Games That Push The Limits of the TG-16

It's the TG16, the other '16-bit' console, or maybe it's 8-bit. Whatever it had a whole load of amazing games and I'm going to take a look at a few that pushed it to the limits.
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Index:
00:00 Intro
00:30 R-Type
02:17 Coryoon: Child of Dragon
04:02 Air Zonk
05:06 Darius Plus
05:27 FLASHING IMAGES - Ninja Gaiden
08:58 END OF FLASHING - Parasol Stars
12:50 Ninja Spirit
14:55 Street Fighter II Champion Edition
18:48 Blazing Lazers
19:48 Silent Debuggers
20:34 Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
20:58 Patreon Thanks

[@DeathMetalDerf]

I was the only one in my friend group back in the day who actually owned one of these. I even started a mini lawn-cutting business in the summer and snow removal in the winter (I live in Western NY State where we get like 9 months of winter) just in my neighborhood. I worked so hard for the money for this thing, and I've never been able to get myself to sell it off with the eight games I have because of how hard I worked at getting it. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, dude. Excellent and very entertaining video (as always), dude.

[@JahElOfYHWH]

Me too 😂 I loved bonks and shmups

[@comiumapedra5397]

Just buy a flash card and use it

[@jamesmoss3424]

The Turbogarfx-16 is still brilliant today. 😀👍🎮

[@tubejay1]

When the TG16 was discontinued in the US, I went to Toys R Us one day, and they had the systems for $50, and the games were $1 to $5 a piece. I got the system and about 15 games for under $100. Including Parasol Stars, which is a superb game. I still have the TG16 and a few of the games, but stupidly sold most of the games in the early 2000's. I wish I hadn't now, because most of those games are ridiculously priced now.

[@artemusprine]

Wow, wish I had caught that sale! I bought mine at Montgomery Ward for around $212...

[@AngryCalvin]

That’s great! It’s funny how many stories you hear like this in comments sections yet I was never fortunate to see any of these types of deals. I was always amazed every time I saw this system on display but had just got my first NES. A year later it had CD-Rom and looked even better.

[@belstar1128]

I never sell my games.

[@JMFSpike]

@@belstar1128 Neither do I, but we're in the minority I think. Most will usually sell their console and games in order to acquire much of the money needed for the new console (sometimes parents would even make their kids do this), and often it leads to regret later in life. I've heard this story time and time again. It sounds like tubejay1's regret is only because of how much the TurboGrafx-16 stuff sells for these days, but for most people, they wish to play them again and experience all those great memories. There is always emulation, but some people want the experience to be just as it was, which means on a real console.

[@jameslloydtiffner8678]

about the same for me... my parents where letting me pick a genesis or nintendo, I saw the clearance and chose the turbografx and a ton of games.... and was still able to find games at garage sales for around a year to stock up a bunch

[@pixelsncreatures]

I found parasol stars and blazing lazers at a thrift store with their music CDs. I audibly screeched

[@LavaCreeperPeople]

Games That Push The Limits of the TurboGrafx-16

[@BeefJerkey]

How long ago was this? Those are definitely rare in the US, and generally not cheap, to my knowledge.

[@artemusprine]

There was a Blazing Lazers CD? Gunhed had one of my all time favorite soundtracks!

[@donaldsmith5667]

wow. that’s awesome. I found a copy of blazing lazers last winter that was absolutely near mint condition for $40.00. I grabbed it instantly.

[@pixelsncreatures]

@@artemusprine I'm not really sure, the only chip to CD game I know of is R-ype but I'm not familiar with the entire Library

[@jasonblalock4429]

I occasionally wonder what would have happened, if Hudson & NEC hadn't dragged their feet on releasing this in the US. It came out at almost exactly the same time as the Genesis, which could outpower it in almost any matchup. But what if they'd only waited one year, and it came out in 1988 instead? That might have really changed the landscape.

[@dwightdixon8508]

NEC America felt Americans want bigger so they lost a year redesigning the console. NEC also didn’t believe in paying licensing fees to MLB, NFL etc so that and the fact that NECs marketing was almost nonexistent didn’t help matters and lets not forget NEC NA couldn’t get games ported over to NA because NEC Japan said Americans wouldn’t understand or want some of the games. I remember it very well as a TG16 owner back then so frustrated but I had my Genesis. Just unfortunate because so many wonderful games stuck in Japan

[@sidearmsalpha]

@@dwightdixon8508 I love the form factor of the PC Engine. NEC screwed it up for the NA release. And yeah, so many awesome games were left in Japan. I bought a TG-16 and kept it for about a year before I traded it in for a SNES because of the lack of good games. Years later i picked up the Duo at a game shop and acquired a lot of the must-have Japanese games. Still an awesome system that I will keep playing as long as I'm able to.

[@artemusprine]

Or better yet if they had simply waited and released the SuperGrafx here with a big push. But yeah, it was Hudson not wanting to hurt their standing with Nintendo that hurt it most. Adventure Island would have been a better pack-in and there were a number of other titles that either came out later than they should have or not at all.

[@sidearmsalpha]

@@artemusprine Yeah, Keith Courage's 2nd half levels were very cool but the overworld levels were not. Adventure Island would have been a much better choice. They had another chance to do things right with the Turbo Duo and squandered it again only to fail. So many great CD games were never brought over.

[@belstar1128]

Yea it was a big problem with a lot of Japanese companies but it was the most extreme with nec where they made way too many changes. localisation totally ruined their chances

[@mercster]

Always loved the TG16 graphics, very good color capabilities.

[@wizzgamer]

Turbo Grafx 16 was a beast for it's age displaying some excellent 16 bit graphics.

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

I love the Turbo but I dont see anything here that SNES or Genesis couldnt easily out-do

[@vacantseaofplanets]

It came out in 1987, before the genesis and the SNES... and look at these specs. Genesis can do 61 colors on screen. SNES can do 256. TurboGrafx can do 482.

[@neoturfmasterMVS]

@@vacantseaofplanets Would have been cool to see a Turbo Nintendo. or a Genesis Grafx.

[@jimedd2561]

That's interesting seeing all the capabilities of these old 16 bit systems.. the super Nintendo had more sprites than the turbo and Genesis but smaller in size so lots of tradeoffs with these systems..

[@Nexus9_KD6-4.8]

As a Sega Genesis fanboy, your robot farts comment about the audio made me chuckle.

[@returnofmerenguespersempre6664]

Rondo is the reason I got this machine for.

[@pixelsncreatures]

I did too but I had a horrible time doing so. First I didn't know about needing the system 3 card and then I found out something with my system wouldn't play it right, then I sent it in for repair and finally got everything I needed to play it. Glad this all happened when NEC was still servicing their stuff

[@Alex_Valentine]

I got this system for Cadash and I'm so glad I did.

[@bananonymouslastname5693]

I got it for Keith Courage. I love Gate of Thunder, Rondo, Gradius II, etc., but Keith Courage was the first Turbografx game I played at a friend's house. It was so colorful, and those glowing alien bodies in the background of the bossfights really stood out as enticingly creepy to my young eyes.

[@drunkensailor112]

​@@pixelsncreatures same for me and got it 3 years ago. My favorite non metroidvania castlevania and perhaps even my favorite castlevania of all time

[@TheRealCaptainFreedom]

The Thirst Mutilator that’s got what plants crave?

[@crestofhonor2349]

The PC engine/Turbo graphics had so many great games I’ve discovered recently. Especially the CD add on had even more that I’ve been playing recently thanks to people translating many of these games

[@morenauer]

Tbh, it was the perfect console for the Japanese market. THey were REALLY into shoot'em-ups back in the day and both this system and the Sharp x68000 delivered.

[@joesshows6793]

US gamers could only dream of getting a Sharp x68k

[@witecatj6007]

The TG-16 was known for its awesome shmups. It was a good little system.

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

I hated Blazing Lazers so much. Musha on Genesis destroyed it in every way so I dont know why people rave about it. Air Zonk was the real deal Im glad we got a truly good Shooter at the end

[@witecatj6007]

@@worsethanhitlerpt.2539 The crazy thing about Air Zonk is that Mitsubishi used him for some of their car products.

[@richardadams4928]

I still have mine, loved it in its day. Should have been a real contender. The Turbo Express blew my MIND, playing the identical physical HUECards. I played MANY hours of Alien Crush on the Express. Sadly, it only shows a solid white screen now, and the sound capacitor punked out about a million years ago.

[@supermegagrafx64]

There is no such thing as too many TurboGrafx videos. Love yourr channel.

[@j4yb0b]

Parasol Stars did have an excellent Amiga port.

[@carn9507]

Yeah I played that port loads in the 90s. Was fantastic and is what made the game my fave in the whole Bubble Bobble / Rainbow Islands series. :)

[@anthonypimentel7218]

Amiga was such a great system! Was far better than PC as a computer at first IMO

[@belstar1128]

Usually the amiga ports are quite bad because they where made by group of 3 British 14 year olds. compared to pc engine game that where made with teams of over 10 20 something year old Japanese guys who also made the arcade version .

[@terrylyn]

Although I never owned one or even seen one in real life and only heard about it decades afterwards from youtube it's my all time favorite console.

[@SonicBoone56]

10:37 "robot farts of the Genesis and muffled mumbling of the SNES." Lmao, extremely accurate.

[@dwightdixon8508]

Bought TG16 just after Genesis. TG16 games definitely had a look and feel that made me know I was playing TG16. Really a shame NEC dropped the ball when it came to marketing & selecting what games to port outside of Japan because the PC Engine definitely has impressive games. I still have my TG16 hardware & games

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

I bet lots of people would love to see a diagram that explains in easy terms, the way the Turbo worked Vs. SNES and Genesis. Obviously having an 8-bit CPU makes it way different but it can somewhat compete with the 16-bit systems so its interesting for sure

[@ProctorSilex]

A friend's father got one and returned it because the games bit. The only game I recall other than the later Zonk advertising was some puzzle with melons that was on the demo machine at Babbages or the other game store. I found the system mysterious and fascinating but totally off my wish list because of the cost like a Bugatti. It's fun playing today and finding that it really did have good games. If I had one, I wouldn't sell my hard earned childhood PCE either.

[@f.k.b.16]

My friend came to me one day and said, "MY Dad said i could get the Genesis or the TG16 for my birthday! Which one should I get?" I talked him into the TG16 because I had the Genesis. It had a few great games but I think he always felt left behind by his choice.

[@AirZonkWorldChamp]

Ahh, Air Zonk. Looks great and plays amazing!

[@JasperTedVidalTale]

6:50 MSX on steroids (TG16 Is like: What if the msx can do scrolling but it has choppy parallax scrolling)

[@apollolux]

I was born in 1985 and have lived in New York City all of my life. For the record, as a pleb kid growing up in the 90s, my understanding of the way the video game industry marketed "bittage" was that it referred to _graphics_ capabilities of the console and not so much the CPU itself, so pushing the TG-16/PC Engine as a "16-bit console" I always assumed was "does 16-bit graphics." I eventually got a bachelor's degree in computer science, among the curriculum is studying processor architecture, and understood that not only was that mostly marketing speak but also each console had its own set of hardware (sometimes custom) and usually had its own charm, sometimes even directly because of those limitations. I never did get past the first enemy in the store kiosk demo of Air Zonk that Toys 'R' Us had when we ultimately got Chrono Trigger, however.

[@deku812]

Fun fact, Hudsonsoft was a big NES/Famicom developer and they developed the PC Engine as a 'Super' Famicom, it uses the same 6502 8 bit CPU running much faster than the NES, making programming from existing Nintendo devs much easier. They approached Nintendo with their PC Engine technology first. Nintendo turned them down so they went with NEC.

[@daveloomis]

He says this in the video...

[@jsr734]

Lol, that remainds me of the Nintendo Playstation history.😄

[@Prizrak-hv6qk]

Why repeat what was said in the video?

[@customsongmaker]

Hudson also invented the multitap

[@leomon32]

I've always been amazed by Parodius and Download in terms of parallax effects!

[@Animated__Freak]

I wish it had a wider release in Europe. It was released under the name TurboGrafx (dropping the 16 part) but it was a very very limited release.

[@astra6712]

In Australia we never had PC Engine, Colecovision, intellivision, Atari 5200, wonder swan and Neo Geo. What a shame

[@wardrich]

18:06 probably also worth mentioning that the Street Fighter HU card itself was a custom build with a beefy section where the label goes to accommodate the extra hardware that they had to use.

[@tarstarkusz]

I always wondered back then why NEC decided to use the credit card sized game cartridges in the first place. Was this some kind of generic appeal to futurism? I think this aspect not only held the system back later, but even at the time of release. While they might have wanted to invoke "the future" with these tiny cards, it also made some people think the cards would limit the size of games. I was one of these people. It held the system back, IMHO. Was it some attempt at saving money? Also having only 1 controller port and the whole daisy chain thing.

[@TurboXray]

@@tarstarkusz Probably just to stand out. In Japan, hi-tech was perceived differently. Smaller form factor was higher tech - credit card size carts, tiny PCE console, etc. In reality, it didn't have an effect on cart sizes.. the actual rom ICs themselves (inside their packages) are like a few millimeters. There's actually nothing under that bump in SF2. It's just the pcb slightly extended. They would have needed to put a sticker over it, but chose a bump instead (better choice in my opinion). The arcade card "Duo" has a lot more chips than SF2 and doesn't have a bump. I dunno - maybe they had planned on a few more games using the extended hucard format (with mapper) and other games WOULD need the space under the bump (the arcade card "pro" did).

[@wardrich]

@@tarstarkusz I've always found it curious how they were able to cram so much onto such a thin board. I'm sure the small form factor limited what they could do - I wonder if they could have done away with the CD-RomRom (what a dumb name lol) add-on had they just used a better cartridge design. Also - the daisy chained controller thing is def dumb. Maybe multi-player gaming wasn't as popular in Japan as it was in the USA and Canada? It almost seemed like more of an after thought

[@tarstarkusz]

@@TurboXray I don't know how long the PCE was kept going in Japan. But by the end of the SNES and Genesis era, games were 4MB or 6MB in some cases. Not sure they could have reached that level cheaply in the credit card format. Presumably they would have needed newer, higher density chips for that. OTOH, if they had the manufacturing capability of doing away with the package and using the hucard itself as the package, then perhaps it was possible. I'm pretty sure NEC had its own chip fabrication capabilities.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@wardrich Well, I do know living space is far more limited in Japan than in the West. Those CD jewel cases probably cut the physical storage of them maybe 1/2 of what boxed SNES or Genesis games.

[@KattKirsch]

Would love a Turbo CD limit video!

[@ailaxl]

In reality, through, Turbografx-16 games, despite the impressive base color palette, were close but never displayed quite as many different simultaneous colors as SNES games. Like, SNES games rarely approached 256 different onscreen colors but TG-16 games would typically only approach ~150 simultaneous colors like max. Why? I don’t know, but the point is that in practice the SNES had more colorful games, followed very closely behind by the TG-16, and then MD/Genesis was last of course.

[@hicknopunk]

I wouldn't say the sound chip on the pc-engine is better than the nes chip. They are different, but I like them both.

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

The Turbo Grafx sound chip can do some crisp sound FX that I dont think Genesis can match. Alien Crush, Devils Crush and Dungeon Explorer have the sounds that are too high frequency for Genesis

[@jc_dogen]

well the nes has 5 channels that are fixed function (pulse, triangle, noise, delta pcm) and in mono. the pc engine has 6 channels at a slightly higher bit depth that can play whatever waveform you want in full pannable stereo. the only thing the nes really has over it was the auto loading of dpcm samples. the pc engine had to load new samples in manually with the CPU, but they're much higher quality and you have a 4-5x faster cpu anyway.

[@alaggan]

Excellent machine. The bridge between the 8 & 16-bit generation technically for me. A tweaked 65C02 CPU on steroids running at 7.16Mhz was a very fast & efficient CPU coupled with a 16-bit graphics chip that could handle a ton of sprites at a high colour depth. Great shame we never got a genuine successor to the hardware that built on the original design.

[@IdentityCrisis1581]

I actually got one for the shooters myself. It was the only decent arcade port of r-type. And the other shooters were great too. But for the most part, I liked it because it was unique. By the time I got mine snes and Genesis were out. But everyone had those. No one I knew had a turbo grafx, so I felt like I had a hidden gem. And it was a new library of games to explore so it was a fresh break from the snes and genesis that had gotten old and boring. The only problem is that a lot of the best games never made it out of Japan. Granted a lot of others were so heavily japanese that they wouldn't have sold in a western market where people didn't get the cultural references. So a lot of them would have been confusing. But the few that were culturally neutral didn't have much of a chance because of the system's short lifespan. When the CD add on came out they focused on porting the CD games. So a lot of the good chip games that came out after the CD add on was released weren't ported over. We never got the supergrafx but that kind of flopped even in Japan. It just wasn't enough of an upgrade compared to what Nintendo and Sega were doing. Their biggest failure was the PC-fx. It was released around the 32-bit era where all other systems were leaning into 3d graphics. Their mistake was that the PC-fx could not do true wireframe graphics. That system had to fake it the same way the TurboGrafx CD did by using sprite graphics that were pre rendered in a 3d program. It was intended to be a 2d power house. But the problem with that is that 2d graphics weren't as popular anymore. And it really wasn't capable of doing anything with 2d graphics that the other systems couldn't do on top of doing 3d as well. The Sega Saturn for as much of a failure it is considered to be. It was a powerful system that could do 2d just as well as 3d. The only reason playstation came out on top is that they undercut Sega on the price point. When Sony announced that the PlayStation was 100$ cheaper than the Saturn on release, that was the mic drop. Sega couldn't compete because the Saturn was more powerful and more expensive to produce. They couldn't sell it at the same price as the PlayStation without loosing money. Sony effectively forced Sega to sell the Saturn at a loss to compete. By that time no one cared about Nec's new system because it couldn't do 3d, and most of the games for it were those story based games where you just choose from a list of dialog options, like an interactive story. If not that type of game most of the others relied heavily on quick time events and didn't have much gameplay. It didn't have any notable shooters, RPGs or platformer games. Shooters were Nec's claim to fame. So the PC-fx not having any decent shooters was a deal breaker for most consumers. And the PC-fx was not weak it had plenty of processing power and memory. But not making the jump to 3d, and not having any amazing shooters like it's predecessors were known for. It was pretty much a still birth system even in Japan. It never made it to the west.

[@donskiver]

Can you imagine all of the bangers that would have been if the TG16 had the same 3rd party support as the NES?

[@marcellachine5718]

I often wonder what could have been.

[@donaldsmith5667]

I have loved this console since 1989.

[@roystonlodge]

The TG-16 was the console of choice … as long as you really liked shooters. If you preferred platformers or RPGs, not so much.

[@glennshoemake4200]

I was living in Germany from 1990 to 1992 and everyone were playing games on the Amiga 500, so I bought an Amiga 500. Maybe saw a few advertisements for Turbografx but they were no where to be found.

[@Lukas-kz4xm]

Ohh, I'm struggling to think of one single title that came out on this system and it's numerous expensive expansions that graphically outdid offerings from other consoles of it's generation.

[@TheCeallach]

Hell yeah, more Neville content

[@Sharopolis]

I forgot about that! That's what I was going to call it wasn't it?

[@TheCeallach]

@@Sharopolis Thats what you decided on in the PCE video lol.

[@digital_underground]

This was rthe first time I've seen this show. I'm in the U.S. and I didn't even know about the Turbo Grafx 16 until 2002 when I went to a flea market and a guy was selling one. I almost bought it and a few games. Wish I had.

[@thegreathadoken6808]

My SF2 port of choice was on this console. It had some better, more arcade-faithful fonts, audio and whatnot that the Super Nintendo lacked while having music that both the SNES and Megadrive could not touch in terms of their clarity and arcade-accuracy. The Sharp 68k port was better (could it even be called a port at all, since the arcade game was built on the machine in the first place?), but who's gonna take all that disk-swapping for the small upgrade that would give you? Given how far behind the PC Engine was supposed to be in the 16-Bit wars, how they crammed Champion Edition into this console without locking it behind the Supergrafx or CD systems seems like extremely good work to me, perhaps the best port the console has to offer, although there's a version of one of the Neo Geo fighters which is also far better than it ever had any right to be hidden away on the CD console.

[@jsr734]

I think the Genesis/Megadrive port sounds more Arcade accurate tough. The Snes and Genesis versions have selectable turbo speeds and parallax background scrolling. The only thing the PC Engine port has over the Genesis and Snes versions is a liittle more color than the Snes in some instances but overall the Snes is still displaying more colors on screen.

[@poncho828]

The Genesis version is the most arcade accurate. Both the snes and PC engine are missing character combos.

[@Prizrak-hv6qk]

The MD port is the closest to arcade when it comes to gameplay and music, thanks to sharing some similarities with the CPS hardware. The SNES gives you the closest graphical representation thanks to its large pallet and 4 background layers, as well as best voice work. The PCE port is great for what it is but has by far the worst music and background graphics detail out of all three CE/Turbo ports . It's a neat curiosity, but I'd never choose to play it over the MD and SNES versions.

[@turrican4d599]

R-Type was so enduring in the commercials. We had R-Type on Amiga that time and I thought WOW, a PC(Personal Computer) ENGINE is way better than my Amiga 500!!!

[@Rikkenharp]

I had the pc engine, bought it because of Mr.Heli/Battle Chopper, Parodius and R-Type...also loved Nectaris/Military Madness. Miss the little machine :)

[@jeffyp2483]

if that sf2 game made it to the US id be surprised if it didnt at least let the turbo (as its known here) hold on a little longer.

[@doomslayerdave]

I only knew one friend that had a TG16 and the only games he had was Keith Courage, Final Lap Twin, Blazing Lasers and Legendary Axe. And those were the only games I ever played.

[@Nirakolov]

There should be a Bonk and Zonk teamup

[@mekman4]

Great Stuff, as always!

[@TurboXray]

Airzonk and Coryoon are the same engine (it was admitted during a hudson interview).. even right down to the sound engine which is byte for byte the same binary code in the exact same address hahah.

[@Crono_Triggered]

Your videos are fantastic man.

[@donjaun540]

Turbo Graphics -16 was pretty badass. Thank you for the great video.

[@willrobinson7599]

Some stunning games on the pc engine Streetfighter 2 just amazing

[@rangoononline]

These choices are all top notch and some of my favorite games on the system. Air Zonk and Blazing Lazers have amazing soundtracks. I might even put Alien Crush and Devils crush on the list because they still my favorite pinball games

[@TurboXray]

I think, if you're looking at just hucards... I would think Magical Chase should have been at the top. It does more tricks than any other hucard games (including hsync color updates "ala copper bars" for an additional BG layer).

[@tarstarkusz]

Parasol Stars is an absolutely outstanding game and well worthy of the connection with Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands. It is one of the best games on the TG16. it looks spectacular, especially compared to the NES version. The NES version is a big flickering nasty looking mess. It is not worth playing. The Amiga and Atari ST versions are also very good, but the controller for the PCE is just much better than the 1 button joysticks of the ST and Amiga. If you have a TG16 or even an emulator and you don't have the game/ROM, do yourself a favor and get a copy. You won't be disappointed.

[@belstar1128]

Most ST and Amiga arcade ports where really bad because they where rushed out my small uk games devs .but sometimes they made good ports.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@belstar1128 Parasol Stars is excellent on Amiga and ST. But you're right, a lot of ST/Amiga ports are junk.

[@legendsflashback]

Great video , if Capcom had configure option sf2 you could just use 1 punch 1 kick but Capcom didn't let you map certain buttons just detect what kind controller you had each system 😢

[@thecunninlynguist]

blazing lasers looks great, and of course SF 2.

[@vidarlystadjohansen9829]

awesome channel!

[@TurboXray]

Okay.. you showed Ninja Spirit, and how the first level "dynamic tiles" works.. and you even show the 2nd level with the trees.. but you completely missed the more advanced effect hahah. In the 2nd level, the "dynamic tile" animation is done on a 2bit level instead of a 4 bit level. What do I mean by this? The tiles on the PCE are 4bit.. but they are actually in the formation of two 2bit "composite" tiles (it's just like the SNES) because - the PCE can be switched into 2bit color mode for either tiles or sprites (just like the SNES). Anyway, the leaves of the trees are on one 2bit tile composition side, and the "dynamic" tiles are on the other 2bit composite side of the tile. Normally this would cause an OR'ing logic to occur messing with the colors, and it actually does, but thanks to the whole palette of a tile being 4bit, you basically have four repeats of the first 4 colors. Difficult to understand, but this is an advance affect. So much so, that this is how you would do fake transparency on the PCE (ala some Amiga demos) by exploiting the planar graphic format and having the right colors in the subpalette. Except in instead of making the tree leaves transparent.. they simply repeated the colors so that you wouldn't see any difference in the OR'ing of both sets - when far BG is show and no OR'ing then you see just those colors, when tree leaves are showing and no OR'ing then you just see those colors, and when ANY two pixels overlap between the two OR'ing then you see the repeated colors of the leaves so only the leaves are perceivable.

[@jamiec2023]

Crazy to think the Japanese and some Americans were playing games like this when I had my humble Atari ST back in the day this would have blown my mind if Id ever seen none of these in the flesh

[@belstar1128]

The st could come close to this. but most st games where coded by random teenagers in their bedroom. while Japanese developers where already having professional teams with a lot of people.

[@SonicBoone56]

That Street Fighter port is extremely impressive.

[@Halbared]

The PC Engine looked amazing when I saw it in mags back in tje day.

[@Eric_Malbos]

Excellent video. Aside from Japan and US, Europe was also a significant market for gaming system. At that time, Sega had the upper hand there with its master system. Although less known, The PC Engine was also sold in supermarket and electronic / media shops.

[@Halbared]

The Master system and the Nes vied for top spot in different countries in Europe.

[@ValisFan3]

The Turbografx 16 just didn't have enough buttons. Only 2 action buttons really limited what it could do compared to the Genesis and SNES. It really needed more buttons to show that is a next generation console compared to the NES and Master System.

[@gamerdude0]

I remember seeing the PAL UK Turbo in Electronic Boutiques stores, heavily discounted around the time. I was lucky to get a PC Engine with Briefcase Interface Unit and CDROM unit off ebay pretty early on, I've had problems with it reading discs lately even after a laser swap. May be time for a recap as the potentiometers on the unit don't help. Great Video~

[@Halbared]

An unofficial import?

[@fungo6631]

14:38 Actually, no. You could just use bit rotating in RAM to achieve it.

[@fattomandeibu]

Talking of bad 8-bit versions of SF2, I have the C64 version on cassette tape in the medium box. Got it the same day I got a SNES with SF2. I played it once and never again 'cause the loading times took the piss, even by arcade port on tape standard.

[@Halbared]

Moving to a Snes from a 64 was quite the jump!

[@fattomandeibu]

@@Halbared Same jump as made by most. A C64 was no worse than a NES in most cases. Hell, a few of the C64 games I had(Robocop 2, Terminator 2 etc., both crap on a gameplay level, but very impressive on a technical level) had the same cartridge upgrading the hardware trickery as NES carts did. The only real disadvantage the C64 had in this situation was the colour palette and number of sound channels. You had the same CPU(the NES one was clocked faster but the sound controller, which the C64 had a separate chip for, nicked the vast majority of those extra cycles), the same number of sprites etc.

[@Halbared]

@@fattomandeibu I had a Vic20, then a 64, then a Nes, then an Amiga and so on.

[@namelesssoul8098]

I wish I never would have gotten rid of mine.

[@googleboughtmee]

Love your vids! Can I ask what you used to run the games in the vid? Because I noticed a corrupt frame in SFII at 16:00 and that happens (or at least, used to happen, it might have been fixed recently) in the MiSTer core with this game. So I'm just curious if you used MiSTer, or if the same glitch also happens on other emulators or real hardware. I don't think it happens on my Turbo Everdrive and I don't have the original HuCard to check.

[@TurboXray]

Probably mister. Never seen this on the real hardware. It can be caused by a timing issue (as in the game is writing to regs right against the timing threshold for updates, and if it gets missed - things like this happen).

[@artemusprine]

Ninja Spirits is equal parts Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi, as every system of that era needed its own ninja game apparently. Even the Neo had one, but its is much more like Final Fight or Golden Axe.

[@MrAckers75]

Got a pc engine in the uk through a grey importer and I bloody loved it

[@Alianger]

Do you know where I can find the SSF (saturn) version with an audio debugger showing the audio channels being used?

[@jeffyp2483]

i think for ninja gaiden it might be possible to choose a pattern such that when it snaps it lines up in such a way it appears the same in the first and last frame, or the last frame skipped to the next position.

[@supabass4003]

Gotta love those cute-em-ups.

[@PeterMackay]

One of the most impressive background tile animation effects I've seen was the snowfall effect in Creatures 2 on the C64: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eKG5ZXV_fcemm68

[@Seb66]

More video like this please🙏

[@MaxOakland]

I love the way described the audio chips of the Genesis and SNES as “robot farts” and “muffled mumbling” 😂 What are the technical details of the TG16’s audio?

[@luigifan001]

nice

[@annfrank5959]

Very interesting I would like to the performance difference of all the SNES titles on the Turbo Grafx 16 just to see a comparison if a hardware mod or software would be needed to run the same as SNES or better. I'm loving the Air Zonk game beautiful colors And everyone gets protoman glasses 🕶️

[@yod1213]

@ Sharoplis, whats the sprite viewer you're using for this called and also the one you used for the SNES, also can you do a short video on how to use them? I would love a program that lets you count all the sprites on screen and see how many sprites there are per scan line.

[@adamb89]

The TG16 had two main flaws: It was expensive as ass, and didn't really have a library worth speaking of. It really makes me wonder what would've happened if they'd had their own flagship franchise(s) to give them a boost. As it was back in school there was the one rich kid who had the TG16 and for like a week his place was the hang-out spot as we were all impressed by the graphics. But then we realized that he only had a handful of games, and wasn't able to trade games with the rest of us Nintendo players, so after the novelty wore off he was sort of on his own again. Kids are fickle, in the span of a week he went from being the dork who didn't have a Nintendo, to the cool kid who had a TG16, back to the dork who still didn't have a Nintendo lol.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Ahh haa.... thought i was havin de ja vu

[@johneygd]

Ninja gaiden & ninja spirit really blows my mind in the graphical department,how could they do render those multi background effect trough software without getting color clashes.

[@TheJinxCast]

9:45 He said the G word D:

[@lordterra1377]

That background scrolling in Ninja Gaiden is horrible depsite the game looking very nice.

[@forcedfeedbackclassicgamer5499]

❤TG16/PCE.

[@Steph_7d7]

Super star soldier is an absolute classic for smup fans, i prefer it over blazing lasers as amazing as that one is.

[@AltimaNEO]

Have you talked about the addons and what kind of hardware they had, if at all? Im really unfamiliar with the Turbo's cards and addons.

[@MabuseXX]

More RAM is better. You can than create the missing tiles on the fly (or before the level starts). Saving Rom space & more flexibel. 14:45

[@SmeddyTooBestChannel]

the sprites on the pc-engine are absolutely deranged. there's only 64 sprites available like the NES but the max size of them is 32x64. you can super easily fake extra parallax layers just by using 2-3 sprites.

[@SmeddyTooBestChannel]

DAMMIT you literally mentioned this in the video and I just got to that part

[@jockobo]

Is the hit detection off on this version of Ninja gaiden?

[@legendsflashback]

20:00 what game is that?

[@tarstarkusz]

16:20 I don't think you can compare the TG16's sprite capabilities with the NES or Master System and especially not the NES. Not only are TG16 sprites larger and more colorful, they don't suffer from flicker nearly as bad. This was a major problem for the NES. The flicker of many sprite games for the NES is near unbearable.

[@DoggoneNexus]

I swear I hear a crosswalk ticking sound throughout this video

[@Ahmadu100]

17:04 It's called "Line Scrolling".

[@TurboXray]

yeah. But in SF2 for a parallax "plane" effect, you still need the correct art with the 3D perspective. I think he was looking for a term when the two are applied.

[@Ahmadu100]

@@TurboXrayDude, he was talking about the floor.

[@TurboXray]

@@Ahmadu100 Yo, the floor is a background layer. I know exactly that he was talking about

[@Ahmadu100]

@@TurboXray The whole stage is a background layer but he was talking about the floor in contrast to the rest of the stage and the technique used to achieve the effect of parallax scrolling on the floor.

[@TurboXray]

@@Ahmadu100 Okay.. I understand ~all~ of that. What's your point? It doesn't change what I said. It's not JUST line scrolling. That's half of it.. and he was looking for a term to explain them TOGETHER (line scrolling on specifically 3D skewed perspective art). Pretty sure he already knows what line scrolling is (he's already pointed out more technical stuff in his video, and has already talked about line scrolling in other videos).

[@joesshows6793]

This is right on my friend

[@deadcentre-retro-meaningma6209]

I always thought the PC Engine I saw in UK 80s/90s magazines looked like nothing else in gaming. But I now realise that just isn’t true. Put it next to a Japanese Famicom and it looks much less revolutionary. The shell’s still cool, but definitely heavily influenced by the Nintendo.

[@atmaweapon2803]

So many good games. The CD version as well, although so many of them were Japanese exclusives, like Ys IV. Ys Book I & II for the TG-CD/PC Engine CD is one of the greatest video games of all time.

[@xxxpensive1415]

The controller had settings that is a notch above Nintendos game controller

[@skalt711]

You forgot about Magical Chase :(

[@cash5627]

I've always viewed the tg16 as the beefiest 8 bit system ever released. 8bit because of it's 8bit cpu and two 8bit gpu's. The 16 is marketing more than anything. But damn what an 8 bit console it was! I love my tg16

[@belstar1128]

It may as well be 16 bit .it can do anything a 16 bit system can even if its technically not 16 bit. later on Nintendo made the n64 a 64 bit console but then they made the game cube but it was 32 bit but it was more powerful .on the pc the first consumer 64 bit cpu only came out in 2003 and it was not the norm until 2010.

[@AltimaNEO]

The Turbo was such a beast. Its a shame it wasnt as popular in the States. I remember a friend of mine had it, but he only had Bonk. It seemed like such a lame game, at the time, when compared to the likes of Sonic and Mario World.

[@ridiculous_gaming]

I wish they retained the original PC Engine form factor here in Canada. What a dense, tiny power house the PC Engine was. The TG16, was such a cheap looking bloated case.