The really REAL reason why the Turbografx-16 failed in North America | In response to Shmup Junkie

On April 25th of 2021, Shmup Junkie, KZbin’s rising star, uploaded the first of two videos that went into the history of the PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16. In the second of these two videos, regarding the Turbografx-16, the Shmup Junkie described the various reasons that people give for why the Turbografx-16 console failed to make it in North America.
Chief among the positions discussed is Creative Cat Production’s own hypothesis from one of our most popular videos, which also happened to be about the history of the Turbografx-16. Our hypothesis is that the console failed because it surrounded itself with confusing and expensive hardware add-ons that dissuaded consumers who preferred the cheaper and more clear cut NES and Sega Genesis.
Shmup Junkie did not cite us within his video, but he DID call our position “rubbish” or “trash”…..what’s the deal with that?
So I contacted Shmup Junkie through Twitter and told him that he referenced our video and that I wanted to do a response, because we cordially disagree. He said he watched and liked our video, but he is still committed to his position that the Turbografx-16 was not brought down by its costly accessories, but rather, the popularity of SEGA. Let’s just see about that!
We’ve gone back and reviewed the literature….this ONE Gamasutra article by a journalist named Christian Nutt, from which we BOTH acquired all of our most important information and ideas. Having reviewed our own video, his videos, and carefully studied the Gamasutra article, we realized that we were kind of right, but for a reason that we failed to pay enough attention to the first time we visited this topic.
So, we present to you all, for your consideration, the really REAL reason why the Turbografx-16 failed in North America…..and it wasn’t SEGA’s fault….it was actually killed by the console’s creator, Hudsonsoft.
Check out our video for the detail. As always, thanks for watching.
-CCP Management
__________________________________
Links:
Shmups Junkies PC Engine video:
• History of the Amazing...
Shmup Junkie’s Turbografx video:
• History of the Amazing...
CCP’s origina Turbografx video:
• Why the TurboGrafx-16 ...
the Gamasutra article by Christian Nutt:
www.gamasutra....
--------

[@ShmupJunkie]

What is this madness??? You dare question THE almighty Shmup Junkie then proceed to criticize and lampoon? Blasphemy! You’ve not seen the last of me! Just wait until I bring all the shmupsters to the yard. Watcha gonna do when Shmupamania runs wild on youuuu. Woooo! 🤣 Edit: sorry that’s what happens when Timmaaay gets out of his cage.

[@creativecatproductions]

Ooooooh yeeeeeah! Brother! TurboGrafx Mania!!!

[@creativecatproductions]

This video has been blessed 😇 Thanks for watching and not setting our channel on fire with torches! 😝

[@georgehanskluwe5774]

Shmup"s view point is on point...

[@simon41978]

@@georgehanskluwe5774 I consider the PC Engine and PC Engine CDROM as basically two systems. People buying the base PC Engine usually didn't get the best franchises. No Final Fight, Turtles, Contra, Castlevania, Daimakaimura. It did get Gradius but it was a very old game at the time. With the CDROM, the library is much better. The PC Engine was underestimated and a niche console. One thing CCP didn't mention which is very significant IMO, is there was some confusion as to what the PC Engine was - an 8 Bit or 16 Bit console. I know I was confused for years with magazines calling it an 8 Bit console. Confusion amongst consumers is not good.

[@mr.milehi9883]

You need to relax man. That's if this is eating your brain. I feel sorry for the sheep in your garage.

[@quesocoatl21]

It's a lot of factors but two big ones you didn't mention: Nintendo's monopolistic practices in America holding up 3rd party releases, the different culture: in Japan kids are given money to buy what they want but adults do the buying in America and as we all know they're clueless. There are probably much more too: should've released a year or more earlier and marketing.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching dude! 😎 I wish Hudson had really used the TG16 as an opportunity to cut lose as a console developer. It wouldn’t have hurt to port some of the NES hits to the system in addition to the great games they did produce

[@chazzw5388]

Nintendo had limited exclusive games after losing their biggest third party games to fed up programmers that jumped on the Sega Genesis 16bit band wagon! 👏😃

[@orlandoturbo6431]

TurboGrafx 16 failed because it was a lack of popular American games and 3rd party support. Games that Americans would like to play. And TTI inc. should have release Madden on Turbochip too so everyone could play the game. What was they thinking. It probably would have been the number one best seller on Turbochip.

[@creativecatproductions]

I don’t think American games were that popular in 1989 or 1990, when I think back on the big hits from that period. Nintendo dominated the industry and so the most popular games by far were their big first party titles like the Super Mario Bros games, and after that there were the big hits from Japanese companies like Capcom and Konami. The arcades were the same way. All the biggest hit games were produced by Japanese companies like Sega, namco, Capcom, Irem, data east, and Konami. This was the case at the time. The TG16 enjoyed games from companies like namco, Irem, Konami, Masaya, and so on…..it plainly didn’t have enough games but what it got was pretty good and representative of a wide variety of companies. I just think it was partly just too confusing and expensive to consumers…..and the distribution was probably inadequate too. If you can’t sell it at Walmart then you’re not really going to sell that many in the US. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@chriswheatley3146]

@@creativecatproductions I believe you misread what he stated there. He wasn't referring to games that were made in America, but games that were popular in America at the time. In the arcade, Sega was still big. The Genesis came out including the popular Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Super Hang-On, etc being offered at the time. The Turbo really didn't have any big name recognizeable titles during then; even if the quality was just as good. The arcade titles at the time were Vigilante (also on SMS), R-Type (also on SMS), Ninja Spirit (obscure), Tiger Road (obscure), and Bloody Wolf (obscure). A couple others may have been arcade ports as well, but just as obscure. When the SNES came out later on, Nintendo knew right away that grabbing exclusive arcade titles was the route to go as well; thus why they originally exclusively had Final Fight and Street Fighter 2.

[@creativecatproductions]

I see what you’re saying but to be fair I think it’s more accurate to say he “misspoke” about what constituted popular games in 1989, as opposed to my misinterpretation ……it wasn’t “American games” that were popular at the time that were missing from the console, but rather it was Japanese games popular in the American arcades. I think the biggest hit in 1989, by far, was probably Capcom’s Final Fight for instance…..a game that would be a SNES exclusive in 1991 (until the SEGA CD version). I think it is true that the TG-16 lacked arcaded games that were very popular, though it did have quite a few notable Namco titles like Splatterhouse, Pac-land, and Dragon Spirit. However, I also think its true that the SEGA Genesis was equally deficient despite the marketing to the contrary. The only real notable arcade games at launch were Altered Beast, Ghouls N Ghosts and Super Hang On. The port of Super Thunder Blade was awful and Space Harrier 2 was virtually unplayable. But by the end of the year, the big Genesis game every one wanted definitely Golden Axe. That was by far the most popular, high profile arcade to home port for the console, probably until Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. I don’t think the TG-16 ever had a game quite that popular, as far as arcade ports are concerned. Forgotten Worlds came out in 89 too, but like most of the other Genesis arcade ports at the time, it was pretty fringe in terms of popularity. I think, really, the Genesis and TG-16 were ABOUT on par in this regard in 89 and early 90. They CLAIMED to be arcade consoles, but they really barely were and neither had very many big hits. It was nice to get some of those SEGA games, because as you indicate, SEGA was the king of arcades, but many of the SEGA ports were also disappointing. Golden Axe really was a much bigger game than any game on the TG-16 in 89 though. People loved that game and the Genesis version was, thankfully, pretty darn good. The Revenge of Shinobi was also a shockingly great game, though it was never actually an arcade game, unless you count those SEGA cabinets that played Genesis games. Anyway, thanks for watching dude! Cool 😎

[@orlandoturbo6431]

@mgriz-it4ch If they had release all the Supergrafx games,Madden, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2 and games that will appeal to Americans on Turbochip. The TurboGrafx16 wouldn't had failed like it did. A lot of kids didn't even know about the system.

[@josephfrye7342]

It failed in japan too except castlevania

[@wargameboy72]

I like Shmup Junkie and all that. But Creative Cat Productions made the all time greatest Turbografx-16 Documentary I have ever seen and I have seen them all!!!! This is KZbin gold...

[@creativecatproductions]

Shmup junkie is the man! Thank you very much for watching our video! Your kind words have made my day. 😎

[@MerelyAFan]

I've seen a lot of speculation that Turbografx-16's North American issues were somewhat rooted not with a lack of marketing, but a lack of distinct marketing. The Genesis was able to carve out the image of doing accurate arcade ports at first and subtly positioned itself as the console for tweens and teenagers later on. Throw in the system having its price cut down (to the point of arguably hurting SoA's profits long term) and it had an immediate hook, especially when the console got EA sports titles. The Turbografx-16 had a strong library, even in the West, but I've not seen much in the advertising that really made it a unique must have; its overall presentation seemed to be just better and more colorful variations of many NES games. However, that was so diminished by the aforementioned perceived costly hardware set up that enough of the market simply saw a more expensive Nintendo console without the same kind of high-profile arcade faithfulness that a cheaper system like the Genesis offered. Honestly competing with Nintendo in the West (without the major financial resources of a Sony or Microsoft) may have only led to the respective outcomes of Sega and NEC that we got; getting market share at the cost of long term viability or low success due to cutting losses when profitability wasn't seen as likely.

[@creativecatproductions]

I definitely recall the Sega Genesis originally being positioned as the “tween” to “teen” alternative to Nintendo. Im not sure that positioning was very effective until the big price cut and sonic though. People mostly cared about individual games and, while I love the Genesis, it just didn’t have many games with wide mass market appeal for years….except a few sega and capcom arcade ports. I do think the price cut and the EA sports games helped a lot. However, something I recall is that Genesis owners tended to be heavy game renters as opposed to owners. I’ve always wanted to explore this but concrete facts are hard to discern. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@JasonBaker1978]

Ah but we now know Sega of Japan ordered the release of the Saturn in USA not because they wanted a jump on the competition, it was because Sega of Japan held off the USA launch of the Saturn at the request of Tom C. who believed they would have a better opportunity to sell 32x addons. When that didn't happen and the warehouse was piled skyhigh with unsold 32x units, Sega of Japan ordered its release immediately (before they had wide distribution in many retail stores ie see Kay Bee Toys response at the time) then asked Tom to step down as CEO.

[@NoshAbroad]

The Famicom sold 19 million consoles (in Japan) over its life time. The Famicom Disk System sold about 4.4 million units in Japan. Or roughly 1 in 4 Famicom households also had the disk drive... that's hardly a failure. Considering the disk drive came out just 3 years after the Famicom's release, that ratio would have been a lot higher in 1990. Now consider that the Famicom was sold in Japan until 2003 to reach that 19 million! The reason Nintendo stopped selling the drive was because it was the solution to a problem that no longer existed. Chip shortages and dramatic increases in chip cost forced Nintendo to look for alternatives to chips. DISKS! but technology advanced and the advantages were soon obsoleted by cheaper larger ROMs and save batteries. The Famicom Disk System was announced for America but it was ultimately not necessary.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching! I think perhaps it is a mistake on my part to characterize the Famicom disk system as a failure, but at the same time 1/4 famicom owners acquiring the disk system is probably far below Nintendo’s intended goal when you consider that they wanted the format to replace the chip based cartridge. And it is remarkable how system add ons, such as this, universally fail to achieve anywhere near a 1:1 relationship with the hardware that they are built to serve. I might be missing something but I can’t think of a single example wherein consumers were happy to do this. I suspect you’re right, and that Nintendo felt making the disk drive was no longer necessary given the increased accessibility to chips for games , but I can also imagine that Nintendo wouldn’t have discontinued the hardware had it sold as well as the famicom. 1/4 isn’t bad when compared to the famicom, but maybe not persuasive enough to invest in so much hardware…..especially when the money, for Nintendo, was in the software. Were 3rd parties going to be interested in making games for a format that 1/4 famicom users had access to? When they could make games for famicom instead? I don’t know. Anyway, it’s all fun to think about. Thank you very much for your comment.

[@NoshAbroad]

@@creativecatproductions 1 in 4 ... by 2003! I know we're just splitting hairs. I was sort of making the point that 1 in 4 was the pretty conservative. In fact I would wager it was closer to 1 in 2 or better around the time it was discontinued. The Japanese bubble era was a pretty wild time! Now there is something to factor into your numbers. The PC Engine was released in the hight of Japan's bubble economy. The amount of disposable income Japanese had in 1987 was astounding. But that all exploded and came crashing down in 1990. Companies were forced to be more conservative and pumping money into a failing system across the sea was probably a low priority for all those involved.

[@creativecatproductions]

The bubble economy was indeed a crazy time in Japan! And a cautionary tale that I have taken to heart. 😎

[@cyriak]

As a gamer of the time, its funny to see people discussing this. We didn't even get the pc engine in the UK, didn't stop us from importing it from japan, but you could see at the time that it was kind of doomed. There was only really room for 2 rival consoles at any one time, the expense of the hobby meant you had to consider not only the games, but the future lifespan of the console. By that point it seemed clear that a new generation of hardware was due, and while the pc engine looked better than the nes/master system, it clearly wasn't next generation compared to the megadrive. To fork out cash on a new machine it wasnt enough to have a few good games, you wanted to know the machine would stick around for a while. Bridging the technology gap with hardware addons was always a failure because it basically told people your console wasn't good enough, wait for the next one. And of course, once we had the megadrive we knew that nintendo could be trusted to join the 16 bit race, and that would be enough 16 bit consoles, thanks. PC engine had great games, but nintendo could be relied upon to keep a console alive for long enough to be worth the expense, and while we waited for the snes we had sonic to keep us going. I've no doubt there were all kinds of other reasons the pc engine died a death, as these videos describe. But yeah, if you were into games back then and you weren't rich, spending money on a machine that wouldn't survive the inevitable console war probably wasn't a great investment.

[@creativecatproductions]

I think this is true! Sadly I think the reason I made the mistake of going with the 32X back in the day is because I assumed it would have lasting power (plus it was cheap). Sadly I was so wrong. I was right about the PlayStation though! I had no idea how far that thing would go….but it was Sony Thanks for watching!

[@creativecatproductions]

Your channel is as amazing by the way….really cool stuff

[@cyriak]

@@creativecatproductions cheers old bean

[@apollosungod2819]

The U.K. importing the NEC PC-E and Sega MegaDrive in 1988 was not a wide spread or as wide spread as when they were available in stores... a major problem with the U.S.A. during that time is a lot of weird resistance to marketing game systems to late teens and 20 year olds and older which flip flopped culturally by the actual subsidiary branches and why this video seems to rely too much on parents buying their kids "toys" for x-mas. It's true that the holiday season equals a big shopping season but females and older than 12 and 20 year olds existed as potential game consumers... youtube even has actual news reports from that time documenting this yet the general image was that kids under 12 were the only market... that was not so in Japan where the family was included as well as female players...

[@axelgear666]

The pc engine needed more marketing, and had they emphasized on bringing forth the pc engine cd a lot sooner and maybe combined it altogether with the pc engine they would have stood a chance. Instead, there was a huge emphasis on redesigning to pc engine into a bulkier turbografx box. It didn't help NEC/Hudson soft release frame was eerily similar to how the dreamcast launched early

[@randallscott4581]

I think the name PC Engine was supposed to represent the partnership between NEC and Hudson Soft due to NEC making personal computers and Hudson's name coming from a Hudson steam engine that would pass by the founders' house every day when they were children.

[@creativecatproductions]

That does make sense, but without full knowledge of Hudsonsoft or it’s legacy, it sure is confusing. Imagine the disappointment after buying a PC Engine to work on spreadsheets only to find out that all it’s good for was Blazing Lazers and Bonks Adventure?! Wait…that’d be quite a nice surprise, but it also sounds like a recipe for losing one’s job.

[@nottiredofwinning3736]

Peak YouTubing is listening to two unknown KZbinrs having a passionate multi-hour debate over an unkown console.

[@creativecatproductions]

Shmup Junkie is KZbin’s rising star! He’s got quite a fan base within the shooter retrogaming community. He’s not quite Bit Head 1000, but the man has become a legend. And I’m almost sure that he’s not an actual junkie. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@UJCammy]

This is an amazing video. The way you contextualize everything historically makes an extremely captivating story. For some reason I'd never put two and two together before to think about what actually ushered in the Bubble Era in Japan- I live in Pittsburgh and during the 1980s the city and its surrounding areas saw economic downturn due to the struggling steel industry which my family had always ranted to me as a child was because of the Japanese. I'd never thought about how during that same time period Japan was flourishing and going full Yakuza 0 while Pittsburgh and the steel industry were hit in a way it would never fully recover from. I clicked on this video for the TurboGrafx history but now I'm thinking about local history instead. LOL.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for the thoughtful comment! I ended up researching the Japanese bubble because I couldn’t make sense of why or how the PC-Engine was such a success in Japan. It only launched with a couple of games, granted the Bikkuriman game was probably pretty popular at the time. Then I realized that Japan had some very odd economic conditions that lent itself to a culture of casual “over consumption”…. and I think the collapse of the bubble helps explain a lot of what happened during that time period. Why NEC abandoned the TG-16 without much of a fight, when just a couple of years earlier they had so easily overextended themselves by mass producing units with total abandon. I don’t think I did a good enough job illustrating this connection in the video, but at least we made it clear that NEC had a perverse incentive to flood the market with too much hardware and accessories. I used to live in Steubenville, OH and my oldest daughter was born in Pittsburgh. I’ve often heard that the collapse of the US steel industry had a lot to do with Japan. I think Pittsburgh is one of the most underrated cities in North America. We really loved it. My own hometown of El Paso suffered something similar back when NAFTA happened in the early 90s. We used to be a major textile center and there were a lot of jobs in the clothing manufacturing industry. Then the jobs went abroad and El Paso, which was on a decent trajectory to be a pretty decent city, sort of fell into the gutter. Anyone, thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@joesaiditstrue]

I pre-ordered an Analogue Duo a while back and I've watched this 3 times now. You nailed it dude. Best PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 documentary on KZbin.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching dude! 😎

[@jackofallgamesTV]

About add-ons, there was one company that did it right Coleco. They had a 2600 adapter, a steering wheel, a 4 button controller and a trackball. They did the one thing that turbo Graphics did not knew which was say everything was essential for the whole series. The 2600 adapter was for those who want to bring their old system over. The driving was for driving fans. The 4 button controller was for those who like arcade style sticks and had added functionality, and a trackball was needed or optimized with certain games. Where Coleco got in trouble was making the Adam. Something that was both a stand-alone computer and an ad on computer for those who owned a Colecovision . Also about the Japaneseness if the TG16 failing in the US, this that's exactly why Sega failed in Japan was because they were an American company before the Atari crash and had too much American DNA to get over Japanese one-way cultural wall when it came to video games. Most people in Japan think balloon fight was the first flappy game when in actuality it was Williams's Joust they got the rest of the world repeatedly flapping. And Americans made great games before the Atari crash. But let's admit Midway got greedy by overcrediting themselves for Pac-Man and Space Invaders. I didn't take the heart they were Namco games until much later. And I was a dumb ten-year-old American back then. Midway's over crediting themselves for Pac-Man and Space Invaders cost their hone system, the Bally Astrocade, the official home licenses for Namco games.

[@KoopaMedia64]

Absolutely excellent video. The preface section is a bit overly long, but it was all well explained and easy to follow with an excellent payoff in the middle and end, well done. My thoughts on why the TG16 failed? The really really real reason is a multitude of factors. NEC making sales almost only on hardware, therefore leading them to overproducing TG16s and launching the TGCD early is a big reason, but not the only one (also lets not forget NEC Avenue which was a software division mostly doing arcade ports) Other big reasons include poor perceived value with the console being RF only and having just one controller port, no mascot game for Christmas 1989, average game selection and limited national availability. But there’s one massive reason that few ever talk about. (CCP you are welcome to address this in a new video), very few games designed for the American market. That’s boring stuff like licensed tie-in games and sports titles. The NES had licensed titles from popular IPs like TMNT, Ghostbusters and X-Men and nearly every major sport was well represented. TG16 had next to none of those. NEC and Hudson didn’t have games to hit the lowest common denominator section of the market. They needed to secure licenses with popular movies, TV shows, comics, toy lines and other media, plus sports games. We all look back on those licensed games with disgust, but they’re also among the most common games on a console. They didn’t have to be amazing, just good enough to bring customers in. People still bought Back to the Future and The Terminator on NES.

[@creativecatproductions]

It’s a good point that the console lacked American cultural tie-ins……they did have that Die Hard game that only came out in Japan, which is a super weird fact….and the even weirder Batman game based on the 1989 movie…..which also never came out in the US. They really needed to get on that. There were so many potential licenses in 1989 for them to try out. The late 80s and early 90s were a great time for movies. I don’t know why (I guess splatterhouse is why) but I feel like the TG-16 could have been a really cool avenue for niche horror oriented action games: Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th….relevant, popular, and on target with their customer base. Good points! Thank you very much for watching and for your kind words. We really appreciate it!

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

@@creativecatproductions Play Darkwing Duck and TailSpin, then get back to me on whether or not you think these geniuses could have made use of American licenses for the American market without running back to Japan and holding hostages until Hudson took pity? They made Acclaim/LJN look competent. As for licenses, the problem is that they'd be in an aggressive bidding war for international rights - after the success of Robocop, Ocean was buying everything they could get their hands on, before the first day of shooting began. And the other western developers were just as bad. You know things are bad when Gilligan's Island is spoken for. Even Sunsoft couldn't get their hands on the Terminator license, and Konami couldn't port their Simpsons arcade game to home console. Plus, I still haven't forgiven Activision for their crimes against Ghostbusters 2...

[@creativecatproductions]

Darkwing Duck on the TG16 might be one of the worst games I’ve ever played, ever

[@unk000]

The way you describe history in the beginning is pure gold 😆: brutally honest facts but with a sprinkle of humor in the form of irony and sarcasm 👍 Awesome video!

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching! My favorite part is definitely the parts about Japan, which I had been reading about in my spare time just as a coincidence. It’s a parody of Schmup Junkie’s PC Engine video, wherein he describes Japan as a Utopia where kids had all these awesome videogames: but the reality is they don’t play them nearly as much or as long as we afford our kids. I thought that was ironic.

[@RetroGG-74]

That was exceptional. Being a teen of that era(soon to be 47) I certainly have thick goggles for nostalgia however living it gave those to me. I had a turbo , a genesis and snes and whatever else I could get my grubby hands on. I was a junky then and still. Aside from some true favorites on the Turbo as a whole SNES was and is the favorite for memories overall followed by NES and Gameboy. Then that stereo and TV maker came in and shook my bones having me jump away from the N64(while owning it never grabbed as hard as it's elder systems nor Sony). Keep up the good work and thank for such a lengthy docu-movie experience.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching! I was only about 7years old when the TG16 came out my brother was 17 and he and knew all about all the videogames of the day. He read wizard, computer magazines, the new game pro and electronic gaming monthly. We were super excited about the TG 16…..I still wanted an NES….but we wound up with a Genesis. I ended up loving the Genesis. But was there ever a more exciting time in gaming? My brother also bought me a game boy for my birthday at launch with his own money from work. He really is a great brother 😆

[@RetroGG-74]

@@creativecatproductions Was the same for my brother and myself, he being 7 years younger than me. Based on your description it's very fitting as we named the Turbo CD combo (which I still own) Franky for having so many parts 🙂 He never got into Gameboy so much but I did buy him a Packard Bell 486 dx2 50 from Walmart for Christmas the year DOOM came out ... The rabbit hole just gets deeper from there as we had the joy of being in the PC world now to. Birth of emulation. 3dfx and so on . Truly was the best generation for all of it and certainly doesn't feel the same today.

[@creativecatproductions]

My brother and I once built a pc just to play ultima IX ….we were disappointed 😂

[@keithkelly5692]

There were two main reasons it failed: 1) Most video rental stores (Blockbuster) did not rent TG16 games, but they DID rent NES games. 2) Only a single built-in controller port, and absurdly short controller cables. Thus, no sharing the fancy new game console with whining siblings or friends by enjoying multiplayer games, without buying a TurboTap and second controller... and even then, you'd have to sit too close to the TV due to the short controller cables.

[@creativecatproductions]

One controller port was just madness. But from the point of view of NEC it was just one more piece of hardware they could sell in order to actually profit off the console. Thanks for watching dude 😎

[@Verilee1970]

Dragon Spirit, Devil's Crush, Klax, R-Type - very good games. I owned one and it never felt to me like a failure.

[@creativecatproductions]

Those are great games! Thank you very much for watching dude! 😎

[@DragonmasterDan]

I just watched this video after seeing it linked elsewhere. You're right on target with just a few details being a bit overlooked. For example while the Turbo CD add-on sold only around 20,000 units. The TurboDuo added to the overall install base. Tied to your questioning of the PC Engine sales taking off at the start of the systems life, here is a little more context. When the port of R-Type (well the first half of it as part 1) came out in Spring of 1988, this led to a run on supplies of the console and very quickly threw huge momentum behind the PC Engine, the sales of R-type inspired lots of developers to see this as a console for shooting fans which made it THE shooter platform of its era which is what led to so many shmups appearing on the platform. The reason the PC Engine outsold the Famicom in 1988-1990 was due to the fact that the Famicom had reached a point where most people who were going to buy one by five years into the systems lifespan had. Sure there were eventually more feature rich models (like the Twin Famicom and AV Famicom with composite output replacing the archaic RF, or the Famicom titler that used it as a CG generator for people making home camcorder footage) that caused short term boosts in hardware sales at times. But for the most part the Famicom hardware had reached critical mass by 1988, so while games continued to sell well for years, hardware sales were only going to go down from there and this led to NEC being overconfident in the US without the understanding of why the PC Engine was outselling the Famicom in the first place. With that said you are dead to with regards to the fact that due to add-ons and costly extras like the need for a multi-tap for two player games, the fact that the vast majority of the best games came out on the higher initial investment CD add-on or Duo compared to the entry level versions of its competitors is one of the key reasons the platform wasn't as successful. And you're absolutely right with regards to the Hudson royalty agreement being the main reason that NEC Home Electronics USA went in that direction, with very little of the licensing revenue coming their way, the agreement made the system doomed before it ever reached American store shelves. On a side note, you have a new subscriber and an thumbs up. Anyway, great job on a great video.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for your thoughtful comment and for subscribing to our channel!

[@moisesberducido1248]

-Your comment is very interesting, and yes, it was true, the Famicom had have reached its peak at Japan, but you're overstimate the sales of PC Engine during 1988-1990 period. Actually, PC Engine only outnumebered the Famicom during it's launch window, latter half of 1987. During 1988, even when some of the first trully amazing and actual must have titles were relased on the PC Engine, on the Famicom there were the release of the two punch lethal combo of Dragon Quest III (february 1988) and SMB 3 (octuber 1988). Nobody could stop that big hit!. Even more, some of the best selling games at Japan during late 1987 and early 1988 were the Famicom version of the super popular Punch-Out!! arcade, the Famicom conversion of Metal Gear, Pro Yakyū Family Stadium '87 (a mega hit), and the unexpected success of Hinoburo Sakaguchi, the first Final Fantasy. Actually, PC Engine only sold less and less in the next yers, briefly revived during the early 90's with some espectacular games that used the CD-Rom2 or the CD base console, but the truth is PC Engine only had a big launch sales, and each year declined, and the old Famicom actually outsold it during 1989 and 1990.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you for this perspective

[@jameskelvin6720]

In order to get my NES in 1987, I had to sign an exclusivity form....using my own blood. Sorry TG16...my hands were tied, and my blood was drained.

[@creativecatproductions]

😂 I was a member of the cult too. Still have my tattoo. I remember wearing super Mario underwear and eating Super Mario bros cereal while I watched the super Mario Bros super show….and a commercial came on….for super Mario Bros 3. Nintendo was kind of a big deal Thanks for watching dude! I hope all is well on the frontier

[@jameskelvin6720]

@@creativecatproductions Things are going okay. Our AC broke twice in 2 weeks. First the motor, then a draining problem. AC's are essential in Texas. It has been the summer from Heck! Already looking forward to Halloween. Anyway, your video was great. Watched the whole thing in 4 sittings. No notes!

[@creativecatproductions]

No AC is no bueno! I hope for cooler weather soon….but not an ice storm that almost kills all of us, no more of that please I’m glad you liked it dude! I’m talking about the evercade next because there’s been a development in that arena

[@creativecatproductions]

Also how’s the neo geo?

[@jameskelvin6720]

@@creativecatproductions The NeoGeo is awesome! I mean, total fun! Fun to use in the hotel while traveling (gotta plug it in, but outlets are everywhere in rooms usually.) I have zero complaints, but I'm easy going on Mini systems. Looking forward to your Evercade info! I'm not as familiar with it. Maybe they've fixed the early bugs in sound testing and unexpected game resets.

[@Parmandur]

Nintendo actually always sells hardware at a profit, the only exceptions were the Wii U and 3DS, IIRC. They make a profit on every Switch sold, before the games make a profit.

[@creativecatproductions]

I really need to research this. It’s hard to get reliable information about game consoles from the 80s, but I need to try. Ive spread this conventional story because I took it for granted that this is orthodoxy. However, now that you say this, I can’t find any information corroborating this claim outside of forums where people will either reaffirm my assumption, or contradict it…..no one has a source, that I can find as of yet, but you raise a good point….. This is hardly an established FACT as far as I can tell….though I am pretty sure Nintendo made the bulk of their profits on the basis of licensing their cartridges. Thank you for bringing this to my attention!

[@Parmandur]

@@creativecatproductions for sure, and seriously don't just take my word for it, I'dbe fascinated by any findings you come up with. It is pretty common practice in the industry, and my understanding is thats why Nintendo doesn't compete with Xbox or Playstation on hardware specs: they can't win the selling at a loss competition with trillion dollar companies.

[@RiiViiMedia2424]

58:28 An interesting thing about when an artpiece in general is examined is that it will always be based on when it is experienced in the first place. Almost always will the initial contemporary experiences with an artpiece be prioritized above all else as opposed to when it first came out eons ago. An artpiece will always be a product of its time with the time, place, and people that were involved with making it. A human's experiences seem to always be changing and absorbing these experiences from said artpieces. So even if an artpiece in of itself can't change on its own, a human will always change. It isn't the same playing a game 4-years old on original hardware, and playing the same game on an emulator years later from a computer. It is so many little pieces of *experience* that people never seem to notice that all add up.

[@creativecatproductions]

I think this is true!

[@arkayanon]

I don't know when we got our TurboGrafx-16 (probably on clearance at Kmart), but I was well aware of the system and its advertisements at the time, so I agree that failure likely wasn't due to no one being aware of the system at the time. The relationship between NEC and Hudson does make sense, though.

[@creativecatproductions]

It’s a shame because it was a very fun console. I love the Hudson soft style. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@marcusgurley9495]

watched both of your videos today. this was spot on. simple economics of terrible business practices. reminds me of the L's wireless companies take off those deep discounts on phones. you earned my subscribe, Fam!

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching dude, we really appreciate the sub!

[@mr.milehi9883]

I had to watch introduction to this video again. The Japanese history have not known anything about it. Never heard of city pop either. So I learned a lot from the first 20 minutes of this fantastic video you guys made thanks, Sal

[@creativecatproductions]

Im glad that first portion was informative! The 80s was a wild time to be alive, but it seems as thought it was wildest in Japan where there was a lending/spending frenzy. Appreciate it!

[@pjdolont9012]

The marketing sucked, it was not available everywhere, NEC and Hudson didn't have the same kind of name recognition as Nintendo, Sega, or Atari and it was expensive. Also, MK would not have worked without at least a 3 action button controller.. SF2 is playable using select to shuffle between punches and kicks. The gameplay is completely different though and MK depends on weird combos to complete special moves. They miss the boat by not offering multiplayer standard and they fall behind a bit (when they could have been ahead) by not reconfiguring the system itself.. At the very least this is the style of the time.. I'll plug this into this and that into those and this, back into that.... Technology!

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you for watching! The poor TurboGrafx had so much going for it….yet so much going against it. It’s such a wonderful console. I hope they release more of those games for sale the way they did the TG16 mini

[@pjdolont9012]

@@creativecatproductionswe knew about the tb16 in the states. Thing is, it was like someone telling that their father had a pigmy ghost in his bedroom ....

[@creativecatproductions]

@@pjdolont9012 😂

[@SeveredLegs]

I only came here for the Super Star Soldier music, and i immediately left before the Guile theme.

[@creativecatproductions]

Oh! 😝 Then thanks for watching as far as the epic Guile theme dude! 😎

[@LargeAlbatross]

From my perspective, growing up in a small city in the midwest, I simply wasn't aware of the TG16. I had seen it in magazines but it wasn't available anywhere within several hours driving distance so I had never actually seen one until I visited the game store in the Mall Of America in MN. There I saw the machine on display along with Hu cards and indeed the fricken awesome turbo express. I also saw the Atari Lynx and the 3do (800 bucks?) at the same visit so that should give a good time frame. I saw Sega and Nintendo commercials all the time but rarely if ever a TG16 commercial. If it were available I would have compared it to the NES and had it instead.

[@creativecatproductions]

I think the failure to get the TG-16 some shelf space in big box stores really is an overlooked aspect of our TG-16 videos. The thing that really made the Sega Genesis relevant, beyond Sonic and the huge price cut, was the fact that Tom Kalinske’s SEGA of America managed to convince Walmart and Target to carry the Genesis…..at a huge price, but at the very least the console had a fighting chance. Tg-16 was, as you say, for many many people basically irrelevant. We also did a video about how that Walmart shelf space was one of the main factors that killed SEGA in the long run as a hardware manufacturer. It turns out Tom Kalinske cut deals with big box stores that had pretty bad terms, such as SEGA having to buy back all unsold stock after a period. I guess that’s fine when the stock is Sonic 2 and a popular Genesis Model 2, but its absolutely horrible when you’ve launched a 32X, a Sega activator, a Sega Menacer (light gun) with like no games, and so forth. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@dwightdixon8508]

I still have my original TurboGrafx-16 console complete in box and my TurboExpress, TurboDuo and almost every game I purchased back in the early 90’s. My first console was the Sega Genesis I bought just before my TG16 due to the Genesis slightly lower price because it was an additional cost to buy a TurboTap for multiplayer and a TurboBooster for AV out whereas Genesis had 2 controller ports and only required an inexpensive AV cable. It was very frustrating as a TG16 owner back then, at least after it’s first year as game releases became few and far between when compared to my Genesis. I recall going to my game store many times not seeing any new TG16 game releases for months upon months while the Genesis game shelves were filled with games and new releases almost every month if not weeks. Another thing is the games we received didn’t have licensed teams/players for the sports games. NEC didn’t believe in that so your Football, Baseball, Basketball and other games had generic players where Sega had full licensed rosters for MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, Boxing, Golf etc. NEC also didn’t spend much on advertising where Sega was all in. NEC simply didn’t have a lot of experience or understanding the North American market and made a lot of poor decisions when deciding what games to port over to the North American market. NA never got CastleVania, Street Fighter II C.E. and a plethora of other wonderful PC Engine games. And there was a time when TTI was offered an exclusive on Mortal Kombat but NEC Japan turned it down, so many mistakes were made. Another thing you’ll notice is that NA TurboChip cards had 3-4 color plain graphic text whereas PC Engine received beautiful artworks on their HuCards, at least not till TTI took over sales and distribution around 1992 when NA started to see some nice graphics on the TurboChip cards but by then it was too late as Sega & Nintendo we’re running away with the video games market. Yeah, many frustrations that are fresh in my mind as they were back then. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed my TurboGrafx-16 system and games but when compared to my Genesis it’s a stark difference between the two in North America and my Genesis easily was played and enjoyed 10x as much if not more. Today you’ll find so many wonderful PC Engine games that NA never received thinking how in the world did NEC not port them over to North America.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for sharing your experience! 😎

[@hepwo91222]

just pointing out 10 million consoles sold would normally be a "failure", but consider the PC Engine the overwhelming majority were in Japan. Put it into context, Switch, one of the most successful consoles ever has sold about 18 million units in Japan as of writing this. So PC Engine was a success in Japan, obviously not worldwide.

[@fatfurie]

bro.. 1k subs? this video alone is worth that.. great stuff dude edit:turbo graphx minis are going for 400 now :(

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching dude! 😎

[@mattmungrin4792]

Great video. TG16 is my favorite game system but when it came out along side the Genesis, all my friends recognized the Sega games that brought the arcade home.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching! Indeed, the Genesis was pretty darn eye catching in its time. Especially early on. I recall how people were absolutely blown away by the werewolf transformation animations in Altered Beast. But I think the Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 were more or less in the same boat until about 1991….that is, a very distant second and third place. People just kept buying Nintendo. I think both consoles were more or less preferred by teenagers and adults, but they had yet to catch on with the lucrative 5 to 12 year old demographic that drove videogame sales in the 80s and early 90s.

[@acmnin2146]

Famicom Disk System wasn’t a failure; it was a stop-gap between development of built in mapper chips to cartridges.

[@creativecatproductions]

It was a stepping stone toward a better future! Positive observation dude 😎

[@Berengier817]

Man if I only watched the first couple minutes of this video I would totally get the wrong idea

[@captain3186]

As an American in his 40's, and a PCE/Turbografx-16 Fan, I gotta be honest. This console didn't exist to me as a kid. I don't remember TV commercials for it, I never seen one in the store and I didn't even know it existed until some kid on the Bus tried convincing me HIS TG16 was better than my SNES. First I was like, "WTF even is a TG16?" and "NUH-UH!" Then Name calling ensued. I still hate that Kid to this day >.

[@creativecatproductions]

I’ve looked into this and i have to admit i don’t remember much advertising for it, but according to interviews with former NEC staff they spent a huge amount on advertising….on par with Sega. I believe the figure was $10M. I think the perception that it never happened could be just a function of the fact that we forgot what we did, at one time, see. Sega and Nintendo both remained commercially, and therefore culturally, relevant for years to come. More people recirculated information about these things, reinforcing their existence in our minds, and as soon as the internet became relevant, that selective mental reinforcement only continued to favor the things that were more popular. Its weird how stuff from back then seems totally dead to the imagination. As if it never happened, and then I find photographic evidence of myself doing things or experiencing things I long since forgot about…..things that seem like they never actually happened. I think thats the TG-16. The big budget video game console that “never happened” 😝

[@simon41978]

Yes, I agree that we should remember how it was at the time. I got my Japanese Saturn on Day 1 and hoped for a Street Fighter II collection of perfect arcade ports soon after launch. We did get that game... 4 years later. Capcom took a year to get going and I couldn't stand it any longer. I swapped my Saturn for a Neo Geo CD. The fact that Capcom needed a year to release a CPS2 port suggests they got their development systems very late (almost at launch).

[@creativecatproductions]

The Saturn was handled so poorly by Sega. It had so much potential but they were so Indecisive with it, going back and drastically changing the hardware late in production as a reaction to the PSX. If they had not done the 32X and went all in on a high end 2D console I wonder how they’d have faired?

[@simon41978]

@@creativecatproductions Yes, I can understand their anger about the PS. They probably felt disrespected that this newbie console manufacturer was muscling in on their turf. Plus, Sega were finally delivering something close to what 'hardcore' gamers wanted. By 'hardcore' I mean people who went to arcades. Nintendo arrogantly disregarded trying to mimic the arcades with N64. It could be done fairly well on PS but 3D was the big draw.

[@moisesberducido1248]

​@@creativecatproductions Saturn was the result of Sega being a reactionary company. Saturn should be a powerfull 2D machine with CD games (System 32 home version, better that the Neo Geo AVS home system) and relased a soon as summer 1993, with Sonic 3 as launch title and great games like Crusaders of Centy and Phantasy Star IV as counterpoints of Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy VI. It should noted this console, easy to devolpe and with CD, should turn the table in Japanes market becasue a lot of games relased between 93 to 97 were visual and audio novels, adventure games, j-RPG's and 2D fighters. The other option is turn the table and scrapped all the work and should developed an equivalent of a Model 1.5 arcade plaque for the home console, capable enough to easly port the Sega arcade games and add more content (the most important complain about the Saturn arcade games form Sega was the shallow content of them, so they were unfavorable compared to the Namco equivalent in PS1). The console probably could be relased late 95 in Japan and early 96 in the West. But it's hard to think Sega could work as a console manufacture in the long play. Sega, in wherever alternative timeline when the Saturn wasn't the failure in the West, should be focus only with arcades, 2 or 3 amusement parks globally, and not waste resources in the Mega Drive/Genesis add-ons, the Sega Pico, the Sega Nomad, the PC venture, and all the other crazy ideas Sega tried at mid 90's. Another thing is... there were a total collapse of the 16 bits market once the Play Station was relased; heck, even the original Play Station itself was not enough at the beging to turn the market at its highs (peaking during 1994), at least in the USA market. There wasn't games that the players want to buy in dorves during the 1995-1996 period, except Donkey Kong Country 2, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Tekken 2 and Super Mario 64, all of them early 3D showcases (DKC 2 was a 2D game, but with the impressing 3D digitalizated sprites).

[@creativecatproductions]

Wow! Great comment! I really think Sega would have been better off sticking to the original 2D business model for the Saturn. I would have loved that console and there were a lot of top shelf developers that were just not ready for the 3D revolution. I think that capcom comes to mind. Anyway, thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@moisesberducido1248]

@@creativecatproductions Yes, I felt that even with the demise of the late 16 bits consoles, a bit of fresh air coming form a CD base console could give another life until mid 1996 for the 2D games, come on!, Donkey Kong Country and Rayman sold millions during that timeframe.

[@williammcguire130]

Also I want to say this is the greatest video about the business of retro consoles I've ever seen on this platform. Your centering of the economic health of the given country and the experience of the parents was like scales falling from the eyes

[@creativecatproductions]

Wow! Thank you very much for that compliment. I research these videos for a long time before putting them together and I really appreciate that those kinds of details matter to people. You made my day dude! 😎

[@randallscott4581]

You know, a lot of people say Kalinske started the "GENESIS DOES" campaign, but according to Console Wars it was Michael Katz. What's the real story?

[@creativecatproductions]

According to Sega Retro, and some old newspaper articles they link to, it’s clear that the Genesis Does ad campaign predates Tom Kalinske’s arrival. The commercial debuted in 1990 as part of a marketing strategy rooted in costly celebrity endorsements including Joe Montana, Tommy Lasorda, buster douglas, Michael Jackson, etc….it cost many millions of dollars and yet the Genesis did not sell that well. So it also cost Michael Katz his job. Tom Kalinske wasn’t with Sega until 1991. I believe his marketing team is credited with coining the term “blast processing” and all the edgy MTV generation commercials oriented toward teens….but Genesis Does was before he got there. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@williammcguire130]

Kalinskie sacrificed short term profits to get brand recognition because he was competing against a brand that had like 95% market share. It's the same thing Lexus did when they entered the luxury car market: undercut everyone to get people in the door and then convert those curious new customers into loyal regular ones. The problem was that because that success wasn't enjoyed where the decisions were made at Sega of Japan, it wasn't safe guarded. They squandered the good will that came with a near 50% increase in American market share with add ons and when they should have been cashing in from all the lean years on the Saturn, they were snuffed out by the competition.

[@creativecatproductions]

Indeed! I think SEGA had a lot problems stemming from being spread out over too many entities with too many departments and without the benefit of a unified goal: attracting players with games. They were split across the Pacific Ocean, and SEGA of American, who in turn started STI, and their own R&D department. A lot of the really weird decision SoA made in the US came from SoA’s R&D department trying to pump out as much hardware as possible. And STI sucked massive resources to produce….a whole lot of nothing. Each Sega of Japan was buried trying to keep up with development for both the Saturn and the 32X simultaneously. Japan made a lot of mistakes, but the biggest one was probably giving SEGA of American way too much autonomy. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@jackofallgamesTV]

Oh, if I were suggesting Sega's ad team doing ads for Turbo Grafx: Turbo Grafx is what Genesisn't.

[@jasonviande5053]

I found this video very well researched and produced. It happens I agree with you on most points (the main ones). I think people can speak about how we think things were (based on some interviews of events that happened years ago) but in reality we are dealing with human memory, unless there was evidence outside of that (which there really isn't, which is my issue with Nutt's interviews). And with many videos on YT it is down to the populist view, which in most of these kinds of productions is really preaching to the converted. But your video (including the first one) was a breath of fresh air. At this point I have am placing you up there with GTV Japan (which is my opinion is high praise). What I didn't agree was is very slight, I think. The story about EA kind of makes sense, but only if you take into account their (mostly) excellent record in the computer world, and the industry-wide recognition of the arrogance of Trip Hawkins. And I enjoyed Console Wars but I really feel like I need to call into question some of what Tom Kalinske talked about. He really made it sound like just about everything he touched turned to gold and when crap was handed down it was just about always from Japan. To a certain extent this does sound plausible, but I imagine the truth is somewhere in the middle. Good work and I look forward to looking into the rest of your content.

[@creativecatproductions]

The comparison with G-tv made my day as that is one of my all time favorite channels. Thank you very much! 😎

[@haruruben]

48:00 that’s the reason, you had a choice- you could buy like five great games for NES or upgrade and there wasn’t any exciting games for these other systems

[@randallscott4581]

I'm quite pleased that you've done another video on TG-16.

[@creativecatproductions]

I’m glad! I love the Turbografx-16. I wish that it had succeeded and that the full PC Engine lineup was brought over from Japan. Thank you very much for watching!

[@creativecatproductions]

I’m still planning on doing a Blaster Master video ….I’ll get there 😆

[@randallscott4581]

@@creativecatproductions That one might take a while since there's a third "Zero" game coming out.

[@creativecatproductions]

I know! It’s on my radar. I haven’t played any of the new games and I’m interested for sure !

[@randallscott4581]

@@creativecatproductions Do you plan on breaking down the series' history?

[@hepwo91222]

like both your take and shmup junkie, both make good points, but also can I point out games associated with the TG-16 like Splatterhouse, Bonk, Ys, R-Type, would get sequels on Genesis and SNES. Licensed games like Die Hard or Batman, American IP's would be Japan only PC Engine games. Fighting games were becoming a very popular genre in the west and TG-16 had pretty much none in the west while SF2 CE and Arcade Card Neo Geo fighters were in Japan. NEC/Hudson sort of just gave up early on and weren't fully committed to the western audience, didn't try hard enough to win them over.

[@creativecatproductions]

Indeed! They seem to have given up. I think after the bubble burst in Japan they may not have enjoyed the risk. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@jeremygregorio7472]

They didn't have a football game in America until 1990. I was a nerd so I didn't care but that was just insane. They also didn't release any other baseball games let alone one with an MLB license. And they didn't have a basketball game until 1991. You would have to be a hardcore nerd gamer to not be annoyed as hell by the lack of sports titles.

[@creativecatproductions]

I am a hardcore nerd gamer. As hardcore as they come 😆 My favorite sports were wrestling and Judo. We had that crappy Budokan game by Electronic Arts and some fake wrestling games, of course, but those were all really bad until the N64 came out with those beautiful AKI/THQ games. With the exception of NBA Jam, and maybe a few baseball sims, I didn’t see the appeal of sports games in the early 90s. Not because I didn’t see the appeal of sports but because sports games were always so shallow. I don’t think I liked a football game until NFL Blitz…..or love one until NFL2K for the Dreamcast. But it is true that the Turbografx lacked sports games…..I know the NES had a ton of them, but does anyone really remember the NES for sports games? Maybe Tecmo bowl. And super dodgeball. And the hockey games…..and golf….and excite bike…..and all the baseballs games….but except for dozens of games do people really remember sports games on the NES? I joke. Thanks for watching!

[@jeremygregorio7472]

@@creativecatproductions you'd be surprised. The KZbinr snesdrunk speaks fondly of old sports games largely because he really liked playing as people who are real sports figures at the time. In the several ranking videos on mega drive sports titles that talk about how important it was that the license was spot on. You've also got gamer friends who plays sports games to role plays their favorite players to this day and did that back in the 16 bed era. Heck I don't think that super Nintendo would have caught up to the Genesis without also catching up on sports tiles

[@creativecatproductions]

@@jeremygregorio7472 I think a lot of people really like NHL hockey 94, on the Genesis. A lot! I really loved NBA jam but I struggled to find interest in sports games. It was definitely a Sega thing to do sports games.

[@jeremygregorio7472]

@@creativecatproductions I think you would have had to have been something of a sports nut. When I hear people who look back at the 16-bit sports titles that aren't any channel 94 or NBA jam they can always rattle off the names of their favorite athletes and how they played in the various games. Is an entire world of sports gamers out there that kind of keep to themselves. They don't do KZbin channels the way other gamers do what they analyze everything and go over everything

[@creativecatproductions]

I think I can see how that would be. It’s amazing how one group of people can find so much good in something that would be missed by everyone else. It’s a reminder to take nothing for granted, and recognize that many hidden things can bring about joy when approached with the right attitude or spirit.

[@crazyoldschool6342]

I have to say it was the console itself and games during launch. I actually remember when it came out I myself didn't like the one controller port and the price of the console when other consoles had 2 ports and more games. I remember playing games like Raiden, splatterhouse, impossimole, kieth courage, bonks adventure, and aero blasters at my friend's house and it was awesome. But even then couldn't justify getting the console because of the genesis and super nintendo at the time. They had more value overall.

[@creativecatproductions]

I personally really admired the console and I remember liking the the early game library, especially the shooters like Blazing Lazers, R-Type and Dragon Spirit....but there's no doubt that they had stiff competition going into the future. By the time the SNES came out it was definitely too late. I don't really think the Genesis from 1989 to 1990 was much better, but it was also a complete thing without all this weird stuff to get on top of the console.....ironically SEGA would completely lose that advantage with the SEGA CD and 32X down the road, but at the time, SEGA just seemed less gougey. Thanks for watching dude!

[@CEEPMDEE]

I would have to agree with you, Creative Cat Productions. The Turbo Graf-X had a bunch of expensive crap and inferior games when compared to the Sega Genesis/Megadrive.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@namelesssoul8098]

If the TG16 had good sports titles like the Sega Genesis did then I believe it would have sold much better. I wish I had kept my TG16.

[@creativecatproductions]

It’s true that it really didn’t have many good sports titles. I think the original PC Engine game library sort of predated the sports game craze that came later in the 90s. I think EAs Madden series really sort of catapulted interest in sports games to a new level around 1991. The poor TG-16 came out in 1989, was based on hardware and games from 1987, and was mostly abandoned by NEC in 1991. If they had hung in there, maybe they could have had a 4 player version of NBA jam utilizing their multi-tap peripheral! Who knows…. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@TurboXray]

Yeah... your whole "America loved Anime" in 1990 is soo inaccurate. There was a vast majority games that didn't know what Anime was. Those that did, were very-very much niche. To say it had any sort of influence on gamers in NA is about ridiculous as you can get.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching! I never meant to give the impression that anime was VERY popular in the US in 1990, but the hobby was not unknown. It was well established by 1990 and even I knew what it was thanks to my older nerdy brother. Akira was released in the US in the 80s, and got wide distribution, and was reviewed and talked about by critics like Gene Siskle and roger ebert at the time. Robotech, which I depict in the video, was a major hit however, though I’m sure not everyone knew it was repurposed anime (macross and so on). Voltron was another major hit in the 80s, people liked speed racer….in the 80s….in fact the more I think about it the more I’m willing to say NO. Anime WAS popular by 1990. Kids had voltron shirts and lunch boxes. We all watched thunder cats, which was animated in Japan. As was the first season of ninja turtles. People were already fans. It wasn’t ask big as it would get in the mid 90s when dragonball, sailor moon, and Pokemon hit television but anime wasn’t this totally foreign thing….especially not among hardcore gamers Again, thanks for watching! We appreciate the discussion

[@TurboXray]

@@creativecatproductions I was 14 in 1990. TNMT, Thunder Cats, etc .. no one knew that had any sort of connection to Anime, outside of the very few such as myself and my friends when we discovered this literally in 1990 (starting with re-watching Robotech even though we say it as kids). We imported VHS tapes with subbed and even non-subbed shows/movies. But to say this had any sort of influence on gamers, let alone the greater population outside of gaming, *IS* ridiculous. It definitely was NOT well established. By a stretch of the imagination, "well established" would be something like Sun Coast video caring dubbed Anime. That didn't happen until well after 1990, and even then - it had little-to-no influence on gamers. A niche group of Anime nerds would by games with Anime artwork and cinemas. That's true. But to say that had ANY meaningful influence is an exaggeration to the point of misinformation and complete bullshit. And I say this as someone, in my teens, that imported PCE CD games for my TurboDuo for which Anime-art in the games was a huge plus. Look, the point is that when you make such a statement, calls into question other statements you make. I know this isn't academic level research, but things should be accurate and not anecdotal. I grew up in a small city where the TG16 was wildly popular. I know of at least 6 people who owned Duos. To this day, you can still find TG16 stuff pop up in used game stores here. Just because I grew up with people actually knowing the TG16, Duo, imported Japanese games, and all my friends watched Anime since 1990 - only makes that anecdotal and definitely *not* representative of the US/NA.

[@creativecatproductions]

I was part of the same import and tape trading community! I remember watching Ranma 1/2 for the first time thanks to tape trading…..blew me away that anything like that was on TV…..until I realized that it was also on Mexican television in my Texas border town (that I grew up in). Then I was doubly amazed! 😂 I don’t want to take away from the specialness or elite status of our anime hobby, but it can’t be THAT special and elite if both you, your friends, me, my brother, and our geeky friends ALL did the same thing at the same time. One might want to say that it was a nationally well known pastime for a subset of America’s youth? Not everyone was a goth in high school…..but, yeah, a ton of people were. You know what I mean?

[@creativecatproductions]

I’ be read a lot academic articles and journals in my day…..I have a background in that arena….and they’re often full of errors, mistakes, or things that I (or others) would take issue with. Doing historical narrative, like this, always suffers from this problem because the teller of the tale is often forced to step into many different waters at the same time…..and often they’re out of their zone of expertise. [They’re also forced to gloss over important information or make gross simplifications for the sake of brevity or accessibility …..and the truth suffers] That’s cool though! That’s the GOOD thing that comes out of this stuff. You SHOULD find mistakes, or things to talk about. That’s what makes any of this worthwhile. That it brings people together and gives them something to discuss. I’m down with getting at the truth with you. That’s what I want. I would point out that you and I are both coming at this SAME issue anecdotally and IRONICALLY from within the same sub-culture. You look at the fact that we were a “sub-culture” and you infer that “oh, we had no impact on the culture, or we were outside of the scope of mainstream culture.” I on the other hand look at the SAME phenomena, that these sub-cultures even existed…..Nationally…..and I realize that “wow! Anime and our subculture really played a big role as a subset of mainstream culture”…..the prelude to the anime explosion just a few years later. I think what’s really going on is that we’re describing the same thing and yet we have competing intuitions about it. We interpret the data of our lived experience differently. But that’s why we should talk about it! So we can understand this better, and in doing so, maybe we can get at something like the real TRUTH Thank you for this. I really appreciate it!

[@NightWolve75]

In Chicago we had a local TV station, WPWR 50, that had a Friday evening program called "Japanimation" which is where I first saw "Wicked City," "Ghost in the Shell," Robotech and other weird/interesting animes. I was already into Voltron which was mainstream enough for the local FOX station as I recall. So I'd fall into the category of someone that like anime at the time, but yeah, can't say it influenced me much as a gamer. I liked tech ever since Galaga arcades, Atari 2600, and Karateka at school on some weird computer, that's what got me hooked/interested in gaming/computing, etc. However, I can see a connection for others, won't rule it out.

[@simon41978]

To be fair to the Neo Geo, it was never intended to compete with Sega and Nintendo. It started out as a rental system and did very well which led to a home system. It was for people (adults) with large disposable income. I did some research on SNK recently which led to some very strange discoveries. 'Neo Geo' means New World which alludes to the New World Order (the dream of the masons and why we are in this Covid situation). The 330 Mega limit is simply a 33 masonic code. The phrase 'The Future Is Now' is worth 330 in one type of numerology (It's a 33 masonic code). In another type of numerology it's worth 666 (The number of the beast). One of my MVS arcade boards was dead so I removed the bios chip hoping a new bios chip would fix it. Hidden under the bios is a PENTAGRAM.

[@creativecatproductions]

Whoa!

[@creativecatproductions]

Was it factory printed?

[@simon41978]

@@creativecatproductions Yes, I can back up all of this. I have a BitChute channel. I'll make a short video for you and post the link here when it's done. Maybe today.

[@simon41978]

It's best to watch this short, 5-minute video first. It will give context. www.bitchute.com/video/o90yRr8QSBLN/

[@simon41978]

@@creativecatproductions Here's my short video I just made: www.bitchute.com/video/mjezqYXQfX4b/

[@hamodhossain4261]

almost all the popular games in NES are japasnes .. ( Sonic - Mario - Zelda - street fighter - Castlevania - Streets of rage - Punch out - Duck hunt - Biohazard - shinobi - Metal gear - Megaman - Metroid - Final fight ) even Duck tales & Mickey mouse were made in Japan by capcom that time .. that's almost like 90% of Global childhood .. people they started to play USA games only when ( Mortal Kombat & Aladdin ) got released .. and at that time childhood was over , they already became teen agers LOL

[@braillynn]

Such an informational and well produced video. I'm really glad that I watched it.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching! 😎

[@chazzw5388]

No brainers! No pack in street fighter 2! No pack in Castlevania rondo of blood (English translation)!!! Serious missed opportunities for TurboGrafx greatness in north America!!!

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@SeveredLegs]

I still say that the 3DO was the greatest console of all time (I don't) and i am shocked as to why it wasn't a worldwide hit (I'm not) and it will forever be known as one of the all-time great (it won't).

[@creativecatproductions]

Have you seen Gamesack’s new video about the 3DO vs the Jaguar vs the 32X? It’s pretty great. Indeed, of the worst consoles of the mid 90s, the 3DO was the clear king….until you consider the price tag, then it’s not. But boy did it have some serious potential. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@SeveredLegs]

@@creativecatproductions yup definitely saw the video and it was enlightening. 3DO had one game I would've wanted to play at the time, Super Street Fighter 2 turbo. But I'm well aware of the controller is trash and so it wouldn't have been worth it anyway. A great tragedy they didn't port SSF2T to Genesis.

[@creativecatproductions]

@@SeveredLegs road rash also looked sick! Those controllers are garbage though. $700 garbage

[@SeveredLegs]

@@creativecatproductions yeah but you could get a basically equivalent road rash experience on Sega CD or PSX. Maybe not quite as good but considering the price tag and the lack of anything else to play on it, totally agree.

[@weston407]

80s Japan sounds fricking AWESOME

[@creativecatproductions]

It was a wild time, Ive heard

[@magdcs]

I'm convinced. You got a new subscriber. Hell of an introduction. Well done 👏

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching and subscribing dude! 😎

[@nebulapig]

My friend had a Turbografx. The control wires were really short.

[@creativecatproductions]

They really were! Like the Nintendo Famicom and the PC Engine. In Japan I think kids had to sit down on the floor right in front of their TV to play. In the US however it’s in every house to have a living room with enough square space that the family TV is like more than 8 feet from the nearest place to sit. It’s odd they made such a big deal about refashioning the console to look like high end stereo equipment, for the American home, but didn’t think to extend to the controller wires but at least a couple of feet. When the TG-16 Mini came out, the controller wires were LONG. Better late than never. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@RifeXD]

Great follow-up. The inner workings at Hudson Soft are severely underresearched. Nowadays with emulation, it can be easy to lose sight of the reality of getting all the right (hopefully) working hardware to even get a game running.

[@creativecatproductions]

I really miss Hudson soft. I think in some ways they were the greatest game company of the 80s and 90s. I love their spirit and the wild stuff they did like outfit their R&D labs with a miniature train that could be ridden. Ive heard wild stories about the brothers from Hokkaido that started the company and they seem like a couple of crazy Japanese cowboys. I love it and wish I could dig deeper into their story. I know its out there, but its all in Japanese and outside of the view of the internet. Someday I’d love to take a trip and talk to some people in person. Thank you very much for checking out our other videos! 😎

[@RifeXD]

@@creativecatproductions No problem. After having binged Bomberman more than pretty much anyone else, I guess that my hot take is that the Hokkaido Takushoku bank crash and the subsequent partial acquisition by Konami in 2001 hit them hard (semi-separate from the full acquisition in 2011). In the 90s and up until 2002 they were making Bomberman games left and right and Shigeki Fujiwara was producing/directing or at least supervising pretty much all of them. Then, suddenly, in the period of 2003-2005 they pretty much only made Bomberman spinoff games like more Bomberman Land games and Bomberman Kart, and Fujiwara only appears in the credits of one of them as "Marketing". Leaves me to assume that in the process of this partial acquisition a ton of staff making the main games was either let go or left, with only the spinoff crew staying, but I'm coming at this from the outside, this stuff isn't well documented. On a sidenote, thank you for your perspective on the old Sega commercials. I grew up far, far away from these "console wars" and only learned about them around 2010. Always found it odd that people seem to rate this stuff positively. If Sega was framing Nintendo as an evil corporation with bad business practices I could get behind it, but saying Nintendo is "dumb stuff for babies" just makes them come off as insecure bullies. I think Playstation managed to frame themselves as "the cool one" without being jerks about it but this is also just my outsider perspective.

[@creativecatproductions]

Indeed! The Nintendon’t and “mario is lame” slant of SEGA commercials in the early 90s were embarrassing. At the time I really don’t think people thought anything about them. People didn’t start reflecting on 90s marketing until many years afterward, when it became part of 90s nostalgia culture. With nostalgia, existence is sufficient for fondness many times.

[@bubbythebear6891]

@@creativecatproductions As someone who was born in the 2000s, 90s ads are so charming. They were weird, but I get the feeling that actual effort was put into them. Modern wacky and over the top commercials feel so corporate and manufactured. Liberty Mutual, State Farm, and those awful Stadia advertisements come to mind. Media in general feels souless, and it can't just be nostalgia, as I'm currently experiencing many old franchises for the first time.

[@creativecatproductions]

@@bubbythebear6891 they definitely have a coherent aesthetic and were the product of weird avante garde film school types. I get the feeling alot of the producers of these commercials had experience with music videos or were taught the same techniques and principles when coming up as film makers. Lots of apocalyptic, post industrial imagery, fish lens, a cynical, snarky, irreverent tone. Even nintendo commercials looked the same. Sometimes it worked, but at the time it was honestly irritatingly homogenous and forced. Even as a kid it was clear they were painting by numbers and were almost incapable of doing something authentic or original. It felt desperate. I think, now, with hindsight and so many years between us, it’s nostalgic and “retro chic”…..but at the time, it was redundant and boring. I like the idea of honesty in advertising. No gimmicks. No attempt to stoke my ego, just show me.

[@orlandoturbo6431]

I like to see the game Zool ported to the Turbografx 16.

[@creativecatproductions]

Someone should get on that! Thanks for watching dude 😎

[@agarza915]

“We all knew about the console back then, we just mostly decided not to buy it…” dude, this is crazy broad generalization and it feels like a desperate grasping of straws. I never heard of that console when I was a kid and nobody else I grew up with heard of it either. Go ahead and ask around. I’m sure you’ll find that my own generalization holds more water than yours lol

[@creativecatproductions]

Perhaps it would have been better if I stated “we all USED to know about the console back then, even if we don’t remember as much about it today.” Overtime, after more than 30 years, we forget about a lot of things. There are friends and associates we had as children that we spent hours with every day at school, or in our neighborhoods, that we have mostly completely forgotten; their names, the detail of their faces. Yet many other people, we carry their memory forward even beyond 30 years because we never lost contact with them. They remain as part of our working memory, and we can continue to creatively retrieve a past about them. Family members we routinely see or visit for instance. There are a lot of media and things from the American childhood of the late 80s that people have mostly completely forgotten due to their limited lifespans and faddish natures. Things like Monster Balls, or My Pet Monster, or Mask, or Dino Riders were all at one time extremely well known owing to their widespread exposure including advertising, television shows, toy lines, and so forth. Yet, today, its possible a large percentage of the same population that once fervently knew these things has forgotten they even existed. Yet other major brands have remained popular to this very day due to perennial re-exposure: transformers, Barbie, GI Joe, Ninja Turtles. The NES clearly belongs to this latter category. Nintendo has been very good about exploiting the historic relevance of their legacy brands and past accomplishments, periodically re-releasing many of their old games in various forms. Many people have followed after their lead, and an entire retro-gaming subculture took root, almost entirely on the basis of nostalgia for the NES. The Turbografx-16, however, falls in the other category of more or less forgotten brands and media. This doesn’t mean we historically actually lacked exposure or awareness of the brand, but rather due to its commercial irrelevance, over time, most of us have simply forgotten about almost all of it….and so we erroneously assume that their just wasn’t ANY exposure. This is demonstrably false however. If you dig, you soon discover, and may recall, that the Turbografx-16, for at least a couple of years, enjoyed very widespread mainstream exposure: it had playable kiosks at major chain stores such as Toys R Us, it was featured in the gaming magazines (sometimes even on the front cover), there were television commercials, lots of print ads, window displays at major electronics stores such as Babbages…..all of this has been preserved for anyone willing to look into it. According to former NEC executives, there was a 10 million dollar national advertising campaign. It was a nationally recognized brand….even if it wasn’t a successful one. So, yes, it is possible that lots of people have forgotten about ALL of this, since the Turbografx-16 saw no cultural relevance beyond the year 1990 or so. The kiosks were eventually replaced, the ads eventually stopped, the console eventually got placed in the bargain bin of history. But from the fact that you, and some other people, don’t remember how well known the Turbografx-16 was for that brief period of time, it does not therefore follow that the console was NEVER well known. My personal recollection, indeed, is that we all knew about Bonk, and his adventures, and this other cool 16 bit game console….we talked about it….but it was never a realistic option and the pull toward Nintendo remained overwhelming. That’s the clarification I would make then. We all USED to know about the console back then, even if many of us have long since forgotten owning to its long term irrelevance. I can’t remember the name of that one kid I used to see every day who lived across the street….its not that he never existed, or our relationship never mattered….its that it never mattered 10, 20, and 30 years after the fact. We forget. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@ryanmckenzie7149]

It was a lack of games and a price point that got you Keith Courage in Alpha Zones and two other games, Sega saw an opportunity and ran with it. Mega Drive/Genesis was a brilliant design. They tried to do the same thing with Saturn. Capcom or Konami or some other company told Sega about the PS1 3D capability. Not to mention how bad the launch and games were. Saturn was a capable machine. Even in Japan they had to stop making consoles, because they were not selling enough games to offset the cost. It was a sad end to a great machine. Dreamcast was awesome, but it had no killer app. Shenmue should have been it, but it was pretty boring. 32X should never have come out and all of Sega's teams should have been hard at work on Saturn. Hind sight is 20/20 I guess.

[@creativecatproductions]

Great points! Thanks for watching dude 😎

[@briantran3791]

It’s FOMO now. The games are great and many people didn’t get to play the system so to many it’s new.

[@ENFDO]

Back in 1991 PC Engine in USA didnt figure, not even Sega until came Sonic. The market was almost 100% for Nintendo. U red a magazine saw some vigilante Pc Engine game, was okay but the magazine was full of Nintendo and Sega publicity. Back then i has many consoles and computers but Pc Engine wasnt in mi average radar.

[@creativecatproductions]

This is true! Thanks for watching dude

[@ENFDO]

@@creativecatproductions tnx to u buddy cool videos. Today i murdered my wallet, i bought a boxed Pc Engine Gt.

[@creativecatproductions]

Nice dude! 😎

[@dtester]

I think you're both wrong and right. It's probably a of a little bit of everything mentioned in the video that led to the failure. Now, regarding what was the biggest reason, I do disagree with your theory somewhat. While I do believe it contributed, I don't believe the TG16 combine total cost was the biggest factor. Why? Because I don't think a lot of people even noticed at the time. They just didn't want to buy the TG16. I personally believe the biggest factor was the NES and Genesis competition combined.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching dude! 😎 I think a point I missed was the fact that a lot of big retailers didn’t carry the TG-16. It’s dawned on me that one of the main reasons the NES was so ubiquitous was the fact it was available at Wal-Mart and K-Mart (etc), stores that millions up millions of middle class Americans depended upon with increasing prominence during that time period. I read recently that Nintendo in the 80s once accounted for something like 10% of Wal-Marts profit from sales? And by the 90s, if you weren’t selling your product at Wal-Mart, it was almost like it was “unavailable”. I think the main reason the Sega Genesis REALLY took off as a popular consumer product was three fold: (1) it was relatively cheap after the 1991 price cut and (2) it was on sale at every big box chain, including Walmart and (3) of course it had a sufficient number of good games. The TG-16 was only ever at Toys R Us and specialty shops at the mall. But I did a video recently about recent revelations from Japan that indicate Tom Kalinske was actually fired from SEGA in 1996. Essentially, being on the shelves at Walmart was both a blessing and a curse for SEGA since these giant retailers also demanded that SEGA buy back unsold stock. For a time it worked wonders, but after SEGA hit a wall between 1993-1994, these buy backs got the company into a lot of trouble, especially with large quantities of unsold accessories and games for things like the 32X in early 1995. I think the TurboGrafx-16, spread out over all that hardware and accessories…..like the multi tap, would have suffered a similar fate.

[@dtester]

@@creativecatproductions That's a good point. The retail logistics is probably a huge factor that people don't think about..... That and parents. Clueless cheap parents amiright!? Just buy you're kids all the consoles and stop promoting war (er, video game wars). I saw that recent interview too. It was interesting to see the finger pointing from the Japanese side for once! Definitely provided some additional information we didn't know about before. Also I just have to say, since the TG-16 was twice as big as the PCE, they really should have made the multitap and a/v stereo built-in with all that extra space!

[@BalthazarEmollient]

I just wanted to say that I enjoyed this dissertation, along with your previous one. I think you did hit most of the key points that I would consider, but there are a few things I'd like to add: Hardware: Your point about NEC pushing hardware in order to increase profits holds water IMO, but it does perhaps ignore two factors. When you mention the eventual, somewhat lower-cost release of the PC Engine Duo/TurboDuo and how the console always *should* have been that way, I mostly agree...but if NEC had to pay a royalty to Hudson Soft for each HuCard manufactured, it kinda begs the question (unless there was a contractual requirement) as to why NEC bothered to manufacture HuCards at all, at least for the US market. CD-Rom technology was still somewhat new, but did exist, in 1987 (as you're probably aware, while it doesn't look terribly exciting to most people nowadays, No-Ri-Ko was not only a launch title for the PC Engine CD-RomRom, but very likely [along with Fighting Street] the first 'game' on a CD-ROM anywhere), so they could have conceivably forsaken the HuCard interface altogether (and at least for the US, porting existing HuCard software to CD shouldn't have been much of a problem, since there was the eventual 4-in-1 pack-in for the Duo, with three of those titles having previously been card exclusive). It also ignores that, at least to some extent, hardware development *still* persisted even as NEC had mostly moved on and TTI was in its death throes. There's a particularly fascinating interview with John Brandstetter from (IIRC) a 1994 episode of The Computer Chronicles on CD-ROM tech where he not only profiles a piece of software that was never released, but he also profiles a card-slot-to-SCSI interface (apparently at least one prototype still exists) that would have allowed the system to function as a CD-ROM drive for then-contemporary home computers. Of course, by that point, it probably would not have helped console sales at all, as a single-speed CD-ROM at that cost point just wouldn't have made sense, but who knows...if it had been available in 1989, when CD-ROM drives were still a novelty, perhaps the story of the Turbo would've been different. Software: While I don't necessarily agree with you about the strength of the US launch titles, or even necessarily about the US library's quality (while I haven't played every US title, at this point, I'm nonetheless convinced that a lot of the best software never left Japan), one point that I feel like you neglected a bit is the fact that the TG16/Duo never really had a "killer app" to drive sales. Of course, you did touch on brand recognition, and how *eventually* Bonk was the mascot and became a pack-in...but is it really a great game? Does it have a "wow factor" to it, some sort of thing that would make a casual observer pick it over, say, the then-contemporaneous SMB3 or the slightly-later Sonic games? While I like Bonk's Adventure well enough (though I do think Revenge plays *much* better), one of the big problems I've noticed with the US library is that it has a certain tone of mimicry to it, almost as if NEC/Hudson were constantly trying to say "oh yeah, we have that too! ...Well, sort of..." with many of their releases. Of course, to some extent, that can be boiled down to the contractual practices of Nintendo (not to mention that they were the biggest game in town), but I feel like that contributes to the US library in particular being a mixed bag. Sometimes they did okay with these sort of games, as with the Bonk series, but sometimes not (I know this opinion is perhaps controversial, but I think Neutopia is an awful, borderline-unplayable attempt to ape The Legend Of Zelda)...but even still, while there are good games on the system, and even *great* games, I don't personally see much that could have driven potential customers to the TG16/Duo, at least as a primary system (and how many people *really* had multiple game systems in that era?)...outside of some of the CD-ROM titles, but that then loops back to the issue of hardware costs. Sales: One thing I'd like to add to your discussion of hardware sales figures is that, if it is indeed true that NEC never sold out their stock of 750k TG16 consoles in the US, and if the 10.5 million worldwide sales figure you quote is accurate...that means nearly all of those sales came from Nippon, because the console only saw very limited release (as I recall) in PAL regions and might not have even been released to other parts of the world. When you contrast that with something like the sales figures of the Mega Drive/Genesis, which were mostly from the USA, and take into account that the Land of the Rising Sun's population count is roughly a third the size of the US, you *can* extrapolate that to roughly the same sort of market penetration there that the Genesis had in the US. Of course, that's based on whether the quoted sales figures are accurate, but if they are...by that metric, can it really be considered a failure? Anyway, as I stated before, I enjoyed the video. Keep up the good work.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching and for your thoughtful comment! I’m actually not entirely certain, at this point, who actually manufactured the hu-cards. I know Hudson developed the technology, but I think it was actually a tertiary party to the Hudson/NEC alliance who actually manufactured the hu cards. I recall orders had to be large, and that they were expensive, and this dissuaded a lot of 3rd party developers from wanting to participate. NECs software division also developed some games themselves (a lot of ports) and I assume they had to buy the hu-cards like every other developer. Again, it’s really hard to corroborate any of this. I get all of my information from all of these interviews and while that’s better than nothing, I think the interviews often raise as many questions as they seem to initially answer. These events happened a long time ago. I suspect many of the industry insiders don’t remember everything exactly the way it actually happened. The sales figures that get batted around the internet are very suspicious to me because when I attempt to verify, or at least examine their purported sources, the links are dead. I think companies were pretty secretive about actual sales figures, unless of course sales were very high. Obviously the story is consistent with “low sales figures” but I wish I knew the exact numbers. I think you’re right about not wanting to dismiss the PC engine as a failure (especially as it pertains to Japan). 10.5 million is a seriously huge number and almost all of that seems to be attributable to Japan alone. It’s why I compared the numbers to the Sega Saturn which, I recall, being similar. The Saturn, like the PC engine, was more of a success in Japan. Frankly, I love Bonks Adventure and consider it the kind of game that the Turbografx needed to be successful….a little earlier. Subjectively, I always thought the game was awesome and preferred it to Sonic on the Genesis. But it is True Neutopia was a pretty generic game, especially the first entry in the series. I still liked it, but compared to Zelda it’s kind of sad.

[@creativecatproductions]

When I think back on this era, with adult eyes, and a lot of hindsight, and if I could have chosen ONE console for our family’s boxy living room TV in 1989, then it would have been the NES. Not the Genesis, or the TG16. The NES was cheaper and had a far better game library than either console, regardless of the fact that it was utilizing older technology. Obviously the sales figures from the time reflect that and it lured in all of the developers who wanted to make games for the largest platform available. Of course Nintendo didn’t allow their developers to make the same games for other consoles, but I’m not sure why they would have even wanted to? The NES was the place to be. I still love Sega and Hudson though, and I will always sort of lean towards their brands by virtue of my reactionary anti-mainstream tendencies….but in my heart, deep down, I have to admit….that Nintendo was just awesome 😂

[@BalthazarEmollient]

@@creativecatproductions Thank you for your responses on this. I just wanted to add a few more thoughts... Regarding HuCards, you make a good point when you mention the possibility of some other firm handling manufacturing, and it made me a little curious...not curious enough to rip apart one of my own HuCards, of course, but after looking a little bit on the Interwebz, I see that other people have done exactly that (though I'm sure you already knew this), but unfortunately, I didn't see any close-up photos of the unexposed boards themselves, which might contain some branding to give us an idea of who made them. Of course, NEC was a huge electronics manufacturer, so another possibility is that the boards were manufactured in-house, with the plastic housing itself done elsewhere. All of this made me think about the card-based games Sega was releasing (more or less) prior to the PC Engine, as well as Hudson's own earlier BeeCards for the MSX, and the superficial similarities between them. After doing a cursory search, it turns out Mitsubishi did Sega's card manufacturing, and while there's a claim on Wikipedia's "Sega Card" page (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Card) that claims Mitsubishi also handled manufacturing for Hudson/NEC, it is un-sourced, so your mileage may vary there. Regarding hindsight, to some extent, I have to agree that I probably would have also been biased toward the NES if I were in the "befuddled dad" position in 1989 (as far as I can tell, that was the year I ended up with one), partly due to things like brand recognition, but also due to ubiquity - NES stuff was *everywhere*, and while I know that market saturation isn't everything, especially when you have limited financial resources, a console with a plethora of relatively inexpensive games really adds to the appeal as well, since it is a lot easier to justify paying $20 (or less) for what is essentially a blind purchase than $50. Lest you feel that I'm coming down particularly hard on the TG16 library, though, I will note that buying a modded Duo about five years ago really made me think of the broader implications regarding the quality of a game (and a console's library) in contrast to the nostalgia/novelty of it, and it really made me wonder whether I would have ranked titles for the NES (and eventually, Genesis) as highly as I once did had I started exploring their library now, rather than when I was younger (to be fair, I've also wondered this about some TG reviewers, and game reviewers in general, especially in regard to things like Neutopia). Of course, I think everybody knows at this point that, once you go outside of the established canon of the NES (and even within it, there are sometimes debates), there are more turds than gems to be found, but I think the NES (and to a lesser extent, the Genesis) has benefited from the nostalgic allure of their popular canon in contrast to the TG, which never really had that here...but I also think that, when considering the base system libraries, the NES and Genesis do outshine the TG. Where the TG does match them (in my opinion), and perhaps even outshines them, is in its expanded library VIA the CD add-on (the only sort of systems that could really begin to match something like the Duo in 1989 would have been a PC with then-expensive peripherals like a VGA card and CD-ROM drive, and even then, it really wouldn't be until around 1991 that computer game companies tentatively started exploring CD-ROM technology). Unlike the Sega CD, which (although I own it) didn't really add a great deal of quality software to the Genesis library, a lot of the best (and most interesting) titles for the TG/PC Engine were exclusive to CD (of course, it is worth noting at this junction that there are more than a few well-regarded Sega CD titles that were on the Duo beforehand, including the now-highly-regarded Snatcher), thus making it more than an upsell...but that also gets back to the problem of how the system should have either always been released stateside in the Duo format, or with just the CD drive and with HuCards ported to that format.

[@creativecatproductions]

@@BalthazarEmollient once again, these are great comments. Thank you very much for your contribution!

[@creativecatproductions]

@@BalthazarEmollient I really think if they went back and released a Duo instead of a TG16 that they would have had a fighting chance. Of course that’s premature and wishful thinking on my part, because I’m sure that CD rom drives weren’t going to be that cheap in 1989.

[@francescosmith7859]

Interesting. I think it’s really a combination of all these things. I think you’re right on with the overwhelming cost and push to include a way too expensive cd add on and just too many extras which confused parents who had no idea what they were looking for (perfectly shown in your cartoon). However I truly never even heard of the Turbo when I was a kid. So they may have spent the same as Sega in advertising but Sega reached me. I don’t even think the Turbo was sold at Kay Bee Toys which was my local toy store. I first remember seeing the TurboDuo at RadioShack years later. I think you might be underestimating the value of sports games and celebrity endorsements. EA and their sports games especially the NHL series were pretty big. But anyway still a good video and I’m glad I found your channel.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching dude! 😎 I think a lot more people probably encountered the Turbografx during their childhood than it appears, but it sold so poorly that there was no way to reinforce the memories of those encounters. Many “memories” I have regarding the NES, for instance, probably came later in my life as the console maintained mass cultural relevance and widespread circulation. The Turbografx was heavily featured in the gaming magazines at the time. Bonk was on covers for years….but the console still didn’t take off. I’m actually not sure where the TurboGrafx was sold. I know it was sold at toys r us. Distribution was a huge problem for everyone who wasn’t Nintendo that’s for sure. At least at that time!

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

@@creativecatproductions My memories of the Turbo are pretty clear, and I can confirm it wasn't sold with the other systems in our mall - likely part of that "We're luxury high end" marketing push, while the others were trying to be seen as toys. I can't comment on Toys R Us...we didn't have one...but Kay Bee was a much smaller store, and space was very limited.

[@creativecatproductions]

My vague recollection was that it was only in specialty videogame stores like Babbage’s and that it was also pushed at toys r us. I do recall seeing it, and I even played it the year it came out, thanks to one of the leaders of the ‘space camp’ I attended at a local community college……it was the best thing that happened throughout those 2 harrowing weeks 😆 Thanks for watching our other TG16 video dude! 😎

[@MeanMrMustard1]

Glad you're a wrestling fan because my analogy will hopefully make sense. Animal (Sega) hoists up a mid-carder named Turbo G. up onto his shoulders. Hawk (Nintendo) leaps from the top rope and hits the Doomsday Device on Turbo, then gets the pin. Hardcore fans knew of Turbo. Some appreciated his ring work and hoped he'd move up the rankings. The majority of casual fans probably took a bathroom break or made a sandwich during his matches, or probably changed the channel and changed it back for the main event. They simply didn't pay attention to him. I only knew one kid in school who had a TG-16. Pretty much everyone else had a Nintendo. No one seemed interested in trying something else.

[@creativecatproductions]

The TG16 is the Bobby Blaze of videogame consoles: Talented, hard working, entertaining, yet mostly unknown, under appreciated, and totally has a mullet

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching! And thanks for the entertaining wrestling analogy….I love it 😂

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

@@creativecatproductions Speaking of wrestling analogies, I hope you remember Lyger and Muta were NWA/WCW guys in America, and Lyger was a part timer while Muta was jobbed out hard in Starrcade '89. More representative of Japanese portrayals in the mainstream of wrestling were the Badd Company of the Orient Express...truly, a Diamond in the rough. Japanese entertainment just wasn't completely accepted yet...cartoon boobs, in the 80's? You were more likely to be talking Heavy Metal or Fritz the Cat, and they weren't exactly mainstream either. Robotech had done a lot for the anime aesthetic, in ways Thundercats and Turtles didn't dare, but the toy line was a failure, and so was the movie. Only the Macross adaptation really succeeded, despite the Invid Saga kicking ass. And Mario was still talking in a gruff Brooklyn voice, as far as most gamers were concerned.

[@creativecatproductions]

I’m a huge Muta fan and Lyger was awesome in wcw!

[@creativecatproductions]

I think Japanese entertainment was fairly well accepted by people born after a certain period (1970 or so)….but even then, only a niche audience at the time really embraced it as such. Akira was already a big deal, in a small circle. By the early 90s I think most of us were aware of the fact that many of our favorite characters or games were imports from Japan, even as that fact remained discreet due to negative perceptions of Japan lingering from the 1980s. It was the era of ‘made in America’.

[@kentoad8948]

Being around 12 or 13, I was exactly the age to get my parents to purchase a TG-16, but I got a Genesis instead. The TG-16 looked funky and old school. The commercials were terrible and the games looked like bad versions of Mario and Kung Fu with bigger sprites. I don't remember the CD or any other addon being a factor at all. RF was fine. None of my friends or I cared at all how the console was hooked up. The only unacceptable video quality was black and white. I had a black and white TV in my room for a while in the late 80's and we all hated it. I only had one controller for both NES and Genesis. If I knew we were playing a game that had 2 player simultaneous play, then I would have the friend bring an extra controller. By the time the TG-16 was getting clearanced, still no one I knew bought it, mainly because we didn't know the games. I enjoy several of the games now, but nothing stands out as a killer app that could have sold the console to American kids at the time.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching dude! 😎 Out of curiosity, what game lured you over to the Genesis over the other consoles? The Genesis itself didn’t really have that great of a launch lineup either…..but it did have Golden Axe and THAT was the game my brother and I were really after that fateful fall/winter of 1989.

[@kentoad8948]

​@@creativecatproductions Yeah, Golden Axe was definitely high on that list. We played the game a lot in the arcade. Altered Beast was cool, but repetitive. I remember renting the Genesis at first to try out those games. This would have been around summer to fall 1990. TG-16 had pure crap comparatively, at least at far as we could tell from TV ads and box art. Bonk's Adventure and Splatterhouse looked fun, but no one had them. I don't think anyone in my town bought a TG-16, although I remember it being sold next to NES stuff in my local Woolworth's. And the rental places had no TG-16 stuff, either. I would be a Genesis devotee until SFII came out on the SNES. Then I traded my Genesis for an SNES with a buddy who still preferred Genesis for the better sports titles.

[@creativecatproductions]

@kentoad8948 i was an early adopter of the Genesis too. I ended up loving the console, but i was definitely envious of bonks adventure and all the shooters. Later in life i started playing tg-16 more regularly, but I only met one person who ever had one….a couselor at space camp brought his tg-16 on the last day and it was truly awesome!

[@GenerationalGamer]

This was an excellent video. I enjoyed Shmup Junkie’s video too. Generally, I will listen to multiple opinions before making my own. I thought your points were well founded and reasonable. I just subscribed, so I will have to watch more of your videos.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much dude! 😎 I also enjoyed Shmup junkies video and his great editing style. I love his channel!

[@creativecatproductions]

I’ve been a fan or channel for a while dude

[@GenerationalGamer]

I’m going to watch more of your channel very soon. This was an excellent first video.

[@moisesberducido1248]

Cat, this video condense not only the failure of N.A. TurboGrafx-16, but the overstimation of NEC PC Engine in its own main country, Japan. It's important to make a clear statement about the socio-economical context in Japan during the late 80's. PC Engine was a sucess early on because japanese common people had have a lot of extra money and the console was cheap enough to catch the interest of some casual Famicom user, and some demographic that latter we could call them "the Otaku Market". The Otaku Market it's own strenght is at the same time a weakness: A very loyal and dedicated fanbase that could buy expensive consumer's electronic and special edition toys, but at the same time, is a niche market that don't grew more. However, I disagree in two points: 1) The anime wasn't a big market back in the 80's in the USA. Sure, there were some shows that were classics for some kids back in the 80's (the mish-mash Harmony Gold create with Robotech from Macross and the other shows used as sources, the americanizated version of Gatchaman, the G-Force), there were some shows as Speed Racer and the Theater Masterpiece that were foundly remenber by a kid's generation before the 80's ones, and some of the most popular cartoons during the 80's were animated by Toei and other japanesse studios, but take in consideration for the vast amout of people in USA don't saw them as "japanesse anime" and some shows (Macross) were a thing very different from the original source. That distinction came with the original localization of Akira and Lensman and the first bootleg OVA's avaible form fandoms and obscure importers. The USA didn't have a notion about anime until the early 90's, when in Europe, México, South America, and some southeast Asia countries anime were more common and accepted as a different beast from the american cartoons (Mazinger Z, Arbegas, Hurracaine Polymar, Galaxy Express 999, Cobra or Captain Tsubasa were a thing outisde Japan back in the 80's and early 90's but completly unnoticiable in USA). So, the general public couldn't care less about the "anime look" of the games, even more, we have evidence that the general US public were very adverse to anime look games; when we search about the total dissaster that was for Nintendo of America the relase of Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest 1 in North America), part of the failure was confer to the cutsey and "weird" heavy anime syled monsters and enemies of the game, thanks for Akira Toriyama (a man was a total alien for the westerns during the 80') 2) The North American name was simple too long. Whle I understand the name "PC Engine" could be very confusing with a clone PC, the name "TurboGrafX-16" was too long, could be unimpronunciable and sound stupid. Why not "Turbo-16" or "Turbo NEC"? A shorter name could be more distinctive and memorable. Another thing you didn't notice enough is the big amout of PC Engine variants relased: The CoreGrafx, the SuperGrafx (that have 5 exclusive games), the Shuttle (a crap deceit), the Turbo Duo, the CD Rom-Rom... Sega was widlly critizated for the MegaDrive / Genesis variants and the expensive and commercial doubtful add ons relased, but NEC wasnt so harsh critizated for creating the same and worst errors (there were like 3 expansion cards to the PC Engine in Japan, for example). Keep the good work, because your TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine videos were a fun ride. I hope you could release more material, thanks buddy, and good luck!

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much dude! 😎

[@moisesberducido1248]

@@creativecatproductions Another situation that came in my mid is the bussiness model of the PC Engine. Hudson Soft obtained all the profit from the console manufactured and the Hu-Cards, but NEC only obtained profits by each console sold to the final client... IT'S BUSSINESS SUICIDE! That is the reason NEC decided sold apart the RCA composite accesories, the Turbo tap and the CD ROM2 as add-ons and not in the base console, expecting selling the (percibed) very expensive add-ons and make the gain. They aren't making any money at all, it was a very similar model that was used in the 3DO, a console too expensive during the introduction phase to really make an impact (the only difference, the 3DO technology was licensed to all the electronic manufacturers that want a piece of the videogame pie by the 3DO Company; PC Engine was manufactuerd by NEC only). It was a suicidal idea, NEC bring the idea of an expensive game console for a market that begun a mild recession, and didn't obtain any gain for each game sold. And a fun fact, the unsold new games, consoles, accesories, and controllers were pilled in a warehouse in California the infamous TTi, but when the TTi ceased to exist at mid 1995, ANOTHER shell company was created with the same purporse, liquidate the remaining stock. That company was called "Turbo Zone Direct", and even it have its own website: www.tzd.com (shut down actually, but active until 2008), and they have Turbo Duos, controllers, accesories and games rotting in the warehouse unitl 2005/6! That's the reason the console maker should be a major game publisher, because the games are the reason to exist for a console, and you as a console manufacture use the "Guillette razor machine" model, sell the console at lost and recover the investment in manufacturing and developing the machine with each game sold. And last, but not lest, one of the articles had have interview Victor Ireland, the founder of Working Designs. The guy it had good intentions with the games his team localizate, but its tiresome all the shit Ireland talk in the media is painting himself as some kind of brillant enterpreneur and US videogame savior, creatively castrated by stupid by-the-numbers suits (Bernie Stollar is his archi-nemesis), because he couldn't localizate more of the niche games that the general US public didn't care. The guy only want to work with niche j-RPG's and talk about a mytical unnobtained potential of not-localizated games for the Turbo Grafx-16, even when the standard of the Working Designs titles were 100K copies sold in the best of the scenarios. Edit: For a better understanding my comentary about Ireland , the article was this from Game Developer: www.gamedeveloper.com/business/stalled-engine-the-turbografx-16-turns-25 While an interesting look at the inside personal experience for the TurboGrafx-16 US team, I think the Ireland part is unbecesary, he was even painted as a TurboGrafx-16 fanboy who localizate some awsome japanese games!

[@creativecatproductions]

I totally agree dude! It was a really bad business model.

[@creativecatproductions]

I 100% agree about working designs here. Those games were too niche to make a major difference

[@lailanitaganap6314]

Turbografx 16 and Sega needs to team up on a new next-generation console?

[@creativecatproductions]

We could call it the TurboGenesis-64! Thanks for watching dude 😎

[@willmistretta]

Just FYI, but Dr. Sparkle mentions the Bikkuriman craze in conjunction with gaming multiple times in his excellent Chronturbo series.

[@creativecatproductions]

I just learned who this even is thanks to you……aaaaaand…..its awesome. Thank you very much for pointing this out. Do you happen to know which episode he mentions this in? I had to eat BIKKURIMAN snacks for the sake of my video and I really wish that I hadn’t. Thanks for watching!

[@willmistretta]

@@creativecatproductions Oh, yes. I'm addicted to Chrontendo/turbo/sega and there's at least a couple hundred hours (!) of obscure game reviews between the three series. Since they're chronological, I believe the Bikkuriman references are fairly early in Chronturbo. There was the launxh HuCard title and an early CD-ROM one.

[@creativecatproductions]

I’ve just started watching it! It’s great, thank you for sharing this

[@daddygrasshopper]

I suddenly feel the need to go spend my life savings on TurboGrafx 16 stuff.

[@TheAlphaOmegaX3]

This is fantastic. After watching the two, I feel like your opinion is more based on logic and makes more sense. Thanks for sharing your side and opinions. No doubt even all these years later we get to enjoy (cherry pick lol) all the amazing games for the TG16/PCE. Love that console!

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching dude!

[@Sinn0100]

"The true reason kids wound up with a Sega Genesis in 1989..." No, that is incorrect. The Nes was not selling out of stores in 1989. Individual games were selling out but not the console. You're talking about a console that came out in 1985...in 1989. Not even when the Nes dropped down to 100 dollars, did it completely sell out nationwide. Moving along... In reality, most gamers who got a Genesis or TG-16 simply were ready for something better. I remember well my mother asking me which console I wanted for Christmas. At the time, it was the biggest decision of my life, and I didn't want to be stuck with a console that might fizzle out and not be supported. What helped me immensely was several friends got their Genesis consoles a few months before Christmas. After seeing what Sega's 16-bit console could do, the choice became easy. I got my Genesis on Christmas of 1989 with Altered Beast (pack-in), Ghouls n' Ghosts, and Space Harrier II. Not because of happenstance or luck but because I wanted it. For reference- Neo Geo AES games cost $200 to $250 a pop new. Even after its price drop to $400, their games still retailed well above $120 mark. I know because I tried like hell to get one and almost succeeded... sort of. I had one in my hands before my mother found out how much it was selling for. I finally got my AES in 2008... Addendum- EA was not hugely important for console gaming in 1989. However, they became a powerhouse in the industry from early 1990 forward. EA brought more than Madden to 16-bit consoles. Road Rash, Madden, and the Strike series made EA household names in the US.

[@creativecatproductions]

The NES came out in 1985, but I don’t think it really picked up in sales until around 1987. My thought is that sales of the NES probably peaked around 1989/1990 in anticipation of Mario 3. 1989 was a monster year for that console. And around that time the console was at or near market saturation. The Genesis and TurboGrafx both attempted to appeal to a slightly different population (older teens), but in reality their market was the exact same demographic that already had a Nintendo. The NES wasn’t really “dated” in 1989 the way we would think of consoles now because no one, as of yet, expected videogame consoles to be replaced every 5 years or so. After the failure of Atari, the NES simply WAS the videogame industry, and they completely filled the void to the point where no one was really interested in competition. There was no demand for anything else. My recollection is that in 1989 it was, in fact, very difficult to get an NES that Christmas (during the peak sales season). There was a chip shortage around that same time and back then, as much as now, it was very hard to stock ENOUGH Nintendo hardware to meet demand. I do think the relatively small (very small) demographic of gamers (such as myself) that moved onto the Genesis and TG16 were looking for something better. For sure! What year did you get the SEGA Genesis [oh you mention that, sorry] ? My brother and I got it in 1989, a few months after the NA launch, and in my home town I was one of the only people who had a SEGA Genesis for years. It was until 1991-1992 that other people really started getting the console. Indeed, most of my peers had really never even heard of it. There was, like, one other dude that had a Genesis and it felt like we were literally the only two people on planet earth legitimately excited about Streets of Rage. Yeah we definitely wanted a Genesis. Specifically my brother wanted Golden Axe, which I think he was hoping was going to be some kind of fantasy adventure game or something. We got ghouls n ghosts, altered beast of course, and super thunder blade. By January we also had revenge of Shinobi and Golden Axe. But the games we played the most were Phantasy Star II and Herzog Zwei. Neo Geo AES games had a really broad price range. I low balled it and I understand many cost much more than $120. I think $120 was already absurdly high enough to make my point, which is course that normal people could not afford that. 😆

[@creativecatproductions]

For sure! EA was really important PC game developer in 89’ but not yet a console major player. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@Sinn0100]

@creativecatproductions Yes, sir, and thank you for making the video! I may disagree on some things, but it was still excellent.

[@Sinn0100]

@creativecatproductions I disagree with you completely on the Nes looking dated by 1989. Perhaps it was because gaming mags showed us what the rest of the world was playing that did it. Maybe it was seeing the arcades improve to such a degree that "just like the arcades" wasn't even a statement Nintendo, Sega, or Atari could even make by then. There was a divide, and it was growing ever larger day-by-day. In Japan, gamers were enjoying the PC Engine and Mega Drive games. Nintendo was talking about their Super Famicom as a coming soon product while flatly telling us, "It's not happening." They were more than happy keeping us in the dark ages for as long as possible (that is another conversation entirely). Both Europe and the UK were lighting it up with their Amiga 500's and Atari ST micros. Everyone in the free world had access to much better gaming experiences at home (and Nintendo's products as well), and we knew it. Super Mario Brothers 3 was big, and I enjoyed immensely... but that alone pails in comparison to what we were missing out on.

[@Sinn0100]

@creativecatproductions Almost forgot...the Nes was definitely not hard to get in 1989. By that time, the Nes was being sold in every department store, Toy Store, and certain video rental places across America. Wal-Mart, Target, Toy's R" Us, Montgomery Wards, Macy's, Gimbals, Lionel Playworld, KB Toy's, Sears, Sharper Image, Circuit City, Radio Shack, Best Buy....the list is endless. The only console that was hard to shop for was the Sega Master System in 1989. Finding games for it was like catching a unicorn. Addendum- I believe you are thinking about the Super Mario Brothers 2 and Zelda 2 cart shortage in 1989. They were truly scarce and parents were angry.

[@user-ok8yq6nc6x]

This is an amazing doc, you need more subscribers

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching dude! 😎

[@MurasakiBunny]

And Rondo of Blood, well, that didn't release outside of Japan until.... Sony make a crappy port of it to the PSP.

[@creativecatproductions]

Indeed! The game was pretty popular in the import scene though….as far as that hardcore bunch goes. A lot of gaming magazines covered it and praised it heavily at the time. But few really ever got to play it. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@moomah5929]

Should we bring up, how Nintendo more or less blackmailed other publishers and developers to only release games on Nintendo consoles or else they would not be allowed to release them on their platforms anymore? Nintendo were bricks and they still are. I'm not about talking the developers but the leadership. When you bring up all these great games that came out for the NES, most of them were from other companies that could have released their games also on the PCE or Sega consoles but didn't for quite a while because of the threat from Nintendo. Seeing this video, especially the beginning of the PCE, it really feels odd that this console was barely getting any third party support, even though NEC's PC88 and 98 series of computers were quite successful.

[@creativecatproductions]

This is a good point to bring up and I address it a little more in the forerunner to this video. It’s a topic I want to explore in more detail someday but I think there’s a more positive way to interpret Nintendo’s relationship with 3rd party game developers…..beyond “blackmail”, which is of course a hyperbolic pejorative. I think the key to understanding WHY Nintendo required certain restrictions on their publishers is the videogame crash of 1983. The cause of the crash was a market taxed by over saturation of both shovelware and redundant game titles that were haphazardly ported to every console. Nintendo saw the causes of the crash and therefore sought to ensure their developers met basic standards of quality, including limiting the quantity of games their developers released in a year, and avoiding redundancy in the market that would encourage just anyone to produce a competing console of questionable quality…..repeating the cycle that killed the industry in the first place. This is the reason Nintendo made such a big deal out of their propriety cartridges, the lock-out chip, licensing deals, and the Nintendo seal of quality. For Nintendo to exist, they had to create a set of practices that would prevent a second videogame crash and I think they were effective in that end. Indeed, I think Nintendo saved the industry. Sure, it sucks that this meant some 3rd party developers were tied up with Nintendo, but at the same time it’s not really true that 3rd party developers abandoned the TG-16 or couldn’t work with NEC/Hudsonsoft. Namco made tons of great games for the TG-16 for instance. I think the main reason developers stuck with Nintendo was actually voluntary. They simply had the bigger market share. Why start a game project on a platform with a fraction of the market share? Thank you very much watching dude! 😎

[@joefreak2377]

I say it failed because of lack of third party support, timing, ugly console design, and bad marketing. C’mon look no further than the Turbo Grafx 16 box art for the console and games they are hideous. The Japanese artwork and designs for the PC Engine looked way more appealing especially to a kid. I grew up when these consoles were slugging it out. It was Sega and Nintendo that had cool box art. The PC Engine should have kept the same design as in Europe and Japan.

[@creativecatproductions]

I actually really like the westernized design 😅 Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@mr.pavone9719]

The interesting part starts at 5:38

[@creativecatproductions]

I needed to set up the cultural and economic climate to explain and how why NEC would agree to produce 750,000 units of a videogame console that had only a handful of games 😝 Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@BH-vh3iu]

One thing that was a BIG deal back then is that few of us were allowed to own many games, mostly of what we played was borrowed or rented, and the social aspect of being part of a clique and discussing games, that was quite important. Owning a console no one else did, thus, could be quite limiting and lonely. I wouldn't be surprised if a good chunk of the kids who ever owned the turbografx back in the day were kids who also owned a nes. Owning only a turbografx would keep you out of the loop, owning both a turbografx and a nes would make you the cool kid.

[@creativecatproductions]

This is a really great point, and I think it corroborates my own experience. I recall that the people who had a TG16 also had an NES, at least. A lot of us had an NES by 1989, but there were a few people who seemed to have every console and those types were the only ones I ever knew to have one. We called them rich kids 😝 Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@BH-vh3iu]

@@creativecatproductions Before Sonic kids who had the Genesis too were the so-called rich kids who also had the NES and possibly the TG16 as well, lol. Only after Sonic I remember Sega kids really becoming a thing. The video was nicely edited, well researched (I appreciate sources being discussed) and quite entertaining to watch. Great job!

[@creativecatproductions]

It’s really true that the Genesis was basically on par with the TG16 until sonic and the big price cut. Thank you very much for the kind words. We really appreciate it!

[@KILLJOY375]

I owned the Turbo Graphics 16 and getting friends to come over and play it was like pulling teeth. When 90% of your friends have a Nintendo it gives them something almost all have in common. You were able to talk about the games you were playing and offer help on beating them. Even more so it would expand your access to other games without having to pay because you could borrow or trade games with friends. This was not an option for the kid who had only neighborhood turbo Graphics 16 console...lol. I ended up getting a Nintendo and never played with the turbo graphics console, I believe my mother sold it for 40.00 at a garage sale a few years later with 5 games.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching dude! 😎 Indeed, the social advantages of having an NES were unparalleled. Though, with certain friends, I found that having different consoles was strategically beneficial as well. My best friend and I made a pact: if I got Sega, he got Nintendo. Its this way that he got to play the best of the Dreamcast, and I got to play the Gamecube. Of course….we both had a PS2!

[@KILLJOY375]

@creativecatproductions I too had the pS2 which was a great time to be gaming. Met so many new people dude it being online capable. My first online game was Socom Navy Seals. For me, the Xbox 360 was when I got into gaming. The online community was by far the best at the time. Xbox made it so easy to connect and play with people all over the world. Unfortunately, I do not play often even though I have both of the newest gaming consoles. Not sure why, but I hope one day I will get that feeling once again that video games gave me. Thank you for your channel, video, and response!

[@creativecatproductions]

@Al-fw2lp I also fell off the gaming wagon after a time. From the time of the Commodore 64 through to the Dreamcast/PS2, I was an avid gamer. But after getting married, having children, work, and so forth, I more or less stopped playing almost entirely. As my kids got older I started sharing my interest in games with them….. and they have a Switch, so occasionally I’ll play that with. But still, mostly, I only play to make these videos.

[@KILLJOY375]

@@creativecatproductions Ah man, I was hoping you were going to say it was only a phase and it will all come back. It is good to hear that you were able to turn this pastime hobby into something that could contribute to your financial well-being. I once money off of gaming in the past. If you are familiar with the Navy Socom Navy Seal game. Then you might remember the clan that was called Se Snipers. I was a part of that clan and helped write a lot of the official strategy guides that came for that game. So I got to meet the design and developer teams at Zipper. I used a lot of what I was learning from the military at the time to help develop and better sense of tactical awareness within the game. Ad that game ( Socom Navy Seal) fell out of favor with a lot of gamers. We happened to get a call from Infinityward and they want to name a strategy guide for their upcoming game Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Yep, check the Prima official strategy guide and you'll see us in the back.

[@creativecatproductions]

@@KILLJOY375 thats amazing!

[@shade221]

16:45 the jaguar wasn't 64-bit. it used two 32-bit processors. atari used this fact disingenuously, ie, "32+32=64!!" . but like, the 32x and the saturn used two 32-bit processors as well. so no lol, that's not how that works.

[@creativecatproductions]

Actually, the atari jaguar was 32 different 2-bit processors linked together by a network of empty soup cans connected by string…… April fools! 🎉 No, you’re right. The 32X was two 32-bit processors. The 64-bit claim was just marketing. Indeed, talking about “bits” was just marketing across the board. And im not sure it really worked. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@devonwilliams5738]

I still blame it all on the delayed western launch. I think the Saturn comparison is invalid. Sega of America and Sega of Japan were at each other's throats at the time, with the Japanese office vetoing most of Sega of America's big plans. Sega of America planned a September launch for the Saturn (A week before the PlayStation), but Japan demanded that they release early, forcing them into their infamous surprise E3 launch. This release date swap was much to the dismay of developers and retail stores who weren't alerted of the change ahead of time, resulting in a shoddy launch lineup and poor availability. KB Toys was so outraged by the switch (and not being among the stores that got the first batch of Saturn units), that they dropped Sega from their stores altogether. You also bring up the Saturn but ignore the Xbox 360, who in beating Sony to the punch by a year, forced Sony to play catchup for pretty much the entire 7th console generation until some high profile exclusives like God of War III and Uncharted started taking big chunks out of Microsoft's market share. An earlier launch (even as late as Christmas 1988), would have offset many of NEC's mistakes. Sega and NEC cannibalized each other's sales due to launching so close together, and I bet NEC would have had a much easier time selling through that overblown initial shipment of 750,000 units if they had the 16-bit market all to themselves, just like in Japan.

[@creativecatproductions]

I think an early launch would have helped, but if and only if the TurboGrafx remained a hucard based system and the turbo cd was never a thing. There’s no way the vast majority of people were going to buy both of those things. Looking at the pc engine game library in Japan, after 1989, most of the games were for the pc engine CD. Probably because manufacturing CDs were a lot cheaper….plus they store so much data compared to hu cards. But since the turbo cd was basically a non starter in the US, most of those games never came out over here. But, of course, TurboGrafx dudes were really into importing and buying out of catalogues….out of necessity. It’s a different culture and that may actually be part of the appeal of the whole thing. Thanks for watching!

[@devonwilliams5738]

@@creativecatproductions I do think releasing the Turbo CD so soon was a mistake, but I don't think never releasing it is a good idea either. Release the main unit much earlier, and delay the CD attachment to Christmas 1990. Give the Turbo some room to breathe before you upsell people on insane attachments. Alternatively, wait until the Super CD-Rom2 drive and release that in North America, completely skipping the regular CD-Rom2 drive. There are so many better ways to handle that 400 dollar tumor.

[@creativecatproductions]

I secretly think the CD rom drive was the worst thing to happen to gaming in the 90s….cut scenes, long load times, voice overs. I think castlevania Dracula x the rondo of blood could have been even better as a hu card game…. ….but what I’m saying is heresy 😂 and no one else thinks this way. But I really hated these innovations. I like being able to turn it on and play immediately. I think delaying the cd rom drive should have happened until they had at least 5 or so must have games. That would have given people room to consider it and build interest. Sega is just lucky their Sega cd didn’t come out as soon.

[@woksrandomchannel]

I had a TG16. I liked it. A lot. I was really sad there were so few games. And very hard to find. I had to mail order my games.

[@creativecatproductions]

When did games wind up full blown mail order? Ive always wanted to answer this question. I remember the games in stores in 1989 and 1990 for sure but they were scarce after that. Thanks for the watching dude! 😎

[@woksrandomchannel]

@@creativecatproductions I don’t know, but in the back of gaming magazines had mail order companies that sold systems like SuperGrafx for insane prices

[@americananalyst6723]

Indeed sometimes the very best things are less than successful, i mean, look at CCP😂😂😂 wow man that was some truth and self aware af of a joke.❤❤❤ i learned so much from this video. I think you totally closed the case on this. You deserve way more subs and views. You have a viewer for life.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching and for the kind comment 😎

[@jackofallgamesTV]

The Atari 2600 had lots of games and was priced at $300. The intellivision had their machine at $200 I was trying for games that are not easily replicated in the arcade like the original sports games. The ColecoVision was 150 and had enough arcade games that people wanted, like ironically hits, from Nintendo and Sega, the ColecoVision became the number one system of 1984 then shot themselves in the foot with the Adam. But unique to the second generation was not who had the most exclusive games because they were infiltrating each other's ecosystems with M Network, AtariSoft and Coleco's red and blue label games.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching dude! 😎 I never personally owned any of these console, though my brother had the 2600, and our aunt had the Intellivision. I really really liked the Intellivision. But I was definitely a Commodore 64 guy before anything. Not at all cost effective, but everyone pirated all the software all the time.

[@syzygyio]

The Atari 2600 was never priced at $300. Not once.

[@jackofallgamesTV]

Your right about the INTV and 2600 being $200 when they were the big 2. When Atari's big competitor was the Bally Astrocade, what was the prices of those 2? I though there was a $100 difference then. I just forgot whether it was 200 vs 300 or 300 vs 400. That'd be interesting to see a chart of system retail prices over time and key events which knocked down the price.

[@jackofallgamesTV]

My main point was that if exclusives sell systems, the consoles of the second generation would have laughed at you. Because the system makers made $0 from third parties like Activision, the only way to increase sales of a game was to infiltrate other ecosystems. The console makers were also trying to lock each other as well as third parties, but the FTC wouldn't have that. It was Atari vs Mystique which granted system owners certain rights over their ecosystems. Too bad for Atari that Nintendo would act as the original console warrior, preventing multiconsole releases. I think there were only 1 title that was NES/SMS/7800 co-releases. Rampage and Double Dragon (if you count the fact the 7800 plays 2600 games). That's when the system exclusive era started.

[@tk7977]

This guy really started off his 1hr30min video with a history lesson on WWII. These video essays are getting way too overconfident LMFAO

[@creativecatproductions]

It is a lengthy video for sure! 😆 My opener was less about WW2 and more about the Japanese postwar economy, the Japanese “miracle economy” that essentially climaxed in the 1980s (until it ended spectacularly in 1990). The reason for this is two fold (1) this is sort of response video to Shmup Junkies history of the PC Engine which had a similar emphasis on Japan that I wanted to address and (2) I think it’s an important element in the story of the rise and fall of the PC Engine in Japan. It’s destiny was tied closely to the Japanese bubble economy. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@OutOfTouch_YT]

Honestly its cause how the f*** is anyone gonna compete with gamer watch time profiles?! 😂 ONLY THEY WATCH VIDEOS THIS LONG UP TO 8 HRS OF LENGTH LIKE WTF IN THE MOST COMPETITIVE TOPIC ON KZbin LOL

[@creativecatproductions]

Some topics really just can’t be washed over in a few minutes. In order to talk about the failure of the Turbografx-16 in America, for a contemporary audience, you have to not only describe what a TG16 is but you also have to talk about NEC, Nintendo, the Japanese and US economies in 1989. To describe the specific causes of the console’s failure you have to address all the relevant factors, which are many…..AND, since this is more or less a response Video, you have to address the perspective of other people….describing them clearly and then showing why you think they’re wrong. If this were a video about a just one very specific aspect of the larger story we tried to tell, like the quality of the launch games, then it could have been done in 15 minutes. But even a launch game video could go well over an hour if you bothered to do a full review for every game. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@apollosungod2819]

I like that you did some good theories and research into the topic but I really do not like how you immediately dismiss the NEC PC-ENGINE and its CD-ROM2 attachment or even Sega Genesis and SegaCD for the FEAR of the monster of the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super Nintendo... it's not that simple to just lump the competition like that because there were real factors that stagnated Sega in North America, namely the newly formed subsidiary branch, Sega of America which had unreliable management staff and a leadership who quit or left and allegedly claimed that videogames were not gonna be profitable which is almost like a curse because later hired Sega of America leadership had that same lack of faith including Tom Kalinske who since 1993 was giving out misinformation and fear about the Project Saturn being over $400 dollars. Note that the Sega MegaCD launched in Japan for ¥50,000.00 Yen which roughly is around $500 dollars because it featured competitive CPU, graphics and sound processors to battle it out with the NEC/Hudson Soft technology and the potential for what Nintendo was making threats about. The NEC PC-ENGINE Duo also launched in Japan for slightly similar or higher price because of the technology being cutting edge... Also do not just dismiss the buying consumer into just parents. Nintendo launched their FamiCom in 1983 Japan and by 1986 they had sold ten million FamiComs in Japan alone, securing the loyalty of Japanese third party devs... Nintendo then launches in North America 1985 and Nintendo of America goes through their teething problems without some management leader quitting or claiming videogames weren't profitable... Btw Atari largely abandoned the game system market in favor of selling their Atari Computers under the belief that a specialized videogame computer aka videogame systems were no longer profitable essentially giving the market wide open to Nintendo and even Sega who had far superior tech than both Atari's 7800 and the NES but of course Sega of America was so unstable that they dipped to a dismal third place and under management by Tonka Toys... a toy company clueless about videogames or arcades. As such Sega headquarters in Japan had to increase funding to reformat and reorganize Sega of America and by relation also lost their potential to have launched the Sega MegaDrive in 1988 North America as test markets which is probably the other problem. By 1989 the NES and Nintendo of America had basically formed a beachhead fortress... it wasn't just "nuts for Nintendo" they basically kept advancing the chess piece and formed a defensive line... Nintendo of America also greatly benefited from the 1986 ten million FamiComs sold which greatly allowed the chips in the NES to be highly profitable, mass produced and allowed for price drops in the approaching new cutting edge competition. Therefore by 1989 the NES could sell for a lower price, had four years of marketing presence and the year before had started up their official Nintendo Power Magazine which quickly became monthly and if you purchased a NES game or NES system in 1988 and 1989 you were guaranteed to get a slip offering a two year subscription to Nintendo Power Magazine for the price of one year. Michael Katz knew this and so did NEC America... that's why Michael Katz had started the official Sega Visions Magazine in 1990 but that got stuck in not being funded once he was fired by the replacement hack job. NEC was starting TG16 fan magazines... but here is the problem or question. by 1987 going into 1988 and 1989, NES was setting sales records in North America again securing loyalty from third parties counting the beans of how many NES systems sold the previous years so at some point both NEC America and Sega of America misjudged the sales potential for their brand new cutting edge technology systems... it wasn't really just pricing NES went through test markets in 1985... that's an edge gaining move that was sheer magic or again Atari walked away and didn't bother leaving the NES to secure dipping their toes... Therefore it is just UNREASONABLE and unrealistic to just expect the targeted one million Genesis sold in one year promise or even the 700,000 TG16 units produced... If both NEC and Sega had set lower production runs and targets in 1989... things would have been dramatically different because it's likely that Michael Katz would not have been fired and it's even more likely that the TG16 would have been slowly increasing production runs instead of making what seems to be a "Hey Nintendo sold 5 millions systems in U.S.A., we should be able to completely sell out stock especially because this is new tech. Another way of looking at it is if ATI released RADEON 8500 in 2001 to wild success and four years later Nvidia released their Geforce 6800 GTX but people had instead no real knowledge of what the 6800 offered and worse they expected use production runs to sell out from over production.. Also yes thank you for finally saying that Tom Kalinske had a spotty record... many things started and arranged by Michael Katz including the Genesis Does comparison commercials were all set up by Katz and Kalinske took all the credit.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for watching and for your thoughtful and informative comment. It’s a lot for me to think about.

[@simon41978]

About the adult diapers and used female underwear: the Japanese have vending machines where you can buy a used diaper that has been used by a specific girl/woman. The photo's are there and you choose one. The diapers have shit in them. The girl/woman has done her business in them. I imagine you can then go home, wear them and writhe around in them in ecstacy. Talk about degeneracy!

[@creativecatproductions]

Japan is a magical land of many peculiar contradictions. Beautiful, rich in art, history, and culture….yet nuttier than the circus 🤡 🎪

[@simon41978]

@@creativecatproductions I thought the Japanese were the smartest people on Earth with no discernible weaknesses. Then I saw this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kGLUdGpugrGknrc I still like that they eat seaweed. Very clever.

[@creativecatproductions]

@@simon41978 😂 like sardines Come on Japan! You’re better than this. Also please don’t try and take all of Southeast Asia again. Thanks for watching!

[@nickb.235]

It was sold through Sears with no marketing support and Nintendo and Sega were superior at the time.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@syzygyio]

Sears was huge and the place to buy video games in the first decade or two. TG16 was also sold through Toys R Us and had plenty of shelf space and room in TRU fliers.

[@JAPJAC]

Japan just surrendered to USA? Thought it was to Britain and Australia too.

[@creativecatproductions]

The formal surrender took place in September of 1945 on the USS Missouri. I believe they also technically surrendered to the British Empire (including Australia) and China. But typically the event is described bilaterally between the US and Japan since they were the main participants of the pacific war and since Japan was faced with a US invasion in the event they failed to surrender Thanks for watching!

[@JAPJAC]

And didn't Britain beat Britain in North America in 1776 too? George Washington was definitely English. This video was in a type of English. God Save The Queen.

[@creativecatproductions]

@@JAPJAC God save the Queen indeed! I love England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 and the rest of it….

[@JAPJAC]

@@creativecatproductions So Britain is the only country to have conquered all countries involved historically? Good to know cheers.

[@creativecatproductions]

That’s a true! Though I don’t think Japan was ever colonized. Strange fact, wherever Britain left a colony, prosperity followed. Coincidence? It really isn’t. No one did the enlightenment right….except Great Britain

[@NekoMilkshake]

29:51 hard disagree on that. Companies made whatever possible to disguise the origin of anything that was of japanese origin, even going at lengths of changing the form factor of the consoles (tubografx, nes, snes) and the artwork of basically every game giving us the infamous megaman 1 artwork. They rather slap that on the box than having something resembling japanese style illustration. So yeah all that is result of xenophobia, no other way around it. Anyways this is a really good video!

[@creativecatproductions]

It’s easy to forget that there was real animosity between Japan and the US during the late 80s and early 90s. There was this sense in Japan that the US was holding them back, that we’d meddled in their domestic and economic affairs long enough….and, conversely, Americans felt like they were enduring a hostile takeover….another attempt at Japanese imperialism coming in the form of foreign investment as opposed to bullets and bombs. Thank you very much for watching! 😎

[@goodchildmusic0]

I'm 32 minutes into this video and it's FUCKING HILARIOUS :D I'm also going to fanboy over the cyriak comment 😍😍😍😍

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much haha Yeah it was quite an honor that Cyriak left a comment. I didn’t know who he was, but I was pretty blown away when I figured it out

[@alderoth01]

I eventually got a Turbografx with Splatterhouse, and I couldn't find games for it unless I ordered them online lol. I played Bonks adventure more than anything. Then suddenly, *poof*. I think after that I had a JVC X-eye after that which played SEGA CD, SEGA Genesis, and kareoke lol.

[@creativecatproductions]

Yeah NEC pulled the plug on the TG 16 pretty early. The JVC X-eye sounds amazing! Karaoke too?! Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@alderoth01]

@@creativecatproductions Yeah, I think my mother said we wouldn't have the money for a SEGA, and one day at the toy store I came across the X-eye and I saw "SEGA CD" on it, and it was significantly cheaper than buying the official one, so we got it. That was where I played my first CD rom style game. It was a SEGA CD boxing game with like a 4 x 4 black and white square with videos, and see through boxing gloves. If you hit at the right time, it would switch the videos to show a hit lol. It was a terrible SEGA CD game lol.

[@creativecatproductions]

Wow! Did it function as well as a regular Sega Genesis / Sega CD or were there differences?

[@alderoth01]

@@creativecatproductions It was just like a SEGA Genesis or SEGA CD as far as how the games functioned. The starting menu was different because you had to select between the different options. I don't think it said anything about SEGA to be honest. It had options for cartridge, CD, and then the karaoke. The karaoke CD's displayed the lyrics on your TV, and you could hook a microphone, as well as headphones into the side of the machine lol. It was genuinely an all in one. I looked up the prices on them, and it says they were $499, but I don't remember them being that high. I don't know if my mother bought it used, or where she got it from. I just remember she refused to buy a SEGA, a SEGA CD, then games for both types. With the X-eye you just bought the games without adding anything extra to it. I wish I could remember the company that made them. All I can remember is the beginning screen was like a weird rainbow effect, and it flashed some name up on the screen. Oh, and the first game I played was called "Prize Fighter". It came with the system when you bought it. There was one cartridge, and one CD game, but all I remember is the CD, because the screen even on a CRT TV was just a 4 or 5 inch by 5 inch square with videos in it. It couldn't take up a whole screen lol. The videos were extremely grainy, and it would lag really bad sometimes between video's. I also wanna say it connected to the TV through AV cables, and not the switch box like most systems came with back then. It was the first system I had that didn't require the AV block on the back, and the controller was wired to it I think. It was a JVC controller, and not SEGA. Looked like SEGA, but had JVC on top of it lol. That's pretty much all I can remember. It was a cool little system. I don't know if it played any of those 32 bit SEGA games though. I always wanted the CD games because I thought they looked better lol.

[@creativecatproductions]

I looked it up and that thing looks phenomenal. I’m jealous!

[@genesisfan029]

BitHead1000 is the man! How dare you?

[@creativecatproductions]

BitHead 1000 is the man! Sip of coffee you sir

[@Superdimensional]

That apartment building reminds me of the movie Baby Boy when Snoop was over at his girls place lol

[@creativecatproductions]

😂 I’m pretty sure I grabbed that photo from a random spot in LA….it could be the one

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks for watching!

[@Superdimensional]

@@creativecatproductions i love that you liked Turbografx and ROBOTECH, did we just become best friends?

[@creativecatproductions]

@@Superdimensional it’s one of the greatest shows ever!

[@davidcarmichael4006]

But the Turbo Express was pretty great

[@mr.milehi9883]

I subscribed. I usually don't spend over an hour watching anybody's video that you made very cogent points that are easy to forget even for those of us who are buying video games at that time. I've got to say. The lettering style on most of the early tg16 games is pretty damn ugly. You're right though. And yes. But look at something really ugly like MOTO RACER box art.yuck Dot but I gladly subscribe to your video and when I have time I'll be watching the ones about the history. You're reasonable. And I didn't even think of how much the CD had on was $400 at the time yikes! I bought my for $80 in 1993 or so. Worth more than that now! Thanks for the video and look forward to seeing more stuff from you.

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much for the thoughtful comment and for watching dude! 😎

[@Orangedome]

70%babble 30% what the title said.= monetized mo ney for this channel. Very clever non the less.

[@creativecatproductions]

30% complement about a clever video. 70% insult about, I think, the video being very long? 😂 Either way, I’m 100% grateful that you watched our video dude 😎 I admit that I really needed to trim out some of the wordiness in this one. It really could have been a much shorter, tighter affair.