Which controller for TG-16 games?

[jbanes]

As most of you know, the TurboGrafix-16 had a two button controller with a configuration almost identical to the famous NES controller. It was quite possibly the only entry into the 16-bit console war that had so few buttons. From the Virtual Console perspective, this means that you can use the Wii Remote, the Classic Controller, or the Gamecube controller to play your favorite TG-16 games.

 

After playing with both the Wii Remote and the Classic Controller, I think I like the feel of the Wiimote better. Yet the Classic Controller is nice because it offers easy access to the "turbo" buttons. What's your preference?

 

 

So I was playing Bonk's Adventure today and started pondering the status of the TG-16 games, and how they fit into their time and place in history. The first thing that stuck out at me was that the graphics weren't quite as good as I remembered them. When I played demos in Toys'r'Us back in the early 90's, the graphics seemed so amazingly colorful and vibrant. Bonk also seemed like such a "cool" and incredible game.

 

Yet looking back at this game, it becomes obvious that it's a decendent of your Commodore 64 and Atari 8-Bit platformers. The graphics are nice, but nothing that would have easily outshown a game on these classic computers. In fact, the more TG-16 games I look back on, the more I realize that they look like some of the better C64 titles. Even the fancy text fading effects look a lot like something from the early C64 demo scene. It's enough to make you wonder if the TG-16 was really as unique as it seemed at the time. I think that some of the later games showed that the TG-16 was capable of more, but the early titles certainly looked like they pulled programmers from the computer-gaming community.

 

The second thing that stuck out at me was that the TG-16 was full of technically competent platforms (e.g. Bonk, Adverture Island, etc.), but that they weren't all that different from one another. When you play the original Mario Bros, you are constantly given different options and things to do. Do you bash the blocks looking for goodies, go down the pipe, find a way into the ceiling, slide under the barrier, stomp the goomba, use the koopa to wipe out enemies (but put yourself in danger!), etc? Mario Bros was just so dense. Yet the competing platformers of the time had you walk along a graphically rich landscape in a serial fashion. You dealt with each enemy one after another, with no real variety or branching in gameplay. As a result, the platformers tended to get repetitive. You played one, you played them all.

 

I don't see any sign that NEC ever really "got" that. Sega eventually woke up and retired Alex Kidd for the more interesting Sonic platformers. But NEC just kept plowing forward with the status-quo. (Though perhaps the AtariAge community knows of PC Engine games that would have changed things around?)

 

In any case, those are my wild thoughts for the evening. Feel free to add your own two cents in.

[BydoEmpire]

I like the classic controller. The dpad is bigger, it's more comfortable to hold, the turbo buttons are easier to access, and on the wii remote, sometimes I accidentally hit the B button with my index finger (inadvertent turbo). The Wii remote isn't bad to use at all, I just like the classic controller is better.

[Lord Helmet]

Anything but the GCN controller. With that crappy d-pad, it really sucks for the older games.

[Gabriel]

It was quite possibly the only entry into the 16-bit console war that had so few buttons.

 

Actually, it has the same number of buttons as the original Genesis controller. It's just that it has two "pez buttons" instead of only one.

 

I prefer using the classic controller for the games which support it. I find the Wiimote simultaneously too thick in depth and too thin vertically to be comfortable. But it's one of those situations where there's always something wrong, because if I use the classic controller, not only to I have to have the wiimote dangling off the end like some kind of leech, but the classic controller just doesn't feel very good in the hand either, due to it being thicker than a SNES pad and lacking dualshock style handles.

 

Off topic, the SNES button arrangement of the classic controller is good for NES, SNES, and TG-16 games, but the uneven buttons make it assy for the Genesis games which use all three buttons.

[Steril707]

The Pc Engine had an almost arcadelike R-Type, and that was reason enough for us to want one just for that game alone.