Console reviews are no longer a new thing here on Critical Mass as I did my own review of the Nintendo Switch console earlier this year. Man, we’ve really expanded our horizons this year! At any rate, I would like to see the diversity of topics continue on this blog because my own personal interests are vast and diverse as the world in which we live. To that end, we’ve got a review of a lesser known, but no less influential console from the way back time for you to enjoy this week as we ramp up to the end of the year.
There aren’t many feelings more exciting than getting that one special thing that you had been hoping to receive all year for the holidays. Maybe welcoming a child into the world, paying all of your bills and having enough left to eat, or surviving a near death experience, but getting that one thing on Christmas morning was always a rush for me as a kid. This story actually has nothing to do with my childhood Christmases though. My first console was a Nintendo Entertainment System that I actually think my dad got because he really likes electronic toys. In fact, the TurboGrafx 16, or TG-16 as the cool kids call it, didn’t hit my radar until almost the end of its development cycle. So how did I come to form a relationship with this fairly obscure, and oft forgotten gem? My grandparents, that’s how! See, I’m not much younger than my youngest uncle, and as such, my family always just kind of included me in the affairs of my uncles. It was nice to be treated like a more adult kid, but it was even better to play with my uncles’ more mature toys. That came out entirely wrong, you sicko. You know what I meant. As we get older, our toys get more delicate, and intricate, and infinitely more fun to enjoy. The trade off is, we get less time to enjoy them.
This was the case the year that my uncles got the TG-16 for Christmas. They were all either in high school, or getting to point of starting high school soon, and as we all know, middle school and high school load us up with tons of work to distract us from trivial things like video games, at least if we’re doing things right they do. What that meant is when I went down to visit, I got to play with the video games while they were busy with school. It was awesome. It was in this way that I originally got introduced to such classics as Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Ice Hockey. However, in the spring of 1997, the Nintendo had been replaced with a new player, the TG-16. It was a little weird to play at first, and the games seemed a bit lower brow than their NES counterparts that I had grown accustomed to playing, but the transition was definitely worth the effort!
Let’s get some history out of the way real quick. So in the 70s, two brothers named Yuji and Hiroshi Kudo formed a company named Hudson Soft. They started out selling civilian HAM radios or some such, but in the late 70s and early 80s they started to transition to developing video gaming software. In 1983, a superb year if I do say so myself, they started looking to market software and hardware to Nintendo. Nintendo liked the idea of software development, but not the idea of hardware development because they were micromanaging jerks. However, the influx of cash from game design for Nintendo would at least pay the bills and give them funds to do their own hardware thing. Eventually, they designed the HuCard:
The card is about the size of a credit card, and it could hold enough information to store some pretty sweet games. It was a truly innovative approach to video distribution as it was really cheap medium, but Nintendo didn’t like that there were no physical anti-piracy measures in place. Nintendo’s cartridge design meant that folks in the US couldn’t easily play games from Japan and vice versa, and in their minds, this meant that we filthy Americans weren’t abusing the market by importing Japanese Nintendo carts or some madness. This rejection didn’t really deter Hudson. They just partnered with NEC to finish developing a console for their game delivery method, and in 1987, the PC Engine was released in Japan. You may find this difficult to believe, but in 1987, the PC Engine actually outsold the Famicom in Japan, and the system enjoyed tremendous third party support. It only made sense after their initial success to also market the console in the US, and that’s where my love affair comes in.
Some brilliant person suggested that if they sold the console as the PC Engine in the US, we here in the US of A might confuse it for a home computer as we were calling home computers PCs at that point. And so the decision was made to change the name to the TurboGrafx 16, and once that little hurdle was passed, NEC hit the ground running full speed… Sort of… They were really tentative about their release tactics, choosing to release the console in a limited run in bigger markets like New York City, and San Francisco in 1989, a mere two week after the Sega Genesis released, the TurboGrafx 16 officially hit the US streets.
As a result of the tentative marketing and release, it was really rare to see any advertising support outside of these markets. To this day, I’m not entirely sure how my uncles stumbled across the thing, but I do remember seeing that advertising material came packaged in the box with the console so that you could tell your friends all about it. Anyway, the TG-16 had a major problem here in the US. Oh it was well received, and it even sold decently well. The problem was that when Nintendo of Japan had crafted their third party software development contracts in Japan, they had included a non-competition clause in said contracts to illegally prohibit developers from coding games for competing consoles outside of Japan. This meant that while the PC Engine had great third party support in Japan, totaling in around 425 games there, the TG-16 saw no such benefits here in the states.
This again, illegal, arrangement that Nintendo had concocted put a stranglehold on NEC here in the US and as a result, American console owners got about 95 games total to the over 400 games that were eventually available in Japan. The shame in this situation only deepens when one takes a look at some of the innovations that NEC introduced to world with its console. Remember those credit card sized games that NEC was selling? Well, free from the pesky restraints of things like cartridges, the TG-16 HuCard games could quite easily be used with NEC’s portable variant console, the TurboExpress:
That’s right, you could play your games at home, or abroad and only have to buy the game once. That’s a model that Nintendo only adopted this year, and as far as I can remember, no other company has done in the intervening years. It was an idea that was lightyears ahead of its time. As you can see, the handheld even had a backlit display so that you could easily play your favorite games in the dark if you wanted. Nintendo didn’t finally adopt this feature until the release of the GameBoy Advance SP, which came out much later.
Another among the firsts that NEC claimed was the first release of a CD driven console… Sort of… In the 90s we were in a toxic love affair with peripheral addons for our video game consoles, and it was NEC who first broke into the CD gaming market with the release of the TurboGrafx CD:
I’m not sure that this addon was a drastic improvement on the original console, but at the very least, the CDs could hold way more information than the HuCards so games could, in theory, be more complex and longer just by default of storage space. Eventually, versions of the consoles would be released that integrated the CD drive with the HuCard slot, and I think that was a pairing made in Heaven.
Okay, so with the limited number of games that could be purchased for this revolutionary console, what could you look forward to playing. Well, my experience is somewhat limited, but I’ll give you a sampling based on my experience.
First, there was the pack in game, Keith Courage in the Alpha Zones. This was a pretty mediocre game if I’m being honest with myself. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed it when I was younger. You play the eponymous Keith Courage, and in each stage, you start as a puny punk looking kid as you kill things for gold coins, and spend said coins on upgrades. It’s when you get to the Alpha Zone areas that things get pretty fun. Gameplay moves more quickly, the music becomes appropriately 80s, and you get to wear some freakin’ sweet armor and use a sweet sword:
It was pretty 80s craptastic. For a pack in that you got basically for free, it was decent. It didn’t really show off what the console could do terribly well, but it was worth a weekend of button mashing.
One of the most enduring titles released for the TG-16 was Splatterhouse. You played as a dude wielding whatever weapons you could find, and wearing a hockey mask. It was a pretty straightforward side scroller action game with great graphics and creepy ambience that survives even to this day. There were like, five made during the 16- and 32-bit era, and a title came out under the franchise name in 2010 for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It’s the Friday the 13th game that we should have gotten from the start LJN:
The next title is, in my opinion, the crown jewel of the system, at least here in the states where title releases were much leaner. Blazing Lazers is a vertical scrolling shoot’em up in the hallowed tradition of such games as Space Invaders, 1943, and Xevious. Blazing Lazers featured great graphics, amazing 80s techno music, fast gameplay that was challenging without being impossible, and digitally synthesized spoken vocals that really set the game apart from it predecessors in a way that hadn’t been seen much previously. It was colorful, and addictive, and it was a blast to play!
My final entry may be somewhat controversial due to the overabundance of love for the Legend of Zelda franchise. I’m not sure that this is the first Zelda clone, but in my opinion, it was one of the best. Neutopia was released in 1990, and it couldn’t be a more enjoyable rip-off if it came with a chinchilla and a boat load of chocolate! Unlike the previous entries here, this game actually has a story and for you Zelda fans out there, it will feel pretty familiar. An evil wizard has kidnapped the princess, and a hero has been chosen to save her! In order to do so, the hero, Jazeta, has to track down and obtain 8 magic crystals in order to open a portal to the evil wizard realm. This is a much longer game than the previous games as well, and it has a lot to offer. You explore four different environments in four different stages. Each offers unique creatures to battle, and two dungeons to beat. You’ll find unique items to help you along the way in your quest. I may be starting to sound like a broken record here, but this game offers a vivid color palette that really pops off the screen, the environments, minus the dungeons, the characters and the creatures are well designed, and the music although not as well rendered as it could be, is still really good. It’s a super challenging game that I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t actually beaten yet. Someday though… It’s a really fun game that offers plenty of challenge, and I highly recommend it!
I can’t speak highly enough about the TG-16! It was a powerful console for its time, and although there weren’t many games, the games it had were actually really good. NEC really created a marvelous console in the PC Engine/TG-16, but unfortunately, it was discontinued in 1994. However, I recently learned that there’s an interesting footnote ending to this saga. In December of 1994, NEC released a full blown follow-up to the PC Engine that was sold on the market until 1998 called the PC-FX. It was a 32-bit dedicated CD console. It didn’t do polygons, and that really set it behind its competitors, but perhaps it looks familiar to fans of a certain motion based console that was released about a decade ago…
Happy holidays everyone! Stick around to see what I’ve got left in my grab bag this holiday season!
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