When did you discover the secret life of Keith Courage? Did you ever own a TurboGrafx- 16? Are you a fan of the game, anime or both? Leave your thoughts and comments!
The anime is definitely better than the game. It might be one of the most important robot cartoons ever made Edit: Sunrise wasn't merged with Bandai until 93 well after the original Wataru ended
Cool, Wataru`s voice is Mayumi Tanaka. She does the voices for Kuririn(Krillin), Luffy and many others. Great video, I have fond memories of this game.
If Wataru sounds familiar to any of you thats because he is voiced by Mayumi Tanaka who you might know as the Japanese VA of Krillin from Dragon Ball/Z/GT/Super, Koenma from Yu Yu Hakusho, and Luffy from One Piece.
Thank you so much for this! Basically, this game was my Mario Bros growing up, because my parents couldn't afford a Nintendo, so I got a TG instead. My friends always wondered what the hell I was going on about, talking about "alpha zones". lol. The Japanese version is better fleshed out, so this really helped fill in the blanks all these years later.
"...couldn"t afford a Nintendo..."? Huh?! From what I remember, my Turbografx cost my parents $300, while Nintendo was either on sale for 99 bucks, or somewhere in the 250 range. Regardless, it was definitely "the newer, cooler thing" that just never caught on. Kinda like Zune in the 2000's. Lol
@@trancemixed9913 I dunno, my dad bought me my Turbo graphx at a radioshack I wanna say around 91-92 after years of bugging him for a Nintendo. I'm sure he picked up a TG for much cheaper, even though I'm sure he Nintendo was around the same price at that time with the impending SNES release. I was also 5 years old at the time so console costs werent really on my radar at the time. But yes, I couldn't afford a Nintendo at launch and eventually got a cheaper TG.
I only knew about Wataru because I have a lot of 90's anime magazines I bought for other shows - but Wataru's all over them - so it & its sequel were definitely well loved. I had no idea it was localized as a video game so this video was a treat to stumble upon and thank you for the overview of both! I definitely appreciate Wataru a lot more now
Lol I never knew that they created an American backstory comic for Keith while paying some homage to the original (the 7 layers). Thank you for that. 😂
I've only heard of the anime, because of the French opening used on TF1's Club Dorothée block, but the character names and the anime title is different, compared to the US localization on the TurboGrafx-16.
My first encounter with Wataru was an anime called Chou Mashin Eiyuden Wataru which was just called Saber Wataru in my country. I followed it religiously and was drawn to the different bosses in each level. I didnt know that the US received a game for it but in a different name. I may need to pick it up!
Great Video! I had already known some of the story of this game from different sources, but this is the ultimate way to bring it all together. Well done!
Great history video! Keith Courage is at least nostalgic for me -- I remember that TurboGrafx ad showing the game and playing its music before I got to try out the system in Summer '89. The game is "somewhat" fun. I have no complaints. The best thing about the game is its classic Hudson art style -- even in the slow overworld parts, it has beautifully-shaded rocks and grass, and luscious ice blocks in that stage.
Agree with Chris. I won a TurboGrafx-16 console with Keith Courage and Bloody Wolf so I got to play them a lot over and over. KC is a charming little game that impressed me with its color palette and music in the robot stage. It's humble in a sense. Definitely deserves respect in gaming history.
Well I be damned. This is easily the most informative video I’ve ever seen. Answered so many questions from childhood. Was not expecting this whatsoever. Thanks for this bro. 🔥🤘
One thing's for sure, whenever certain Japanese characters get Americanized in terms of style (particularly humans), they always turn out to be quite ugly and unappealing, and that's probably why Keith Courage was never able to catch on. :P
Can't believe I missed out on this video when it came out, had to double check my notifications cause I can never get enough of this channel. I played Keith Courage as a kid and honestly didn't even know about Wataru until I played Super Robot Taisen X and suddenly it all clicked. Very much the kind of thing I would have loved as a kid had it been localized and even now it definitely holds a lot of appeal to me.
As an early owner of the TG-16, I played the heck out of this game and loved it. I know that it doesn’t hold up as well as other launch titles, but I agree that it has received a bad rap that it doesn’t deserve. It really does have to be put into context. I find that the gameplay is balanced and fair, and the power suit levels were always fun. As someone who knew nothing of the Japanime series, the fact that I could still appreciate Kieth Courage as a kid demonstrates its appeal purely as a game. I no longer own a TurboGrafx 16, but recently I purchased the game in a pawn shop for nostalgia reasons. And now it sits in one of my display cases alongside more valuable games like MegaMan: The Wily Wars, MegaMan X3 and Castlevania X.
@@GTV-Japan Thanks for the response! I think it would be great if some indie developer revisited KC to polish the game and make the overworld portions a little more exciting. I always thought that if the game focused more on the Nova suit action, it would have been better received. Anyway, the potential is there.
Wataru played an important role in my country in Vietnam where it was the very first mech anime to be broadcasted in my country (and being the most broadcast anime at the time with 60% of our local stations broadcasted it) and it remained as one of the very few mech series that were successful in Vietnam (stuffs like Gundam and Macross had not been aired on television here). Part of it is due to Vietnam at the time were still collecting imported shows from Chinese/Russian channels and Wataru was extremely popular in China.
I agree. Because they are trying to get clicks! Where as here we always get great random stuff!! The coverage of Super Mario Bros 2 is insane! But yes, need more views! Share! Share! Share!
Think something happened in the edit at 25:30 ... opps! Also, I like the plugs for other episodes. Really embraces that "TV station" feel of your channel.
Thanks at 25:30 the copyright monster came and took the footage away. The choice was was remove it or block. Sorry! What was cut was about the series edition from 1997 and 2020. Thanks for watching 🌈
It 's funny to me how many Turbografx 16 games were games based on Japanese media and celebrities that got renamed and/or reskinned in the west. Keith Courage might be an odd game to pack in, but out the 9 original games, I'm not sure what would be a decent alternative.
In hindsight the feeling seems to be legendary axe was the best game of the bunch. China warrior had impressive grafx but wasn’t so good. I never though sports games made a good pack in either. Oh well it’s all in the past. Thanks for watching 🌈
I love all these videos on the PC Engine. It's really interesting to think of the world that could have been for the Turbografx-16 with just a little different approach. So many post-mortems forget the context of the times, and it's so important to remember what people were actually expecting back then.
Yes! Exactly!! I think that’s because the so-called “experts” writing these post mortems weren’t around for it so they have no sense of what happened and usually don’t have a clue in general. I’ll try to get some more pce/tg videos out in 22! Thanks for watching as always 🌈
@@GTV-Japan hey brother! Some years ago it was fan translated and put up on rom hacking.net. On the old Nintendo age, some of the users sold reproductions of famicom games put on nes carts and I got it from them. If you go to any repro site though and ask them to make it, they could. It uses a pretty easy mapper. The label looks really good too! I think they found an image from an old poster in japan or some images from the box art and they edited it together in paint or some other another editing software. They made the English font as similar as possible to the Japanese font. It’s actually a pretty fun game and got me interested in the anime. Sadly, I wish I could purchase the seasons of the show with English subtitles but theyre nowhere to be found. Some episodes are up on RU-vid though. Love the show dude! It’s my favorite on RU-vid
So much childhood trauma, sometimes i would play to hear the Nurss Nancy song and wish she could heal everything. Refusing help almost seemed mean as you go back to the outside.
I do like your series on Japanese games that were Doki Doki Panic'ed in the West. I had a Master System growing up, and always suspected the game Zillion had far more behind it, also later on the game Cyborg Hunter. Both of which I discovered I was right about. But you could look at ones done in reverse, like the British game Nebulus being turned into Koryo Chan Etc.
oh god yes! that the mascot of choco ball! which between you and me, is what inspired ... noo no i won't spoil it. I'll make this a video next year. to me in the usa the game was called tower toppler! Thanks for the advice 🌈
I often wonder about the westernization of Mickey Mousecapade. They replaced Disney's Alice and Peter Pan characters with... Disney's Jungle Book and other Peter Pan characters. What was the point?
I can’t say. Maybe they were just more popular but in japan Alice in wonderland is immensely popular and that’s why they went with it in the game. Literally every year there is a different Japanese translation of the original book. It’s what they call a long seller
One year for xmas I got a sega genesis, hooked it up that morning and it didn't work. took it back when the stores opened up and they were sold out, so I got the TG16 instead. Also when I got mine, inside the console box was an order form with a list of games and you could choose like 3 games, you mailed in the form and they would send you back one of your 3 choices for free. I ended up with Vigilante. The only two TG16 games I ever owned lol. I got a working Genesis the next Xmas that came with Sonic. I still have a very deep love of the TG16 and Keith Courage, I played the hell out of that game for a year. To me the TG16 and Keith Courage are what saved a little game nerds Xmas that year.
@@dtester couldn't find games for it anywhere lol. usually i would get a console or one big xmas gift and rely on getting to rent some games and movies on the weekends if i got all my homework done and stuff. but tg16 games were non existent in my little town.
Good documentary. The problem as you say with Keith Courage is that it was a localised game without a cartoon for people to get the context from. In regards to the classical comic style the Keith Courage comic had I miss that style and wish it would return. 😥
Another great video! Thanks for putting together something so comprehensive. I spent many Saturday mornings playing both Keith Courage and Legendary Axe in 1989/1990 at my local Service Merchandise store, while my parents browsed the aisles. The music and the graphics (the richness of the colors mostly) really made an impression on my pre-teen mind, standing out against anything I had previously seen on the NES. If only Konami had relicensed the game for the PCE/TG16 Mini…
I remember service merchandise well too. In my town a new shopping center opened in 89 and thanks to that I was able to see a turbo firsthand. Otherwise who knows what would happen. Thanks for watching as always 🌈
16:05 - 16:45 Yeah....given the context that we never got the localized version of the anime, you're probably right. Around that time, we were three years into The Transformers while The Power Rangers were three years away. Probably the best way to cover both fans at that time.
I was a huge TG16 fan, but my other gaming friends always gave me hell for it. My best friend had a Genesis, all my other friends had SNES's. Yet I stuck with my TG 16 (Until the fall of 1992 when I broke down and got an SNES for FF2). It was an amazing system, and I still own a launch TG16 with the original CD Rom (all repaired and working great). It was so underrated. So many amazing games with amazing soundtracks. Dungeon Explorer, Final Lap Twin, Moto Roader, Splatterhouse, Bloody Wolf, CADASH!!!! Just so many great memories. I made my Genesis-owning best friend a big TG16 fan too, and he'd often borrow my system and play it for a week. Like I said, I got my TG16 from my childhood and had it professionally repaired when the CD died in 2009. It means a lot to me, and That Christmas morning of 1989 when I booted up Keith Courage? Timeless.
Great story! Thanks for sharing! The TG-16 had some great stuff. I think looking back, we take things like library size and market share after the fact and it clouds the perception we had back then. And if you had just a TG16 and a few games a year that you liked, it was all that mattered and we were happy with what we had. We weren't thinking of some epic "console war" or who had the most games, we woudl never be able to own them all anyway and in the early years, they all had only a few to start out with.
SD style Gundams is dope as it gets. Seriously, Something about Super Deformed Machine's is just way cooler than SD people. They remind of me these toys I used to have. I had many Japanese Foreign exchange students and got to experience things like Pokemon years before it came here. I didn't understand the Japanese but seeing such exotic things at like 10 really changed my life. Now I am trying to learn Japanese and this channel is helping me a lot, it's great to pause and translate on the fly. Especially the magazine shots. I actually feel like I am starting to understand Hiragana and Katakana, I rarely need to use a chart anymore! It's the Kanji that I haven't grasped well yet.
That’s cool if it helps you. One video I did with lots of Japanese what famicom wars. Anyway I love the style of sd too. Just green. Thanks for watching 🌈
Amazing documentary, thank you! I played the heck out of the game and always thought it has so much potential. I had no idea it's such a big franchise over in Japan. Mind blown XD
I wonder why we didn't just get the Wataru anime though. It's silly, it's sophomoric in a TV-Y7 way sometimes, the action is really good, it's fanciful, and it has everything a kid in America in the early 90's would like. Knights, rollerblades robots and dragons. And it was pretty funny!
We didn't really start getting anime on TV in the US until the late 90s (aside from the occasional early-mid 90s localization like Ronin Warriors and DBZ)... I don't think any American TV execs would have had the foresight to predict how well Japanese animation would have been received here around the time the TG-16 was on the market. That said, I do agree that it could have been a hit with kids back then!
There were a number of anime showed that ran on tv in the 70s and 80s and certainly straight to video but they often tried to hide their Japanese origins. But still the true boom was years away.
THANK YOU for this video. It does a good job of introducing the Wataru franchise to the Western audience in a concise, bias-free way. There are LOTS of strong opinions surrounding this series and Super Robot Wars X's inclusion of this series, so that's really what made your mini-docu stand out. Mild corrections for the Cho Mashin parts: 1) Ankokudar was in no way connected to Doakdar and his previous incarnations, as Cho was meant(loosely) as an alternate continuity to the first series, e.g. on the assumption that Wataru 2 never happened. But since the sequels weren't exactly written with a tight continuity, it can also be treated as a sequel to Wataru 2 or the newer Seven Spirits ONA with no glaring contradictions or plotholes(despite what longtime fans of the franchise who dislike Cho would LOVE to tell everyone). 2)The Another Step game was meant to focus on Wataru Ikusabe's counterpart in an alternate timeline of Soukaizan, Wataru Homurabe. His companions Sakuya(the ninja girl) and Aragoto(the swordsman guy) are supposed to be the counterparts of Himiko and Shibaraku in that timeline respectively. But apart from that, you mostly got everything right.
@@GTV-Japan BTW, there seems to be an active Wataru revival movement in the form of mobage collabs(Langrisser Mobile in China and Ragnarok Mobile Asia-wide). Vids have been uploaded here in YT.
Hey, I made the top five commenters! Right on!! NEC made so many errors in the US that prevented the Turbo from being as successful as it could have been. I don't think they could've taken either Nintendo or Sega down, but they could've given them a decent run for their money. Didn't help that the mascot that should've represented them going forward, Bonk, showed up on the multiple Nintendo platforms killing exclusivity.
That list of commenters was everyone who thought Game Genius was funny 😄 it’s interesting how the turbo and Genesis came at the same time and were perfect examples of what to do and what not to do to succeed and overtake Nintendo. Thanks for watching as always 🌈
Thanks for covering this series. Hopefully the recent resurgence with the new series and starring role in SRW X means we'll see more of it. I'm personally hoping for Wataru 2 to be covered in a future SRW game because that's the series I watched the most while growing up.
In the 90's I rented a VHS tape here in Brazil of this Granzort anime, that is similar to Wataru. The tape contained the first episodes with dubbing in Portuguese, and I thought it was a cool and fun anime. However, because it was not successful, a volume 2 was not even released. The distributor that released Granzort on VHS was trying to achieve the same success that the anime Knights of the Zodiac (Saint Seiya) achieved here. So much so that on the cover of the tape case, there was a sticker written "more exciting than Knights of the Zodiac". Hardly anyone remembers Granzort here in Brazil, because it wasn't even on TV. Only the most anime fanatics could find this VHS in video rental stores.
🎵Kimi no... Namida... Saigoo ni sure wake wa niji no... hashi ga... mou suuugu kakeru kara Kirameku rainboooow... koruko ko oku noooooo kagi o akereba... kagayaku noooooooo saa Boku no... kimochi... tsutaeraranai mamaa konna hazujya...nakatta dream haaanta yureteru Lonely Heart... setsunai hitomiiii dakedo mamoruyo.... kyou kara waaaaaaaa Ai o motomete! Kizutsuku toki waa! Tamerai mo, koukai mo... nemurenai hodo yume o motomete, kujiketa toki wa atarashii Suteppu de, sunao ni narebaiiiiiii 🎵
The localisation process of games (Japanese to English) from the 90's will always be so fascinating to me. There's just something interesting about comparing the revamp of a game's story, art style, graphics/sprites, and even censorship. I guess the Westernisation of Adol from Ys in my avatar kinda reflects that a little, haha. Great episode as always!
It is funny that you mention the Japanese buildings. I remember watching my uncles playing this game when I was a kid after reading the story from the instruction manual and pointing out that the buildings look Japanese. My uncles, of course, had no answer.
Another great video! It's really crazy to see the missteps Hudson/NEC made with localization. I think of the cosmic fantasy 2 box art vs. The japanese art. Had they stuck closer to the source material they would have been more appealing. At least that's how i would have thought in elementary school.
sunrise used gundam coloring for many shows, like wataru and metal armor dragonar, stick with the proven formular, still thanks to srw being on english
After watching this we got screwed again and missed out on something special. I had no idea this game was based on a TV show!? I got a TG-16 in the later years of its life cycle and also got Bonk free along with Keith. I till have my original system and hand full of games. Great vid and keep up the good work!
Wataru shares the same color scheme as Speedy, Himiko wears pink like Polly, and Shibarak has some blue in his outfit: I think you're on to something here.
Always a great video, i Saw the anime show in french with subtitles in spanish, them called Adrien le sauveur du monde time ago, actually got a new anime this year. Sadly the turbografx never came officially to México neither by contrabando.
Oh really? I had no idea. I’d love to see that! In the show Wataru is referred to as the savior. But in Japanese it sound similar to ambulance and that’s sometimes used haha 🌈
I agree with the Fiasco about NEC not giving Keith Courage the Mascot Treatment I mean I think a Company like either Dic or Saban could've localized the Anime Series and called it "The New Adventures of Keith Courage" as well as having the Show sponsor the TurboGrafx-16 Systems and Games
@@GTV-Japan by the way, X-Omega is a differ game than SRW X. Easy mistake to make, but one is a gacha and the other is a real game. They still did Wataru a lot of justice by making him and his quest the main plot of SRW X, and they played a bunch of his stock footage through the game, and Ryujinmaru gets more music tracks than any other series in it
Even still, Keith Courage also might have been ground zero for the localization discourse in it's current form given the consequence of false advertising. Which was pretty common of Super Robot shows of it's time: Getter Robo G, Macross, Mazinger Z, UFO Grendizer, Go-Lion, and Wataru all fell victim in some way. It seemed that absolutely NO mecha show was safe from being reskinned and changed entirely. Damn shame, too.
16:10, considering how there was a LOT of children's movies at the time with magical places and tons of media with high energy adventures, Wataru being adapted seems like the perfect storm for an 80's extravagant adventure. It has a formula that kids who watch Voltron, Transformers, Robotech and Gigantor would enjoy with multiple robots while also having a big adventure akin to the likes of Land Before Time and other Don Bluth Films and Steven Spielberg films that you can think of. Hell, Sunrise wouldn't mind lending the anime to be dubbed. It kinda reminds me of how Gear Fighter Dendoh, Red Baron the 90s anime and the Brave series could have been airing in Toonami when kids are looking for giant robot action when Gundam Wing was certainly a hit or miss series series when kids were expecting to see giant robots fight each other and not politics, not helped by the fact that real life incidents were happening at the time back in near 2000. 16:59, thankfully you can get a HG of Ryujinmaru Amplified to look like an actual super robot with proportionate limbs. Had the creators of Keith Courage seen this beast, they would have seen another look of Keith Courage come to life. 21:27, hehe...very sneaky. 23:39, Do-Aku-Dar may as well be an evil Time Lord at this point. Hopefully I can get the Amplified IMGN Ryujinmaru so I can say...I own the Nova Suit of Keith Courage as the TurboGrafx-16 staff had envisioned.
I have NO CLUE who Keith is but I did watch Wataru back in the day and had some of the toys ~ it's funny how you made a video on this since BANDAI / SUNRISE just released a new web series for Wataru a few months before your vid came out :P but yeah Ojiji literally means super old grandpa and Obaba is super old grandma but in respectable elderly ways ~
That's always the case with unpopular systems from the 90s. They were more popular in Japan because of the anime games but got "de-culturerized" in the West and became too bland for gamers. Never mind thus was the same decade anime became mainstream outside of Japan....
7MGTESupraTurboA yea that’s true. Some interviews I’ve read from NEC America employees seem to paint a picture that it was all possible but they weren’t allowed to run things the right way. And that after 89-90 they knew all was lost and just kind of existed without trying
It's seen that many people want to see Keith Courage on the TurboGrafx-16 mini, but sadly it isn't on here due to copyright issues. I kinda wish that the gameplay itself was completely redesigned just like Sega did with Decap Attack. Blazing Lazer and J.J & Jeff were based on what you said at the beginning of the video, and they completely redesigned the title screen and character's model in the US. And because of this, they successfully re-released those US versions on the Virtual Console and the mini console across all regions.
That is a nice idea! I think the issue is the game would need a major overhaul and the effort put in wouldn’t be made back up in a significant way. Maybe a fan can create something cool! Thanks for watching 🌈
Great Stuff GTV - Par for the Course Saw this Anime in our Animation club back in Junior High/Senior High - about 15 years old or so?? Met one of my best friends, who also had the Anime and the game, so I totally and completely agree... if they would have tied it to the explosive Anime craze and use KEITH ROGERS as both your mascot as well as having this great game (in my opinion) then the Turbo Graphix-16 would have turned out much better. They needed focus with more variety, more originals, and more sequels or improved versions of past hits that would automatically get other players to the system. I mean... NICE and BAD?? How much more 80's/90's overload crazy could you go with that?? A family Sword.. A Mech called the Nova Suit.. unique level names and engaging ways to get through those levels. Essentially, what SEGADIDNOTDO but had tried.. to "limited" success. In fact, I met and gained a best friend with this Anime and Video Game. He was an Otaku and his Dorm room was a gateway back to Japan in many ways!! Anime Girls, Video Games, Manga, Visual Novels, etc. I learned one or two Japanese words/phrases/traditions per day and I showed him 1 or 2 of the American equivalent. Then.. when I went to visit Japan my Junior Year.. I stayed with his family and already knew a lot of things to do/not do as well as 'street/real talk' Japanese!! What an amazing, life-changing experience!! Anyway, I always think of my best bud when I see this Game or the Anime. Thanks GTV!! =]
Thanks I’m glad I could bring back some good memories! I often wonder what the rarity of Keith Courage would be had not been the free game? Honestly I thought the concept of the comic was cool. Except for bad and nice that was so cheesy it’s listed in the dictionary when you look up eye roll. Thanks for watching as always 🌈
Ah, people bagged on this game because they didn't have it growing up. Not saying it is bad, but to me Keith Courage was a lot like the NES TMNT game (which everybody kind of expected to be a bit like the arcade game); you just had to play past the doubt phase and the fun kicked in. Problem was most people who played this was either in a bundle of ROMS or in a stack of games they played just like a bundle of ROMS (five minutes for each game). I could be wrong, but that is what I think.
I did not own a Turbografx-16 but I had an Uncle who did and also had this Game somehow the Game gave me Nightmares as a Kid..... but when I joined RU-vid I wanted to play the Game again because I saw 1 RU-vid Complete the Game and I figured the Time was right The Wounds I had as a Kid were completely Gone and I seemed to really like the Game I'm glad the Series is Alive but I also feel Cockteased too since it's only Japan and Not anywhere else like Canada where I'm from!
i wasnt even 10 when i played this and it left me with something good remember. Had i known about the cartoon, being a fan of the samurai pizza cats, that would have blown my mind even more.
I loved Keith Courage then, and I still have and love it now. I found out about its Japanese origins in high school in the '90s when I had my first internet accessn and then later boughf the PC Engine version as well. I was curious about the "next adventure" mentioned in the ending of the Turbografx game, and tracked down the Famicom Wataru game that plays a bit like Zelda 2. Then, I got the 2 Japanese Game Boy Wataru games, which turned out to be disappointing Tamogachi-like experiences, and finally the Playstation 1 game, which us more of a JRPG. None is better than the Turbografx game, but the Famicom game is absolutely worth playing.
Yea I thought the FC game was playable and could be fun. The Japanese version doesn’t mention a “next adventure” so I have. No idea what they were talking about or what that could mean
I actually watched a good portion of the original Wataru series online not too long ago, and all I can think is that Hudson and NEC had a huge missed opportunity on their hands. I have little doubt that, if Wataru had been localized as a "Keith Courage" cartoon, the toys gotten a release, tiny kid me would have fallen in love with the show and would have been begging my mom for a TurboGrafx so I could get the game
@@GTV-Japan On the bright side, the show does seem to have gained a tiny following outside of Japan recently. Now here's hoping someone fan translates the Famicom RPGs, because those look super fun
Although I did not get a TurboGrafx 16 when they were brand new, when I did get one it came with Keith Courage. Since I was a little older, I was able to appreciate how campy the Americanized story was.
My dad worked for NEC in 1989 and the Turbografx was my first video game experience. Bonk was not included (as it had not been made yet), but I did have Keith Courage. I will never forget those first experiences. I have heard the mantra repeated by everybody that this was the wrong game to pick as a pack-in, but I agree with you. If they had localized the show, it could have been a successful mascot.
Keith Courage was my very first video game. I love it. When I found out that he was really Wataru I was a little sad that they have Westernised him instead of just bringing the whole franchise over show, toys and all. It might not have outsold Mario or Sonic but possibly sold enough for more than one console print run. Oh Wataru we needed you and we didn't know.
Wow that’s amazing! I love to hear stories like that! I’m a sad/confused about it too especially when the license for the game included all the characters. Oh well. If you enjoyed this video then I feel I’ve done something right and gave Keith/Wataru some deserved justice. Thanks for watching 🌈
What a great video. Here's my story with the TG16 and this game. For starters, I don't know why it's always said that the console was not officially released in Europe. I grew up in Spain and the console could be found on major retailers and was heavily advertised on magazines, though it never caught on. Also, our Turbografx was not the american model, as our version had red/blue accent colours instead of orange and yellow and came with both RF and RCA video cables, both of which would be plugged on a propietary connector, so, apart from USA and PC Engine, there clearly was a third version. Also, the pack-in game here was not Keith Courage, but Alien Crush, which to me was a much wiser decision. Anyway, I got this game shortly after getting the console and I have to say that to me it felt pretty meh... The difficulty was not well adjusted and the game was too repetitive. Not to say I did not like it but meh... (I own the PC Engine version today). Also, I remember nothing about the comic here. Honestly, had I known it came from a japanese anime I would have liked it much more. Oh, and what you said about the story not matching the scenery happened to me too :D In any case, lovely memories (I have the Analogue Duo today, which I use everyday) and fantastic channel. I love everything TurboGrafx.
Wow that’s really cool! I don’t think I ever even seen one of those. I have heard often that the PC Engine was imported into France and many of the anime based games were translated into French and that helped the popularity but never hear anything about Spain. Thanks for sharing!
So...of course I was definitely a gamer in 1989 and was caught between both 16-bit "Super Systems." The notion that the TG-16 should have come with a Mario like game by 1989 totally ignores what those consoles represented. We all grew up playing Nintendo (and Sega) games that followed the Mario style of gameplay but....we were ready for something new. Nec knew this and despite what the "the Turbo should have come with X" crowd says...Sega knew this as well. The pack-in game for the Genesis was of course Altered Beast. So I agree with you 100%. Having said that, I have always felt Kieth Courage was the wrong game to lead with. No, if you want your console to sell you lead with one of your biggest guns. For Nec, that's either Blazing Lazers or Legendary Axe. Had either of those came with the TG-16 it would have turned some heads. I don't know if I would have passed on getting the TG-16 in 1989 had that happened... Back when I was helplessly lost I had two friends help me make my decision. The first had a TG-16 and at the time it blew my mind (Kieth Courage and Blazing Lazers). I wanted one so badly...until I saw the Sega Genesis while visiting my other friends house. I absolutely loved Altered Beast with its impressive parallax scrolling and Ghouls n' Ghosts was just on another level. I got my Genesis on Christmas Eve of 1989 with Altered Beast, Ghouls n' Ghosts, and Space Harrier II.
I think they were kind of caught. You had to include a game that was good enough to get people buying the machine but then not so good that you’re giving away potential sales down the road and there were only a few games to go with as it was.
