Turbo-tastic!

After many years of wanting to get one I finally found a TurboGrafx-16 at the MCM expo in Birmingham! It was a sealed console and came with the pack in game, Blazing Lazers, and a sealed copy of Pac-Land, which I don't plan on opening as I've not heard very good things about it. If anyone wants to trade for a different game then send me a message.

Probably a lot of readers won't know very much, or anything about the TurboGrafx, so I will quickly explain a bit about it. The TurboGrafx, named PC-Engine in Japan is a console created by NEC. The system only had a very small release in the UK by Telegames. There was no full scale PAL release which makes it very hard to find. In America the system was more successful. The main format of games for the system are HU cards, which are small cards, about the size of a credit card. There was a CD add-on which allows you to run Turbo CD and Super CD games. To run the Turbo and Super CD games you needed to have an additional HU Card which slots into the system to give it more memory. Later on in the systems life there were many different versions released which combined the standard Turbo Grafx / PC-Engine and the CD add-ons. The best of these was the Turbo Duo which had extra memory and combined the Super CD, HU card and the improvements of the super system 3 HU card expansion.

You can read more about the TurboGrafx and PC-Engine here: http://www.racketboy.com/retro/turbografx-16/tubrografix-16-tg16-101-beginners-guide

You can see the difference here between the US and Japanese versions of the console. the Japanese console is much smaller and, in my opinion, a much better design. Both have expansion ports on the back for attaching their CD units. Both systems had several re-designs which did not sell very well, making them very sought after by collectors.

The system was originally designed to compete with the NES and Mastersystem, but due to the timing of its release it was actually more in competition with the MegaDrive / Genesis and Super Nintendo. Thankfully, the console, although actually only using an 8-Bit processor, was capable of similar graphics to the SNES and MD, and actually out performed the SNES in terms of speed, making most shooting games perform a lot smoother on the TurboGrafx.


So its all a bit confusing, and these days, quite expensive, to be able to play all the games available for the Turbo Grafx. For this post I will be focusing only on games that were made for the HU card.

These are some games I hope to get in the future for the system!

Bomberman 93 / 94

Parodius

Detana Twinbee

Neutopia

Parasol Stars

Dragons Curse

Super Star Soldier

Maybe one day I can get a CD unit or a combo system and look into getting some CD games, but for now there's plenty for me to enjoy and collect!

A great place to look for TurboGrafx game reviews / opinions is the Youtube channel Spida1a, he is attempting to review every single TurboGrafx game released in the US. There are many in depth video's for every game. check the channel out here http://www.youtube.com/user/spida1a

Also worth mentioning is Episode 2 of the AllGenGamers Podcast in which they discuss TurboGrafx and PC-Engine. It's quite long but definitely worth a listen! http://www.allgengamers.com/home/2010/8/11/episode-2-turbo-grafx-16-pc-engine-everything-you-want-to-kn.html


Thanks for reading.