I loved having this thing as a kid. I didn't even have a TG-16, so this was my entire NEC experience. I even got it with a converter and SFII. Eventually, the screen didn't come on, and my parents pawned it when I left for the military. Really miss it now, knowing how I'd prolly be able to fix it.
Did you ever have to repair the turboexpress? I've had mine since launch, and when I visited my old folks home where it's stored, it will no longer power on. Aside from that, there's not a scratch or a speck of dust on it. I loved that thing when I was a kid, and always played it on my vacation to mom and dad's house.
I picked up a GT on ebay a few weeks ago. I replaced all caps and both the sound and screen have been vastly improved. There's just something magical about this console as i yearned after it as a kid. I've already ordered the LCD screen mod kit :D
The Game Boy Light of 1998 had back light though. Furthermore the Game Boy Advance had no back light. The common GBA SP was front lit. Just the SP AGS101 has back light, which came much later....
I could only dream of having this system after seeing it in the magazines back then. It was just too expensive. The color screen & tv option was super impressive to me. Great little machine. Nice work. Great video.
love the PC Engine GT, found one in a cash conversters years ago with a buch of games including Splaterhouse & Die Hard good times, but thank god for emualtion as that battery habbit is huge
So glad I bought one of these several years ago before collecting got so popular. Actually got it for a steal because the sound stopped working, the seller gave me a refund and didn't want it back, and all I had to do was solder on a new capacitor. So, I got a Turbo Express for basically 25 cents!
Great video man! The Turbo Express seemed like such an impossible option as a kid, seeing as barely anyone even had a TG16 around here, let alone had enough to purchase that expensive thing. BUt, I definitely wanted one!
Yeah, I gotta agree. With much easier ways to play TG-16 games on the go now, this really is a "If you really love the thing and have lots of cash to spend on a recapped unit!" item.
The Atari Lynx was the first back-lit handheld, and most advanced handheld at the time (the GT was after-all based on the mid-80s PC Engine). In fact I remember the mags at the time saying the Lynx with its hardware sprite scaling etc was the most powerful console available of any format in 1989/90, just before the SNES / Neo Geo etc. Shame it had so few games. The GT certainly won on games
I still have my Atari Lynx. I thought it had quite a few good games. But it was a really mixed bag as far as capabilities. On the upside, the scaling really was impressive and it could have a huge number of sprites on the screen without slowdown. But its screen resolution was terrible and it couldn't display many colors. If games like racing and flying titles, could play to its strengths, they were pretty amazing for the time. But genres like platformers didn't, and then just looked bad because of the resolution and limited color.
@ressljs: It had 4096 colours (12 bit) with 16 (4bit) per scanline, better than any other 8 bit system in the palette department and in many ways superior to the st and Amiga (discounting resolution). Back in the day I was pretty impressed with the lcd but i know they are prone to getting worse with age so a drop in replacement does wonders and shows what the machine is really capable of. The sprite scaling was very advanced for the time, blue lightning was like a handheld afterburner.
I guess I should have been more specific about "it couldn't display many colors." It had a large total color pallet, but could only display 16 colors at a time. So a lot of the games either had muted colors, or jarring color differences because with only 16 simultaneous colors, they couldn't do smooth transitions. But when it came to games like Blue Lightning, Road Blasters and Steel Talons (tedious to play, but technically impressive) that really made use of the scaling, it could beat the Genesis.
@ressjls: It could do 16 colours per scanline so quite a few hundred were possible on the entire screen. Resolution of the lcd was 160×102 so thats 1632 possible different colours onscreen at once (102x16).
A few years later and there is a nice new option in the Analog Pocket. It plays all Game Boy games from old school to advance and adapters for the Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket and Turbo Grafix (along with Supergrafx as well). With a larger, sharper screen, built in battery that lasts longer then a set in the Express and a new price of 320 bucks (220 for the system and 100 for the adapters for the later 3 systems, Game Gear is a 30 on it's own) vs over 500 bucks for one on Ebay that is decades old. Also it can play the games on the TV for another 100 and all the other things it can do though it's FPGA cores.
This system was practically BEGGING for a TV Out port. To have what is basically a home console in portable form and no way to play it on the TV makes little sense. Also a shame that it had so little RAM out of the box. It was really restricted by this until the CD units came along which added extra RAM to the console. The games looked significantly better with this extra video RAM, rivaling what the Genesis and the SNES could do.
I think it would be a good idea to make a newer and more portable version of this system, after all if this handheld is apparently very sought after nowdays and if people is going crazy over a NES Classic Edition then why not release a new version of the Turbo Express? and also why not make it able to play PCE-CD and Supergrafx games, that would be even more convenient. oh and i barely noticed the regional differences in Magical Chase, does anyone know why that is?
I wanted one of these as a kid, but because of the TurboGrafx system’s lousy market penetration, it wasn’t even available in my area. Thus, my parents refused to let me buy one, because I wouldn’t be able to go to a local or regional store to buy games. Despite that, the mystique of the TurboGrafx, and by extension, the TurboExpress, never quite dissipated. Even now, all these years later, and owning a TurboGrafx and PC Engine, I still want one.
I loved my turbo Express and also used the TV tuner. It wasn't too bad. You could also use the turbo as a monitor for watching movies from a camcorder which was a big thing in the 90's. The only problem I ever had was playing raiden. Those bullets were so small it was hard to see them. It was great for bombeman, Allen crush, moto roader, neutopia and silent debuggers
I played the North American release if the JJ & Jeff game. If I remember correctly it doesn't have the fecal matter references in that version. Funny game nonetheless. Very unique system!
There was this wonderful girl. Cashier at a local thrift shop. She gave me a TurboDuo for free. As great as that deal was... The price to procure more games for the platform wasn't worth it for me. TurboDuo with Lords of Thunder Sold $450. Back in 1999.
I was trying to get one back in the late 90's. They were expensive and rare even back then. Because that was before ebay and amazon online shopping. I got most of my NEC stuff from turbo zone direct back in the day. While everyone else was playing the first playstation and dreamcast. I was playing my duo.
Always wanted a Turbo Express but I would want to mod it with a modeen backlit LCD screen to both increase battery life but also visibility. I would also probably want to do a cap replacement on it as well.
Top Hat Gaming Man: I like the novelty of handhelds like this and the Sega Nomad but like the Game Gear or any handheld from that period, doing any feasable gaming on it is not as good as many of us remember it as modern mobile screen technology has spoiled us. We tend to forget short battery life that infected most handhelds, excluding the Gameboys of course, as well as the poor visibility of mobile screens durring that time. I think if I was to get one without modding it, it would become more of a display piece instead something I would actively play on. As far as modding it for a better screen and not being real hardware, I don't get that argument as all the processors and other intenal bits that run and read the data would still be same, hence still being real hardware. Edit: Never mind about the real hardware part. I see you edited your comment to say authentic which I guess you wanted to review it as it was released.
I will say though, that the screen is surprisingly decent and I have heard a rumor on the grapevine that modern batteries are much more powerful than what we had back in the day. So you maybe underestimating it somewhat. I have not tested this battery theory out yet though.
Top Hat Gaming Man: Yeah I saw you edited your comment to say you wanted to review it in the form it was released which is fair. As far as screen replacement goes, it does wonderful job for the Game Gear's visibility and battery life. I also seen simmilar results for the Sega Nomad as well.
People are more tolerant of battery life because the cost of the battery's and that rechargeable batteries at the time kinda sucked with charging time and very quickly loosing their max charge so very quickly would take longer to charge and not lasting as long as they had. That said at the time my pa rentals probably purchased the cheapest battery's they could find. That said with say Switch and my personal use will generally get closer to 5 hours based on the games I play when out and about compared to on my TV. I very rarely when out and about have more than 2 hours if that to play games hence being out and about and these days usually have a battery bank close by which is not an issue because my 2 hours of play usually not in one sitting so not an issue either charging with the bank or via usb port on car dash. Have though not have yet experienced long travel times with my Switch just 45 minute train ride in then out with an 8 hour holdover every day but on the way home my Switch is usually fully charged at that point. Only time charge has been an issue is over the holidays when my nephew would not put the thing down. That said in those circumstances should have just thrown the dock in with my luggage as had plenty of space and was not necessarily on the go just away from home for a few days but stationary without anything but a phone charger.
I love the switch's portability. I frequently switch which docking station it is plugged into...................seriously though, I cant imagine trying to use it on the go. 3DSXL pushes the size to the limit. GBA SP and GBA Micro are definitely the pinnacle of portability
LOL! I paid $300 since also got the TV tuner. I then got a card converter so I could play Japanese games. It's price and battery life did it in, but I loved it.
I actually owned one of these!!! I had the TV add-on and a bunch of games... unfortunately I only kept up with the games for about a year. By then the reality of the limitations of the games set in. Mind you, this was pre-internet so if I wanted to get a new game meant asking my parents for a ride to the mall and putting down money on a few screenshots and a brief description of the back of the box. I wouldn't have any idea if the game was good or not until I got home and actually played it. I look back on those times and feel like I was living in caveman times, lol.
i remember i wanted one sooo bad but the 300$ price tag quickly killed that dream. I have one now many years later. its kinda cool, it was very impressive back in its day.
Glenn Griffon yea i figured, which is why I said "I assume that is on purpose." It is even more fitting cuz he is fighting around the world with the wrestling. Lets just hope that THGM doesn't throw a phone at me like crowe may or may not have done.
I didn't even know the portable system existed at the time until after it was taken off the market, and by that time also I had returned my Turbo before moving to Taiwan. I think I may have seen the portable out in the wild here. I never bothered looking for one anyways, though there were times when I did know about it, long for it.
I think your being a bit harsh on the Nintendo Switch's battery life, if you play 2D games with the brightness lowered a bit you can get like 5 hours. Also i grew up in the 90's and the reason people are more accepting of less battery life is because now portables come with rechargeable batteries built in, and back in the day it wasn't really common knowledge that they existed, and it was mostly parents buying the consoles for their kids, and kids didn't know they existed, plus we would just steal batteries out of TV remotes to keep playing. i eventually got one but i played many years of Pokemon without it.
EXACTLY! Most adults didn't play video games in the '90s, and that typically goes doubly so for handhelds. Most handhelds were owned and played by kids, who were at the mercy of their parents to get batteries, and batteries are/were expensive, especially in a power drain like this, the Lynx, or the Game Gear. To me, that's a large reason Nintendo dominated the portable market in the '90s. Rechargeable batteries have completely tossed this issue by the wayside, no matter the battery life. This instantly made portable gaming more accessible. But you won't be able to tell any of this to this asshat. He has a hate-on for Nintendo.
turbro express is the pinnacle of handhelds for decades. An actual 'home console' in your hand did not happen again for decades took about 25 years for the Nintendo switch to come out after turbo express - nomad.... so sad the nomad did not come out 3 years earlier if it had we would have had a switch like system WAY WAY SOONER the genesis was DONE by the time the nomads inception. IF it came out when megadrive/genesis was hot we would be way farther alone in portable systems I think the xbox and sony both would have fully portible switch like consoles both PS3 and 360 would have had portable version. ALOT of us realized how epic that was people who had those 2 rare system understood it was only matter time something like switch would smash market if done right.
I happen to have one and had mine modded to hell, with a modern 3.5" LCD screen, Composite & RGB output & a controller port, essentially turning it into both a handheld and console. Pretty darn cool, but if you want one of these to play on the go then I would absolutely recommend at least getting the 3.5" LCD screen upgrade as the stock 2.5" screen is tiny & horrid looking.
Here Man Gaming Hat Top. Gentlemen and Ladies, Hello. When I see the shot of you in front of the boats it reminds me too much of my Top Hat Hypnotist Gaming Man image on Twitter. Now I'm sad that you don't actually have a cat on your shoulder. I'm wondering why I hear The Beach Boys' California Girls in the background.
What's your favorite continent? It's Oceania, isn't it? As spoiled as I was as a kid, and as much as I desperately wanted one, I just couldn't afford an Express. I dreamed of playing a Bonk game for 10 minutes before the batteries died.
Being able to just plug your system back in and charge it up when it runs out of power = good. Having to keep running out and buying packs of batteries, or use unreliable rechargeable ones which stop holding a decent charge after a fairly short time anyway = bad. Plus you can also have a portable power bank with you these days as well.
i've been trying to find one of these at a decent price forever now. probably going to have to shell out more than i care for but it would be a great hand held to have.
The Turbo grafx 16 although released in the UK wasn't popular infact Back in the day I don't remember seeing it in the shops at all infact I saw more neogeos than turbo grafx console.
Game Boy won due to the prize, low battery consumption and portability but just imagine if this system, the Game Gear and Lynx worked with rechargable batteries as do mobile phones, they would have been more successful. Or if they added a video port that allowed to connect it to the TV, you would get both a portable and a home game system, that's one of the reasons of the Nintendo Switch's success. Anyways this was a really superior system for it's time due to being able to use the same games as it's home version. Game Gear could do the same with Master System games with an adaptor but you required to purchase it and the Master System cartridges were big, making the console less portable.
I have a turbo express, sadly it's not working at the moment, the back light turns on, but no games power up with it..guessing it is the capacitor issue that I have read about..not sure where I can get my express fixed where I live.
I played one of these bad boys way back near it's release if I remember correctly I played Legendary Axe and some other game also played a Atari Lynx at the same house I had a GameBoy and honestly even at that age thought I had the much superior system.
The Switch has a minimum of 3 hours of battery life, not maximum. It's batteries are also rechargeable and can be charged while playing. That's why it's not such a major problem anymore.
I have never got 3 hours play time on a proper switch game like Mario Oddysey, Breath of the Wild or Xenoblade. So I would say maximum of 3 hours on real games. A toaster could play some of the indy titles for long durations.
Uhhh, I mean, I have. Minimum. With max brightness. And those are the games taking by far the most battery life. But in any case, I answered your question. the battery is rechargeable and can be charged during gameplay, so that's why it's not such a big deal anymore.
5:51 I think people are more tolerant of a handheld's low battery life today because of their ability to be recharged instead of chewing through batteries, thus costing so much money each month for a set of batteries just to play a system.
The big reason people are more ok with garbage battery life is because they use rechargeable batteries instead of standard AA batteries. I mean you can always use rechargeable AA batteries but I never really was able to get good battery life out of those rechargeables.
If you can pick up one of these on the cheap, modding can definitely help overcome the limitations. A modern screen, lipo battery and recapping will give amazing results.
Haha, unfortunately if you have ever made a video yourself it is amazingly easy to make mistakes like this and miss them in editing. Best to get someone to proof-listen/watch before releasing I guess
Wow when you're standing around water to film this, it makes me really nervous. Those things are precious and you don't want them falling into the water. o_o And the reason people are tolerant of poor battery life today, is today the batteries are rechargeable. If your battery only lasts 3-4 hours, and you can just sit down and charge it, it's not so bad. But if your battery only lasts 3-4 hours and you have to go out and buy $5 worth of batteries to keep playing.. Well that really burns your wallet. And ni-cd and later ni-mh batteries had poor capacity compared to their alkaline counterparts, so you might get 1-2hours at most, and have to spend 4-5 hours charging them.(slow charge if you want them to last longer)
I'm surprised you glossed over the fact that the release price in Japan corresponds to about 450 fucking dollars! That's insane! That's like double of the western price. Did it come out earlier in Japan?
"The Turbo version of this game (Dragon's Curse) may be my favourite of all, the music and graphics are a lot smarter than the Master System..." Instant thumbs up right there!
Not true about the saves. Neither the TG-16 or the PC Engine had save backups on the system itself. There were only a handful of Hu-Card games that had save support, and these needed a separate accessory for this. It wasn't til the CD based systems that save data could be saved on the actual system, making this point rather irrelevant as the home consoles couldn't hold saves either.
