3 ms·

I didn't grow up with the PC Engine or TurboGrafx, but I did start getting into it after I got the MiSTer. I find that the unsuccessful [1] consoles are genera

by tombert 5mo ago

I didn't grow up with the PC Engine or TurboGrafx, but I did start getting into it after I got the MiSTer. I find that the unsuccessful [1] consoles are generally pretty bad. The 3DO and the Jaguar and CD-i are mostly pretty crappy, and while it can be fun to play for a novelty and you might even find one or two games that make it worth it, the vast majority of the time there's a reason that people don't seriously revisit these consoles. To be clear, I did grow up with a 3DO and Jaguar (well, I got both when I was thirteen), so I'm not speaking out of my ass here. So I was actually very surprised that the TurboGrafx games were actually quite good. Like, I kept going through random games, and I was shocked to find that a lot of them were actually very well made; decent graphics, tight controls, and fun gameplay. There are terrible games on there, but I was kind of shocked to find that they appear to be outliers. Now I kind of wish I had grown up with the Turbografx. [1] A relative term, I acknowledge

dfxm12 5mo ago
Tons of the games were simple shmups, so I can understand people who might have the wrong idea about the library. Also, the library in Japan was way more impressive than what made it to the west. Gekisha Boy in particular still stands out as a fun and unique game (though you can play a translated version on your Mister). Fire Pro 3 is an incredible wrestling game that I still play today (no japanese required). There was another game, Zero4 Champ, which had unique drag racing gameplay (it was all about timing your gear shifts). It was hard to play without japanese knowledge, except for the 2 player head to head races. For CD games, of course, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood is well known.
- tombert 5mo ago
  I actually really liked Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu. The NES version is pretty ok too, but I think the TurboGrafx version is a bit better. There's also the Bonk games, Air Zonk, Alien Crush, and Legendary Axe: all pretty fun games with good art style and decent controls. Rondo of Blood was actually the only PC-Engine game I had actually played before the MiSTer, and of course it's a classic for a reason, it's great. Something I find charming in how utterly incompetent it is is the Addams Family game on the CD. I have no idea how the hell it was even released, let alone made, because it is absurdly bad. You play as the lawyer from the movie (the absolute least interesting character in the movie) and apparently all the Addams' want you actively fucking dead. It's so unbelievably terrible that I sort of got obsessed with it and managed to actually beat it.
xoxxala 5mo ago
The Jaguar catalog was mostly meh, but there were a few gems that I really enjoyed (Aliens vs Predator, Doom, Wolf 3d, Iron Soldier, and Tempest 2000). AvP alone was worth the price of the system. I was a proud Turbo DUO owner. It had some fantastic multiplayer games, especially 5-player Bomberman. That got a lot of play, including tournaments at work. Dungeon Explorer is another one we played through multiple times.
- zulux 5mo ago
  FYI, Sega Saturn has 10 player bomberman. It's insanely fun.
- tombert 5mo ago
  I have to push back on that a bit. I played through the campaign for Alien vs Predator for both the Space Marine and the Alien campaigns in BigPEmu, and I really think it's a mediocre-at-best Wolf 3D clone. If it had been released on anything besides the Jag, then I think it would be, at best, relegated to the annals of mediocrity like the dozens of other Wolfenstein 3D knock offs. I wanted to like it because I love the first two Alien movies, but I really do not think it holds up compared to most FPS games, even at the time. I haven't fully gone through the Turbo CD catalog yet, but I did play through It Came From Outer space and that was a blast in a "so bad it's good" kind of way.
bartread 5mo ago
I always thought the 3DO was good hardware, for 1993, let down by a high price (especially by 1993 standards) and a poor library of games: there just wasn’t a good incentive to buy the thing. Fast forward a couple of years and the PlayStation and Saturn are both out, more technically capable, cheaper, and with better game libraries. However, I really do think the main thing that killed the 3DO was the price - it was wildly and ridiculously expensive compared with the alternatives - and the lack of games sort of followed naturally from that because who’s going to develop for a console hardly anyone bought? The inter-generation timing of its launch probably didn’t help. Who’s forking over when you know Sega, Nintendo and - it turns out - Sony are all going to release something better in a year or two?
- tombert 5mo ago
  I agree; if the console had been half the price it might have faired better. Another issue is that pretty much every good game on there came out on other platforms, and often the other platform's version was actually better anyway. Return Fire, for example: great game, a lot of fun, but the PlayStation version is better in pretty much every way. Same with Road Rash, or The Horde (in a cheesy way, on the Saturn), Alone in the Dark (on the PC), etc. Despite being called the 3DO, it pretty much always had the absolute worst version of 3D games. There are a few exclusives, and even a couple that are ok, but certainly not enough to justify the price tag. Even compared to the Saturn (a system that also tends to have pretty mediocre 3D experiences), it's pretty obvious that the 3DO is a bad deal.
- sillywalk 5mo ago
  > the main thing that killed the 3DO was the price I believe this was because 3DO didn't make the consoles themselves, they licensed the design to others who made it. The console had to be profitable, rather than be sold at a loss and be subsidized by game sales.
  - tombert 5mo ago
    I always wondered if the better approach would have been to have the 3DO company subsidize the development of the consoles in relation to how many games were sold, and maybe in relation to how many of those specific consoles were sold. e.g. if they dedicated half the licensing proceeds to paying back the consoles, and 80% of the 3DO consoles sold were Panasonic, than they'd give 40% of the licensing fees back to Panasonic. I'm sure there are issues with this kind of scheme, but I think it's possible that by doing that it could have brought the console price down.
garciansmith 5mo ago
I wouldn't call the PC Engine unsuccessful. Sure it did poorly in the US, but it did well in Japan, even outsold the Mega Drive (Genesis). That's definitely part of the reason it had quite a few good games by Japanese companies.
- tombert 5mo ago
  Yeah, that's why I specified that it's relative. I honestly hadn't even heard of the Turbografx until I was a teenager, but I had a Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.
  - Tiktaalik 5mo ago
    It's a real tragedy for North American gamers because it seems like we were robbed of a lot of truly amazing games for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx due to mistakes on the business side of things. The PC Engine, released in 1987, was an incredible success in Japan, rivalling the Famicom, as its graphical effects blew the socks off Famicom players. I imagine it would have done the same in North America if it had released in 1987 or 1988 but sadly it somehow took until late August 1989 for it to be released! Years late!!!! By this point the NES was firmly established and the same month, the truly 16 bit Genesis would be released. Turbografx didn't stand a chance.
cubefox 5mo ago
Maybe they should have sold the TurboGrafx-16 in the US only with the CD add-on already built in, and one or two CD games included to set off the hardware price somewhat. That would have made them stand out versus SNES/Genesis.
- wmil 5mo ago
  CD drives were still expensive and a bit flakey at that point. It might have worked by packing in extra games. Sega of America was just really good at understanding the US market. Sega did a US launch (August 29, 1989) of the Genesis 9 months after the JP launch. They had EA releasing sports games on the console in 1990. The TG-16 came out in 1987 in JP but they waited 1 year 10 months to do a US release, so it came out after the Genesis. They didn't get any US developers on board. A 1988 release of the TG-16 combined with some decent sports games probably would have been a success.
wmil 5mo ago
It was actually a big success in Japan. NEC America completely botched everything in the US market. In Japan it came out in 1987, two years before the Sega Genesis. In the US it launched a few weeks after the Genesis. The pack in game was based on an anime that didn't come out in the US. It's big weakness was probably that putting button batteries on HuCards was awkward, so it didn't really have many longer slower paced games with save systems.

by tombert 5mo ago

dfxm12 5mo ago

Tons of the games were simple shmups, so I can understand people who might have the wrong idea about the library. Also, the library in Japan was way more impressive than what made it to the west. Gekisha Boy in particular still stands out as a fun and unique game (though you can play a translated version on your Mister). Fire Pro 3 is an incredible wrestling game that I still play today (no japanese required). There was another game, Zero4 Champ, which had unique drag racing gameplay (it was all about timing your gear shifts). It was hard to play without japanese knowledge, except for the 2 player head to head races. For CD games, of course, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood is well known.

tombert 5mo ago
I actually really liked Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu. The NES version is pretty ok too, but I think the TurboGrafx version is a bit better. There's also the Bonk games, Air Zonk, Alien Crush, and Legendary Axe: all pretty fun games with good art style and decent controls. Rondo of Blood was actually the only PC-Engine game I had actually played before the MiSTer, and of course it's a classic for a reason, it's great. Something I find charming in how utterly incompetent it is is the Addams Family game on the CD. I have no idea how the hell it was even released, let alone made, because it is absurdly bad. You play as the lawyer from the movie (the absolute least interesting character in the movie) and apparently all the Addams' want you actively fucking dead. It's so unbelievably terrible that I sort of got obsessed with it and managed to actually beat it.

xoxxala 5mo ago

The Jaguar catalog was mostly meh, but there were a few gems that I really enjoyed (Aliens vs Predator, Doom, Wolf 3d, Iron Soldier, and Tempest 2000). AvP alone was worth the price of the system. I was a proud Turbo DUO owner. It had some fantastic multiplayer games, especially 5-player Bomberman. That got a lot of play, including tournaments at work. Dungeon Explorer is another one we played through multiple times.

zulux 5mo ago
FYI, Sega Saturn has 10 player bomberman. It's insanely fun.
tombert 5mo ago
I have to push back on that a bit. I played through the campaign for Alien vs Predator for both the Space Marine and the Alien campaigns in BigPEmu, and I really think it's a mediocre-at-best Wolf 3D clone. If it had been released on anything besides the Jag, then I think it would be, at best, relegated to the annals of mediocrity like the dozens of other Wolfenstein 3D knock offs. I wanted to like it because I love the first two Alien movies, but I really do not think it holds up compared to most FPS games, even at the time. I haven't fully gone through the Turbo CD catalog yet, but I did play through It Came From Outer space and that was a blast in a "so bad it's good" kind of way.

bartread 5mo ago

I always thought the 3DO was good hardware, for 1993, let down by a high price (especially by 1993 standards) and a poor library of games: there just wasn’t a good incentive to buy the thing. Fast forward a couple of years and the PlayStation and Saturn are both out, more technically capable, cheaper, and with better game libraries. However, I really do think the main thing that killed the 3DO was the price - it was wildly and ridiculously expensive compared with the alternatives - and the lack of games sort of followed naturally from that because who’s going to develop for a console hardly anyone bought? The inter-generation timing of its launch probably didn’t help. Who’s forking over when you know Sega, Nintendo and - it turns out - Sony are all going to release something better in a year or two?

tombert 5mo ago
I agree; if the console had been half the price it might have faired better. Another issue is that pretty much every good game on there came out on other platforms, and often the other platform's version was actually better anyway. Return Fire, for example: great game, a lot of fun, but the PlayStation version is better in pretty much every way. Same with Road Rash, or The Horde (in a cheesy way, on the Saturn), Alone in the Dark (on the PC), etc. Despite being called the 3DO, it pretty much always had the absolute worst version of 3D games. There are a few exclusives, and even a couple that are ok, but certainly not enough to justify the price tag. Even compared to the Saturn (a system that also tends to have pretty mediocre 3D experiences), it's pretty obvious that the 3DO is a bad deal.
sillywalk 5mo ago
> the main thing that killed the 3DO was the price I believe this was because 3DO didn't make the consoles themselves, they licensed the design to others who made it. The console had to be profitable, rather than be sold at a loss and be subsidized by game sales.
- tombert 5mo ago
  I always wondered if the better approach would have been to have the 3DO company subsidize the development of the consoles in relation to how many games were sold, and maybe in relation to how many of those specific consoles were sold. e.g. if they dedicated half the licensing proceeds to paying back the consoles, and 80% of the 3DO consoles sold were Panasonic, than they'd give 40% of the licensing fees back to Panasonic. I'm sure there are issues with this kind of scheme, but I think it's possible that by doing that it could have brought the console price down.

garciansmith 5mo ago

I wouldn't call the PC Engine unsuccessful. Sure it did poorly in the US, but it did well in Japan, even outsold the Mega Drive (Genesis). That's definitely part of the reason it had quite a few good games by Japanese companies.

tombert 5mo ago
Yeah, that's why I specified that it's relative. I honestly hadn't even heard of the Turbografx until I was a teenager, but I had a Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.
- Tiktaalik 5mo ago
  It's a real tragedy for North American gamers because it seems like we were robbed of a lot of truly amazing games for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx due to mistakes on the business side of things. The PC Engine, released in 1987, was an incredible success in Japan, rivalling the Famicom, as its graphical effects blew the socks off Famicom players. I imagine it would have done the same in North America if it had released in 1987 or 1988 but sadly it somehow took until late August 1989 for it to be released! Years late!!!! By this point the NES was firmly established and the same month, the truly 16 bit Genesis would be released. Turbografx didn't stand a chance.

cubefox 5mo ago

Maybe they should have sold the TurboGrafx-16 in the US only with the CD add-on already built in, and one or two CD games included to set off the hardware price somewhat. That would have made them stand out versus SNES/Genesis.

wmil 5mo ago
CD drives were still expensive and a bit flakey at that point. It might have worked by packing in extra games. Sega of America was just really good at understanding the US market. Sega did a US launch (August 29, 1989) of the Genesis 9 months after the JP launch. They had EA releasing sports games on the console in 1990. The TG-16 came out in 1987 in JP but they waited 1 year 10 months to do a US release, so it came out after the Genesis. They didn't get any US developers on board. A 1988 release of the TG-16 combined with some decent sports games probably would have been a success.

wmil 5mo ago

It was actually a big success in Japan. NEC America completely botched everything in the US market. In Japan it came out in 1987, two years before the Sega Genesis. In the US it launched a few weeks after the Genesis. The pack in game was based on an anime that didn't come out in the US. It's big weakness was probably that putting button batteries on HuCards was awkward, so it didn't really have many longer slower paced games with save systems.