spreading tg16 like a virus

[escarioth]

I always though since the old days that a TG16 could step up to nintendo and sega back then.
Sadly, so many people never even heard about this game console... its quite surprising. I dont know about you guys from diferent places and countrys, but at my place.. i guess we were'nt that many. Only met 5 people so far...  (face to face)

And now, years later. When i find someone crazy about nintendo & sega....
without a TG16/duo. the fun really start.

The look on their face when i make them play bonk, legendary axe, castlevania or lord of thunder. They totally freak out and weeks later have a TG16 at their home. Makes me wonder how things would be now if many more people would have fell in love with it sooner.

[vestcoat]

Makes me wonder how things would be now if many more people would have fell in love with it sooner.

It wouldn't have made any difference because game quality wasn't a big motivator for mainstream gamers back then (and now). Gamers wanted hype. They wanted shock and awe. Mega power. Mode 7. Blast processing. Whatever promised to be the most cutting edge technology so they could bedazzle their friends. Whatever had the biggest mascot franchise. They wanted whatever their friends wanted and they wanted to own it first and bask in envy. They didn't want a weird underdog system to introduce to their friends, they wanted what their friends had seen on TV and were drooling over. They wanted to walk into school after christmas break and tell everyone that they owned the new Nintendo, or Street Fighter 2, or whatever. They wanted to be better than their friends at all of the popular games.

These days it's kind of the opposite. Mainstream gamers want to impress their aging Gen X and Millennial peers with obscurity, not popularity. Hidden gems, not blockbusters. Campy retro graphics. Nostalgia instead of state of the art. Collection size over gaming prowess.

Game quality has always taken a back seat to petty bullshit.

[escarioth]

Yeah but the cd Games were very impressives for the time dont you think ?
i read some infos in books relating to the NEC against nintendo back in japan.
And pc engine was scaring the shit out of Hiroshi Yamauchi. but ..well is this really true ? i can't say.

And when you look at games like YS or even gate/lord of thunder and some others...i guess the
"wow" effect was there in some games..... oh well

but i understand what you mean, back in the old days it was a diferent way of thinking

[clackattack]

Ya it seems like the ad campaigns back then were fashioned around promoting the titles and names instead of the hardware itself. That piled on top of the fact that gaming was more of an underground following at the time, and that kids had to leave the decision making to mom and dad, big names and franchises always came in for the win. And dont forget, when the Turbografx dropped over here in the states, it cost twice as much as any of its competitor's console did.   

[Necromancer]

And dont forget, when the Turbografx dropped over here in the states, it cost twice as much as any of its competitor's console did.   

False.  It was $200 at launch, $10 more than the Genesis.

[escarioth]

I remember here in quebec , we had only a tv spot to promote the console...
and Radio shack 

[o.pwuaioc]

It wouldn't have made any difference because game quality wasn't a big motivator for mainstream gamers back then (and now). Gamers wanted hype. They wanted shock and awe. Mega power. Mode 7. Blast processing. Whatever promised to be the most cutting edge technology so they could bedazzle their friends. Whatever had the biggest mascot franchise. They wanted whatever their friends wanted and they wanted to own it first and bask in envy. They didn't want a weird underdog system to introduce to their friends, they wanted what their friends had seen on TV and were drooling over.

I'm not sure that's exactly true. The popular games thing, sure, though that's still largely true. But the ad stuff? Many mascots died, and the reason Sega's and Nintendo's were so popular was because the games they in which they were featured were actually good. Sega may have touted "Blast Processing" and Nintendo their "mode 7", but more than anything, they touted their games. I think that's why the Jaguar and 32X never bothered to get off the ground. Yeah, they were the "new, cool technology!" but they had f*ck-all for games. There is a grand total of five 32X games I own/want to own, and maybe 5 for the Jaguar, which is so little, a Jaguar I will never get. (And that sucks, too, because the classic Jaguar is my dream car.)

It's really just the combination of good advertising and great games. I think the tech factor played into it very little (except perhaps in a few vocal corners).

[FiftyQuid]

I remember here in quebec , we had only a tv spot to promote the console...
and Radio shack 

This is true, but back then was when Radio Shack actually had decent shit.  You can't walk into a local Radio Shack The Source in Canada now and find anything you need that you couldn't get somewhere else for $100 cheaper.  Two years ago I walked into The Source and asked the salesperson for flux.  He looked at me like my cock was hanging out of my pants.  First I had to tell him what flux was, then I had to tell him it was used for soldering.  Then he finally showed me were the soldering 'section' was.  1 iron, bundled with 3 inches of solder, and a desolder for $40. 

I left and never went back.  My point being, back then Radio Shack had cool and unique items.  Now they are just a carbon copy of every other garbage store, at least in Canada.

[Black Tiger]

Ya it seems like the ad campaigns back then were fashioned around promoting the titles and names instead of the hardware itself. That piled on top of the fact that gaming was more of an underground following at the time, and that kids had to leave the decision making to mom and dad, big names and franchises always came in for the win. And dont forget, when the Turbografx dropped over here in the states, it cost twice as much as any of its competitor's console did.

I'm always curious where people hear this kind of random misinformation.

Like how the Turbo-CD is dismissed by revisionist historians/Nintendolots as a "$400 mistake", when in reality a TG-16 + Turbo-CD
cost as much as a SNES when it launched.

[Medic_wheat]

I think the reason we are seeing more people with a TG-16 or quickly picking one up now a days is:

A)  we are mostly in our 30s and have a little disposable income

B)  the TG-16 is still in that gray zone of collectability before MASSIVE overcharging for games and systems. Tgis seems to be going tits up as general knowledge and increase in interest have made some games become silly expensive.

C)  the internet has made finding games and systems easyer then what most would ever hope to find locally.

[clackattack]

I definately remember Electronics Boutique in my town advertising the TG16 for $299.99 when they got them in... the more I think about it tho, it may have been a bundle deal. EB used to like doing bundles with consoles.

Ill NEVER Forget my dreamcast bundle I bought from them for $69.99... came with a second OEM controller and any game of my choice!

[escarioth]

I left and never went back.  My point being, back then Radio Shack had cool and unique items.  Now they are just a carbon copy of every other garbage store, at least in Canada.

same here... i was going there much more before they called themselves "la source"

[seieienbu]

My TG16 was a gift so I don't know how much it cost, but I seem to recall my Turbo CD costing $199 from McDuff Electronics when I got it.  Assuming $190 for a Turbo, then it + the CD add-on would cost almost $400...

[schweaty]

The reason TG-16 failed in NA was that it came out too damn late.  If it had come out here the same time it came out in Japan (1987 instead of 1989) they would have blown away anything else in the market at the time.  Hudson Soft could have established itself in 1987/88 as THE console to have.  A strong customer base could have set them up for years to come just like it did in Japan.  Unfortunately, Japan was not a large enough market to establish themselves on the same footing internationally as Nintendo. 

Just think of all the the third party software support if they had usurped Nintendo in 1987.   By 1989 when the Sega Genesis came along they could have overcame their hardware deficiencies with the CD drive and Supergrafx but by then, it was really too late.  Unfortunately, they waited until 1989 (when it was beginning to become obsolete technology), marketed it poorly, and never really committed to the NA market.  It was doomed from the start.

[KingDrool]

I actually wound up getting the TurboGrafx-16 because at the store I bought it, it was cheaper than the Genesis. My Dad and I brought the Genesis up to the counter, and it rang up at like $230 or something. My Dad asked if I'd mind getting "that other one" instead, and I said sure. Great choice!

Regarding the why and why not of its failure, that's been debated here for years. My answer is always the same: software and distribution. The TG16 had some great games, yeah. But Nintendo had a lock on third parties, and Sega had the sports thing down pat, along with their killer first party lineup. And, as the Genesis picked up steam, the third party issue went away. Of course, the TG16 was dead in the water by then. Further, they didn't bring enough great games from Japan. And secondly, I grew up in a small town and there wasn't a store within a 2-3 hour radius that carried Turbo games. We had WalMart, Radio Shack, KB Toys...but not one of them carried Turbo games. Luckily, my step-dad was a truck driver, so I'd send him off with a list of games, and he'd stop at Toys R' Us while out on his route. Beyond that, I was f*cked. I knew of one other kid in my town who had a Turbografx. That's it.