What year did you first start gaming on the PC Engine/Turbografx??

[Jibbajaba]

I got my first TurboGrafx in 2004.  I traded a guy online a CIB Jaguar with a game or two for a CIB TG16 with Keith Courage.  I built up a small collection, and then sold it all a few years later because I needed money (needed to buy an engagement ring.  This is now called "The Great Purge of 2007".)  I got into emulation because I got a modded Xbox, and felt like I didn't need all of these consoles and games anymore.  Well about a year later my friend got me into RGB gaming, which means that I needed consoles again.  Currently I have a TG16 with CD base (but no CD drive), about 15 CIB games, and a Neo Flash 64Mb card.  I have an external RGB amp (on a bread board, actually) that I need to put inside the CD base.  I am going to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo next week and have my fingers crossed that I can find a CD drive and System 3.0 card while I'm there.

So that's my story.

Chris

[Tatsujin]

I was not a PCE user from day one on. how could I? the system was never sold officially in my homecountry and the prices for imports where far beyond my budget at that time I was like 12~13 years old. but I am a pce adorer since almost day one, when I first saw it in our local mags shortly after its japan release. R-Type 1:1 arcade like, so who wouldn't have fallen in love with that system instantly?
I always wanted it over the Mega Drive or Super NES.

I played it the first time in like 1990 at a friends place (rich parents bastard). When I started my apprentiship in 1993, soon after a US Turbo DUO (w/ awesome RGB mod) was my own (including the YS 1&2, GoT bonk combo etc).
games like spriggan, nexzr, WoT, star parodia and dracula x followed soon.

that was the point of no return.

[Mathius]

I was not a PCE user from day one on. how could I? the system was never sold officially in my homecountry and the prices for imports where far beyond my budget at that time I was like 12~13 years old. but I am a pce adorer since almost day one, when I first saw it in our local mags shortly after its japan release. R-Type 1:1 arcade like, so who wouldn't have fallen in love with that system instantly?
I always wanted it over the Mega Drive or Super NES.

I played it the first time in like 1990 at a friends place (rich parents bastard). When I started my apprentiship in 1993, soon after a US Turbo DUO (w/ awesome RGB mod) was my own (including the YS 1&2, GoT bonk combo etc).
games like spriggan, nexzr, WoT, star parodia and dracula x followed soon.

that was the point of no return.

What's your home country Tats?

[Tatsujin]

What's your home country Tats?

Le swissle

[shubibiman]

I bought my SGX at Christmas 1991 along with Final Soldier and Dragon Egg. Cyber Core was bundled with the SGX. I was a bit disappointed as I expected Battle Ace to be bundled instaed of what I thought was a crap back then (I changed my mind since then) and as no SGX games were available in the store where I bought the lot. I had heard of the PCE for the first time in a French magazine in mid-1990. I fell in love at once as saw that all my arcade favourites were released for this little machine. At the time, I owned an Amstrad CPC 464 so there was quite a difference between the games I already played and what I saw in the magazines. I didn't even have an audio CD player so I just couldn't imagine you could play CD games already!

I was living in the Frenc countryside and even if Sodipeng made an excellent job with its grey import, it was still hard to get devices and games outside of bigger cities. So some friends and I had hard time which to decide of the Megadrive and the PCE. We thought it would be good to buy the same machine so that we could exchange games. I can clearly remember the exact moment when we opted for the PCE. We were walking in a wood!

One of my friends got his Coregrafx first (it was a special pack sold by Sodipeng and included a Coregrafx, a multitap, a game and 2 pads) along with PC Kid 2, that turned out to be the very first PCE game I've ever played. Before that, I saw some gameplay in stores that sold PCE systems when we went to big cities with my parents. My jaws litterally dropped. I was so impressed!

I still own the same SGX now and I never stopped playing and buying PCE games since then, that's why I now have quite a big collection, PCE games would go for so cheap between 1996 and 2000!

[Obfuscate]

Got a Turboduo Christmas 92'. Although had a couple good friends who had regular TG 16 and loved playing theirs so that's what made me want a duo.

[Necromancer]

I got my TurboDuo in late '91 and never looked back.

I did not even know what Y's was until I saw it on the Top 100!!!

Never heard of it.

[rag-time4]

From the time I saw the very first Turbo CD display in Toys R' Us with Fighting Street I really wanted one.... but never got one until I got my US Duo in 01, with my first game being Fighting Street! I briefly played a TurboGrafx at my next door neighbor's house back around 90/91, but I wasn't impressed by China Warrior and Battle Royale. Axe II was decent, though... and those are the only three games I remember playing back then.

My Duo sat in storage for years between 02 and 06... but 06 was definitely the year of the Duo for me. I sold all of my SNES and Genesis stuff and got really into the Duo!

[nectarsis]

Late 91/early 92 (I remember the TurboExpress was $250 when I bought it).  Nabbed Neutopia II, and Veigues Tactical Gladiator  (always teh mecha head).  I LOVED it, even though for the life of me I couldn't find anyplace that carried the ac adapter .  I ended up selling it off for peanuts in like 96 with never delving farther into the library.   

Fast forward to 2007, the bug came back...and will never leave.

[termis]

Initially played at a store booths, a friend borrowed the system from another friend etc... but then,

* 92 or so - got my first tg16 + cd-rom when those systems went on clearance.  I got a few CD games not too long afterward - Ys, Spiriggan (a blind purchase for like $5 - awesome!), etc...   then I put it away for awhile after a year or so as I got into other things (girls, booz, motorcycles, computers, etc)...

* 96 or 97 - started getting back into the system.  Sold off the tg16 + cd-rom and got hold of a used TurboDuo for like $50 (Oh, the days).  Played it for a while here and there, but then got out of gaming again as I went full time into college.

* 2003 - took the Duo out, played some games here and there, and reminded me how awesome the Duo is...  I put it away again as I went back to  Korea, but this was the little spark that got me getting into PCE a couple years later.

* 2005 - Living in Japan at this point, I started visiting recycle shops and started buying a dirt cheap games here and there initially for the saturn, but couldn't look away from the PCE section.  I ended up getting a SGX, and a package consisting CG2, SCD-ROM2 and a broken PCE Duo.  After realizing that SGX + SCD-ROM2 wasn't really a practical setup, I ended up only keeping the PCE Duo (of course, after repairing it).  Learning Japanese helped with enjoying the whole PCE experience. 

* Currently, the PCE is one of my full time consoles set up on my TV.  I don't get as much videogame playtime as I'd like, but I still fire it up once in awhile, and I get reminded of a game now and then by regularly visiting this forum. 

[DesmondThe3rd]

For me it was 1989. Me and brother passed up the Sega Genesis and we're more interested in what the Turbo had to offer especially since Sega screwed up the Master System in our opinion. I remember playing R Type, The Legendary Axe, and Keith Courage like crazy.

[ParanoiaDragon]

My first TGX16 was bought at Game Dude, Sherman way (or something?) in LA winter -90.
Me and two friends went to the US to for a  month on holliday and to buy used car parts for our Vintage cars back home.
Me being a videogame nerd as well had to finally get my hearts desire a TURBOGRAFX 16....
So I've had contacted G.D. before and made sure they had all the stuff waiting for me...
I was in heaven that nite, at last the long wait was over.

I bought a boxed TGX, a boxed Turbo booster Plus, a turbo tap, three turbopads and a Boxed Purple Barnie .
Also Bonks adventure, Revenge, K.C., Legendary axe and  13 games more.
Since then has the collection grown and expanded to an unexpected size.

At the moment I've got:
My first TGX 16 and all the hardware
Another one to spare
A brand spanking new in an unopend box (The EU version named "Turbografx") And a boxed unopend Turbotap and two boxed unopend Pads.
A SuperCd player and a CorgrafX II
A PC Engine shuttle  with pad AC and cable (missing the lid though)
A PC Engine DUO Boxed
A PC Engine DUO-R missing the original joypad
A PC Engine DUO- RX
A Boxed PC Engine plus additional hardware
A PC FX boxed as new. and a mem-card
A Boxed PX-FX GA for PC-9800 new
About 85-100 Tgx 16 games
And aprox. 150 PC engine games
And 28 PC-FX games
The collection is growing constantly slowly but surely

Game being played at the moment is Dragon Knight 3

Wow, you got yours at Game Dude?!  I didn't know that place was around that far back!  I used to buy alot of import PCE games there years later.

Anyways, probably around October of 1990 it started with me playing a friends TG the night before going to Disneyland.  The only game I know I played for sure that night was Bonk 1, played it for hours, got to the last level but needed sleep!  Then I believe in Februaray of 91, I bought a friends TG with KC, Ninja Spirit, Vigilante, Tiger Road, & Splatterhouse.  I think later that year is when the Genesis dropped for $150, I bought that, but, eventually sold it to my bro since it just didn't have as many good games IMO.  I believe that was also the year that the CDRom was slashed to $150, & I got that along with Valis 3 for $30 at Babbage's.

[TheOldMan]

I honestly don't remember what year it was - the late 80's comes to mind.

Just graduated college (university to you guys), got my first real job making pretty good money. Sister, nephew and I went out for my birthday, and we stopped by toys-r-us on the way home. Nephew was interested in tg-16 (he had an nes already). I was gonna buy some games for us to play, but my sister said he would only lose/trade them away. Since I wanted something I could play, I bought the tg-16. All of it. CD attachment too, and all the games toys-r-us had in stock.

When the turbo express came out, I had to have that too, so I could play my games on the road. Spent many, many hours (and loads of batteries) in airplanes trying to beat blazing lazers and alien crush. Then devil's crush, when it came out.

And fwiw, it became household policy that if you wanted a video game system, you couldn't buy one we already had.. So we ended up with pretty much all the major ones since then. Genesis+cd (niece), SNES, n64, Dreamcast, XBox, XBox360 (nephew), and wii (niece).

I pretty much stuck to the retro stuff; I still have my first 2600, but I had to replace my coleco. Nephew picked up an intellevision from someone. I don't collect this stuff; there's only a few games I play on each system, but the games I play i really enjoy.

[Mathius]

For me it was 1989. Me and brother passed up the Sega Genesis and we're more interested in what the Turbo had to offer especially since Sega screwed up the Master System in our opinion. I remember playing R Type, The Legendary Axe, and Keith Courage like crazy.

I remember standing in an Electronics Boutique in the late 80s playing Legendary Axe and Keith Courage. The graphics in both games back then seemed SO awesome for the time. Unfortunately, playing them again in 2009 for the first time since didn't quite wow me like they did BITD. At least Legendary Axe's music never looses its charm.

[Tablet]

Living in England we didn't really get a TG-16 release here (dunno where all these new PAL-UK ones have popped up from recently) I remember when I was in High School and trying to find a replacement SMS, my mother was the type to have yearly clearouts of our older stuff, normally when we were at school so we wouldn't notice and the SMS went. After I managed to track down another model 2 with Alex Kidd built in I turned my sights to handhelds. I've always loved handheld gaming, in fact my first system was a big ol'fatty gameboy I got for my 4th birthday (my dad was a gaming nerd and wanted me and my brother to turn out the same way) and I loved it... At around 2002-03 ish I had became aware of the TG-16 thanks to wikipedia, my attention however was always drawn to the Turbo Express and the cards they used for the games, niavely I thought the cards were swiped through the system like a credit card (the wiki article did describe them as credit card sized) but prices always kept them just out of reach.

Anyway in mid 2007 a friend needed some cash (went over his student overdraft,  tut tut) was selling a PC engine core grafx with a tenokoe 2 and a loose copy of Genpei Toumaden (most probably spelt wrong) I think he'd ebayed the rest of the games in the past but I know he needed the money ASAP. I bought it from him, joined this forum to get some suggestions for games and have been hooked ever since. I grabbed my PCE-CD unit in 08 and I haven't looked back. I think the appeal for me, getting into this so late on was that I had had a mega drive and a super nintendo throughout my childhood and I wouldn't say I was bored of either system but the PCE was something completely different, I'm still astounded they managed to fit Street Fighter 2 on a huey. Before the PCE I NEVER played shooters but now after playing Gate of Thunder, Soldier Blade, Download 2 and many many more I fell in love with the genre and in particular that era of shooters tracking down similar shooters for the MD and SNES.

So for me it was 2007, late to the party but I'm glad I'm here.