Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 287: TurboGrafx-16

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, Ray Barnholt, and Shane Bettenhausen convene to discuss the legacy of the ultimate NEC and Hudson collaboration: the TurboGrafx-16. Just in time for the launch of the TG16 mini (in a parallel, pandemic-free universe)!

If you're listening to Retronauts as part of the Greenlit Podcast Network, a collective of creator-owned and fully independent podcasts focused on pop culture and video gaming. To learn more and to catch up on all the other network shows, check out Greenlitpodcasts.com. This week in Retronauts, we're not even human. Hi, everyone, welcome to Retronauts.

I'm Jeremy Parrish, and this is an episode full of fake robot drones from the FECA Corporation. And we are here to talk disgraceful things about. about NEC and Hudson's grand experiment in the late 80s, the NEC Turbo Graphics 16, also known as the PC Engine, also known as the PC Engine Duo, also known as the Laser Active. It was a lot of things, many things to many people,

and we're going to talk about many of them because we are many people. Who are the many people who are here in the studio with me today? Hey, it's Bob Mackie, and I am a loser of the contest to name Arizonk, officially. This is not a joke. I lost the contest. I'm Rock Hard Caveman, Ray Barnhol. This is Shane Bettenhausen frequent contributor.

And also, I don't like how you've already framed the Toprograph 16 negatively by bringing up Johnny Turbo. It's like the whole thing's like a joke. True. No, Zonk is awesome. Yeah, no, really like, I stand by Zonk in the soundtrack. You've already set this the stage for this to be. We always do this with a podcast, Shane Bettenhausen. Scandless.

This is how we are. We're here to celebrate the revival of this classic franchise. We are. This episode is happening because Konami suddenly remembered that back about 15 years ago, it bought Hudson and said, man, we should do something. this rich IP besides just posting untranslated games to the WiiU virtual console. And so we are getting the PC engine

mini, the TurboGraphics Mini. Microconsuls are still all their age. They're not but I'm very excited about this one because it really feels like it is the deepest cuts of all the mini consoles that have existed to date. It has lots of untranslated Japanese games on it, I believe. It is cool

and maybe you'll get into this how there's like three different versions of this thing coming out. Are you going to talk about all that? Sure. We can we can start from the beginning. I mean, I checked it out at Tokyo Game Show last year. Well, and it's cool. I was really impressed with the quality of it. They introduced this a year before it came out or something. Yeah. Yeah. Like we have a long time to get excited about the turbo coming back. Yeah. And the, like you said, there are three different versions. There is the standard PC engine mini for Japan. There is the turbo graphics mini for America. And

then there's the core graphics, which apparently is designed to kind of reflect Europe. Because Turmographics wasn't really a thing in Europe. Like it was kind of only released there. But apparently the representative I talked to, the guy who's producing this at Konami, said, yeah, you know, like people imported it in Europe and what they tended to get was the core graphics. So this is the British version,

like the European version of the mini. But the funny thing about the PC Engine Mini is that it's really not because the PC Engine console itself was so small that the PC Engine Mini is only like, it's like 30% smaller. as opposed to 70% smaller, like the other mini-consuls. Because it was just such a great little piece of engineering. Hudson and NEC really just put together a remarkable little system.

It was very powerful despite being like the size of a CD case. It was tiny, barely bigger than the controller that came with it. And it wasn't a big controller. It was like an NES-sized controller. It was a crazy little system. And it had something like 19 different variants released through the years across all regions, including CD add-ons, the failed expansion. I'm out of the shuttle graphics.

The shuttle, yeah, the one that's kind of like rounded. Looks like a space shuttle. It kind of looks like the N64 before the N64. As we rewind here to the PC engine, what, 1983? Is that the debut? No, 87. No, 87. Oh, I'm all insane thinking he came about.

83's Fabicom. So 87 is PC engine. 83's a bleeding edge. We first hear about it 88, but like when NES was first coming to America, I had no idea this thing existed in Japan. if you know that this console existed. Oh, no way. There wasn't really the media support at the time.

It wasn't until the NES kind of picked up in the U.S. that game magazines really became a thing again. Before that point, they were all pretty much just PC focused. Right. I don't think I'd ever seen anybody talk about the existence of this thing until, like, that video game buyer's guide, 1988, that talked about the Sega Mega Drive and the first early shot of, like, Super Famicomcom,

and that that talked about the PC engine. And I'm like, wait, there's a console that's out in Japan that has games that is popular, huh? Yeah, you didn't tell me about it? How could you? Yep, and that kind of was the ghost that haunted turbographics throughout its life was just poor messaging and poor promotion.

It's a shame because it's a great little system, but the story of the PC engine in Japan is very different than the story of the TurboGraphics 16 in America. We're going to talk about that. And it is not all negative, because I think we all have many positive things to say about the PC engine. and trooper graphics. It's just, you know, you can't really tell the American story of this thing

without the big asterisk next to it of like Hudson and, or NEC and TTI just did not know what to do this thing and how to position it. And, you know, it launched two years after the Japanese version, which was also like two weeks after the Sega Genesis launched in the US. And as great a system as it was compared to the NES, it just didn't quite stack up to the legitimately next generation Sega Genesis. So, you know, it was a very haunted

system in a lot of ways. Most of us here are old enough to have remembered this happening. And like, you know, NES and to a lesser extent Sega Mass system were my life. You know, like me and my friends spent like literally every breaking moment

thinking about these things. So we were eagerly anticipating the Sega Genesis, but much less so, the Topographic 16. I was curious about it. I was like, you know, I didn't quite understand it.

And I remember the advertising, the print ad, launch, you know, the three-page ad, like, comparing a screenshot of Super Mario Brothers to a screenshot of Vigilante and me, like, I had... Vigilante. The European pronunciation. It's not the French version. I had played Vigilante in the arcade, and I'd beat Super Mario Bros. many times, and I knew,

well, okay, even though Vigilante has better graphics, Super Mario Bros. is a better game. It's one of the greatest games ever made. And at Toys R Us or Children's Palace, you could go and play at launch a demo of Keith Courage in Alpha Zones. And although I kind of like Keith Courage, I looked at this, I was like, This is an altered beast. These graphics aren't that great. I don't need to tell my parents that this is the thing I need to buy.

Keith Courage was maybe not the best choice of a packet. I don't know that I actually played a turbo graphics until like 1999 or 1990 or so. Oh, there were in-store demos at lock. I don't remember seeing it in stores. The place I saw was at a put putt putt after a while in the late 80s, early 90s, the puttut near us built this little like console arcade in addition to their arcade arcade. It wasn't. You would pay like for a little bit.

bit of time on the game systems. And one of those was a turbo graphics. And I was like, oh, I can finally see this. Hey, it's Bonk. They have Legendary Axel at least? It was Bonk. So this was a year and a half later, at least. Because Bonk was not a launch title.

No, it was, I'm pretty sure it was around 1991, actually, now that I think about it, because around the same time, they started selling some of the games that they had, I guess, the cartridges that weren't popular. And that's where I bought Metal Storm. So that would have been 91, right? I'll also say, by me, there were no rental places where one could rent any of the games. That's true, yeah. Nobody carried it.

Blockbuster didn't carry it. Mom and Pop didn't carry it. Nobody carried it. I'm sure I drooled over pictures of, you know, the giant green dinosaur and box adventure that they would always show off in screenshots. Again, that's not launched, not available at launch. Right. Not even announced it launched. But I didn't get one until 1992, and that's when I believe it was cut to $100.

So I was like, oh, that's an easy sell for my parents. And these are games I have never seen or touched before. So none of us bought this at launch. None of us even played it at launch. Shortly after launch, legendary acts came out and was very well reviewed. Got nines across the board everywhere. it had a giant lous boss that you saw screen shots up

that looked really cool and that was the first like FOMO like ooh that is kind of a game I actually want to play but I'm not I can't play this no one has it

also I was a big Gallagia 88 fan and this game did have Gallagia 88 as Gallagia 90 which was like the second game I kind of wanted to play but at the same time

I remember thinking Sega Genesis is amazing it's so good I was like a super Sega Genesis fanboy Just look at those graphics on Ultra Beast Goals and Ghosts

Golden Axe everything Rends a Shinobi, Fantasy Star 2. So, like, early on, it became like this was the third-tier system. It was like, I didn't know a single person who had it. It seemed weird. And I was always curious about it, but not curious enough to actually save up my allowance

and have showing interest in this thing. For me, I think, well, I think like most of us in this country, it was like, it was only, well, you knew a friend who had one. And I did for a little while. I think actually it was a hand-me-down from his older brother. But at least his brother had good taste and had some of the good early games,

like Bong and Dungeon Explorer and stuff. So I played that for a little bit. But, yeah, I even bought it after Bob did a year after that when they dropped it to $60. Oh, wow. So it 93? Yeah. Wow.

Basically. And then I bought it then finally. And by the way, I'd always wanted it. Like post-launched and seeing the advertising of Bongkin stuff. I'd always wanted something to do with TurboRavics, especially Turbo Express. But then I actually got the system. And of course, it came with Keith Courage and Bonk's revenge at that time.

That's the one I got. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got that set. And then, like, mysteriously died. I think our house had some wiring problems. Oh, no. I think that was an issue with the hardware because of my mysteriously died too. Well, I also lost a Sega CD the same way.

That's also a shoddy system. I don't know. That's an expensive thing to lose. Yeah, I was. But I didn't get until my first trip to Japan. I got a core graphics two. Nice. And now I have one again physically.

So I didn't own a. Turbographics, as much as I thought they were interesting and unique, I just didn't have the money or the space for one until 2005, I want to say, at Pax. Maybe it's 2006, when I bought a turbo duo and a copy of Dracula X, Rondo of Blood. And I bought that at Pink Gorilla Games, which at the time was Pink Godzilla. I think that was on the One Up show, so it would have been 2006. It was like a Pax coverage kind of thing, and they got footage of me, like, holding, brandishing my purchase, my long coveted purchase.

I finally got to play Dracula X. And then, like, six months later, they announced it for PSP. So, yes, that was 2006. That's when I finally got it. It is a great little system. Let's rewind to 1990. Actually, I want to rewind a little further into the past and talk about the history of...

How did NEC come to make this thing? And I'll say, like, at the time of launch here in America, there was, like, a young shame being like, wait a minute, like, Nintendo makes Nintendo games, Sega makes Sega games. Who is making this thing? Yeah, it's... Who are making these games?

It's very nebulous. And the fact of the matter is that there were two companies. involved. There was Hudson and there was NEC, both Japanese companies. Hudson, of course, we've talked about a lot. They're the company that is now owned by Konami, and they were kind of on the software side. They were founded in the early 70s, named after the founder's love of trains, I believe. And they initially sold general electronics, but in the late 70s, after the space invaders boom, they were like, we should get into that. And they did. And then around that time, they started actually developing games or publishing them

and then developing them later. And they just kind of inundated the market with a ton of stuff for PCs and it wasn't necessarily great. But in 83, they said, what if we made some good games? And that's around the time I think they created Bomberman. Is that right?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And they kind of hit it big by being the first third-party licensee for Nintendo's Famicom in summer of 1984. And not only were they first, to enter that very, very vibrant market that was about to explode into becoming a national phenomenon, a global phenomenon, they made a really smart choice by taking a game they had

licensed for a computer conversion from the U.S. Load Runner and converting it to Famicom, and even though they had to cut back on it, they gave it like cool new graphics, not cool, but cute new graphics, like very personality-filled new graphics, instead of the little stick man that Doug Smith had created. And that combination of things made them very, very wealthy and very successful. And so they made lots of games for Famicom and NES. And they also made lots of games for PCs, most notably those by NEC, which means something or another. Does anyone know what NEC stands for?

Oh, I'm sure it's NEPL and something. Something, electric company maybe? Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, NEC had been around nearly as long as Nintendo. they were founded in the late 19th century as a telephone and electric company and they moved into computing around the early 80s and released some of the mainstay

home computers for the Japanese market, the PC 6601, the PC 8801, and the 9801, each of which was like progressively more powerful than the other. Yeah, they were the ones who basically had the PC branding in Japan, which is where the PC engine comes from, of course. But yeah, they were the ones who kind of won out in the early days as far as all the different

computer platforms that they had back then. Was PC88 kind of like an Amiga competitor? No, PC88 was an 8-bit system. The 9801 was 16 bits, so that's more along the lines of Amiga. Yeah, they were both pretty solid systems, but

Japan had kind of unique needs in terms of computing because of language and text entry and so forth, and you know, American systems, European systems, just didn't really meet those needs. So, NAC kind of had, they didn't have the market to themselves. Sharp was also a big competitor and there was the MSX standard, but I think when you look back on kind of like classic, original

Japanese PC games throughout the mid, early to mid-80s, it tends to be, you know, games that debuted on 8801, 901, you know, Falcom, that's where they kind of sewed their oats. Is the PC engine kind of a consultification of the PC 88? No. Literally no, it's just a branding. Yeah, the PC, the TurboGraphics PC engine that uses like the same processor family as the Famicom, the NES. Whereas PC 88 and 98 did not. Yeah, it really is like they just collaborated.

And E.C and Hudson got together and we're like, what if instead of us making games for Nintendo's console, we had our own console with hookers and Blackjack. And Hats and NEC was like, yeah, we can do that. We've got hookers right here. I do think the format, the Hugh Card format, is really interesting. And, like, that was one of the things that I did think was cool about Touravis 16 when I saw the cards.

Right. It seemed hip. Everything, well, yeah, everything about it was so tiny and cute and appealing. Well, okay, the TurboGraph 16 is not tiny nor cute. No, because Americans don't like tiny. Like, inside that. Let's fill our system with some empty space, just like Atari. Excuse me.

Sorry. I thought we were still in Japan. I wish we were. Yeah, the PC engine is very cute and small and white and kind of, like, you know, very minimalistic. Until they all shattered, I thought it was cool The games came in jewel cases as a kid Like, wow, it's like a CD

That actually threw me When I saw those for rental at shops I was like, wait, I thought this was a cartridge system But there's like a clip in there holding it down Yeah, it's a little money clip inside At the rental shop And it has an actual manual Not the permistruct manual

Yeah, the Who cards that they published games on initially Were little wafers about the size of a credit card Kind of built on the same technology As the B cards that Hudson made for MSX and Sega made for the SG 1000. The My cards. Right. And like as a match just in person, I was always baffled by the MyCards and never quite understood

the Sega cards. Like, why they even existed. Yeah. Yeah, that was definitely a carryover from Japan. That didn't make a lot of sense here. It just gave us like some very, very low capacity games that needed a special... Basically, yeah, SG1,000 games. Ghosthouse kind of good.

Nah, not really. Transbot's okay. It's, you know, kind of like one of the Macross games, but not bad. 90, I was, like, happy that I made the decision to be a Genesis super fan and not get the topographics. And then I remember EGM, like, it was about the time when the topographic CD was coming out for $399 and $99, which is like a zillion dollars in, like, modern money.

East Book 1 and 2 came out and got a 10, like Ed Samarad gave it a 10 out of 10 in EGM. No game had ever received a 10, ever. And there's a screenshot of Fina, Anime Girl. and I was like, oh my fucking God, why don't I have this console? I can never afford this thing. So in the back of my mind was like, one day, one day I'll play this game.

Did you eventually? Yes. Okay, good. If you fast forward then to 1991, when I purchased my like, topographics, CD, Dracula X, all these things. That's not even really fast forwarding. That's more like, you know,

skip 30 seconds on the podcast player. Well, yeah. So like in the future, by the time it has clearanced, you know, but years later I have money and wrecked games video marketplace. I buy all this.

I was the same way. A good time, yeah. Except my fast forward was 2008 when they came to Wii virtual consoles. Like, okay, finally I can play all these expensive turbographic 16 CD games. Well, and we have a good friend who, if you rewind to the previous version of Alternate Earth Retronauts Christian Nut, he was my friend who had all these things at the time. He had East 1 and 2 on like day of release. And he as my friend. Wait, you guys knew each other as kids?

We knew each other pretty early on. And he was always telling me that I needed to play these games. So eventually, when I did break down and buy it, I was. I was, like, remember putting in East Book 1 and 2 first. Before Dracula X, it was like, the first time we'll play is East Book 1 and 2. And I couldn't get over that the combat was, like, bumping into people. Eventually, I did get over the combat. But, like, it showed me that even, like, arriving just, like, a few years later.

Like, you know, this was only, like, three or four years after this had been a 10 out of 10. You kind of had to be there. I mean, even at the time, like, we just lacked the context for a lot of these games, which I think is another reason turbographics didn't do so well here, is because a lot of these games were kind of immersed in the history of Japanese PC games, We didn't have hide line here. True, yeah. So we weren't used to games that had the bump style combat.

Didn't also Dragha have bump combat too, like RAM combat? You like hold down the attack button and you're phasing through your, yeah, you drop your sword or your shield and hold out your sword. I'll say I give NECTTI everyone a lot of credit. If you do play those 1990 CD-ROM games, if you play Final Zone 2, Eastbrook 1 and 2, like no one had really done this before, had like localized games like this with voices and stuff. Like, you know, as bad as some of it is, like, it was, like, unexplored territory. Someone had to start. Someone had to start. Yeah.

Yeah, and PC Engine Ferbographics was the first game system to have a CD add-on in our CD episode, which I believe, CDROM history episode, which I think was episode 100 of the current run. We talked about how the fact that the first games ever published on CD were Fighting Street and some other, like, on-of-A game, yeah, for PC Engine. Duo. Notic Engine CD-ROM 2, excuse me. And like hearing the Red Book audio on East 1 and 2 was like revelation. You couldn't believe the music like this existed in a video game. Yeah, we should mention that the music was streamed off the disc. The PC Engine duo CD-ROM, whatever, add-on added the ability to stream pre-recorded audio or sound from the CD-ROM in addition to playing the music from the console.

but the idea that that thing that Adon launched for $400 with three or four games at launch was kind of insane, completely insane. Like in modern parlance like this would never happen again. Yeah. But then they launched also a $300 handheld version of the system.

Like NEC was crazy. But it was a no compromises handheld. It was a console that you could carry with you. Not like Game Boy or Game Gear. I mean, when Game Gear came out, it was the master system in portable form. but with more colors. But that was, you know,

that system was like five years old at that point where the telegraphics was... It was all coming from, you know, the bubble era, and it's like, you ship that over to America where you have a lot of, you know, more doting parents and things. I just feel like PC Engine CD-ROM came at least a year or two before, like, CD-ROM mania, like, missed seventh-guest CD-ROM mania.

PC Engine CD launched in at the end of 88, and missed launch in 1993. I guess I'm amazed that it came... It's five years. That, like, it came into existence. And enough people in Japan were like, this is what we need to throw all this money into. It's way, way better than, you know, Encyclopedia Britannica.

It's true. But, like, I was excited about Super Graphic CD, even though I didn't have it. But, like, the fact that it existed, the games like East Book 1 and 2 existed, like, it did spark something in me that, like, you know, the through line from East Book 1 and 2 to, like, Final Fantasy 7 is kind of there. The ambition of what you're trying to do with the medium. Yeah, that's valid. I mean, yeah, for sure. I mean, they were bringing anime into a digital form, essentially, before that was easy. even really a thing.

And like Dragon Quest had changed the world and like, yeah, let's take anime and take Dragon Quest and do something else with the ideas. Meanwhile, in America, video stores hadn't even created their Japanimation section. Right. Right. It was so far ahead of its curve. We still had like heavy metal clash at Demonhead covers instead of the anime that was actually in the game.

Right. For a Kira on VHS to build the section around that. I mean, John Madden football wasn't even out yet, really. Like this was a different era. Yeah. Gosh. Okay, so guys, how do we feel about the branding Trobographics-16? Where do we stand on the 16-bit thing? It's totally in your face?

Well, but is it really 16-bit? That's the question. That's a real gotcha, I think. The graphics processor is only 8-bit, right? No, the CPU is 8-bit. Like I said, it's very similar to the NES processor. Yeah, Hudson had developed their own version, much like how Nintendo did.

Nintendo made their own version of that chip for the Famicom, Hudson kind of made their own modified version for PC Engine. Right. But the graphics chip was 16-bit, and it offloaded a fair amount of the work from the CPU. you, like the master system was kind of built around the same, like the same way. The master system was actually an SG-1000, but with like super beefy graphics processor added to the dinky little SG-1000 processor.

And this was kind of the same thing, except there was no like precursor. I mean, I guess you could consider it in NES basically with like a hyperpowered graphics processor. I see the games did look closer to Sega Genesis games. Like at launch in the first two years, like it was fairly indistinguishable. I think TurboGraphics PC engine is the exact middle ground visually between NES and... They looked closer to Genesis. They played closer to N.S. That's true.

And there's way fewer effects. Because as a Genesis fanboy, just the parallax, like, the amount of... The ease by which you could do parallax scrolling, and, like, on turbo, you didn't see as much of it. It was harder to pull off. Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, the hyperpowered visual processor, graphics processor, would get even beefed up more by the Super graphics release. Oh, God. Which, like, added quadruple to power or something?

What an ill-advised device? Well, listen, first of all, you asked us about the branding. The fact that NEC in Japan adopted the graphics. Well, and core graphics as well. Yeah, yeah. It's so silly. It is weird that, like, where there was adopted back. Yeah, the bad branding came back.

And, like, super graphics, the design of that console, the chassis is like an abomination. And they were going to make it more of an abomination. They were planning, like, a steering wheel attachment and like a flight yoke thing. Like, they wanted to, they were, it didn't make it to market. but yeah, considering all the other crazy stuff I think I remember listening to an episode about the PC Engine LT, like there's all sorts of weird, like, NEC clearly

had no problem just like doing weird shit which I do kind of applaud in post, like, yeah. Yeah, the SuperGraphics is the model that I own. How did that happen? I decided, okay, when the Terra Onion Super SD System 3 came out, which allows you to play any turbo or PC engine game,

including disc games and Super Graphics games, when I came out, I was like, you know, I really do need to add a turbo graphics to my library. And if I get this model, which is a little more expensive than the other models, and actually less expensive than others, then I have the ability to play everything with the Terra Onion device. That's amazing. Yeah, there's six games for the super graphics.

It's not really... I also own one. Mine was a gift from friend of the show Mark McDonald of 8.4. That was the greatest gift to anyone's ever given me. I was like, here's the SuperGraphics. I don't quite get the industrial military design on that. this thing. It's like, it's like a rib cage. It looks like a boss you'd fight in Zevius.

You're like, you're shipping off to Afghanistan. You're bringing your Super Graphics as body armor. It's supposed to look like an engine. Oh, really? Really? Oh. It does. So it's like, spark plugs outside? And I'll say, like, as these things are happening in real time, those of us reading game magazines, like, what are they doing? What are all these things? I remember EGM talking a lot about Super Graphics. Oh, yeah. I was going to have the best version of Strider. It was going to be so good.

We all knew that it was clear, like, why would you spend like hundreds of dollars for like a thing that's only going to have a handful of games? But I don't think anyone knew at the time that it was only going to have six games. No, we did. Like, no one I know bought it to Super Graphics. We all do better. Maybe by then, yeah, but at the very outset of it,

it's just like, wow, this is it. This is the potential. And, like, you know, we're kind of turbo throughout its life in America. By the time of Bonk's adventure, that was where it kind of broke through. They had a mascot who was different. The gameplay was slightly different.

Exactly, and that's when they started pushing the advertising a bit more. Yeah, there was more print ads. Maybe there was a TV commercial even? Maybe. Maybe. Like, Bonk had some. some cultural significance.

I'll give it that. A teeny bit, yes. I'm pretty sure I saw a TV commercial for Bonk. I saw video footage of Bonk when I was younger, and I'm pretty sure that was on TV commercials, yeah. Yeah. And, like, I had friends who were curious about Bonk, and, like, the fact that Bonk made it to, like,

Super Nintendo. They always showed Bonk, like, at his maximum size with a giant head, and they would zoom the camera in really close on him. So it looked like, wow, he fills up the whole screen, which, of course, was not true. But that was the perception that they wanted to give you. But, yeah, their whole advertising was, a little iffy. Like we were talking before

about the Vigilante advertisement, where they were like, you could play Super Mario Brothers, or you could play Vigilani in your face. Which takes 20 minutes. Right, but it was like comparing a 1985 NES game, you know, first generation, first wave of game releases for NES versus like, hey, here's a

1989 vintage game. I mean, that said, Bunk is a bit of a gun set, and clearly it's by design, and like in the era where platformers, mascots were a dime a dozen, and you had to have one when Sonic and Mario were at war. And, you see, did kind of rise to the occasion and make a vaguely cool mascot, although Zonk way cooler.

Zonk. He's a rockabilly Space man. Only got two games. But Bonk was hot. People liked Bonk. I was there. People liked them.

I did. And that's probably why the system was never released formally in Europe because they were like, Bonk. It is weird. I should have called him snog. It is interesting that it was only

a great market import ever in Europe. I mean, you know, after it kind of failed to really get a lot of traction in the U.S., Europe was always kind of the secondary market after the U.S., so the tertiary market. And I think it just didn't make sense to take it there.

You're like, we have the Connix multisystem. We don't want your legendary X. Yeah, we don't need the Super Graphics. We have a... We have space camel. But I feel like TurboGraphics would have done pretty well in Europe because they do love shooters over there in racing games, and there were some really great shooters and racing games.

Tons of good schmops. Yeah, like that's kind of the thing. Well, that's actually, like, when you go back, like the best launch game for TurboGraphics is Blazing Lasers, it's actually really good. Despite the excessive use of the letter Z, Exactly. Or, you know, we haven't quite talked about duo. I guess we should. But, like, Gate of Thunder became, like, the game to have, the killer app, like a traditional size-going schmop. Gate or Lords? I think Gate is the winner.

Okay, yeah. Well, it also came with it, so, yeah. It's actually better, too. Lords was ever released in the U.S., right? It was. Oh. I thought there was one of the Thunder games that did not come here. Lords of Thunder also got a port to Sega City. It was a different name. Okay, we should talk a little bit about each of the models that I could actually write down and find the existence of. All 30 of them. Yeah.

So just to kind of clarify, because we've been throwing around names here. kind of willy-nilly. I think it would help for us to kind of provide some clarity on what each of these things are. So very methodically, let's go through and talk about what is the PC engine, like as a piece of hardware. What does that? What is that? Small, white, different.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's the base model. It was the original 1987 release in Japan and I kind of described it earlier. It's not much bigger than the controller that it comes with. It's the size of a personal pan pizza. Smaller. But, yeah. It's like if Little Caesars did a personal pan pizza, it would be square.

I think it's about the little ones that got a pizza had as a kid. It's about like that. Right, but those are round, whereas this is like fair. Oh, come on. Oh, come now. Yes, that's the important distinction to make. It's like Detroit style pizza, the squares. I like this pizza analogy.

Sicilian. Sicilian, there we go. All right. All right, the PC engine duo. That's not the next revision. I'm not going necessarily chronological. I'm going in like the order that I just wrote stuff down. Oh, well, so that is the combination of the PC engine and the PC engine.

and the PC engine CD-ROM-ROM. Yeah, so because the PC engine was very small, in order to attach to the CD-ROM peripheral, it had to have like this connector on the back that attached it, like created a bridge between the two systems. Yeah, and the CD-ROM to ROMROM is, like, it sits next to and like the PC engine sits on top of this larger device. Unlike in America where the topographics becomes this giant weird thing.

Yeah. They have to build this vertical toilet-shaped thing. Yeah. Hmm, good times. Yeah, so the duo is basically a very sleek sort of. The original model is gray. Well, also, in order to use the PC engine with the CD-ROM attachment, you need to have a system card.

There are three different system cards, and the duo builds that system card too into the device. Yes. Yes. And you, yeah, so the duo can play both WhoCard games and CD-ROM games. And Super CD-ROM games. And Super CD-ROM games, yes. It looks like a fax machine with the lid shut.

I really like it. It's so... Oh, no other Japan loves it. Exactly. Yeah, the duo is very utilitarian, but it's a good thing. There's also the PC engine duo R. Internally, how did that differ? Like, externally, it's white as opposed to gray.

Does the duo have the arcade card, or is it the Duo AC? Oh, God, I don't even know offhand. You should be ahead. Ultimately, towards the end, there's a third system card which adds RAM, adds more capabilities, and there's a latest duo, and that's the RX, which has the arcade card built in. Yeah. And the six-bun pad. The cards that you used for the Super CD-ROM were really interesting, though,

because they weren't just like a program saying, hey, you can run these games now. It actually, they actually did add. So they expanded the capabilities of the system. They did. And a fun thing is like, you know, playing a game that requires a card with the wrong system card will get you a bespoke unique mess error message from some games.

So that's like, there's a whole website which has all those. Yeah, yeah, VG Museum has a great chronicle of those. and also the NeoGeo Pocket error messages and Game Boy Color error. I mean, and some of the ones on Doer are even playable, like the Drag Connects when you actually can play it. Yeah, it's like a little graffiti version of Dragon X. But, you know, I'd imagine that, like, you know, in Japan, the CD-ROM attachment for PC Engine seems to have been fairly popular that a lot of people did have it. You know, whereas I think in America, until the duo came out, it was not very widespread to have the CD attachment. Right.

Just based on the fact that it was the third stringer and an expensive peripheral. Right. Well, and also the turbo graphics was so big because of the expanded casing on it that when you added that peripheral, it became really... The CD-ROM attachment for the derivatives was a massive, and even more so, it came with this a super huge, hard carrying case.

The box for the TurboGraphic CD was like, you could live inside of it. It was the biggest box. It was like the USS flag of video games. Nice of them to include it. It's true. It carried over that briefcase metaphor from the PC engine, but it would be too far with it.

So we also mentioned the super graphics before, but that's a system that's really hard to explain. Dude, it died on the vine. It had like six games. Right, but like visually, it's hard to describe. It's such a weird looking system. Gun metal gray looks like a base, like a military base or something. I think you guys describe, someone said it earlier. It does look kind of like a robot's rib cage.

But I think they were trying to go for an engine motif. Engine block. Around the same time, the shuttle graphics, the core graphics two, and the super graphics all launched. Right. So let's talk about the PC engine shuttle. Yes. Fuck. I've never, no one's ever explained to me why it exists. I don't even know what this is.

I think it's the low-cost model. I think it doesn't have connectivity to in Japan. It was, well, you look at the box art for it and it's all like this cartoon family sort of illustration of it. So it is sort of meant to be like a low-cost, low-function sort of version for kids and families. You can't expand it. No, you cannot expand it. And it's weirdly shaped. It's a rumba.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like, it looks like it's a rumba. It looks like the thing you'd, like, throw as like a flying disc or something? It's like a Manta ray almost. Well, again, it's supposed to be a shuttle shape. And then the controller also has like a special sort of spaceship-y kind of look to it. It's like the Star Wars Lanspeeder kind of.

Because NEC thought they could just throw money at it. Kids gear, I kind of get at this thing, though. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, especially when you already had, I think. I guess it's kind of like the Pikachu N-64. Oh, yes. That's a good one. Yeah, that's a good analogy.

I still regret not buying the spice orange Pikachu N-164. Yeah, me too. There was a spice orange one. Only in Japan. That's hot. I know ahead of my hands. Mist opportunities. The core graphics.

That's basically just a remake of the PC engine with black. Yeah. It's stylish. And then the core graphics too. Like, what even is that? Well, the key thing is that they added composite output. Right. So the original PC engine.

Yeah, it was RF only. Got it. Let's see. Also in Japan, the Pioneer Laser Active. Oh, God. Where's Chris Kohler when you need them? Well, of course, this dovetails into the Mega Drive as well. Well, and I'll say, the laser.

active was like, you know, just when you thought, could this weird thing that's only for rich motherfuckers get any crazier and weirder? Oh, yes. Pioneers like, hold my mirror. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There has to have been a full laser active episode of Retronauts, no? I don't know that really supports an episode. I could try. How much would it cost for me to pay for Chris Goldwood to talk about that for like three hours? Yeah, we got the nature on. Let's go. Yeah, so the Laser Active was a laser disc player that also played video games. If you bought modules. Yeah, you could buy modules. Yeah, you could buy modules. for both the Sega Genesis and the turbographics.

Yeah. Which also supported a extra laser disk-based format for those systems. Right. That you could only get on that system. And the PC Engine LD and Mega-LD. Yeah, which had unique games like Pyramid Patrol. Of course. But yeah, like the number of people who have all this is like single digits.

Exactly. The Sharp X1 twin. Wait, which one is that? It was... Is it a TV that has a built-in PC engine? Close. That's another one. This is the PC with the PC.

engine built in. Oh, shit. So it's a sharp X1 PC. It's like, watch out TerraDrive. It's not, it's the TerraDrive version of the PC. Yeah, it's not, like, based on the title, I thought it was going to be like the Sharp twin Famicom, which is just like a really funky NES plus. Does this have anything unique for it? No, no. It's just a slot, basically, on a PC. Yeah, it's really weird because NEC and Sharp were competitors, and yet here is a sharp

computer, which is kind of cutting into NEC's business, and it has the NECD-Hudson console built into it. I, you know, so many things about the bubble era, hard to explain. I mean, that's one of them. I always thought that both NEC and Sega signed up with Pioneer for laser active was kind of weird, so. Yeah.

The Pioneer wasn't making PCs. So what was this TV with the turbographics built into it? That was just an NEC monitor. Okay. With a PC engine slot. Oh. And, you know, you could play RGB quality PC engine on it. That's appealing.

There was a TV for Super Famcom like that, too. Oh, yeah. There was. Famcom, Super Famcom, yeah. Yeah. But this is a PC monitor. So think of that sharp computer, but this time you could use this monitor on your NECPC, but also play PC engine games on it.

All right. Then over on America's side, there was the Turbo Graphics 16, which we've talked about. It was big and cumbersome. I'd like to be in the meeting where they decided, yes, let's put it in this giant empty chassis for no reason. I feel like it was the same marketing meeting that caused the Atari Links to turn out the way it did. It's kind of similar, yeah, like links and this have kind of a similar visual aesthetic to me. I always heard some conjecture that it was due to like, you know, an FCC thing, like they were trying to protect those RF waves from getting out or something

so they had to make it bigger. I don't know, but that's what I heard a long time ago. Also, like, the part of the topographies had always baffled me, and then I never had one. I have an original TurboGy 16, but I never bought the, like, optional turbo bank thing? Turbo booster, yeah. Turbo booster?

So there was a turbo booster that added composite output, and then the Turbo Booster Plus, which added the memory expansion to it, so you could save games on it. Which is weird. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah. That's real weird. And then, but if you get the CD-ROM, it doesn't matter because it has all that built-ins.

Yeah. I think it's the first box or maybe the only game console box to have lifestyle advertising on the front or just like a smiling. A dude. Zach Morris' face, which is not present on the mini. I say, bring him back. Find that man, photograph him today. They retired him.

Yeah, and that was the visual identity of the launch branding of print ads and stuff. It was like this, like, you know, like kind of weird newsprint dude. Yeah. But he's not even holding a controller. Just like the side of his head smiling at something off. screen. It's weird. But it's half the box. It's like clip art. Yeah, it's very funny. I do think the logo, the

Turo16 logo is kind of good, and the PC engine logo is great. Yeah, they're both pretty good. They both have a presence to them. It's in the shape of the Hugh, is it HuCard or Hugh card? Dealers choice. Hugh card. Sure. The Turbo Duo, how is that different than the PC Engine duo

besides the region thing? It's a different color. Yeah, I don't think it's that different. But the thing about also, well, between the turbographics and PC Engine, they change. the size of the controller connectors from huge to small or yeah the other way around I don't know they started big got like half the size

so not only did you only have a system that could only have one controller slot yeah the fact that turbo had one controller slot you had it by the turbo tap to get a five player adapter yeah get two to get two at least yeah you had also had this size differential thing

also in Japan the cord of the PC engine controller is I shit you not like 15, 7 meters long. It is like the shortest chord mankind has ever seen. I think one thing we missed here is that the name turbographics comes from the fact that has turbo built into the controller as a feature. We didn't even say that. Which is cool. Yeah. Like that was a really cool idea. You could turn it up, turn it on. And yet another fun fact, when the PC engine very first came

out, it did not have turbo switches on it. I was going to ask about that. They revised it later. Okay. In Japan, yeah. Interesting. So you can get that rare switchless. Those of us remember I remember the weird joypad for NES that had the turbo. That was Hudson's one. And it was kind of like a presage of what was going to happen. Yeah, that was Hudson's thing. They had the joy card controller for Famicom with the turbo switches. They pretty much originated that, and then everybody sort of ripped them off.

They were like, you too can press buttons as quickly as Takahashi-Majiji. That was the point. I was in love with the idea of a slow-mo feature until I realized it was turbopause and didn't work with every game. That's great. Okay, let's bring it home. Talk about the Turbo Express, aka the PC Engine GT. This is, yeah, I always wanted one of these.

It was a Cadillac of portable console. It was a portable PC engine. Yeah, in the era of game. It played the cards. In the era of original Game Boy, links, and Game Gear, this thing was a literal just reproduction of the home console

that played the same games with a TV tuner. It was very expensive. I really like the Turbo Express mode built into the mini. Have you seen it yet? Yes. It has, like, that really bad screen filter that you can turn on or off.

So you can get the very accurate, like, I cannot see what's happening. As someone who always wanted to Turbo Express, and, you know, I don't mean to be hyperbolic, but I think the PC Engine GT filter on the PC Engine Mini is the greatest innovation in human history. And it was always advertised. I really love it. It's such a great detail. This was always advertised playing a football game, not a video game, but like a sports game. Does it have a T-Tooner?

Yeah. TV T-Tooner was optional. So I got my Turbo Express years later, like after I got my Turbo Graphics 16, and it was great. Rest in peace, like the screen got broken while moving out to California. But like when I first finally got it, having never touched one, because nobody had it because it was so expensive. It is so much fatter. Like you think a Game Boy OG is fat. When you pick this thing up, it is like holding a bunch of bananas.

It is huge. You look at it from the front and you think, oh, it's probably like a little wide and then kind of thin. But it's like a circle. It's like a circle. It's like six inches wide. It's like a Game Boy that's been on Mars in total recall. But the screen is very bright. It looks really good.

I mean, there were portable black and white little handheld TVs at the time, right? But the idea of a portable color screen was the future. Yeah, because those are like little tubes, like the black and white ones. And this was an LCD. Yeah, you could buy a Sony Watchman. It feels like an old watchman. Like all the buttons are really big and analog on it.

It's a neat device. And then finally, you said the PC engine GT, the Turbo Express, was the Cataloxpress. But no, the Cadillac is the PC engine LT, which is... Like a laptop. It is... LT means a laptop. It folds over like a DS. It can plug into a CD-ROM. You have a portable system that can, like, plug into a TV and a CD-ROM and stick a controller.

It is basically a portable console. Wasn't the MSRP like $1,100 or something? It was pretty expensive. That's definitely what it sells for now. Yeah. I wish I had bought one back when it was merely $500 because that would have been apparently a steal. compared to what it's... But, yeah, like, few consoles have had such weird mutants.

It's an interesting lineup, you've got to say. Yeah, it was basically like a PC engine for all seasons. Whatever your needs, whatever your desires, there was one that could meet them. And that is pretty unique. I mean, some of the choices they made were poor. Like the super graphics, like that is some straight-up Sega 32x kind of nonsense. Like, let's fragment the market. But fortunately, it did not have the lasting impact on people's trust.

The least we say about the PCFX, the better, probably. Yeah, I mean, that's not even the same system. That is the weird follow-up. But, you know, looking back now, the software lineup, I still feel like in America and in Japan, it's a very different perspective. Because if I think back about the turbographics duo lineup in America, you know, it's neat, it's weird, it's quirky,

it's lots of arcade ports, lots of Japanese games. Obviously, a few very strange things made for America, which if you think about those, like, that's like a whole episode of Retronauts right there. but in general I think most of the lineup was left to Japan and like my first like 10 trips to Japan the old days of Akihabra

you would go to the PC engine section there's hundreds of games you've never heard of tons and tons of anime licensed things that never ever ever ever ever came to America yeah I want to talk about the US versus Japan of the turbographics and also the software library but first we're going to take a break Thank you.

They say with age comes wisdom. Well, over here at the cartridge family, we only have one question. Who are they? Join three imperfect dads as they juggle kids, wives, and jobs, while indulging in their favorite hobby, playing video games. The Cartridge Family, a greenlit network podcast. How does Bloodborn stack up against, say, Oregon Trail? And is Bomberman just loadrunner from a different point of view?

Find out on Hardcore Gaming 101's, top games, where we objectively, definitively, and scientifically rank the games you nominate for our ever-growing list. HG 101's top games. Twice a week, every week, right here on Greenlit. Hey, do you enjoy your commute but want to make it a little worse? It's real dumb. We hate ourselves. Hey, guys, you ever like something? Well, you won't in this case. Men like that. A podcast. So one thing we haven't really talked about that one thing we haven't really talked about that much is what the CD-ROM did for the platform. beyond, you know, just adding some streaming audio

because it did augment the capabilities of the system somewhat. I mean, I think the biggest innovation, the biggest improvement it brought was the fact that it could store like 500 times the memory of a HuCard. Right. That was kind of a big deal. Like, it was actually more space than most people could make use of effectively. Right.

But how many games did anything with it besides music? Well, there were also, like, you know, anime-style cutscenes. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. No, just the constraints of cartridges were a really big deal at the time, and it forced a lot of games to be scaled down from what they were originally envisioned as. I mean, when you say anime-style cutscenes, quick, like, record scratch, I mean, like, in reality. I said style.

Yeah. I had in my mind what I thought they were going to be, having not seen them until, like, a few years later, right? And, like, having seen Lunar the Silver Star before I ever saw East Book 1 and 2, I will say I was disappointed by what I got out of PC engine Turrographics cutscenes on CD-ROM. There were not as many frames of animation. Like something like Cosmic Fantasy 2 has a few decent ones,

but usually it was like a small window. It was like at best like a fourth of the screen showing you a cutscene. Yeah, I mean, I think all that unique art still took up a lot of space, though, that could, you know, overpower a Hugh Card or a cartridge or whatever. Yeah, those would not have been possible. on a cartridge. A anime girl's face moving at all was like a revelation.

You'd never seen that on a cartridge before, really? But I think the reality of what a turbographic CD-ROM gave you from a visual perspective was a little disappointing. I still think it was pretty advanced. And, you know, like I said, kind of a harbender where things were going. Because, I mean, they tried.

You can't say they didn't try. The problem was at the same time, like, Wing Commander was happening, right? So, like, if you had a PC, if you had access to a real PC and X86 PC, It was a little disappointing to see what it was doing for me. I mean, what year was Wing Commander with CD-ROM? In 1990-ish?

Yeah, but I mean, this system came out in 88. So it really was way ahead of everyone else. Like a game like Lume, ironically. You know, like this kind of like the level of like graphical cutscene intensity artistry was, you know, it wasn't only in Japan on PC and CD. It was happening in Europe. It was happening in America on PC. I think Lume was on par with what was happening in PC engine games.

games. It actually came out for PC. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I'm... It's a little bit apples and oranges there. Yeah, I find it hard to come down too much on... Well, but imagine you just spent $400, right?

That's the thing. It's like, if you just spent $400 for the add-on for your games... You spent $400 and you didn't know what anime was before you just saw it in the digital bitmap form, then, yeah, I can see how maybe that would let you down. Right, but this was spending $400 on top of $200 at a time when $4 was like $1,000. But if you were coming from NES cartridges or even just Sega Genesis cartridges, it still felt like a big step forward. You know, I would argue that maybe it wasn't

actually. Like, that was the thing. Like, I didn't feel guilty or bad, but not buying it, not having it. Even though, like, it was existing, I felt like, well, actually, for not spending $400,000, fantasy star two ending looks really good, you know? Yeah, but you can't tell me that the intro to Rondo of Blood could have been done on

a game, and you're right. And you're right. Okay, I guess if you're going to fast for you, what is the greatest game for PC Engine, yes, Dracula X, Rondo of Blood is... It's not, it's not the only game that has good animation. Chef's Kiss. Also very late game. 93. That's late. Playstation's almost out. Yeah, I feel like you kind of keep jumping between like the Japanese and American market.

Like you're talking about PlayStation was almost out in Japan. It was still like two years away in America. Because you're right. Turrographics market starts later here and ends earlier here. Exactly. Yeah. And doesn't really have too many hardcore people who are like sad to see. And that's why that's why the system fared poorly and why, you know, you have to kind of put an asterisk next to a discussion of TurboGraphic 16 because it was like it was, it came two years later than the PC engine and that had a huge impact on its performance here. Yeah. Right.

By the time Sega CD had launched, then there was a direct competitor who you could kind of like evenly compare it to. Sega CD seemed better, question mark, to me at least. You had a big question mark. No one else agrees there? No. Well, I mean, they leaned more on the video stuff than say the TurboRavics had the anime stuff. So in terms of, like, appealing to American audience that is a bunch of white guys, you know, maybe they would want the video.

I did find it interesting that Segis City Pack-in was one of the West Sherlock Holmes, which had been a turbographic thing. Right, yes, which Johnny Turbo told us. Johnny Turbo, okay, talk about Johnny Turbo. Oh, I mean, I barely even know what Johnny Turbo is outside of, now he's back, baby. He is back. Yeah. Well, so it's a weird marketing pitch ploy, something. I don't know.

Looks like he's making fun of marketing. I don't understand. It was meta-ish. It's hard to tell. It's honestly hard to tell. To me, it's just very kind of opaque. It was a series of comic strips, basically. He's based on a real person.

Yeah, based on a guy named Jonathan Brandstetter who worked at TTI, Turbo Technologies Incorporated, which we haven't even talked about yet. But, yeah, basically the marketing department built like this comic book style single-page adventures around him, calling him Johnny Turbo. He was like a superhero who was trying to sit. save kids from the evil corporate goons, the soulless robots of the Feca Corporation

which was clearly supposed to... FICA. FICA. A thinly veiled Sega. Yeah. Weirdly, completely like never mentioning Nintendo ever did these ads? Nintendo, yeah, didn't really get mentioned much, but I think that's because thermographics and Genesis were much more kind of rivals at the time.

They launched basically at the same time. Super N.S. wouldn't come until two years later. Sure, given the chance Johnny Terrible would scream, but Nintendo doesn't even have a CD wrong. Well, and this was an ongoing series of ads. And I remember at the point at which the Faker Corporation was about to launch the FACA CD,

that's when Johnny got real mad. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, Nintendo's a much easier name to pun to make fun of. I remember all the ones from, like, Mad Magazine, like, no friendo, no mindo. Very, like, go nuts with that.

Sega, much harder. But I remember at the time thinking Johnny Turbo seemed kind of desperate and sad, and he's not, he wasn't very, like, you know, aspirational? Yeah, he wasn't very super heroic. Yeah, that's why it's

hard to tell if it was meta or not. Like, I'd imagine he looked kind of like he really looked. Yeah, actually, I've met the actual Johnny Turbo, and he looks pretty much like, you know, an older version of the guy in that comic. He was on the computer Chronicles. You can find him in an episode of that. I don't think

those ads worked. I really, I don't think anything really worked for TurboRefix for a TTI until, like, they had the $99 bundle where you got the Turbo Graphics with Bonk and another game, or like, when Duo was getting, like, clear Americans are very easily influenced by low prices. Was Johnny Turbo their Takahashi maging?

They're like, we need one of those slubby guys on our side. I don't know. It was like a bad version of that. Yeah. I like my theory. Yeah, it is. But, you know, Master Takahashi was kind of a big deal because he had a skill. Yeah.

He was marketable, like a marketable skill. But also, like, Johnny Turbo only showed up in like three print ads, comic print ads. And it wasn't, there was no Johnny Turbo game. They should have made Keith Courage Johnny Turbo in Alpha Zones. Not back then, but now he's back with Johnny Turbo's arcade for Nintendo Switch, which is Data East arcade games, not Turbo graphics games. One of those games that come out for PS4. Oh, has it? One of them.

I would say, though, that you know, I would say, though, that, you know, before the Johnny Turbo, like the Turbo graphics print ads were not bad. I've been looking at them, and they were kind of stylish. And they did sort of communicate a certain coolness about the system. But once things switched over to TTII, they kind of fell apart of it. So, I mean, and, you know, to say nothing of the terrible box art. We should probably explain what TTI is.

Is someone else capable of doing that? Because it gives me an idea. So really quickly. Before TTI. So it was NEC Technologies incorporated what's responsible for marketing the Terpographics in America. Then they gave more leeway to Hudson because Hudson, who in the U.S., was basically all Nintendo for many years had finally started to

move over to publish more of their own stuff on the turbographics. So NEC kind of split off that division for turborefics and joined up with Hudson to make turbo technologies incorporated, which would then be responsible for, marketing the rest of the turbographics

plus the turbo duo. It was that by the time duo had come out. Yes, yes. It was basically purposed for the duo to bring that up and get people interested in it. Okay. And then TTI I continued to sell the turbographics well into the late 90s.

After a while, they just went online. Yes and no. So they gave all, once they shut that down, all the old stock went to TurboZone direct. Okay. Which was a mail order company. Towards the tail end of duo, like a few games got like canceled. It was like a trickle of games. Right.

At the end. And then, yeah, it went into kind of like legacy mode. Yeah. Mail order only. Yeah. TZD. Okay, so TurboZone direct. Maybe I'm getting that mixed up.

And I just remember having the opportunity to buy PC engine games, turbographic games, online in, like, 1999. Also, the speed from which, like, turning the page again, Arizonk's coming out, it all seems cool again to it's all over. It was like a year. Like, it was pretty quick, yeah. Right. And I think a lot of people started to pay attention at the end because, like, you know,

it was 19903 and things were changing. But, like, it was too late. Yeah. Yeah. John Madden, duo CD football. Right. Like, yeah. And some of the games.

towards the end, like, I always point to, like, Adam's family. I think there was, like, a bespoke, unique Adams family CD-ROM game where you play as Dan Hediah from the movie. Like, how did these things happen? There's an original tailspin game, an original Darkwing Duck game, not made by Capcom, just for turbographics. Or, like, in Japan, Street Fighter Fucking 2. Like, crazy things kind of happened at the end of this console, actually.

But we didn't say that here. In Japan, they received about 670 games total for the turbo. graphic, or the PC Engine, the PC Engine CD-ROM 2, and the Super Graphics. Hence, to bring back, like, yeah, we're going to Japan. Going to Japan, seeing the PC Engine section, being overwhelmed. You're like, what the hell? It is, it is overwhelming. That's about half the Famicom Library. Yeah. Not bad, not bad. JJ and Jeff was a lie.

No, it was Cato and Kinchan, thank you. You know, that's a pretty good game. People pooped on it, but it's a fun game. But that's because they didn't need to. Poop it already, pooping was built in. It comes in the game. That's right. By comparison to those 600 and 70 games. America got about 125, 130. That's still more than I would have thought. A handful of which

were unique to the U.S. most of which were just localized games. What were some of the unique U.S. releases? Like Falcon 3.0 which had unique... I learned on Retronauts. If you played that on TurboExpresses, it had like a unique point of view for verses with a link cable.

Oh, goodness. I didn't know that. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. There's impossible. It's impossible. I've had impossible. There's like a cinemaware. It came from the And there's also... Cinemaware was like a big backer. There's like two or three Cinemaware games.

Yeah, they made the TV sports games. Yeah. There's Beyond Shadowgate. There's all sorts of weird... Beyond Shadowgate was one of the very final games, right? Like, late 1993. It has good animation. So, yeah, with Cinemaware and ICOM simulations

were like the two big Western backers for the Turpographics slash duo, and they release stuff like, yeah, Impossible and things. And also... The Disney license games are weird. Yeah, those. and things like the Beach Boys saga. Wait, what? Oh, yeah.

Yo bro in Camp California. Which are kind of good. Based on failed attempts by one of the Beach Boys games. Adam's family? These are all NEC. No, no, no, the Beach Boys games. Oh, they're like side-scrolling. You're a bear.

Yeah, they're cartooning. You're cleaning up the beach. They're supposed to be like a cartoon franchise based on the Beach Boys, but did not actually try to. The Band, the Beach Boys. I'd say you're a cartoon bear. I'd say it's the Green Dog equivalent for. Oh, green dog. I remember seeing that on, they were aggressively marketing the Turbo Graphics 16 and Turbo Duo, I think, on VHS tapes.

They would send out to you. And for some reason, I got three of the same tape in the mail and I would watch it over and over. Can I have one? I'm jealous. I don't think I still have them. But there was a very strange narrator and you would see clips of all the games and all of the showy-offy full motion video stuff. And that Beach Boys thing was on that video, I'm pretty sure. There's another video with, like, just like people dressed in the turquoise and neon turbographic.

apparel and just dancing around and holding you hookyards. It's crazy. I didn't get that one. No. And Tony Hawk edited one of those. Wow. But it is like your 95% of Japanese content. It really is. And like I remember even at launch being like, what's it a Chu Man Fu?

Like what are these games? What are Chinese than Japanese? Well, the thing is is that originally PC Engine was bolstered by its quality of arcade ports. And it had a lot of support from like Namco. and Capcom, and in some cases, Sega, licensed device,

who, you know, Namco really had a lot of good arcade ports because, you know, the contemporary arcade games at the time, you know, there was not as much 3D stuff being tossed around. So a lot of it was a lot of 16-bit platformers and so on, things that could be translated a lot better to the PC engine. And you can actually learn some of this in High Scoregirl if you want to watch that. But, like, you can get the gist of that.

It's that, yeah, the PC engine was really early on helped by a lot of good arcade ports, but you bring that over to America, and people are like, what the hell is Ordyne? Right. Or Wonder MoMo. Well, we didn't even get that. Right, yeah.

None of that really tracks. High score girl is underrated. I can see the need maybe for NEC that's sort of, you know, picking shoes and maybe get more original support. Well, I remember the first thing I imported was the Hugh Guard of Salamander, you know, which I'm a huge Life Force fan. And I realize, like, oh, yeah, like, Konami made a lot of really good games. Yeah, they did.

Yeah, it's not just Dracula X. Konami was a really big supporter of it as well. Yeah. Yeah, the, I think it's important to kind of understand the context of the times in which the PC engine launched in Japan, 1987, was the point at which Nintendo's Famicom really dominated the market, but it was starting to show its age. And so when you saw arcade conversions, 1987 was when arcade conversions started to really diverge from what you saw in the arcade.

So you saw games like Section Z from Capcom or Trojan that looked like one way in the arcade, and they were obviously less graphically impressive, or RIGAR from. from Techmo. Yeah. They looked really impressive in the arcade, but they were like very shallow kind of action. And they, when they came to NES, the visuals obviously had to be scaled back. And so to compensate, a lot of people would, a lot of developers would rework the gameplay, so it was more suited to a console environment, which was great for those of us who played

home games. But for those of us who wanted, you know, very faithful arcade conversions, it was a big letdown. Like, you know, maybe you wanted to play a RIGAR game that was 36 levels of just hit things while running in a straight line, as opposed to a backtracking kind of exploratory game with top-down views and strange boss battles and power-up systems, or Section Z where you had to find your way through a space maze instead of just going straightforward, then up, then straightforward, then down, then straightforward, and you got to the end.

So in that context, I think the PC engine was very compelling for people who really wanted the arcade experience at home because what the PC engine offered was much more convincing on a visual level, and as a result, they didn't have to completely rework the games so that you had some compelling reason to play them as opposed to just like, well, here's a really crappy, ugly version of a game that's also very shallow. Yeah, that's kind of why I was getting that too.

I was just thinking about how strange it was that the launch titles for the TurboGraphics CD-ROM were Fighting Street, A.K.A. Street Fighter 1 and Wonderboy 3 Monster Lair. And to bring it back to our friend Christian, he was like, Monster Lair is like the best game. He made me sit down. That's the shooter, right? It is.

And he brought his, before I ever had one, he brought his, like, to Kentucky where I lived and, like, made me play through Monster Lair with him to, like, sell me on Turbo Graphics. That happened. That's a hard pitch. Well, and, like, think, like, this pastel-colored, like, cute schmup was, like, a killer app. Strange days. Yeah. All right, so I do kind of want to go quickly to wrap this up through the kind of

comparative libraries, like, what are U.S. games that you guys would recommend to people? I put together a list, which, like, my suggestions, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not the insightful. Well, games released in the U.S. If you want to just own a turbo graphics and you don't want to deal with imports. Right. Because, like, yeah, go try to find cotton or magical chase. Yeah, yeah. Was magical chase released here? Yes, magical chase from Quest. I bet that's like thousands of dollars. Oh, a thousand. Absolutely. A mint copy? Yeah, it's amazing. This is a basic choice, and we did a whole Bonk episode, but I will say Bonx Revenge is the best Bonk game, and it's on par with some of the best B-tier 16-bit platformers out there.

It's very solidly made. It's very concise. It's very gorgeous, lots of personality. None of the flaws the other games have. I don't like Adventure. Three is kind of mediocre in the series. It just kind of falls off the clip after that. But Bonk's Revenge, super good.

It's where the series works. You are right. I think Arizonc... Oh, Arizon rules. I think Erzong for Card is fantastic. Arizona CD, not nearly as good. That's true. Oh, and the Arizona soundtrack, I don't know how they did it on that platform,

but it's the best sounding soundtrack on the TG16. That's not a CD soundtrack. Yeah, I mean, you didn't really talk about the hardware, but like the sound chip, nothing special, you know. It's kind of that Shami Sen synth. It's a bit twangy, but I like it. It is interesting, the games that are stuck forever, like only on Hugh Card. Like, I'm looking at this list, like, Alien Crush and Devil's Crush,

still, like, among the best in class video game and ball games ever made. Like, spectacular games. Dungeon Explorer 1, really good, really kind of ahead of its time, great game. Gallagin 90, which I brought back earlier. It was still, like, you know, at that time that never had been anywhere else. Don't forget R-Type and, quote, unquote, R-Type 2. Part 2, not R-Type 2. You know, we didn't get, those of us who had Nintendo systems, did not get R-Type on NES,

even though Nintendo distributed R-Type in arcades in America. We had to look on at our friends with master systems in Envy. But then they had to look on at their friends with turbographics and envy, except, you know, again, getting to the point of these cards being constrained for capacity, the game's eight levels were split across two cards. So there was the first four stages, and then there was part two, the second two set of stages. And when this game came to virtual console, they actually combined them into one release. Was it?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, only in America. In America, it was on one card. Yeah. I misunderstood. It was. Our type of complete.

Wow. Okay. Awesome. Well, never right then. Forget I said anything. So we were always winning. All right. Yeah.

was the legendary axe, another, you know, early great side-scrolling game. It's very different than a Golden Axe. It's made by the guy's made Estyennex. Aerographics for whatever reason. The associated Sun Sun Sun 2. Yeah, Sun Sun 2 is interesting because that was an console-only sequel to an early Capcom arcade game. They're not really made by Capcom. It was made by NEC Avenue, but licensed by Capcom.

Military Madness wasn't my jam because I was on the Arizona's Y team, but like it is well regarded. And it's like, you know, like a strategy game early on. It was kind of an interesting thing. And these are all chip cards before we even get to the CD era. And like, you know, Gate of Thun, I kind of mentioned that earlier, one of the best side-scrolling shooters of the era

and has a great hard-write butt-rock soundtrack. Obviously, East Book 1 and 2. East 3, although the version for TurboGraphics is actually kind of the worst, even though it has great music and great cutscenes. It doesn't scroll correctly.

Where do we stand on Utopia 1 and 2? I've always wanted to play those. I've just never gotten around to it. Yeah, I keep buying them a virtual console whenever they pop up, but I can't get around to playing them. It's the Terprographics Zelda, but not as good at all. Yeah.

Well, they are made by Hudson, and I think, you know, Hudson always made generally good games on that platform. So they're not, like, super terrible. But, you know, as far as Zelda clones are okay. I mean, but you could always play Zelda as well. Or even Crusader of Sinty. Not much charisma. Not much charisma. Not much charisma.

Whereas, Crescenti has a lot of, like, charm to it. Newtopia is really charmless. Newtobia is just, like, yeah, bare minimum. I think another one to bring up for Turbo, which was unique and kind of a big deal at the time was Splatterhouse. Like, Spider House was stuck on turbo. It was a thing that, like, seemed really cool that everybody wished was on on the platforms. And then, like, when Spider House 2 or 3 came to Genesis, it was like, thank you. But those weren't the original.

No. And Spider House 1 was, like, a thing that, like, I remember having FOMO on that. Like, I wish I could have had that when it came out. That was no, yeah, they pushed that one. But it's actually not that great over a game. It's not, but at the time, it definitely had, it made an impression. It was like, wow, look how gory and gruesome it is. Video games can do that?

That's crazy. Yeah, I imagine. you know, if you were a certain kid who was a gore hound, maybe you graduated from Castlevania and played Spadahounds. For me, the game I really wanted to play always that did kind of live up to my expectation, more so than Eastbrook 1 and 2

was Valis. So Valis 2 was early, and then Valus 3 came out simultaneously for Genesis and PC Engine here. But, you know, Valus 2 looked like a thing I wanted. Like a cute anime girl, fighting demon, side-scrolling, action game.

That was Wolf Team, right? It is. Yeah. We need a wolf team episode. We should do a full-on-wolf-team episode. And, like, by the time I played Valis 2, it wasn't the greatest gameplay I'd ever play. But the music, the sound, the story, the presentation. Yeah. It definitely hit what I was looking for.

And I am kind of a Valus apologist. Like, I think Valus 3 for Genesis Mega Drive is actually the best Valis. But I do like Valis 2, Valus 3, Valis 4, and Valis 1 remake, which is only on PC. Where do you stand on Sit of Valis? Oh, I love SD Valis. Delightful. All right. How about the Bomber Man?

games. Bomberman and Bomberman 93. And 94. Did that come to the U.S. also? No. Yeah, I didn't think so. I was just going through U.S. games here. You're right. I just remembered, but 94's the best. That's the sad part. Is Bomberman on TurboGraphics just the original Bomberman, the single-player game? Well, it's like a remake-ish reboot thing. Yeah, it's very basic.

93 is did release here, and that is, of course, much better. That's fine. But then they did release it 94 for a console over here. Yeah, and a lot of kind of the level. legacy of PC Engine finally did make it to the U.S. on virtual console. I think was largely overlooked. And some of those games are appearing on the mini. So hopefully they'll find a little more of an appreciative audience. Was it the Wii U where there's like a final dump of all the, like, the contract was

spying games that weren't even even localized? I forgot that it was we if it was Wii or Wii. Yeah, it was like last year. It's not very long ago. Pretty recent, yeah. While one game I think that gets overlooked, I played a ton of it in the early 2000s on the Magic Engine Emulator is the Super Dodgeball port. for TG16.

It's like the best version of that NES game. It's like Cuneo Cone. Yeah, yeah. So it's like that but with no flicker. Like pedographic. Yeah, yeah.

It's so good. It's very, very good. Yeah, they did that with the soccer games as well. I believe it was also a CD remake of River City Ransom. Something like that. Yeah. So there were some Cuneo games on there. I think for America, it's important to talk about working designs.

It was where they got their start. And I remember being aware of them and being like, oh, you know, because they bought ads. They specifically were, I mean, their first releases were Parasol Stars and Kadash, which are two games that I was interested in because I like Bubba Bobble and I loved Cadash in the arcade.

And I still think that that Cadash for Turbo 16 is fantastic. It's the best version of Cadash. It's better than the Genesis one. And that version of one of, you know, of Parasol Stars quite good as well. But then they followed that up with a bunch of RPGs, Cosm Fantasy, Exile. They jumped over to disc.

Yeah, they turned over to CD, Cosm Fantasy 2, Exile 1 and 2. Didn't they break Exile 2 by adjusting it so hard you can't play? Incredibly fucking impossible. They broke a lot of things. They broke a lot of things. But, like, I definitely, you know, I remember by the time I got my turbo, like, I was buying all those games directly from working designs because they were still selling them.

And, you know, I have those all in the boxes. And, like, it was, you know, that was an early boutique publisher that seemed to have my, what I was interested in. And, like, they brought that over to Sega City. Yeah. Webu games, we haveo games, and bad jokes. Yeah. I'm right there with you. What was Exile?

That was, like, an action RPG. It's also a wolf team has kind of like a weird, like desert Middle Eastern vibe. The first one's actually pretty good. You could, like, swap characters, right? Yeah, the battles are weird, action-y, kind of sort of million-y battles. Yeah. All these games are flawed but interesting, but not, like, super memorable. Yeah.

I'm going to be able to be. Yeah, there's some others on here. A lot of shooters, Gate of Thunder, which was top-down shooter, right? Side-scrolling. Side-scrolling, okay. Same with Lords. Sweet-ass soundtrack. Lords, also side-scrolling, kind of spiritual successor, but different.

Superstar Soldier, great top-down. All the soldier games, yeah. Blazing. Soldier Blade. Yeah. I'm not a big fan of compile shooters, so I don't like bleeding lasers that much, but all the soldier games are going. If you speak ill against Musha, it is war between us. Oh, hey, hey, take it outside, guys.

Super Airzank, we've mentioned. Cotton, we kind of touched on in passing, but Super rare. I can't believe that and Magical Chase were released here. They're so not American. Cotton is a CD, Magical Chase is a chip. And Magical Chase is a side-scrolling witch shooter by the guy who made Urgar Battle?

Yeah. Well, kind of by the guy. I mean, it's by the same studio. I don't know that he was like... Same room. Somewhere. And then Cotton is you're also a witch, but you're in search of candy and you have a little bikini fairy who flies around with you and scold

you for eating too much candy. So, yeah, both of them very much the cute him up. I think Ordyne also was a cute him up. Yeah. Yeah. Which is Namco. Yeah. And yeah, just kind of like really branching out for what they were releasing in the U.S. and saying, the hell with marketing plans and focus testing.

Let's just release these games. Yeah, in some ways I think they had no choice because they had to struggle trying to get Western support and having these, you know, developers that most people hadn't heard of to make these weird, you know, tailspin games or whatever. But then you also have like kind of slim pickings in Japan with Japanese games that may not be completely appealing. But I think they just sort of had no choice but to embrace their sort of underdog status and be like, yeah, we're for the sophisticated gamers who know about things in Japan and would appreciate these shooters and whatnot.

But if you go look at the hundreds of Japanese releases, you realize, oh, hundreds of these are licensed. That's why a lot of them didn't come out here. Or they're like visual novels, adventure games, which, you know, wasn't. a genre that could really work in America at that time. And that kind of brings me to like a legendary could have been, like what if Snatcher had come out in America on... What if Toki-Mecke-Memorial had come out.

Right. Which like... That game for PC Engine set the tone for like a whole, you know, like a generation of dating games. Yeah. But we did get some interesting oddities like the Legend of Heroes from Falcom.

Yes. Surprisingly, that one entry in the franchise showed up and then Legend of Heroes wouldn't show up again for more than a decade. It's still going today. Yep. The trails of...

Trails of the sky. Or tails of... Something cold steel? Trails in the sky and trails of cold steel. Okay. I thought we were just... Isn't there one right here? There is one right now.

We were just talking about Vic Ireland and Working Designs. Was the last thing that he tried to kickstart one of those games? His last game was... His last game was Summer Night 6. Oh. But he did Class of Heroes.

Before that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I just wonder what happened to him. And if he still... We don't know. He was on this podcast. He was. Someone find him.

It's been a while since he's appeared online. Oh, you know, looking at the list of things that never came out in America, there is, there are some, you know, a lot of great PC engine games that never got translated. I think Paramount among them would be East 4, Donovies. And it's really sad that it's never, it's never had a translation, it's never been brought over it, because there was a different East 4 that was made for Super Famcom, Mask of the Sun, not nearly as good. But yeah, East 4 Donovies, probably the secret best PC Engine game. Okay, that's a bold claim.

Apparently there is a fan translation, if you're into that sort of thing. I might be. Yeah, supposedly some of the games that were released just in Japan were, like, top of class. Like, I've been told that the PC engine version of Tower of Duraga is the definitive version of that game. How do you feel about that, right? Was it late? I think so. No, no, maybe 90 years, early 90s.

But, yeah, it's kind of remake-ish. They have more, like, guidance and stuff. It feels a bit more like an RPG. very slightly, but yeah, it's a very good version. Yeah, I just discovered the Game Boy version of that, which was not the faithful arcade port that I expected, but gives you like a life bar, which makes a big difference for how it plays.

But apparently this one also gives you tips on, you know, each floor like, how do you find the thing? Yeah. So kind of the appealing definitive version. Oh, yeah, best home version. Well, and really, some of the Super CD games, like Rondo of Blood or East Four or Sapphire, like some of these games at the end,

if you play them, the graphics are pushing, pushing the PC engine so hard. It's hard to believe this is the same thing that played the games back in 1990. Yeah, Sapphire is a game that pretty much launched an entire cottage industry of PC engine bootlegs because that game

even a decade ago was selling for like $8 or $900. I can't imagine what it's selling for now, but like that was kind of the explosion of PC engine piracy was people like making fake sapphires and there had to be guides online. How do you tell if you have a real sapphire or a fake sapphire? Well, there's a

very slight difference in some of the printing quality and the orange is a little different on the corner. And then they re-released it in a collection for PSP, which is also now super expensive. Oh, is it? I shouldn't have gotten rid of that one. I'm glad I still have it. Alas. But other interesting things released just in Japan, Gekisha Boy, which became kind of like a it was like a breakout star of the early

emulation era where people were just experimenting with, you know, like, hey, here's a bunch of ROMs that I found. Let's play with this. And it's a game where you're, it's a very cartoonish game where you're a kid with a camera, like you're basically like an amateur photo journalist, and you're just taking photos of things all around. This game rules. I love it. It's totally not a PC in any way, by the way. It's of its time, but it's like a living mad magazine page. You're just walking across. It's crazy. Exactly, yes. We mentioned Sapphire, Toki-Meckemecim Memorial, like kind of the first kind of

breakout dating sim. Steam Hearts, the naughty shoot him up. That was a officially licensed. Yeah, there's a lot of naughty games on this platform. Yeah, especially toward the end on disc because it was so cheap to make disc games. There is a unique Zevius sequel, Vardrout song. I'm curious about that, actually. Yeah, I kind of want to check that out.

It's basically, well, it's two things. It's a very good arcade port from, I mean, compile developed the whole thing. Really? So you don't like it. It's okay. I love Compos. So they did very good port of the arcade version,

then made a separate mode, which is basically like a sequel. and out of all the different Zuvius semi-sequels there are. This one's pretty good. Also, a company de Retronauts, I just, like, had the thought. The kind of thought I only have when I come to tape this thing is like, oh, I need to get a copy of Zevius 3DG for PSY, which I've never thought about my whole life, but this morning, I'm like, shit, I don't own that.

It's like 12 bucks. Yeah, yeah, a complete common one. Really? Okay, good to hear. There was a unique Load Runner sequel, Battle Load Runner. That was kind of late, right? Yeah, I think it was fairly late. It came out, like, same time as that first bomber man. Oh, okay, so not that late.

But also, you know, some weird things like Popful Mail or Linda Cube, like lots of interesting RPGs that, you know, made have gone to other places, other after here, or like the Chowiniki series existed here in Japan. Good old Chauaniki. Yeah. Lots of great arcade ports that were very, like, unique to that system, 1943 Kai, March and Mays.

I probably mispronance that. Mergen maze, okay, I am not German. Not a good port, though. the original version of Paki and Rocky Kiki Kikai Kai. So lots of, yeah, just interesting things that I think are easy to pick up and play if you're an importer and don't speak Japanese because you don't need a lot of Japanese proficiency to play Kiki Kikai Kai. True.

But the other thing is that because there were so many arcade ports, at least on card, it's like now you kind of don't need to play them. Like, because, you know, we have the original accurate arcade version, so readily available now. Yeah, I mean, some of them are on compilations, not all of them. But you could just download them also, that's what I'm saying. But, like, you really want to play. What does power drift look like on this hardware? Yeah, and that's fine, yeah.

Not amazing. I mean, another thing that's interesting about PC Engine is, like, they were like the summer carnival games. They're kind of like these temporary kind of thing. Do you want to explain that? Ray, why about you? Right, one of the summer carnival games called Alza Dick, and that's from Naxat's off. That's the best one, right?

Explain Summer Carnival, then. It was kind of like NACTS's little development competition. Some people would submit. Like a little mini-gate, small-game, small shooters, yeah. I guess some of it was internal. I don't know the exact story, but that's where also, God dang it, what was the Famicom one? RECA, that's right.

Yeah, but each year there'd be like one of these releases with these little shooters on. So they moved on to PC Engine. It's just, yeah, very good, fast, you know, hardware-pushing shooters, just similar to what Hudson was doing with, like, the Soldier series and their caravan modes and things, but this was Naxad's version, and they're also very good shooter. Yeah, I think we often think back to the Genesis and, in a turbo era as like when schmups ruled.

And I think this is kind of, yeah, like another. If you look at the lineup, like a lot of the greatest games are sides drilling or vertical shooters. And like, I think yet this was the end of that era. It was never to come back again. So if you ever do get this console, just know that like, hopefully you're into that genre because. Yeah.

Well, I think picking up a PC engine mini or turbographics mini is a good way to kind of get a sampler of the system. If you missed out on all the virtual console releases, just to say like, is this my thing? Do I like the aesthetic here? Do I like the games? because it is a really good sampling of like the best of the platform in both regions, which is, you know, I will say this for Konami. They bought Hudson in what, like the mid-2000, like 240,000.

I think they actually bought it out towards like 2008 or 9 or something. Okay, I thought it was a little before that page. But yeah, anyway, so they've owned Hudson for more than a decade. And I feel like they've actually done a pretty good job of keeping the Hudson legacy kind of going with the PCN. engine, the turbographics, through virtual console and now through the PC engine mini. I feel like, actually, Konami does a better job with Hudson's legacy than with its own. I mean, we do have those recent series anniversary collections for modern platforms, Castlevania, Contra, Gradius, or I guess it's just like arcade shooters.

In arcade classics, yeah. Yeah, they made a new bomber man. Yeah. And then a girly bomber man for arcades. Hudson Superfans will remember the PS2 GameCube era when there were a short-lux. series of like reboot remakes cubic load runner and there was a bong and there was a bong that looked like yoshi story it was also an adventure island and they were not so great um they weren't yeah uh hudson needed some help they you know there was the bongc sequel that was supposed

to come out for xbox live arcade and died when conami they did release one for like java cell phones really yeah i think we talked about that on our bong yeah yeah but but on the whole i think Konami has done a pretty decent job of keeping the Hudson legacy alive without actually doing much new with it. They are at least keeping a lot of these games in circulation and keeping the memory of PC engine turbographics alive to a certain degree. But what's sad weird to me is like if I think about the legacy of what is the flavor of this whole thing. Like every Thanksgiving, I go back to where I'm from, we play me and my friends at a big party, we play Saturn Mama Man. And when you play Saturn Mama Man, a lot of the guest characters are like a bunch of rando people from. games that were popular on PCA.

It's like, oh, people from Far East of Eden. Yeah, you remember Manjimaru. It's Bonk. It's Mahjimaru. It's, you know, Princess Tomatoes here. Milan from Milan's Secret Castle. And it's like, yeah. Like, that's ultimately the thing is like, Sega had Sega, Nintendo had Nintendo, and

N.E.C. Hudson, on the best day, it was a rogues gallery. And I think, like, the flavor of this console. Still, still better than Jalico's pinball party. You're right. But, like, that's kind of like, this is always going to be the third's, the third the state. It's never going to be like, oh, man, this, all you need is these games. That's true, but I mean,

you know, that's a spice of life, isn't it? It's better than Jaguar. It's better than Jaguar. Yeah, right. Bad a Bubsy, come on. And Trevor McPherson. Bubzy's still around. Bubzy is somehow still relevant. There've been two new Bubzy games in the last five years. But is he in Bomberman yet?

God no. All right, final thoughts on the TurboGraphics 16 or PC engine. We've been so bad about being consistent with what we call it. Oh, my final thoughts are I'm really excited for the PC engine mini or TurboGraphics mini. I don't buy a lot of these mini consoles because they tend to be games I've already played too much of and that's not the case with this. Yeah. So like I feel like I did buy the S&ES classic. I didn't even open it because it is like pearls before swine for me where it's just like I can just play these anytime I want at any time in my life. I don't need this tiny plastic box to do it.

But with these it's different. I have to try a bit harder. So I'll be jumping back into these for the first time and like since the Wii virtual console. Yeah. And plus every region gets everybody's games. So that's nice too. Yeah. No shenanigans like on Genesis. And I want to a shout-out to CronTurbo video series by our friend Dr. Sparkle. He's been on hiatus for that one for a while, but that's just like this Cron Tendo series, and it does explore probably like 50 or 60 of the game so far, so that's fun to look into.

Yep. Also, I'm excited to revisit it. I kind of forgot that I'd pre-ordered it because the pre-order went up so early. It's like, oh, yeah, that thing is coming out in a few months, and I'll have it. And it's been a while since I've hooked up my old real duo. So I'm eager to revisit it. I'm excited that a new group of people will experience it,

but it definitely, you know, To me, it is an anomaly. It's interesting. It's not my favorite, but I'm glad it existed. Yeah. I'd say it's better than buying a real system because they're all dead capacitors by now. You know, I would characterize the PC engine not as an underdog in Japan, but it is an underdog here. But you just flip that around because Sega was more of an underdog in Japan, but the Genesis was very big here.

And, you know, you need that balance. And especially in the game industry where it's so hard, I think, to support three systems. At least back then, I think now in these new generations, the companies are getting more used to things and how to adapt and such. But, you know, back then when it was just like NEC, this electronics company that made TVs and computers and stuff, all of a sudden trying to market a game system, you know, that's not easy for them, but, you know, someone, I guess, had to take the mantle and take the role of that third pillar, that underdog. And so, again, that's what I mean by the spice of life is that we need that sort of originality. and that's what makes it so fun to talk about as well. And finally, I really need to play more turbographics because I keep buying the games and the systems

and then not making time to play with them, and that's a shame. So that's a commitment from me to you. I will play more of these games, and then I'll be like, hey, we should do another episode on turbographics because now I actually know what I'm talking about. How about another video series? Yeah, no.

More video series, Jeremy. Absolutely not. Start at least three more. Absolutely not. Full playthrough of tailspin for CD. Ooh, make that Darkwing duck. You're hired. Anyway, I am very old and very tired.

I'm Jeremy Parrish, and you are listening to Retronauts. Thanks, Ray, thanks Shane, and thanks Bob, for joining us to talk about the TurboGraphics on the eve or maybe shortly after the TurboGraphics Mini has arrived. Hopefully you, the audience, have enjoyed listening to this, and I'm afraid I will not be doing a Chrome Gaming series about PC Engine because it's already been done. Thank you, Dr. Sparkle. You do super graphics. That's a short one. Yeah, I actually have thought about that. It's less than virtual, boy.

Chris Kohler has all six games, so I might do that one. He is Darius Alpha? I believe so. Wasn't Darius Alpha not actually Super Graphics game? It's cross-compatible. Yeah, it's enhanced. It's enhanced on... It's still costs like $2,000.

It's really expensive. I don't know if he has that one, but I think he might. Wow. Because that's the kind of thing... I'll tune in for that. All right. Anyway, that's as far as I'm going to take it. But you, the audience, can go play some TurboGraphics games and PC Engine games on the PC Engine TurboGraphics Mini whenever it launches in March, March 20th of 2020, which is like right now as you're listening to this.

So you should do that. There's some really great games on there. And play it only in the PC Engine GT filter. Yes, absolutely. You want to not be able to see what's happening in order to get the most out of it. All right. God bless. Anyway, yeah, looking forward to that and to kind of acquaintance.

painting myself with some more of these games. So this has been Retronauts, an episode of Retronauts that you can find on the Internet. That's how you're listening to it right now. You can find many, many other episodes of Retronauts on the Internet. Go to Retronauts.com or look us up on your favorite podcast download platform. We're probably going to be there. You can also support us through Patreon, patreon.com slash Retronauts. If you subscribe for $3 a month, you get to enjoy every weekly episode.

a week in advance of its public release at a higher bit rate quality than on the public release and with no advertisements or sponsorship messages. So it's a superior experience all around. At $5 a month, you also get Patreon exclusive episodes

every other Friday and also weekly columns by Diamond Fight about the history of video games. It's really good stuff. Check it out, enjoy, and thank you for your support. Anyway, let's go around the table

and everyone else can talk about your stuff. You can find me on Twitter at Shane Watch, all one word, Shane Watch. All right. Well, you know, I keep forgetting to plug my podcast, No More Whoppers here on Retronauts, that's the thing.

But now that it is now part of the Greenlight Network, along with Retronauts, it behooves me to tell you that my podcast is No More Whoppers. I do with my friend Alex, who lives in Japan. Why are you so mean to him on Twitter? We're friends. I feel like you're always kind of like, you know,

poking fun at him, being mean to him. It goes both ways, man. a couple of jokesters. We've got to razz each other every now. That's a no more whoppers at Tumblr.com. We're greenlit podcasts dot com. And I'm on Twitter as RDBAAAA. I also have sort of a game company

label thing called bipedled dog. That's a bipeddle dot dog. We made a game called BlastRash. That's on mobile. Check it out. And I'm Bob Mackey. I'm on Twitter as Bob Servo. I have a lot of other podcasts of the Talking Simpsons podcast network. You can find that at patreon.com

slash Talking Simpsons. The podcast, of course, are Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon. Those are available wherever you find podcasts. We also have a lot of bonus podcast, over 100 bonus podcast, available on our Patreon at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Thank you. And finally, you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite.

And you can watch my video series, which have nothing to do with PC engine or turbographics on YouTube. Look up VideoWorks, NES works, Game Boy Works, Virtual Boy Works, whatever. I'm there. You can also find me writing stuff for, with limited run games. It's pretty much the stuff that I do here at Retronauts, but for a corporate overlord, very exciting.

Anyway, that's it. Go play some PC engine or turbographics or whatever the hell you want to call it. Just don't invest in a super graphics. It's not worth it. Thank you.