said, I still remember my first reaction to playing Ys I&II when I finally got the chance.  It was something like, "Why the hell was I playing NES when I could have been playing THIS!" XD