The Official Turbografx 16 Thread!

[Gentlegamer]

Your loss. The 8-bit era (3rd generation NES, SMS, 7800) and especially NES has equally good games to the 16-bit era. 16-bits have a bit more refinement, while the 8-bits have that perfect combination between challenge and simplicity, but to each his own.

 

I was playing Gradius 3 on SNES the other day, and I can say I've definitely stepped up my SHMUP game the past couple years. Turbo/PCE have a custom 6502 with chiptune circuits built in, much like NES. But the NES clocks at 1.79Mhz whereas the Turbo/PCE is clocked at a whopping 7.16Mhz, 4x faster. SNES used the 16-bit upgraded version of the 6502 (I forget the name) clocked at 3.58Mhz. The 16-bit processor gave the SNES a more complex instruction set while making it easy to port NES games. However with SNES having the slowest clock speed of the 3 main 16-bit consoles (SNES, Genny, Turbo) tends to cause slowdown with large amounts of small sprites on screen. I experienced this while playing Gradius III the other night. The Turbo/PCE's higher clock allows the screen to be literally filled with bullets with zero slowdown, making it the perfect SHMUP box. I think the Turbo/PCE is synonomous with SHMUPs in a similar way that the Neo-Geo is synonymous with fighters.

 

Now play Bio Metal, Sonic Wings, Super Aleste, R-Type III, or Rendering Ranger and see that it isn't the lower clock speed causing the problem in Gradius III, it's the programmer.

[8th lutz]

While I didn't own a TG-16 back in the day despite me being aware of the system, I bought myself one in 2006. Too bad the system didn't have more games ported from Japan to the states.

 

It took me so long partly due to me having an easier time to find SMS Games in the wild in the late 1990's and early 2000's compare to the tg-16. I bought a SMS in 1999 matter of fact. I also had to make up for the lost time for the Nes besides getting Genesis, Playstation games games and hand held system games.

 

I played catch up with Handheld games due to the eye medication I took actually caused me problems seeing smaller screens before my version stabilized.

 

 

I have a good sized US Tg-16 HU-Card library. It is a very nice system for a person who loves shooters. I also liked the Bonk Games, Neutopia Games, Crater Maze, Alien Crush, Devil Crush, Ninja Spirit, Legendary Axe Series, New Adventure Island, Dragon's Curse, Cadash, Parasol Stars, Jackie Chan Action Kung-FU, and Bloody Wolf.

Edited April 26, 2015 by 8th lutz

[Andromeda Stardust]

Not sure what you mean by "my loss".

Well said. I gotta be honest, it was years until I was brave enough to jump on the Atari bandwagon. The primative graphics have their charm and something about the sheer rawness of early systems (pre-crash) draws me in a way it didn't before. But there is something for everyone regarding retro systems. I have little interest in fighting games and hence Neo-Geo as a platform has little to offer me. Edited April 26, 2015 by stardust4ever

[Rick Dangerous]

So I am headed to DC for a conference later this month and will be bringing my TG 16 along. I am in a hotel room with my co-worker and fellow retro gaming enthusiast, so I figured we'd have some beers and play some video games.

 

Despite the high amount of good shmups on the TG, I noticed a great number of games are one player. Could anyone reccomend a top 5 or 10 list of 2 player games to enjoy?

 

Thanks

[Gredler]

So I am headed to DC for a conference later this month and will be bringing my TG 16 along. I am in a hotel room with my co-worker and fellow retro gaming enthusiast, so I figured we'd have some beers and play some video games.

 

Despite the high amount of good shmups on the TG, I noticed a great number of games are one player. Could anyone reccomend a top 5 or 10 list of 2 player games to enjoy?

 

Thanks

 

I dont know a ton, though I know there are. The best one I've had/played of is Parasol Stars, which is basically bubble bobble. A+ Game imho.

 

Second to Parasol Stars is TV Sports Hockey - get that game if you have a turbo. I really feel like anyone with a Turbo should have TV Sports Hockey. It plays like the EA 16 bit hockey games, but the goaltending is more like NES Ice Hockey or Blades of Steel. The faceoffs are exciting, which is hardly the case in most hockey games, and the fights are really good too. Ontop of the praise I am giving it, justifiable praise, it is also one of the cheapest turbo games you can get. I got mine for 12$ shipped CIC.

 

The rest of my Turbo games are single player, but have heard about other multiplayer games;

 

I've never had friends who played it, so I never got into Bomber Man, but I hear that there are great versions on the Turbo/PCE.

 

I also hear the Turbo version of Street Fighter II CE is very smooth.

 

Dungeon Explorer and Dungeon Explorer II fall somewhere between gauntlet and diablo, fun multiplayer action rpg.

[Andromeda Stardust]

So I am headed to DC for a conference later this month and will be bringing my TG 16 along. I am in a hotel room with my co-worker and fellow retro gaming enthusiast, so I figured we'd have some beers and play some video games.

 

Despite the high amount of good shmups on the TG, I noticed a great number of games are one player. Could anyone reccomend a top 5 or 10 list of 2 player games to enjoy?

 

Thanks

I don't even have a Turbo Tap yet. I do have an Everdrive fully loaded with the No-Intro set. Given the cost of the Everdrive is not that much compared to the games, I would get one and start playtesting games on it.

[NE146]

When I was in college we challenged in World Class Baseball a ton if you like that kind of thing..

[Papa]

The two bears at the beginning of Legendary Axe are impossible to beat, so the game is impossible.

I've beaten Legendary Axe several times. I REALLY love Legendary Axe II, though. It's far superior in my opinion. I got the TG-16 instead of the Genesis when it first came out because my friend got a Genesis, so I was always playing with him. When he came over and played China Warrior and Ninja Spirit, he wanted one. I eventually got a Turbo Duo and a region adapter with a six-button pad and Street Fighter Championship Edition. Now I have a region modded PC Engine Duo and a SuperGrafx. I totally dig Lords of Thunder, Gates of Thunder, Alien Crush pinball and most of the library. I know it's an 8-bit CPU with 16-bit MOS chip, but the system is just so good!

 

Diamakaimura for the SuperGrafx is STUNNING!! I like to compare as many versions as I can at once. I have the Master System hybrid playing next to the Genesis one, next to the Capcom Classics arcade version, next to the SuperGrafx version. SuperGrafx looks best (some parts I even like better than the original), but I'd have to side with the Mega Drive/Genesis one for play mechanics.

[Eltigro]

I've had my Turbo since the early 90's. Not sure of the exact year, but I got it for Christmas while still in High School, so it must have been before '93.

 

The system came with Keith Courage, but it also had a deal where you could send off your proof of purchase and get a free game. (Don't remember exactly what they required except the UPC from the box, because mine is cut out.) I got Blazing Lazers. I had played it on a big screen TV in an electronics shop in the mall (I think it was a MacDuff's or something like that.) I also got The Legendary Axe with it. (Funny story on that, my dad and step-mom got me the system and told my mom. She decided to get me a game to go with it, but wanted to make sure it was a game I would like, so she told me what they were getting me and asked me what game I wanted. She told me I had to act surprised. lol) Anyway, that was the start of it, the system, two games, and another in the mail.

 

I later acquired a few games from rental places as they dropped the TG from their rental offers and some more things later on from pawn shops, ebay, TurboZone direct, and other sources. I still don't have a lot by collectors standards (16 games, turbo tap, turbo stick, extra controller, and system) but I'm proud of my little pile of black and orange.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I've had my Turbo since the early 90's. Not sure of the exact year, but I got it for Christmas while still in High School, so it must have been before '93.

Welcome to the club. Nice to see someone who owned one back in the day! Most of us got here late to the party!

[+cvga]

My brother bought a TurboGrafx in the Summer of 1990. I had never heard of it before he bought one. However, I loved it and got one for myself shortly after. We really enjoyed Galaga 90, Devil's Crush, Military Madness, Bonk's Adventure, Final Lap Twin, Neutopia, The Legendary Axe, Splatterhouse, and others. There was a video store nearby that used to rent games. I had a couple of friends visiting so we were looking for a multi-player game. I forget what we wanted to rent but I remember it being unavailable so we rented Bomberman instead. We were instantly hooked! One of my friends bought a Turbo just to play Bomberman. He used to bring his Turbo over and we would get 10 people together to play 5 player battles on both of our machines simultaneously. Great fun!

 

By then I was out of school and had a great job with no kids. I bought the CD unit primarily to play Y's Book but I also purchased tons of other games. I have most of the collection boxed (I don't have Magical Chase unfortunately). Still love the Turbo.

[Eltigro]

I remember being in the back seat of my parent's car when we were on the way somewhere. I had just purchased another gaming magazine (EGM maybe?) and it had a breakdown/review/preview/whatever of the Genesis and the TurboGrafx. I remember looking through all of the games and then nearly shitting myself when I saw "JJ & Jeff".

Why? Well, because my nickname as a child was J.J. (from James Jr.) and my best friend since kindergarten is named Jeff. It was a game made for us! lol

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

I first played the Turbo Grafx 16 back in 1991 when I was 10. A couple friends of mine had them when I was living in Tacoma, WA at the time. I had an Atari 2600 and an NES in '91. I had a slumber party at my house then and the first games I played then were. Splatterhouse, Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge, Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, and Blazing Lasers. My friend brought his console and the mentioned games over. I had a blast playing Bonk. As he was supposedly the mascot for the system like Mario for Nintendo and Sonic for Sega. I really was addictive to the Bonk franchise. Beautiful graphics, smooth controls, warp ahead a level if you pick up enough smiley faces, and fun bonus rounds. Splatterhouse is another as well. Never heard of or played the arcade at the time. I was amazed with the fluid animation and the gore when whacking the enemies with a 2x4. I literally enjoyed the heck out of that system. And years have passed by and I completely forgot all about it until 2004. I was addicted to the Genesis, SNES, Playstation, Saturn, N64, Dreamcast, and PS2. I finally purchased one on ebay. And got a ton of games for it. I now have Pac-Land, Keith Courage, Blazing Lasers, Splatterhouse, All 3 Bonk's including the rare third one, and many more. It seemed like a system that came and went so fast to me. J.J. and Jeff is one game I cried my head off from laughing so hard.

[Rick Dangerous]

I remember being in the back seat of my parent's car when we were on the way somewhere. I had just purchased another gaming magazine (EGM maybe?) and it had a breakdown/review/preview/whatever of the Genesis and the TurboGrafx.

 

Would be fun to see that article now! If anyone ever comes across it definitely give it a scan and upload! I feel like the TG-16 is a lot closer to the Genesis performance wise than people give it credit for...

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Would be fun to see that article now! If anyone ever comes across it definitely give it a scan and upload! I feel like the TG-16 is a lot closer to the Genesis performance wise than people give it credit for...

It's basically an NES on steroids with loads more RAM, better sound, loads more sprites, loads more colors, and a 4x overclock...

 

6502 @7.16Mhz

 

The only thing the Genny/MD can do the TG-16 can't is multilayer sprites/parallax scrolling. 8)

[Gredler]

 

Would be fun to see that article now! If anyone ever comes across it definitely give it a scan and upload! I feel like the TG-16 is a lot closer to the Genesis performance wise than people give it credit for...

 

When playing Space Harrier, Fantasy Zone, and Parasol Stars I often think that it is a 16 bit system. It runs so smooth with so much going on, the magic this system weaves given its hardware is the main draw for me at this point. I feel like everything that is good on the system runs so smoothly and has such large spriites, hard to believe it's less powerful than the Genesis.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

When playing Space Harrier, Fantasy Zone, and Parasol Stars I often think that it is a 16 bit system. It runs so smooth with so much going on, the magic this system weaves given its hardware is the main draw for me at this point. I feel like everything that is good on the system runs so smoothly and has such large spriites, hard to believe it's less powerful than the Genesis.

Clock speed makes a huge difference. For instance, the SNES is on par with the Genesis for the most part but the Turbo clocks twice as high as the SNES with similar CPU architecture, albeit half the bits. Genesis is clocked at a high speed (I forget off the top of my head) but the 68k or whatever processor it uses takes longer to execute commands.

[Gredler]

Last night I was playing Street Fighter 2 CE on my TG-16 for the first time, and was blown away. I really expected a down-port, but I had a hard time garnering negative points while comparing it to the the SNES version I am so used to. I really liked the color pallet, there was very little abnormal slowdown (especially when compared to the SNES version,) and the controls were responsive albeit awkward with a 2 button controllers; I have a 6 button Hori Fighting Commander on the way, and can't wait to try it out with a proper controller. I think this is a great game to exemplify what can be done with the system. With the games I had for the TG-16 at the time (Bonks, Keith Courage, Tailspin LOL etc), I would never have thought the system could put out this kind of game. I would say we got the short end of the stick here in the US, but I didn't even flex the power of the US library back then. I've recently been playing a lot of Blazing Lazers... wow, what a game. Blazing Lazers would've blown my young mind, so I'm not sure if I should be regretful or thankful that my parents kept my library full of simpler games like Pac-Land and Parasol Stars hahaha

[CGQuarterly]

I was digging through old Usenet posts, doing research for my next show, when I found a post about the TG-16 from October of 1989 from our dear leader, Albert.

 

 

 

My impression of the Genesis vs. TurboGrafix is that the TurboGrafix has

superior sound and grafix (oops, I meant graphics).. The graphics were
certainly better, no doubt about that. It's hard to compare the sound
though when all you can hear is the game that comes with the system. Oh
yea, the TurboGrafix I saw had the TurboBooster hooked up to it..

Also, the TurboGrafix carts are about $10 cheaper than the Genesis carts..

__________________________________________________________________________
Albert Yarusso | ajy2208@ritvax.bitnet
Rochester Institute of Tech. | {rutgers, ames}!rochester!ritcv!ajy2208
Computer Science | ajy...@ritcv.cs.rit.edu

[Andromeda Stardust]

I was digging through old Usenet posts, doing research for my next show, when I found a post about the TG-16 from October of 1989 from our dear leader, Albert.

 

 

Also, the TurboGrafix carts are about $10 cheaper than the Genesis carts..

If only the same were true today. I can buy Genesis games at $3.95 all day long, but Turbografx are unobtainium.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I just finished my "Poor Man's" AV mod. Just follow this pinout and plug the wire headers into the appropriate pins.

http://www.cgquarterly.com/articles/tg16_cable.htm

 

I used a 4x RCA breakout from Radio Shack, $3.99, and whittled out one of the RCA plugs. The color coded wires with headers still attached were left over scrap from building the wire harness for my Porta Pi arcade.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/237987-mame-options-for-pacman/

I used two grounds, the brown wire next to R for the audio GND and the black wire next to V for the video GND, and created twisted pairs (or triplets) to minimize interference. Wires were soldered directly to the back of the RCA plate and used hot glue to hold them in place to prevent breakage from straining the fragile wires.

 

 

Obviously this won't work with a CD module or other peripheral attached. And before anyone asks, yes, that's my hand made 6-in-1 "Frankendapter" powering the Turbo, a RadioShack regulated 9V 850mA power supply (10V no load) with positive tips for Atari 2600 (hacked stereo phono cable) and SNES (inverted barrel connector), and a standard negative tip barrel connector compatible with the NES, Famicom, Genesis, and TurboGrafx.

Edited June 3, 2015 by stardust4ever

[CGQuarterly]

I just finished my "Poor Man's" AV mod. Just follow this pinout and plug the wire headers into the appropriate pins.

http://www.cgquarterly.com/articles/tg16_cable.htm

 

I used a 4x RCA breakout from Radio Shack, $3.99, and whittled out one of the RCA plugs. The color coded wires with headers still attached were left over scrap from building the wire harness for my Porta Pi arcade.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/237987-mame-options-for-pacman/

I used two grounds, the brown wire next to R for the audio GND and the black wire next to V for the video GND, and created twisted pairs (or triplets) to minimize interference. Wires were soldered directly to the back of the RCA plate and used hot glue to hold them in place to prevent breakage from straining the fragile wires.

 

Poor Man's AV Mod.jpg

Air Zonk.jpg

 

Obviously this won't work with a CD module or other peripheral attached. And before anyone asks, yes, that's my hand made 6-in-1 "Frankendapter" powering the Turbo, a RadioShack regulated 9V 850mA power supply (10V no load) with positive tips for Atari 2600 (hacked stereo phono cable) and SNES (inverted barrel connector), and a standard negative tip barrel connector compatible with the NES, Famicom, Genesis, and TurboGrafx.

 

Hey, that's my website!

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Hey, that's my website!

Thank you for posting this helpful info!

 

Now somebody just needs to create a tidy breakout PCB with headers on one side and RCA jacks on the other that just plugs on the back for a clean but functional look.

Edited June 3, 2015 by stardust4ever

[mickcris]

this is supposed to be coming out soon:

http://www.db-elec.com/home/News/dbgrafxboosterttptestedandfullyoperational

[Rick Dangerous]

this is supposed to be coming out soon:

http://www.db-elec.com/home/News/dbgrafxboosterttptestedandfullyoperational

 

Very nice..if only they could integrate the save feature. That would be epic. Also too bad it needs a costly cable to work, but what RGB system doesn't? I'm thinking of getting a multiscart input to then send one scart to my scart to HDMI converter. As if behind my TV stand wasn't enough of a rats nest of cables already....