I bought a TG-16 when I was a teen, then a Duo :D missed the system, I now have two PC Engines(one CoreGrafx) a Super SD System 3 and an EverDrive... Of course I had to buy a hucard for nostalgia ;) Side Arms
There was also an awesome version of Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition on the TG16 as well, though I guess it's really best remembered as a Shmup monster, especially in Japan. I like the 8/16-Bit era specifically because of its Arcade ports, since compromises had to be made even into the 32-Bit era. Games like Altered Beast on the Genesis might not have aged well (I don't like it very much), but having something so close to the Arcade back in the late 80's was pretty impressive. The TG16 was the Sega Dreamcast of it's time: A fantastic game library and very capable hardware, but just didn't succeed in the market.
Amazing video! Most of these ports are near arcade perfect, and that's from a cheap 8-bit console released in 1987. Another conversion you should cover is Wonderboy In Monster Land (Or Bikkuriman World on PC Engine), it IS a perfect arcade-to-home translation in my eyes
I appreciate the personal story you have for most of the games in this review. Doing an emulator overview is one thing but actually have been there is quite another.
I have to say Bloody Wolf might have the most dramatic minion death animation ever. Usually endless waves of flunkies have the decency to just fall over and blink away or at least explode into bloody chunks. Clutching your exploding heart while reaching out to the cruel heavens is usually a move reserved for final bosses, not comically repeated by literally every single enemy. Like... did they rehearse?!
I also rented games and movies from Phar-Mor but I can only recall them having NES games in my local store in Florida. Their rentals were really cheap. I suspect they only broke even or lost money on the rentals just to get people into the store so that they would buy other things while they were there. At this point there were still a lot of mom and pop rental stores around and Phar-Mor must have cut into their business pretty badly even before Blockbuster finished them off. However, thanks to Phar-Mor I was able to rent and try out a lot more games than would have been possible otherwise.
turbografx 16 may be the nicest looking console ever made. White/green xbox 360 also in the running, but whoever designed the aesthetics for NEC hit it out of the park, and hu cards were way cooler than big empty plastic cartridges!
As I barely heard of this or PC-Engine as a child, I have no nostalgia for this system, but I learned a few things about it on the internet and RU-vid. But if magazines or kids dismissed it as less than the 16-bit consoles, it's obviously a mistake, I know it needed a few expansions to deliver more advanced games like Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, Fatal Fury Special and many more, but still, those games are usually better than most true 16-bit games, for example, Rondo of Blood destroys Castlevania 4, Fatal Fury Special is more faithful on the PC-Engine than on SNES or Sega CD, even Street Fighter II CE is on par, if not better in some aspects, like voices, than the other console ports. You have stinkers like Golden Axe on the PC-Engine CD and I didn't even mention the great exclusives like Saphire and a lot more. But it's clear this console had a lot to offer if developers knew what and how to do it right, Golden Axe could be nearly arcade perfect. To this day I with someone will fix the abismal scrolling on the Ninja Gaiden port, as a hack or something, as they did on the re-released Jim Power for SNES recently. To add further to what you said in Cadash's controls, I feel a lot of multiplatform games usually plays better on the Mega Drive/Gen, the controls just respond better and quicker than other consoles. A few games where it's even more evident are fighting games like SFII, MK and MK2, while the SNES visuals are better overall, I still think MK2 darker and less colorful pallet on the Genesis gives it a unique atmosphere, and definitely controls smoother. As a personal note, games like Ninja Warriors on the arcade and others that used ultra wide (3 horizontal displays) were companies that had nothing new to bring to the table but wanted to stand out with something that didn't even add anything to the gameplay. Ninja Warriors on the SNES doesn't need a wide display to destroy the original in every aspect.
Not on the list. Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition for the PC Engine was a near perfect arcade port for a home console release and by far the most playable port. I mean heck it's even better than the Genesis Special Champion Edition and Snes SF2 Turbo. It's just unfortunate SF2 Champion Edition never gotten a U.S. release on the TG16.
It would be nice if instead of the word "Sega" being mentioned at the intro, it should be "Feka" when the topic is the TurboGraFX system. Johnny T. approves.
I'm also old enough to remember when the first Street Fighter arcade game came out and although it's considered janky these days, it really did seem amazing at the time. By way of comparison, consider that before Street Fighter, the premiere fighting game was Data East's Karate Champ. There's nothing wrong with Karate Champ, but try to imagine what Street Fighter would have looked like coming out of that era.
@@MrBoyYankee - kind of funny to think that the standard 6-button Street Fighter control scheme came about because of that failed attempt at using two analogue buttons. Six buttons is more than any sensible designer would choose but from that day forward arcade sticks would have six buttons, just for Street Fighter.
The Turbografix 16 was and always will be one of the coolest home consoles to ever exist! I still have my console, plus the Turbo Express and the Turbografix Mini! Such a great collectors piece!
This video provides further evidence of how underrated the TurboGrafx was in its day. I agree that one of its strengths was the quality of the arcade ports. I was fortunate to have enjoyed these games back when nearly everyone else was on Team Sega or Nintendo. A few other arcade ports that stand out are Forgotten Worlds, Dragon Spirit, Klax (I played this more than Tetris), and with the Arcade Card, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury 2 and Special, and World Heroes 2.
The best shit never made it to the TG-16. The only PC-Engine game I owned growing up was AfterBurner II 👍. Import games were expensive & difficult to come by.
It was more about the one controller port and very very short controller cables that made it not the system to get. I did own it and the turbo duo for a short time but it was too much of a pain to play with console tv setups
The turbo grafx was more like a 12bit system. Or 8.5 how ever you want to look at it. But basically it was considered 16bit mostly because it could display 16bit colors and had a powerful sound card. But all of that was still backed by an 8bit main processor. I always wondered what it could have done if it had been truely 16bit all around rather than 16bit sound and color pallet ran off an 8bit processor.
@Derrick Finzer yeah. Everyone kind of knows it had potential in the U.S. but something with the insulting marketing and lack of the really good games they had in japan. It bombed in the US. I got into it after it was a dead system. It appealed to me at the time to be collecting an obscure system no one else had or played. I was buying turbo duo games when the first playstation came out. And honestly i liked the top tier pixel graphics better than the blocky early 3d graphics. I guess i was hoping they would make that stuff better. But the markets and technology left all that behind. I quit gaming when my duo died. The last system i owned was a modded original xbox. Cause i could play my turbo duo cds on it. In fact i got it from a friend and he built it himself from spare parts and modded it specifically so i could use it as an emulator box.
My understanding is that Hudson had designed the TurboGrafx-16 as a successor to the Famicom, and offered it to Nintendo on those terms. They weren't interested, waiting years (and years) until finally releasing the Super Famicom instead. The PC Engine had a pretty good run in Japan anyway, under the auspices of NEC. They just had no idea how to market it in a country as large as the United States. I guess the problem is that NEC tried to concentrate its marketing on large cities, which worked well enough in its native Japan, but misses a large chunk of the overall population in America. The other thing which you touched upon is that the games chosen for localization were very much not to American tastes, with all the fun stuff from the original releases censored. JJ & Jeff? Really now.
@LunarVVolf Yep. Maybe they kinda don't trust the Yanks which is why Saturn was only successful in Japan. I think at that time, America was not used to anime artstyle games.
@LunarVVolf Yeah, Sega really would have done better if they had taken Tom Kalinske's advice on things. It's because of his marketing genius that the Genesis competed as well as it did against the SNES, but the Japanese parent company didn't want to heed his warnings regarding the 32x and especially the idiotic early surprise launch of the Saturn.
I think the big problem in the US was an American subsidiary that didn't understand video games. It was a bunch of people from the home audio hi-fi industry trying to market a game console and never really figuring out just how different those markets were. They delayed the thing by a year just to make it larger and heavier for heckin' sake.
Hey SLX, more please that was fantastic! I'm about to complete my Lynx collection and am looking to start collecting for a new console soon! I've been eyeing off the PC Engine/TG-16 for a while now. Loved your video, but don't restrict the TG-16 games to arcade ports, lets have a top 20 of your favourite TG-16 games! Thanks
The TG16 had some awesome very close to the arcade game ports gradius, salamander,bloody wolf,ninja spirit,splatter house,rtype and the list goes on.I also loved the fantastic Zelda clones neutopia 1 and 2. Military madness was probably my favorite,it is one of if not the best hexagon grid military strategy game ever made i probably spent more time with that one than the rest combined.I had bought a TG16 system from a video store that was selling off the systems stock in fall 1996 for $25,and it was actually a system that had never been rented still packed new and fresh.Not only that they had tons of complete games for $3 each even had all the cardboard boxes the CD style cases came in new.I owned all the games previously mentioned plus many more about 30 total I think and they were all the best classics for the system.I played the hell out of it but didn't realize what it would become one day so I let all kinds of friends borrow it.Within a few years(by 1999)the system and games were lost to time and I regret it constantly.
Love seeing the Turbo, my friend growing up got it new and it was so cool, it felt more "Japanese" than the NES or Genesis to me and I loved playing TG16 at their house! Splatterhouse was mind-blowing at home in 1989 or 90 to us elementary school kids
Great episode! I'd definitely like to see more TurboGrafx 16 content. I only got to experience games on the Turbo Grafx 16/CD decades later on the Wii Virtual Console, but I enjoyed what I played. I only had an NES and Genesis growing up in the 90's, but never had a chance to play the TG 16. It really is an underrated system that unfortunately wasn't as big in the US. I'm at least glad I can still play it now as I missed out on a ton of its excellent games!
I love Bloody Wolf and was lucky enough to play it in the late 90's with Magic Engine emulator for MSDOS. I didn't know it was a port at the time and once I both found out about the arcade version and MAME's emulation got better and played the Arcade version it was jarring for me because the framerate, gameplay and music was lacking. Sure it has 2 player but to me this is one of the first times when the home conversion was better than the arcade release. It bothered me so much that I researched the hardware and the arcade version of Bloody Wolf is basically running on a PC Engine equivalent. Maybe the arcade game was rushed and spending a year to convert it to the PC Engine meant they were able to refine things and flesh out more ideas. It's not the best run 'n gun but it has charm, much better music, better frame-rate and more levels. There's portions that are really difficult with checkpoints but at least there's unlimited continues. Overall that and Ninja Spirit stood out the most with the early releases. I miss Pharmor by the way lol. I rented a lot of NES and Genesis games from them as a kid growing up in those plastic cases with the orange super-hero guy on the cover.
I'd be happy to watch more of these PC-Engine/TurboGrafx arcade conversion videos. I recently tried out the Vigilante PC-Engine port on my RPi4 and it's a really faithful interpretation of the arcade, the best one that I'm aware of. I'd also suggest covering the SuperGrafx ports - Daikakaimura/Ghouls 'n Ghosts is the best port on any system IMO.
Both were marketed terrible in the west and eu regions. Imagine if it was marketed well, they're history would've been different in a more popular light.
I'd be interested in more videos on the TG16/PC Engine. Really underrated system, not explored a lot by retro game channels and stuff since a lot of the library is Japanese, but full of hidden gems.
im still sour, even though its years later and i totally missed the turbografx back then, how these pricks made you buy a 4 player adapter, to play 2 players on their system. LMAO what were they thinking? Do you have any knowledge of why they did this? Or cause majority of their games are 1player/solo only.
@@FloridaEbikes i mean i still boggles my mind....i only ever seen turbografx in some magazines back then, never saw one in person or anything till many years later.
If that impresses you check out the games that came out on SNES and Genesis and TG-16. It runs circles around most of them. Valis in particular is amazing. The TG-16 version looks life like with full animated cut-scenes. The Genesis version has still screens and looks much worse.
@@darinherrick9224 absolutely, my favorite shooter is raiden and imho, raiden only really came out on the PCE. i played the raiden port for the genesis as a kid, but after i got my hands on a tg16, i cannot play raiden trad anymore, it feels so damn janky compared to raiden on the tg16. same with devils crash, i cannot play dragons revenge on the genesis anymore after experiencing the sheer accuracy of devils crash.
Great Video SLX! I’d love another episode of this. I’ve got 41 PC Engine Hucards and love the little system. I’ve got Bloody Wolf, Splatterhouse, R Type, Fantasy Zone and more from this list. Always looking to add more…
With some of the Turbo games like Bloody Wolf and Ninja Spirit I didn't even think of them as arcade ports since those game cabinets were not often found in arcades; I never discovered either of the two aforementioned games anywhere but on the Turbografx. Other more common cabinets like R-Type and Splatterhouse were very good home Turbografx representations for the time. Bloody Wolf was the best game of its' type in 1990, easily besting Rambo 3 for the Genesis (Which was solid also); love the music in Bloody Wolf and the sprawling levels.
It's a little funny (not in a ha ha way) I was watching a Spida1a video like a month/month and a half ago where he was reminiscing about how his "Turbo Views" series covering every North American (and a few PC Engine games here and there) Turbografx game came about 12 or so years ago. He was saying how everyone was talking about NES/Super Nintendo and Genesis games but no one was talking about Turbografx. Now here we are years later with a video on Turbografx games and being asked if we want more? My how the times have changed. And YES! I will always watch something about this wonderful machine and it's games.
I never owned a TurboGrafx 16 ever in my life. I lived in Puerto Rico at the time and the NES was the way to go in 1987. But I recently acquired a TurboGrafx 16 mini in the last few months and I've been loving it.
Missed out on the Turbo Grafx as a kid but love the system for a few specific games. The crush series of digital pinball and all the awesome shooters being the main reason I love the system now. Oh and Splatterhouse port was so close to the arcade, I didn’t know it wasn’t 1 to 1 till I was older.
The PCE has amazing arcade ports and they‘re even better now, when played with a proper arcade stick. Hidden gem: Son Son II by Capcom & NEC - a reskinned home port of Black Tiger with super responsive controls.
I always wanted Ninja Spirit to be ported to the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis back in the good old days and was always jealous that it was on the PC Engine
Great video! :) After 'Rainbow Islands', here are my fave coin op conversions (Besides R-Type + pretty much all games you covered here): Tower of Druaga (enhanced version not faithful port but it makes it Oh!, so much better!); Tatsujin/Truxton, Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Parodius Da!. Other Arcade to PCE good ports: After Burner ii; Space invaders - Fukkatso no hi; Vigilante; Bikkuriman World (sprite swap conversion of Wonder Boy Monster Land); The NewZealand Story; Liquid Kids; Operation Wolf; Mr. Heli no Daibouken; Valkyrie no densetsu; Super Volleyball; Detana! TwinBee; Gradius 1&2 (Gradius 2 on CD); Dragon Saber; Kyuukyoku Tiger (liberties are taken but still great); 1941 counter attack; Street Fighter 2 champion; Salamander; Xevious; Raiden ------ I focused on HuCard games as these seem more impressive to me due to memory restrictions :^)
Truly staggering how great some of these ports were, it's surprising regarding the limitations, some of them even seemed to have small improvements as smoother scrolling and such.
I used to rent games from Pharmor back in the day. They had every system, even the portable systems games for rent, which I never saw anywhere else, and they were cheap! Good times 😊
I loved Phar Mor! I used to rent the most random vhs movies from there as a teen. They were 49 cents i think to rent. Section was always disheveled though
NEC Lord X. I've got all the time in the world for the old PCE/TG-16, it's really amazing seeing some of those games side by side, and just how capable that graphics chip really was. Both NEC's North American and Japanese branches messed up in the West. NA was overconfident and spent on manufacturing systems for demand that wasn't there, instead of advertising. While Japan was over-conservative after it faltered out of the gate in NA, and wouldn't spend or approve high profile titles. It's absolutely insane that after launching their CD add-on with Fighting Street as the marquee title, the excellent PC-Engine version of Street Fighter II Champion Edition was never localized...at a time when it was literally the most popular game in the world. Konami's excellent PCE stuff stayed in Japan. Tons of high profile rpgs, the sequel to Military Madness, Compile's Spriggan games, so much was stranded. I'd definitely be up for more videos in this vein.
In the right hands, the TG16 was a champ. CAPCOM did a great port of SF2. Now, can you imagine if video game developer Treasure (Gunstar Heroes , Guardian Heroes and lots more), which is known to make the impossible with limited hardware, we’re more involved with TG16/PCE!!??? I bought my TG16 at Toys R Us in Puerto Rico, at the very end of its cycle for $50. Then had to order most of my games , if not all of them, through a company call Turbo something. Back then , COD(Cash on Door), was still around. So you didn’t had to use a credit card. Wow. Life was better before
Street Fighter II on PC-Engine is a showcase to people that think the PC-Engine, Turbografx, wasn't capable. I love my PC-Engine Duo R, there's so much great stuff on it that the states missed out on, but there's enough there to show that it could have competed, at least in my opinion.
@@GenerationalGamer It's kind of nice to have a health bar, you know? The arcade game didn't have that, which meant that any mistake on your part was one too many.
@@RolandoMarreroPR I compared the NES and PCE versions of Ninja Gaiden. Graphically, the PCE is better, but the music and gameplay was so much better on the NES.
Great coverage-the TG-16 was indeed a wildly under appreciated machine. And if you consider the Turbo Express (a device I would have given my left leg for as a kid), it was the only way to have authentic arcade experiences on the go, including Street Fighter II.
@@SegaLordX Exactly! I remember flipping through GamePro back in the day and just drooling over it. I had the GameBoy (which I loved), but I still want a TurboExpress to this day, just can’t justify the spend. If only money where no object! But to answer your question in the video, definitely would love to see more of arcade ports for TG-16! Great work as always!
I may have suggested this topic when you did this for the Genesis, but either way, I'd definitely like to see more. The PCE definitely went with the arcade-at-home approach, so there will be plenty more. One of my favorites is Capcom's(ported by NEC Avenue) Dynasty Wars. I enjoy the arcade version too, but the PCE version has its charm. Bloody Wolf is quite good on the PCE, better than the arcade in some ways. It's such a close port because the arcade version used PCE-based hardware, though it had to have extra video processing to have two player and not hit a sprite limit. Might even be a bit like a SuperGrafx in that way. Overhead run-and-guns were always hard for the mainstream home systems until the Saturn and Playstation came along.
Great video as always ! I Absolutely loved the Turbographix16 I had all those years ago even though I only had 3 games for it and no rental stores in my area had TG16 games. I loved both Legendary Axe and especially Splatterhouse since that game is the reason horror or Survival Horror games are still my favorite genre of videogame to this day. Resident Evil and Dead Space all exist today because of games like Splatterhouse and Sweet Home on NES.
It still has a place in my heart and over the years I’ve even bought Japanese models with CD support and lots of Japanese titles. I recall a local toy store having the Turbografx laserdisc running on a loop and I would watch it over and over (I was in my 20’s) and I couldn’t help buy buy one and followed it up with the CD peripheral (which btw, was an amazing audiophile CD player). Then the TurboExpress. Still nostalgic for this system but it remains on my list of systems that never got the attention or financial success that they deserved. (Along with Neo Geo and Dreamcast). Still to this day, I find Japanese games on eBay.
As a kid I had a crush on the TurboGrafx, from what I could see in magazines it seemed to me like having an arcade at home, I loved Raiden and Aero Blasters in the arcades, and the TGX screenshots looked like arcade perfect. "Sadly" it wasn't a well marketed machine in Spain, hard to find in stores and not much advertising; lucky me, because I ended up with the Megadrive.
Many feel the TG-16 was underrated but IMO the real story is how poorly the TurboGrafx-16 was handled. Really is a shame how NEC/Hudson messed it all up from the wasting it’s head start with a console redesign to the poor job of selection of games to bring over to the States. I recall all my frustrations back in those days so importing was really the only option and that was challenging due to limited resources & contacts to get what was left in Japan. Would be awesome to see more TG16 but also PC Engine games that never made the trip to the States! Excellent vid topic & content
The TG16 is one of the few consoles I never owned... I worked at Stone Age Gamer and it was having to test the Turbo Everdrives that made me appreciate the TG16. I hope to pick one up one day. I love these comparison videos.
Always great to see some Turbo Grafx coverage. Your arcade comparison series are some of my favorite topics you cover, so I am looking forward to this! :)
Ive never seen a Ninja Spirit, Bloody Wolf or Splatterhouse arcade cab anywhere, and I went to quite a few different arcades in the NW Indiana/Chicagoland area. I didnt even know they were originally released in the arcade. R-Type and Klax were my favorite TG-16 arcade conversions. I remember playing them as a kid and being blown away.
I played Splatterhouse at a local mall, grocery store, + a Dairy Queen. A nearby convenience store had Ninja Spirit. Bloody Wolf was pretty rare for me, but I saw it at least once in an arcade.
14:40 It's amazing how virtually every Chase HQ conversion disappoints. The only ones that I like, even with all the limitations, were those released for ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC.
Compare the xbox PS2 xbox one PS4 to the arcade you shouldn’t compare any 16 bit consoles to the arcade they weren’t perfect street fighter 2 wasn’t perfect final fight on Super Nintendo wasn’t perfect neither was turtles in time everything went wrong when the original xbox and PS2 wasn’t here all arcade hits played wrong the arcade ruled the world of video games it was hard to install every game on mame on PC turbo graphics didn’t have much arcade games as Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis to why it failed
Great video and I'd love to see more PC Engine / Arcade comparrisons. Dragon Spirit and Vigilante were other early impressive conversions and seeing the miracle that was Street Fighter II CE on hardware released in 1987 was just incredible.
Ha! Pharmore was the first place I ever saw Game Boy games for rent. It was the Fist of the North Star game. Always wanted to rent it. At the time my dad only rented from a local place called Mac's Video, which was the first place I ever saw games for rent, and Farm Fresh though.
Being able to rent games at drug stores and department stores seems like it was a regional thing because where I grew up I dont remember being able to rent games at anything other than video stores.
@@FloridaEbikes Yeah Im from the northeast. Its very different from the midwest or south. I looked up phar mor and it said its like CVS and Walgreens well CVS and Walgreens here definitely didnt have game and movie rentals. The northeast is more advanced in some ways but not so much in others. Groceries didnt have game and movie rentals.
