I love this thing. Consider this video a stopgap until I finally get round to showing my Atari Lynx collection. Twitter - / ashens Extra Videos - / extraashens Facebook - / officialashens Web - www.ashens.com
"I don't think there ever was a Strip Fighter 1." Actually there was! It was released 7 years AFTER Strip Fighter 2 was released. I'm not entirely sure how they did that, I'm assuming a time machine was involved.
Hang on a frickin' second. This thing was released in *1990*? Just one year after the Gameboy? 8 years before the Gameboy Color? And it's got hardware on par with a SNES, a big bulky non-portable console also released in 1990? How did this thing NOT take the world by storm and immediately completely dominate the market? O_o
In America Nintendo have a stranglehold on rights for 3rd party games. The US got only 94 games released. That is just a fraction of the entire library and full of duds. The marketing technique they used in Japan was to just advertise in the Big Cities. It worked well over there because of how compact Japan is. They thought the same would work in the US. That was not the case. The ads they did have were horrible too.
what u smoke'n?. the game gear beat the crap out of this in sells. and killed it off along with the lynx, game.com and wonder swan. the game gear was the only real competition 2 the game boy. the game gear made this and other handhelds look like crap. even though both the game boy and game gear had 8-bit graphics, the game gear still looked better in every way. the only reason the game boy won in the end was because the game boy had more games and sold more systems and carts by the time the game gear came out. also, the game boy had alot of 3rd party support. screen-wise, the game gear looked better in every way compared 2 the game boy. it had a lighted-up screen, it was in color, and packed in the power of sega's own 8-bit master system. infact, the the game gear was basically a upgraded sega master system turned into a portable, with more colors. but as powerful as the game gear was, it wasn't about the graphics back then. it was about the games. and the turbo express din't have its own games. it was just a portable turbograffx16/pc engine. the game gear had its own games, plus it had a converter cart attachment that even let u play sega master system games on the game gear with more color. adding what little usefulness the turbo express had. playing your sega master system's console games on the go. it also had an attachment that let u watch tv on your game gear and a shit load of other accessories that the game boy also had. like a screen magnifier, rechargeable battery packs and an ac adapter.
Not rare. It was only Nintendo who didn't use a backlight. Sega game gear, Atari lynx, Sega nomad, all used backlights. It's just you poor Nintendo kids who thought backlights are for rich people only. Nintendo was a big smelly pussy about battery life, AND they wanted to cheap out on parts. Took 15 years before a game boy used a backlight, that's nuts. I never could understand the game boy. Green puke, can't play in the dark, can't see the screen, worst smeary image during screen scrolling. Disgusting. I guess if it's your first handheld you don't know any better, but if (like me) you saw a game gear screen first, you never wanted to look at a game boy ever again. Exorcist vomit color monochrome, no backlight. Once you go back(light) you can't go back.
+Thomas Wallblom The best part of the design for the TG16 was the card design. You could fit a bunch of games in a wallet, and use the same cards on the portable. Brilliant design, shame about the battery life on the portable.
+Dick Fageroni For the era, it looks pretty damn good. Pretty much everything else at the time with an LCD had horrible ghosting on the screen (check out Ashens' Sega Nomad review to see what I mean).
***** I watched a Game Gear review.. cant see why you say that it has a better screen. But can be because of the video itself. I will hold on to my first thought, NEC TurboExpress has a great screen! Would love to own one!
It never ceases to amaze me how powerful hardware has become. Having every PC-engine game on an SD card is a good comparison of old and new technology-and I suppose there's still a lot more capacity on the card.
I don't care if he said it was bad... this is the first time I've seen anyone mention Splatterhouse in a gaming video. RELEASE THE BALLOONS! Mario, Sonic, Pacman and Pokemon always got the spotlight back in those days. But Splatterhouse 3 for the Sega Genesis was hands down my favorite old school classic game. It had alternate endings, very challenging gameplay and it was the most goriest, bloodiest and most disturbing game I've ever played. Not scary, just gory and awesome. Something SNES doesn't do. And if you played it, you'll know this... spin kick = god
Yathzee talked a bit about classic splatterhouse when doing it's reboot and Ashen mentioned it before when doing a really expensive but well made emulator and played at least the entire first level. I think the game is just dated.
Very nice my friend had one of these in 1990/91 or so. It was seriously impressive for the time. The tv tuner attachment was very cool. Such a huge leap from the gameboy.
I do wish Everdrives and similar devices weren't so expensive. I want an SD2SNES(similar to an Everdrive, for SNES, but it has better game compatibility), but they're like $200 or something ridiculous like that. Sure, for the price compared to buying an entire collection of games, it's worth it. But chances are if I don't want to spend tons of money on real games in the first place, I don't have the $200 to spend on a flash cart. That's honestly the ONLY reason I stick to emulation. If I could afford Everdrives or whatever, for each system I have, I'd just play those instead. With the console though, for what it is, it's not bad. But I think I'd much rather get one of those clone-portable SNES systems, and an SD2SNES for that. Nothing wrong with the TG16, but there's more games on the SNES that I'd rather play. Plus more buttons means not having to press select to switch between punch/kick in Street Fighter.
They have this device called the UFO Pro 8 for SNES which is about $50. It's meant for saving games but can also run backups. I've been meaning to get one but just haven't gotten around to it. Look into it if you're interested.
The screen is an active matrix TFT, the best of it's time. The screen is really good on this. One game you definitely want to check out is parasol stars. It's one my favorite games of the era. It's just a shame you can't play rainbow islands on a Turbo Express, because it's the best home version of the game. It's just a shame that AA NIMH cells weren't cheap and readily available back then, because 6 typical AA NIMH cells are 18 watts hours and should power this for quite a few hours.
"Consider this a stopgap until I finally get round to showing my Atari Lynx collection" *FOUR FUCKING YEARS LATER* "Hey guys I'm going to review the Atari Lynx"
This is the best looking TE I have seen in the passed 10 years. I own a sizable collection and still can't find an atari lynx or TE that is in functional quality. Grats its valuable to some collectors and you would be shocked what they would offer for the likes of this one.
These retro console reviews are my favourites of Ashens' videos. It's nice to see the history of gaming. I'd like to see more obscure consoles like the Apple Pippin if Ashens can get his hands on them.
Hello Ashens. Thank you for all your interesting and humorous videos. Being and Atari Lynx fan myself, I would really enjoy seeing a review by you on this superb "portable" gaming console.
+Breadmond McLoafquinn (Mr. Breadmond) They're not even all ports - Bonk's Revenge, for one, was original to the TurboGrafX. It was the first game I ever played and it's a fantastic little platformer, if perhaps a tad easy (see ProJared's review of Super Bonk, a lot of his observations apply to Bonk's Revenge as well, though it's not as... strange). Alien Crush and Devil's Crush were both original and really fantastic as well.
Bonk's Revenge was the first video game I ever played, when I was about four. I finally went back and beat it last year, and it was every bit as good as I remembered. It really is worth playing, and I recommend you try it if you haven't.
I remember seeing those at the mall when they first came out...and immediately lamenting the fact that there was no way I could afford one. It actually has a TFT Active Matrix LCD screen (which was brand-new technology for the time), Sony had a Color Watchman handheld TV that had a TFT screen as well back then, and it was expensive too. Later on I rented a TG-16 console and played Bonks Adventure all the way to the end in one weekend!
I remember this system, it was wildly expensive. I think it was available around the same time as Neo-Geo which was also insanely expensive. Everyone that played in the arcades at the time wanted one of each, but nobody ever got one... let alone both.
The Turbo express was so far ahead of the Gameboy and only 1 year older it boggles the mind. The Game boy held us back so far technology wise it's such a shame. Imagine we all could have been playing console quality colour handhelds in 1990!! This was destroyed ALL because of battery technology being poor. Also the Lynx as a 3D/scaling powerhouse was even superior to the Pc Engine. Although vastly inferior for sprite based 2D games. Both of them nuked the Game boy.
yeah but it was expensive as heck. Nintendo played it smarter compared to NEC, Atari, and even Sony when it comes to handhelds. Seriously, even sony makes some great handhelds but they go a little too far in specs and other areas that make it too expensive that some will just end up buying nintendo instead(this is why vita is already legacy yet big n's 3ds is still going strong. These companies shoot too high only to miss the mark and fizzle out on the handheld spectrum. These other systems were great but as always too expensive in the long run...
ojideagu yeah, but it also came out before those hand helds. It was basically a portable battery eating Master System. As a direct competitor of the Game Boy that had a backlit color screen with a decent library of games, I'm surprised that you don't hear about it much...
This was officially released here in Spain at a retail price of 49.900 ptas ( roughly 300euros) back in maybe 94. Got mine in london (raven games) for roughly half of it.....it was marvelous....period
I remember she was available in France,that was a fucking dream...just play Sf2... Like other stuff (expensive),the Combo A.V supergun... The Turbo GT,I remember the commercials on magazines,with the amazing LT... The Neo geo was called Rolls Royce of home system and the GT was the Rolls Royce of portable. Sweet 90's...vhs...laserdisc...cadridge...(but all was in 50 hertz...I was so furious with all the commercials in 60 hertz...).
***** The Lynx is older than I am by a year! I can't believe that kind of technology existed back then. Wow. Why didn't we just make flat panel color LCD TVs in 1989? The technology was there!
***** I lived in San Francisco in 2003, and they had the absolute latest products for sale. They had brand new 72" LCD TVs that were $21,995, but I think there was more to them. That was at a time when plasma screens were your only affordable flat panel option. That's about $30,000 adjusted for inflation. Prices fell sharply to $2,000 in just 4 years.
I found my brother's old Turbografx 16 in my basement with the rf box and ac adapter. Bought a game pad on amazon for about 40 bucks, and an everdrive and gave it back to him as a gift. It's absolutely fantastic. I highly recommend the everdrive.
ashens, your voice is very soothing not only that but your improv on everything you review are funny to hear. Alot of the things you review you say are bad or even look bad but for some reason it makes me want to own them...or have a bite of the "hot pots" stuff.
The TurboGrafix and its components were the best system of the time. Still have mine with the CD-player add-on. Even played Air Zonk on my Express recently. Gobbles batteries, though...
PC Engine/Turbografx-16 is definitely the king of the obscure consoles for sure. Wonderful games, library is semi small but the quality of the games is just as good as the popular consoles.
Own one of these and a tg16 proper. Have about 20 games for it. I've already had to do the sound capacitor fix and am now fixing the dead screen capacitor.
I’m way late to the party but I just wanted to stop and appreciate how amazing it was that STREET FIGHTER II was available on a handheld in the early 90s 🤯
maybe not in UK, but it was released in other european countries, At least I'm pretty sure seeing it in stores back in the first 90s in Spain (I think CD unit was never released, but I'm not sure). It's amazing how advanced was Turboexpress for its time.
"You have to press select to switch between kick and punch"..yeah..that's a thing the genesis had to deal with too. I dunno why Nintendo was the only one to realize they might need more buttons.
I have one of these! The everdrive looks very nice :) Battery life was a concern, not sure how they do now, but when I first had it, I couldn't actually beat Vigilante before the batteries run out, and it wasn't exactly a long game. Will have to have a look for this everdrive thingy me bob!
I wanted one these so bad in 1990. I didn't know where to get one and it was at least twice as much as a game boy if I remember correctly. We weren't living large in 1990. Lol
it was a mail order release in the UK, I had one in about '89ish - "The PC-Engine" looked nothing like the one you have there though...mine was white, and the games came on these odd fat credit card thingies...some good games tho, perhaps surprisingly. Came with a platform game called "Chan VS Chan"
Ah you indeed really need to get a recapped/reconditioned console if you ever want to be able to play one and enjoy it. I got the TG16 and the PCEngine including that Everdrive module and it has been sweet testing out games sampling which I want to go for and try to find at a reasonable price. This handheld is awesome indeed. A bit like the stuff of legends actually...
The arcade version of Cadash was quite entertaining for an RPG fan like me. I'd have been in hog heaven with a home version I didn't have to constantly plug with quarters. I mean, scrolling action and RPG elements together! What's not to love about that? And the name is just plain fun and satisfying to say. Cadash. Cadash? Cadash! Cadash!
I'm not surprised that this console has H-games. Before releasing the TG-16/PC Engine, which was actually developed by Hudson Soft (Hu-Card = Hudson Card), NEC released the PC-98. That home computer rivals Fujitsu's FM Towns in terms of how many h-games are on it.
Had two of the GT handhelds back in the day (US and Japanese versions) To be fair, NOTHING was touching them handheld spec wise! Battery life ran out quicker than the McCann's vacating Portugal.
