Where was tg16 popular?

[SignOfZeta]

Nowhere. That's why it almost died but TTI rebranded everything and died a couple years later instead. Sure, TRU and EB in my town had games in stock, but you don't need to sell a single copy of anything to pull that off. It's about making deals with stores. No sales are required to arrange these deals. In the same way that everyone has a Kinect every TRU had a copy of Aeroblasters. In my town my brother and I were the only TG people I knew. I knew a guy with a Neo but no TG16. As long as your town had a rich a$$hole in it in 1990 you'd find him with a Neo. The TG was never top shelf enough to attract those guys, not fun enough looking for the kids, and only toward the end was it so cheap that parents might buy it for that reason.

[_joshuaTurbo]

Places like TurboFest and these forums.

[Arkhan]

It was apparently popular in Ohio, given that Me, OldMan, Fragmare, Eagenduder, Spenoza, and like 5 other people are all from Ohio.

lol

[glazball]

Like DragonmasterDan said, it does kind of depend on when.  I'd say retail-wise, the TG was highly visible here in Texas at launch.  Our local mall had a McDuff Electronics that prominently promoted the Turbo.  They always had a big TV running Keith Courage.  Montgomery Ward had a big selection too early on.  I remember seeing consoles and accessories like TurboBoosters there.

Sadly though, I only had 1 friend that had one (and he was the spoiled kid that had ALL game consoles.)  Most of my TurboTime back then came from my cousin who rented the TG-16 console at a mom & pop video store by his house.  He must have rented that thing every week and we played the hell out of Blazing Lazers, Splatterhouse and Alien Crush.

After the initial orange label games were out a while and after the Genesis got so popular, the Turbo just disappeared.

[xelement5x]

I grew up in northern IL area, not in Chicago or the suburbs, and I remember it being pretty well known when I was younger.  Oddly though, I didn't really ever start playing it until I left the state

[csgx1]

Not unpopular in the SF bay area - I knew a few kids who had it.

Growing up in the SF Bay Area I knew only one friend that owned a Turbografx and another person that owned a PC Engine.  Turbo games and systems were easy to find in most stores but it seemed unpopular among the people I knew. 

I never heard of anyone buying a new Turbo Duo or TGCD around my area.  When the Turbo Duo was on clearance for $99 around 1995, a few of my friends talked about how cheap it was but none of them bought it or even cared at that point. 

[exodus]

Well, one kid in my elementary school had one, an older kid whose house I went to sometimes had one, then when I got to middleschool two kids had them, and my class was real small, so it seemed like I ran into them pretty frequently. but it's all a pretty random crapshoot, and this is all anecdotal evidence anyway.

(like zeta said, ultimately it wasn't truly popular much of anywhere)

[SignOfZeta]

It was apparently popular in Ohio, given that Me, OldMan, Fragmare, Eagenduder, Spenoza, and like 5 other people are all from Ohio.

lol

This forum, and Amercian fandom in general has a ridiculously significant Midwest/BFE presence. I'm in Michigan, the MGS is in Wi, we have people here from states I've never actually met anyone from in my life just because the odds are so low. By having just one guy in Alaska on such a small forum the odds are thrown off. I'm not sure ever ever met an Alaskan. I've met hundreds of people from NJ or CA.

Looking at a population density map alone it makes no sense. My theory is that people in the Midwest, too broke to afford anything and living so far from civilization, archive an overdeveloped state of fandom. How many people here "always wanted one back in the day?" The vast majority it seems. But if your family lived in major cities and had the increased income and access to everything that comes with, you maybe would have developed normally and gotten bored with PC Engine the same time everyone in Tokyo did. You'd be playing PS4 now instead, or maybe even living a more interesting thing than that.

[Bonknuts]

In the small city of Tucson, 100 miles from the southern Mexican/American border, it was fairly popular. I knew of quite a few people that had it or played it (even made friends with strangers in high school because of the common interest of having a TG16). A lot of the stores carried TG16 stuff; Best, Toys R US, PlayWorld, Montgomery Wards, and others as well as most video game stores. Though by the time the Duo arrived, it was mostly Toy R US and Babbages that carried the CD titles. It was fairly common to find TG16 stuffs in the wild here up until 2008 (two popular used stores usually had TG16/CD or PCE stuff on the shelves). I even bought a Supergrafx game in the wild. My friend bought Dracula X back in 2005 in the wild, along with Cotton. I picked up Macross 2036 and a few other PCE CD games from the same used stuff place.

[nopepper]

I grew up in Puerto Rico and although my circle of friends were all into video games, not a single person had a Turbo. It did, however, have a sizable retail presence in big stores such as Toys R Us, back when they had those cool display cards in the aisles. Being a nerd since I was a kid, I was fully aware of all the games in the Turbo library, thanks to EGM and Gamepro, but like the majority of middle class America, could not afford but one system at a time.

I do remember seeing a couple of kids at restaurants, shopping malls, etc., hauling around their Turbo Expresses. They always had the look of rich spoiled brats to me...

Interestingly enough, the Sega Master System was much bigger back home than the Turbo ever was. Not as big as the NES mind you, but a pretty sizable minority of kids I knew owned one.

[ccovell]

In Canada, many department stores, computer stores (Compucentre, etc.) and of course Radio Shack carried the Turbo.  During trips to the U.S. I found decent Turbo selections at Software Etc., Target, KayBee, etc in Seattle and Bellingham, WA.

[Idblbruno]

Where I grew up which isn't exactly a small town all I can remember is nintendo and sega.  To be entirely honest I think my cousin had a sega Saturn and another cousin had a sega cd.  Those were about as obscure as I ever saw. 

I still have the first issue of NEXT Generation magazine from the mid 90s and they showed off all of the fringe systems like 3do, neo George cd etc.  I remember reading about them all in magazines but none of the stores up here carried them.

[SignOfZeta]

I think there are a lot of definitions of "small town". My home city of Midland has a population of 40k, about 10% of Tucson which was also mentioned as being a small city. Then a guy who's town apparently didn't even have a mall describes his city as "not exactly small". Unless there are some regional dark areas I've never heard of I'm pretty sure every single "small city" or larger in the continental US had TG16. If you had a TRU, a Best Buy, an EB, etc then you had TG16, you just didn't know it. Same with Sega CD and Saturn. 3DO and Neo was vastly more fringe though, with Neo disappearing from American chain stores completely pretty early on.

[Dicer]

It was semi Popular here "Mass"

I worked in a ritzy mall, so our EB had everything, even NeoGeo...I was a fanboy and I worked with this kid Joe and he was a FEKA diehard, so we we both peddled our wares. NEC rep even came in to congratulate us on decent numbers and to let me fawn over the Turbo-Express.

I had one and I knew a good dozen others with one, which is huge compared to some areas.

[retro junkie]

In my area, western Ky, I was the only one that I knew that had one. I had to go across the state line in order to purchase anything TG 16.