richardjdare said:
I always wanted a Turbografx, or the Japanese version, the PC Engine. They were never released in the uk, but expensive, imported games were often reviewed in magazines like Mean Machines.
They were really hyped in the uk gamer press but when I finally got to play on one in emulation, I had a hard time finding impressive games. Way too many Wonderboy style platformers for my liking.
I'm not sure about collector value, I only ever ran an emulator, but my favorite games were:
Y's
Splatterhouse
Gunhed (called Blazing Lazers in the USA) - vertically scrolling shootemup. One of the best shooters of the era on any platform.
Parasol Stars - sequel to Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands
Galaga '90 - addictive ultra-oldskool shootemup
Bloody Wolf - good side scrolling gun + run.
R-Type
Is your PAL Turbografx region free? I know standard US machines were region locked so you couldn't play Japanese games, but if you can then I recommend the following PC Engine games:
Mr Heli - Shootemup (Like Atomic Robo Kid but with a helicopter)
Atomic Robo Kid - (Like Mr Heli with a Robot)
Devil Crash - well reviewed pinball game
New Zealand Story - nice platformer
Gradius and its sequels - classic horizontal shooters
Vigilante - scrolling beatemup. I didn't like this much. It had a lot of publicity in UK magazines at the time.
The Japanese version of J.J. and Jeff is called Kato and Ken and features two real-life TV comedians. As StriderShinryu says, its not a great game, but does have some curiosity value and crude humour.
Yeah The PAL version of the console is pretty much the same as the US version, and play's US only games (considering blazing lazers was the only TG-16 game to get an offical release in the EU). The only problem is that every game will be downsized to 50hz to play on PAL TV's. Kinda like the saturn when you use a import cartridge to play imports on a unmodded European console.
Telegames licensed it in a very limited production run which was only released in the UK and France, So it's incredibly rare. It's also not called the Turbografx 16, but rather just Turbografx and the logo is white with a blue and red underline instead of yellow.
The good thing though is mine comes with a UK plug, some don't. So this is possibly one of the original EU release systems, not just those new boxed EU ones that have been appearing quite a lot on ebay.
To be honest, if a console has a handful of decent games, i would buy it rather than emulate. However I don't think I would buy something like the CD-I unless it came with some video CD's and had an encoder for it to play them. Most of the software on that system wasn't even a game, and the good games on the system are very few indeed, even compared to consoles like the TG-16, 3DO, Jag, and CD-32, which has quite a few worthwhile games available. These consoles are probably not worth it for the casual video game player, or more modern gamers, but for the retro gamers like me, it sure is. I'm more of a gamer than a collector anyway, regardless of the impression i give out sometimes. I only really collect the consoles, and get the games I want to get.
