"TurboGrafx-16 at 25: Remembering the Little PC Engine That Could"

[Gentlegamer]

Jeremy Parrish has a decent retrospective marking the 25th anniversary of the OBEY.

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/turbografx-16-at-25-remembering-the-little-pc-engine-that-could

Even though it offered a remarkably diverse lineup by the end of 1989, ranging from brawlers to shooters to strategy games, the TurboGrafx library simply didn't connect with American gamers the way Nintendo and Sega's games did. NEC leaned heavily on Japanese-developed games from Hudson and partners like Namco and Atlus; fewer than 20 of TurboGrafx-16's official U.S. releases came from Western studios. The U.S. TurboGrafx-16 HuCard library never even made it to 100 releases, whereas Japanese fans saw more than 300.

The numbers look even grimmer when you factor in CD-based games, of which less than 50 official releases came to America. Japanese consumers, however, had more than 400 CD releases to choose among. In that light, the U.S. market's failure to adopt the Turbo CD ultimately proved to be the greatest limiting factor for the system's viability. Official CD-ROM releases continued to appear in Japan until 1997, well after the advent of the succeeding generation of consoles; as of 1993, however, the platform was effectively dead in the U.S. The one game to see U.S. publication in 1994, Dynastic Hero, was produced in such small numbers that it now commands prices upwards of $1000. 

[420GOAT]

i remember it was the price, thats why none of friends bought it.

[galam]

parrish is fantastic. i buy all of his gamespite books.

[Desh]

Thanks for the link!  Cool article.

[Necromancer]

Poor Dead of the Brain, forgotten again.

[pc_kwajalein]

I enjoyed the article, but groaned every time the author went out of his way to emphasize that the PCE was not a "true 16-bit" system and that it "doesn't hold a candle" technologically to other 16-bit consoles.

That bothered me as well. The article was a good read, but damn it to hell, those bits just rubbed me wrong entirely.

When old gamers wax rhapsodic about the 16-bit console wars, they're really talking about the conflict between Nintendo's Super NES and the Sega Genesis. ... If Hudson and NEC's TurboGrafx-16 enters these console war conversations at all, it's strictly to serve as a footnote or distraction.

(shouts unintelligibly @ the Genny and SNES on the shelf)

[Necromancer]

Do not deny the truth, null.  You know the Intellivision is technologically superior to the PCE.

[DragonmasterDan]

Poor Dead of the Brain, forgotten again.

As was the European TurboGrafx

[bonoedgey]

very interesting read. Thanks for sharing

[munchiaz]

A good read, but i wished it would have highlighted more of what makes the turbo great.

[technozombie]

When I read the part about the SNES displaying more colors I was a bit confused, then I realized he must be talking about size of color palette rather number of colors shown on screen at one time.

[mrhaboobi]

but we did get porn island girls.. though i never knew if they were us or not seeing as they turn up in JP all the time

[Mathius]

Parish is a cool dude, but I think he undersells the CD-ROM unit's place at that time. Calling the Super and Arcade cards "minor" upgrades is one. I think the Super CD-ROM2 was the reason the console was as successful as it was in Japan.

[NightWolve]

The "little PC Engine that could..." Indeed, that's how I thought of it and that's kind of how I came to prefer the Japanese titling of the system over the US [TurboGrafx-16].