Blast From The Past: TurboGrafx-16
Almost every game console war has at least one casualty, and the TurboGrafx-16 was the big loser of the systems that came out during the late 1980s. While it initially had better graphics than the old-school NES and Sega systems, the TurboGrafx-16 had its ass handed to it in a sling when the Genesis and SNES consoles came out a couple of years later. There were other problems with the system as well:
Notable feature limitations stemmed from NEC's cost cutting measures. The TurboGrafx-16 lacked a second player controller port, only supported RF modulation for audio/video (the competition had built-in support for stereo audio, and for video: composite, s-video and even RGB ouput), and even lacked basics such as a reset switch or "power-on" lighted LED indicator. While after market plug-in expansion modules did exist to provide multiple player gamepad ports and composite video-out with stereo audio, they had to be purchased separately and installed externally to the system.
None of my friends ever had the system, so I have no idea what the gameplay and graphics were actually like, but I always loved this ad because it just looked so cool.
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to Miscellany on 27 August 2007
· Comments (10)
Other stuff like this: advertisement, blast from the past, comic, old school, turbografx-16
Coryoon! The system was definately underpowered and Nintendo destroyed any chances the system had of ever getting a foot hold in the market.
The genesis beat it in almost every aspect, graphically and processor. The only real difference was the TG16 had more onscreen colors (481 vs 61).
The TG-16 actually came out a week later than the Sega Genesis in the US. The PC Engine (JP version of the TG-16) did come out before the MegaDrive (JP Genesis).
I remember being in Toys R Us, and the dude working in the game section was totally hyping it saying it was way better than the Genesis.
It was a decent system, I think it's biggest problem was more the caliber of games put out on it. At the time, the games were way to Japanese and difficult for the general American populace. I still have my portable version, the Turbo Express
It was also the first of the systems to offer a CD-Rom ad on, which flopped because it was 400 bucks. It did however have the best versions of one of my fav RPGs Y's Book I and II.
I had one and I loved it, but that's all I remember. Damn brain cells.
Mine came with Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, which was a pretty fun game. You ran around as this little kid for one stage, then he transformed into a speedy mech every other stage. My fave on the system was Monster World, Splatterhouse, and Devil's Crush. Always wanted that cd add-on for Ys, never got it.
I still remember when it was "revealed" in game magazines that the TG16 was not a sixteen bit system as it was claiming, but a system with 2 8 bit processors. I never had one, but am enjoying some of the games on Wii. I wish they'd put the Axe Warrior game out (or whatever it was called, Savage Axe?)
The game is Legendary Axe. And the last boss "Jagu" was such a spectacular feat of 8-bit processing that he has been burned into my psyche ever since.
I love the TG-16. I personally have the Turbo Duo, which came with Gate of Thunder CD, Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge, and Bomberman were also on that CD. The Turbochip that came with that system was Ninja Spirit. The other disc that came packaged was Ys Book I & II. To this day, that remains my favorite game of all time.
Without re-igniting the 16-bit battle, the Turbo could hold it's own, especially with shooters and RPGs.
As for being 16-bit, the main CPU was a customized 65C02 8-bit CPU (HU6280) clocked at 7.16MHz (same as Genesis, 2x faster than the SNES without FX chip acceleration). The graphics chip, however, is indeed 16-bits wide. So technically Turbo Grafx-16 is not too far from the truth as it is referring to the capabilities of the video processor.
Technically, yes the graphics chip had a 16bit wide bus. Essentially, the VPU on the TG16 is somewhere between the Master System and the Genesis.
Technically speaking, the graphics chip of the TG16 just allowed for larger sprites and a wider field of colors than the SMS, so the improvement was only negligable. This is why I hate the
The SNES also had the benefits of a 16bit processor. The clockrate is mostly meaningless. it had wider registers which allowed for faster math, as a faster DMA (the tg-16 only offered a block transfer instruction which had cycle count of either 6 cycles per byte copied). The genesis used the much superior 68k processor (along with a z80 co-processor for legacy support and audio control). It's hard to compare their clock rates and really determine the actual "ranking" of their capibilities.
--Puts on TG fanboy hat--
Comparing the TG16 to the SNES isn't really fair, the systems were released 3 years apart. The Genesis/TG comparison is more accurate, but even then the Genesis was released a year after the TG (in Japan at least).
The TG really sat in between the Sega Master System and the Genesis. It could support more colors and more sprites, but the Genesis could support much larger sprite sizes. It sold better than the Genesis in Japan.
Of course, the TG-CD is what really set it apart. There was nothing that could compare to Ys or Gates Of Thunder on any other system.
NEC itself is what killed TG in America. NEC decided about half way through the product lifecycle to abandon the American market (anybody remember when the NEC Multisync was the de-facto monitor? where are they now?). Shelf space dried up and the ports stopped coming. The product was still popular in Japan and savvy importers could still find great games -- at a price. I still have the original Dracula X.
--removes fanboy hat--
Well, just for the record, I was merely stating the clock speed of the chips in all three machines. I at no time in my post tried to use that as a measurement of performance. The MC68000 in the Genesis is clocked at 7.15909 MHz, as well as the HU6280 in the Turbo. The Super NES uses a modified 65C816 CPU running at 3.57954 MHz. Interestingly, the 65816 CPU is the 16-bit sibling to the 6502 used also in the Gameboy, NES, Atari 2600, Apple II, and Commodore 64 (among many others!)
* All clock speeds are based on North American NTSC model designs.