/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9696602]

Born in 1987, grew up playing the SNES and Genesis, never knew the Turbografx-16 existed until the early 2000s.

What was it like owning and/or playing the Turbografx-16?

[Anonymous No.9696608]

>>9696602
Sad because none of the Japanese games were brought over. In hindsight, the most popular game for the system these days (Rondo of Blood) was never released outside of Japan. Really shows how far they had their heads up their asses.

[Anonymous No.9696616]

>>9696608
>Sad because none of the Japanese games were brought over.

Is that to say most people who owned a Turbografx were aware of the PC-Engine's library as a reason to want to get one?

I sure wasn't aware of the SNES or Genesis' japanese library as a kid.

[Anonymous No.9696637]

>>9696616
Depends on who you ask, but lots of Japanese titles recieved coverage in gaming magazines only to never be brought over. At least the CD's weren't region locked, so importing games was an option.

[Anonymous No.9696835]

>Born in 1996, grew up playing the PS1 and N64, never knew the PC-FX existed until the late 2000s.

Some homebrew? https://www.youtu.be/6rOtI-3aLhc

[Anonymous No.9696964]

I was an exclusive TurboGrafx-16 owner, plus the CD add-on, and later the TurboDuo and TurboExpress, so I was a big supporter.

What it was like = felt like a badass hipster gamer

What it was also like = watching an underdog slowly dying while on life support and saying to self, "Nah, it'll be fine, you'll see. They'll all see."

[Anonymous No.9697296]

>>9696602
At the start it was great. We had Dungeon Explorer, Moto Rotor, and a few other multiplayer games and the turbo tap, having 3 or 4 people playing was a lot of fun. Way better than boring old Nintendo.

Later when it became obvious that the system was left for dead it wasn't so nice, but I did get some deals on games when stores were trying to get rid of inventory and in the end we got a SNES and a Genesis anyway.

[Anonymous No.9697310]

>>9696602
Someone came to my school and offered us $100 bucks to talk about video games for 3 hours. It turned out we were a focus test group for the Turbo-Grafx 16. They had a mock-up made of styrofoam.

We basically said every idea they had was crap, the name was stupid and the "caveman game" could have been good if they had given the caveman a giant club. One of our suggestions was "the games need to have blood", and we argued that some NES games had blood in them. They should have listened to us because two years later we all ended up owning Sega Genesises (Genesi?)

Got to keep the $100 bucks and dodge a half-day of school though.

[Anonymous No.9697563]

What a bizarre choice for box art. Like who is that kid? They should have used bonk

[Anonymous No.9697629]

Had it, sort of. Turbo Express. Knew literally no one else who had either of them and no one with a Duo. I had the shitty Darkwing Duck game for it, among a few dozen others. My favourites of the ones I had were Parasol Stars, Cadash, Neutopia II, Somer Assault, Soldier Blade, the Sokoban game thing I can't recall the name now right now (Boxy Boy?), Final Lap Twin, that tennis game (you know the one) and Magical Chase. Samurai Ghost, Shockman, Order of the Griffin and Tricky Kick were okay-ish. Keith Courage reminded me of the side-scrolling parts of Kid Icarus for some reason and was also meh. DwD was shit and Davis Cup Tennis bored me to tears. Can't remember the other games I had right now, but I had a little binder full of them.
I disliked that I couldn't talk to anyone about the games. Brought it to school one day to show the other kids, but no one was terribly interested.

[Anonymous No.9697642]

>>9696616
>Is that to say most people who owned a Turbografx were aware of the PC-Engine's library as a reason to want to get one?
I'm >>9697629 and I was not aware of the PC-Engine library.

>>9697629
Oh, and just remembered, duh, that I also had Bonk's Revenge (but not the OG) and Air Zonk.

>>9697310
>Genesi?
Geneses.

[Anonymous No.9697664]

>>9696602
i never heard of it or even saw one game\system in the wild
not even a controller
we would frequent swapmeets, yardsales, and vidya stores

i got into pc engine and neogeo shit thanks to the wii virtual console, now i own real hardware

[Anonymous No.9697749]

When I was a kid I remember trading a neighbor of mine a box of bottle rockets for a Turbografx 16

It came with one game, which was some shmup I can't recall. What I do remember was I really liked the hu card as a physical medium. Very sturdy and satisfying compared to a cart or disc.
Also I remember the systems backend having a big piece of plastic that pops off. Could be wrong tho, its all just an echo of a memory now.

[Anonymous No.9697886]

>>9697749
You were correct about the back end popping off. That's where the cd rom add-on docked.

[Anonymous No.9698001]

>>9696602
The games were fun but identical in quality to Sega Genesis games.

HuCards were handy in that they didn't take up much space.

[Anonymous No.9699503]

>>9696602
The games were all over in the magazines, and I really wanted them since they had such high appeal to me. I remember Legendary Axe was VG&CE's game of the year back then. I remember calling to get a few free VHS promo tapes (this one: https://youtu.be/aF14NxV1-V8 ). I didn't get my TurboDuo+TurboExpress until just before the PS2 came out and bought out someone's whole collection for $200USD which was a great start since everyone wanted a PS2 at the time, but I just always had the desire to play. Found out a few friends also had/loved the line of systems, and we all knew that importing the CD games were the main way to get the quality games for it. While it was inexpensive in the early 2000s, it did have a lot of games that had appeal to each of us. It was probably a lonelier experience for others having the system, but there were a few people in my circles that had/loved the system in my area at the time. It does seem like those that did have it on this side of the world sort of already know each other in some way, and if I give information about them, I'd reveal my identity. The games are amazing and it is a shame the market was unable to sustain them. We all knew the best games were to be imported, but even the ones that did get localized were pretty good too. The Duo/PCE line of systems are one of my top 5 most favorite consoles of all time and I am glad that the TurboExpress was my first ever portable system that I have.

[Anonymous No.9699537]

>>9696602
If you try random games on TG-16 you have a good chance of getting japanese kino. Other systems, especially Genesis, ported a whole lot of eurojank.

[Anonymous No.9699827]

>>9699503
What game is on the cover in the top left?

[Anonymous No.9699829]

>>9699827
looks like the side arms japanese box-art, some different coloring?

side arms is a dope port, both the hucard AND CD versions are improved over the arcade

[Anonymous No.9699854]

>>9699829
Nailed it. Thanks, anon

[Anonymous No.9699858]

>>9697563
yeah that's some garbage
all marketers should be killed

[Anonymous No.9699992]

>>9696964
they could at least had the dignity of localizing Rondo

[Anonymous No.9700027]

>>9697563
Worked on my cheapskate parents

[Anonymous No.9700067]

>>9699854
This was the last game I bought for the TG-16, back when they were selling games at Toys R Us. Good stuff.

[Anonymous No.9700941]

>>9696602
my friend's older brother had one, but wouldn't let us play it. it looked fun though.

[Anonymous No.9700986]

>>9699503
Your house must be awesome to hang out in and play all those games! Like a living electronic museum.

[Anonymous No.9701463]

>>9697563
That was Zonk, the hip new futuristic rockabilly Bonk

[Anonymous No.9703628]

>>9699827
It features the painter that did the artwork for the covers of Videogames & Computer Entertainment. Looks like the other anon gave the answer which was Sidearms.

>>9700986
My studio apartment doesn't have the room to host anyone. Mostly when my friends come pick me up, we just go out to a place to eat. They aren't too interested in older games, but they know it'll be around for me to bring if they ask because everyday is throwback Thursday with me.

[Anonymous No.9703724]

>>9701463
*Shantae

[Anonymous No.9703734]

>>9703628
Playing vintage games with friends is comfy & cozy so they shouldn’t miss out. I used to play everything from Atari 2600 (Combat is awesome) to Xbox 360 throughout my youth. Excellent memories.
I finally found out what that tgfx16 is with the guy who kicks the other guy off the toilet shitter. J.J. & Jeff (Kato and Ken in Japanese PCE game).

[Anonymous No.9703747]

>>9696602
I had one and the fact that I was the only one I knew who did was actually a bonus to me because it had a completely unique library. You couldn't play Ninja Spirit or Splatterhouse or Legendary Axe on anything else. I also had the first two Bonk Games, Alien and Devil's Crush, Silent Debuggers, Klax, Vigilane...unlike a lot of "failed" consoles the TG16 really had a great library and a ton of good exclusives.

I felt a lot like >>9696964 where you could kind of see it failing to gain traction and you wanted to tell people it was actually cool and worth their time but it barely got a foothold before it got caught in the SNES / Genesis meat grinder and that was that. It was like when a really cool but offbeat film gets released the same week as a blockbuster and just gets swallowed up by it. The TurboGrafx was good, it just got dabbed on by two tremendously successful consoles and being the bronze medalist of the 16 bit era wasn't quite god enough, it seems.

[Anonymous No.9703858]

>>9696602
Had one as a kid, I had a few games for it about 3 or 4. Out of 3 video stores in a 1km radius of my house only 1 rented games for it. it only had a 20 games for rent and about 2 years later they stopped buying games for it so it was the same old games over and over. I had a good time playing it but once the snes got on the market it stood no chance. it was fun having an exclusive rare console back in the 90's and all my friends were surprised when they saw the console.