/vr/ - Retro Games

>>2241384
Badly marketed overseas with a terrible name, the higher ups at NEC's gaming division going full retard during their short stranglehold on the Japanese market and spending a large portion of the earnings on things like two football teams and a formula 1 car, the stiff competition from Sega and Nintendo.

It was underpowered, it had no "face" (no mascot to hype), it needed an additional piece of tech to use more than one controller and Turbochips didn't have the same appeal or capability as carts.

>>2241384
Not enough good games, I can't remember anything fun on it aside from Bonk and Dragon's Egg that I couldn't get anywhere else.

>>2241456
I think it was mostly shmups.

The PCE succeeded on the strength of Japan's economic boom and beat the Mega Drive to punch for arcade-accurate ports for the "hardcore" gamers of that time. It was/is viewed in Japan as an "off brand" platform, supported mostly by otaku.

It had none of these things going for it in the States, and as has already been discussed, it was marketed and handled horribly.

There just wasn't any place for it n the overseas markets.

In Japan, the PC-Engine was quite popular.

>>2241384
-only one controller port(and on a system where bomberman was a notable franchise)
-pointlessly clunky, they didn't even bother to come up with some sort of use for that extra space
-it was NOT under-powered, it was over-delayed, the power level was just fine for something a year ahead of the genesis, so it needed to have been released in the west before the genesis, not for some reason AFTER
-didn't improve the controller over the previous generation(except turbo fire), YET they had no backwards compatibility like sega (with cross compatibility to boot), devs even ended up using the start or mode button as an action button
-supergrafx was stupid
-they would have needed to pull this whole thing off without major stumbles to milk the potential of a common home&portable game format.

They didn't care much about markets outside of Japan.
Proof is that there wasn't an official distribution in the majority of the european countries.

>>2241417
>It was underpowered,

What? It came out a couple of years before of the 16bit and was way more powerful than NES/SMS

>it had no "face" (no mascot to hype),

Wasn't Bonk the mascot?

>it needed an additional piece of tech to use more than one controller and

That's true, and they came with more retarded add on later, rebranding various times the console, that was not a smart move

>>2241524

Bonk isn't a good mascot

>>2241472
>>2241515
It relied on arcade ports, yet had those measly two buttons when there were already various arcade titles using 3 or 4 buttons at the time it was released.

>>2241478
>In Japan, the PC-Engine was quite popular.

According to Hi Score Girl, it wasn't.

>>2241524
>>2241532

Takeshi Meijin is PCE's mascot

>>2241626
>According to Hi Score Girl, it wasn't.
Who?

Anyway, the PCE sold pretty damn well in the Japanese market. It did better than the Mega Drive.

>>2241626
>it wasn't.

It was anon, SEGA was actually third in Japan because of NEC, that's why they made the SEGA CD, that was even a bigger failure in Japan.

>>2241638
>It did better than the Mega Drive.

Please don't pull such retarded statements from your ass.

>>2241590
This.

Also, arcade boards were already typically 16-bit at that point. Many used the 68000, not only from Sega but from Taito, Namco, Capcom, etc.

I'm on the verge of buying a Core Grafx 2 + Super CD-ROM2 combo with an arcade card. It comes with a stepdown converter and two loose hucards. Is 150 euros a fair price?

I'm having trouble estimating the value and didn't feel like it warranted a new thread, so I'm sorry for going off topic for a bit here.

>>2241648
That depends on the games involved.

>>2241654
R-Type and Gradius.

>>2241472

Do Japanese youth nostalgia about it like Americans do the Genesis?

>>2241461

Shmups are awful though.

>>2241643
Why don't you go ahead and look it up for yourself? The PCE outsold the Mega Drive in Japan. You might not like it, but it's a true statement.

>>2241643
MD systems (1,2,CDX,WM) sold 4.3m units in Japan. The plain PCE alone sold over 3.9m.

>>2241641

Sega being third doesn't mean it was big. For all we know Nintendo could have had 70% of the console market, Sega 9%, and PC Engine 20%

having Keith Courage as the NA pack in game for the first couple years instead of Bonk's Adventure didn't help with sales.

>>2241671
PCE Outsold the Famicom in 89 iirc (the iirc is about the year, it could have been 88.) The PCE did really well in Japan.

>>2241662
You're awful

>>2241384
Too much focus on niche genres (in particular shooters), too lopsided of a gaming selection genre-wise (again, specifically geared toward shooters), and a failure to produce a "must have" game.

>>2241524
It came one year before the genesis and it was a bit less powerful but it could punch above its weight (it had more colors than the genesis and the processor was actually faster than the snes one at some stuff).

The differences between the PCE, Megadrive and SNES would be comparable to the ones between the Dreamcast, the PS2 and the Gamecube respectively.

FCC required the TG16 be bigger than the PCE for whatever reason.. they should have used some of that extra space for a built in multitap.. could have been the first system with >2 player support, and if it came packaged with bomberman, lode runner or dungeon explorer it would have sold way better.

Another regret is that supergrafx launched the same year in JP as TG did in the west.. They should have just sold supergrafx stateside instead, the boost in install base would have brought more game development..

>>2241954
There was no FCC requirement. TTI just thought that Americans liked big clunky electronics.

>>2241991
TTI didnt handle the TG until 91. It was all NEC before that..

Though I agree it probably wasn't the FCC, as the Turbo Express was even smaller than the PC Engine, and had the controller guts built in.. either way, the extra space in the Turbo SCREAMED "put a multitap in me"

>>2241478
>>2241515
>>2241647
>>2241835

>>2241384
Outside of toys r us, you never saw the fuckers.

>>2241716
Bonk's Adventure wasn't a launch title, but they seriously should've put Blazing Lasers in instead of Keith Courage.

>>2241657
Those are the best ports for that system imo.

>>2241954
>could have been the first system with >2 player support

Atari 5200 had 4 controller ports built into the system in 1984, three years before the PC Engine.

>>2242375
Well, it could have been the first native-architecture console with 3 or 4 gamepads.

>>2241659
Pretty much. There's a few threads on 2ch filled with PCE and MD fanboys arguing over which console had the better arcade ports due to their common lineup.

They wasted a LOT of time and money re-designing the TG16 to be bigger than the PC-Engine (for some foolish reason) so they didn't have much money left for advertising. Then SEGA came along with the Genesis and started the console wars: an era where advertising got very expensive.

They also manufactured 750,000 of the damn things before launch because the PC-Engine was such a runaway hit in Japan. That ate up a big part of their war chest as well. They never sold through that initial 750,000 and they ended up dumping the remainder on the Brazilian market.

>>2242478
>for some foolish reason
probably the same reason nintendo redesigned the famicom; so the retarded retail stores would sell it

The Turbografx was more expensive, and had a limited release outside of the major US cities. While it was a big improvement over the NES, NEC's poor choice of pack-in title "Keith Courage in Alpha Zones" couldn't compete with Super Mario World or Sonic The Hedgehog. It would be a year before NEC had a mascot pack-in to rival its competitors, in the form of Bonk's Adventure.

The PC Engine had a different life. It was a perfectly Japanese product. NEC-Hudson took the idea for a strong console and shrunk it down into the smallest form-factor possible. It was an instant hit.

>>2241662
keep telling yourself that. i know it hurts when you can't beat the first level.

how's yoshi's island treating you?

Would you say that NEC's consoles were pretty much the Japanese equivalent of the Xbox? NEC and MS share a similarity in that they primarily made computers, in the latter's case computer software. All NEC consoles had "PC" in the name referring to computers. Xbox is named after MS' video format, DirectX. The Xbox was the first console that could be called a computer, with an x86 CPU before the PS4 and Bone used it. The PC-FX, NEC's last console, was just a PC that hooked up to a TV.

I put the blame squarely on the awful box art (even by late 80's early 90's standards) on a lot of the games. Nothing about this says, "I am an awesome game, play me."

>>2242915
>The Xbox was the first console that could be called a computer, with an x86 CPU before the PS4 and Bone used it.
While the rest of what you said makes sense, this sentence isn't thought out. By that logic, the NES and SNES could be called computers because their processors are are based off of the MOS Technologies 6502/6510 that was used in the Commodore 64. The Genesis and Neo-Geo as well because they use Motorola 68000 family processors like the Apple Macintosh's and Commodore Amiga's did. Even the Game Boy with a Z80 like way too many of the earliest home computers used.

I don't really see how you could fit all that much on Hu Cards/Turbochips.

>>2243732
About as much as a Genesis or NES cartridge. I always felt like the hucard could have been a huge thing in the USA . Especially with that era's infatuation with collectors cards and things like pogs. They had all the signs of being a hit, but they just weren't known. I didn't know about the TG16 until after the Gamecube came out. And I lived through the Genesis/Nes/SNES etc.

>>2242915

No. Hudson Soft designed the CPU inside the PCE and went into a joint venture with NEC.

Also, almost 90% of the posts in this thread are absolutely retarded. If you want answers see:
>>2241472 and >>2241515

The rest of you kill yourselves

Turbografx deserves to be thrown into the trash and forgotten about ,PC engine on the other hand is God tier

>>2242915

Well, the only similar thing I can think of is how many PC-98 ports the PC-E had

>>2243778
Legendary Axe, Blazing Lazers, Bloody Wolf, Air Zonk, Bonk 1 and 2, etc. Not even counting CD games.

A whole bunch of good games came to the US. I'd wager that the US TG16 library is stronger than the Master System on the whole.

>>2242915
>The Xbox was the first console that could be called a computer
I got bad news for you son...

>>2243831
Well one of the best Master System games WB3 also got released on the turbo grafx, so um yeah haha

>>2242915

All consoles are specialized computers.

>>2243831
>Bloody Wolf
Fuck yeah!

>>2244308
>xblock
>specialized

>>2242915
One thing the PC engine does have in common with PCs, only one controller port!

Though that can be split, what with 4 axes and 4 buttons available.

>>2244234
Well that sure looks like a piece of shit, gramps

>>2241384
>recognition

You mean people didn't know about it, or it wasn't a retail success? If it's the former, that's not really true. It was in every store and ads were all over TV. The marketing was extremely aggressive (and annoying). This myth that it was an "obscure" console seems to have taken hold and people like >>2241417 tend to take it as fact and rattle off a laundry list of complaints they learned from some e-celeb who was probably 4 years old when TG16 came out.

>>2244234
The Atari XE was hardly anything at all.