Pc engine on par technically with snes / genesis ?

[FM-77]

Yeah, Legendary Axe II looks pretty nice. Definitely one of the nicest-looking PCE games I've seen, but it's not really "impressive."

[takashirose]

It depends what is "impressive."  For me when I booted up "Gate of Thunder" for the very first time, I thought, "WOW!"  They don't make this anymore.  they should have remade Lords of thunder as a Sega 32X CD game.  Now that would have been impressive.  It would have blown the original away.

[torgo]

Not really. The 32X's color palette "technically" was better than the Duo, but in reality the TG16 still blew it away graphically. I believe only one or 2 games ever used both processors, and most never used the Genesis hardware except for sound channels. The Lords of Thunder for the Sega CD didn't compare at all, and a 32X version wouldn't have been much better.

[takashirose]

If people knew how to use the 32X, it would have been good.  They did an arcade perfect Space Harrier on the 32X, but that game was already old by then.  I love the hard rock music on the Cd games for the TurboGrafx/Duo.  Regardless of graphics it's the music that always blows me away.  When I find a tune in a game that is memorable like in gate of Thunder, that means it's that good.  I love music.  You could have the best graphics, but if the music's bad, then all the fun is sucked out.  Imagine if gate of Thunder was techno.  Not the same.

[Joe Redifer]

I believe only one or 2 [32X] games ever used both processors, and most never used the Genesis hardware except for sound channels.

Are you kidding?  I think most 32X games used the 68000 as the main CPU and barely used the 32X at all.  This is because Sega sent out incomplete development kits for the 32X games, which didn't allow most companies to take much advantage of the unit.

[nodtveidt]

I was extremely impressed by the graphics in LA2 the first time I popped it into my TG. To that point, it had the best graphics of any game I'd played on any console. Granted, no game on the PCE will blow you away graphically these days...no game for ANY 16-bit console will.

[FM-77]

no game for ANY 16-bit console will.

For me it does. A nice-looking 16-bit game is much more impressive than a nice-looking PS2 game in my opinion. Donkey Kong Country 2 & 3 will never stop amazing me.

[takashirose]

A game like gate of Thunder could still blow me away.  I just have to look at it at a different perspective.

[malducci]

When I first played GOT, I was very impressed. My friend at the time who had a Sega CD immediately went out and bought a DUO after playing it. To this day he's a Duo fan. His favorite cartridge system is the Genesis, but his favorite CD system is the Duo - for 16bit era. I might catch some flak for this comment, but to me - the Sega Saturn was the next generation Duo/PCE-SCD. It has that Duo spirit.

 Back to Duo. GOT is pretty impressive in comparison to other titles on the system, but did not push the system to its limits. The load times are short, the graphics are great, the action is non-stop, each enemy/sprite has a good amount of frames, nice use of parallax scrolls, etc. BUT, Lords of Thunder is technically superior to GOT.

 For MegaDrive, I think the most impressive game for me was Gaiares - might be my fav shooter of all time. Gunstar heroes and ThunderForce4 are in the top list. Exranza had some impressive parts, but not overall. I wasn't impressed with Revenge of Shinobi - I perfer Ninja Spirit over it even though they are completely different games.

[Digi.k]

I'm actually pretty sure I read something about that years ago about pc engine owners selecting the saturn as their next gaming system..

I kinda think thats reflected on the software companies that went to produce/publish games on it.

Plus just like the pc engine the Saturn was also home to a lot of anime games.

[guyjin]

If people knew how to use the 32X, it would have been good.  They did an arcade perfect Space Harrier on the 32X, but that game was already old by then.  

The 32X space harrier (and the later saturn version) while good, are not arcade perfect.

The biggest difference I can think of is the  'bush bug', where harry does not collide with bushes on the ground like he should.

[Joe Redifer]

I am probably one of the biggest Space Harrier fans in the world.  The 32X version is close but not quite perfect.  The frame rate stutters and the game is masked off on the top and the bottom.  I notice no difference when Harrier runs into a bush though.  He still trips and says "ouch!", just like the arcade.  The Saturn version is arcade exact unless you get super anal and pick out things like "There are no coin slots on my Saturn and the arcade didn't have an options screen and you couldn't pause the arcade so therefore it is not exactly the same!"

[nodtveidt]

The Saturn version is arcade exact unless you get super anal and pick out things like "There are no coin slots on my Saturn and the arcade didn't have an options screen and you couldn't pause the arcade so therefore it is not exactly the same!"

Anyone who says such things needs to be hung by their coin finger to a broken Pac-Man machine.

[Digi.k]

haha I used to to be really dissapointed with the PCE version of Space Harrier not having the checkerboard effect on the ground..

but speaking of graphics I'm still amazed with magical chase and super star soldier

[Digi.k]

its sound isnt to far off from the genesis though snes murders them both in that area.

Murders?  I completely disagree.  I am a big fan of the TurboGrafx-style of sound (mostly just tone buzzes and whatnot, but still pleasant), but the Genesis has better sound capability as well as cleaner digitized sound reproduction.  There isn't anything on the TG-16 that sounds anywhere near as good as the music from Streets of Rage 1 and 2.  The SNES has fewer sound channels than the Genesis, but better hardware to make that sound.  It sounds better for the most part, but the SNES still sounds like a 16-bit cartridge.  The difference isn't mindblowing, and I really hate the overused SNES reverb effect.  This all is kind of subjective here.

I was listening to the music HES file of the pc engine version of Batman and I gotta say thats pretty amazing.. I just wished that Sunsoft made a better game and made more music tracks.. but I'm pretty sure you will be blown away with the music on this game too as well as Hudson's Soldier and Gunhed/blazing lazers games).