Can we save the Turbo-Grafix 16?

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's iconTamagotchiTamaHero24]

It’s 1989. We as a forum are now the launch team behind the international version of the PC-Engine. Our goal is not to totally dominate the market necessarily, but to at least make this system work and make the 16 bit era have a three way market between us, SEGA, and Nintendo in all regions.

What would you do to make this happen? Be realistic: we don’t have infinite money. So, we’ll have to be clever and sly to make this work.



(It shouldn’t be hard to do better than the original performance of the system though…)

 

[aquova]

I think the biggest thing would be not to completely redesign the thing for the overseas market. Just take the PC Engine, give it a black chassis, and release it as is. That way you aren't having to create two distinct versions of every peripheral you plan on releasing.

Speaking of which, skip most of the accessories. The base PC Engine and later PC Engine CD are probably fine. Maybe the Turbo Duo and Turbo Express if you're feeling fancy. I also personally think "TurboGrafx-16" is a pretty awful name. Perhaps just "Turbo Engine" if you really want to change it for the overseas market.

After that, it's really just up to games. I think they really needed a flashy platformer mascot whose games could rival Super Mario World and Sonic 3. Bonk I'm afraid didn't quite catch the hearts and minds of the world. They had a good shmup library, but they needed some other big 3rd party support as well.

 

[DG!]

Brother the starting price $199 in 1989
we are COOKED.

On that note; If there's any place to start is that, the price of the PC Engine was ludicrous, which applies to all of its add-ons too. You could pick up an NES around 80 bucks at that point



Problem with selling it at a lower price point is that you're ultimately selling the system at a bigger loss than if you priced it at 199$
This can be offset by making back the earnings through game sales but then we have to think about how to make production of HuCards cheaper and how to bring more developers to the platform.

 

[Eclipse14]

Not having your initial method of localization being literally the CEO's daughter, who didn't have any idea about what she was looking and pointing at in the first place.

This is a true story, btw.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's iconTamagotchiTamaHero24]

Brother the starting price $199 in 1989
we are COOKED.

On that note; If there's any place to start is that, the price of the PC Engine was ludicrous, which applies to all of its add-ons too. You could pick up an NES around 80 bucks at that point

View attachment 71768

Problem with selling it at a lower price point is that you're ultimately selling the system at a bigger loss than if you priced it at 199$
This can be offset by making back the earnings through game sales but then we have to think about how to make production of HuCards cheaper and how to bring more developers to the platform.

I think $150 would be fine? We need to make sure we do what SEGA ended up doing: making it clear we are a next generation machine and explaining WITHOUT WORDS why that matters for gaming. You need to just communicate to people why “oh, that thing is awesome. It’s got games that are crazy good and they look super cool!”

Post automatically merged: Today at 12:14 AM

Not having your initial method of localization being literally the CEO's daughter, who didn't have any idea about what she was looking and pointing at in the first place.

This is a true story, btw.

Insane. Explains a lot.

 

[aquova]

Brother the starting price $199 in 1989
we are COOKED.

I disagree. The SNES was also $199, the Genesis $189. Pricing it at $199 was right in line with the competition.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's iconTamagotchiTamaHero24]

Here’s an angle for later in the system’s life:

I think we double down on Splatterhouse. I think, later in the system’s life, we keep our western foothold with Splatterhouse. That needs to be at the forefront of our console, taking the “mature games” crown away from SEGA before they even get the chance to grab it in the first place.

 

[TruxtonTatsujin]

do what a lot of companies where to afraid to do when bring their stuff overseas. Be unapologetically Japanese. The US branch overlooked some of the best games on the console because they where seen as "too Japanese". I don't know why it was such a concern of so many companies, even back then there where people in the west that enjoyed that aesthetic, and the number of them was only increasing as the decade progressed. If they would have just marketed to that audience they would have been set.

Also Turbografx-16 is a shit name. I understand why they didn't what to use the "PC" as that was associated with computers over here. Maybe something like "NEC Engine" would do.

 

[aquova]

It would've been interesting too if they somehow made it enticing for devs to port games from PC-98 to the PC Engine. Maybe create some sort of mouse peripheral to encourage it.

 

[Eclipse14]

There's also another thing that slipped past me at the moment.
NEC actually had a chance to make Mortal Kombat a Turbografx exclusive instead of it going multiplatform. However, somewhere in the discussions, they turned it down. The reason?

They thought people were getting tired of fighting games. This is during the fighting game craze, and Mortal Kombat was getting a massive amount of attention since it hit arcades.

NEC was about as incompetent as Microsoft is today. Some things just never change.

 

[Daughter of Janus]

(Serious):
Firstly, as stated, don't make two versions. Different colors if you want, white and black but design-wise, they should be absolutely the same. Since the system is as old as it is, it would be far easier to have it be a SoC with a couple of gigs of storage, as flash storage is stupidly cheap now.

Secondly, reuse the original molds for the system. No overhead, no paying to have it redesigned. Use whichever mold you want, but stick with the original. I myself hate mini consoles, and like with the NES Mini, I would have honestly preferred a 1:1 scale re-release of the NES, not something that looks like it belongs in a diorama.

Have it come with/use wired and wireless controllers simple Bluetooth, so you can use any controller you want and/or the ones it comes with. Again, using the original molds, so no additional cost there.

No Ethernet port is needed. Just have a cheap Wi-Fi chip, those are literally a dime a dozen and most PCB SoC boards have the slots anyway.

Regarding the games: again, flash storage is cheap. If you want to do physical releases, fine. If not, the card slot is unnecessary and can just be there for aesthetic purposes, like inserting a fake game card.

For the UI, take a page from the NES Mini, it was well designed. Also, include a service to download games for the system of course, not a free service, just buy the game, and that’s it. No monthly fees or subscriptions. The entire library probably only takes up 5-10 megabytes tops.

Use USB-C for power. A cheap knockoff smartwatch could probably run this thing, so it doesn’t need tons of power.

As for CD games, again emulation, no need for the CD addon aside from aesthetics, unless you want to do physical re-releases of the games

Lastly, allow ROMs to be loaded onto it from the start. You know people are going to mod/jailbreak the thing within a month, just let people do it.

Doing this without the extras, like the card reader, disc drive, and additional parts and electronics for this, a $50-70 price tag would far outweigh the production cost

 

[Clippy]

For what it's worth: Please for the love of all that is good in this world DO NOT FORCE PEOPLE TO BUY A PERIPHERAL JUST SO THEY CAN PLAY WITH A FRIEND.

 

[DG!]

I disagree. The SNES was also $199, the Genesis $189. Pricing it at $199 was right in line with the competition.

True that actually. Forgot that little bit frankly, my bad

Also after digging up some old promotional material; some retailers did axe the price around '92, not all of em of course but it is an interesting thing to note.
Maybe a good promotional campaign and more eye catching software really would have pushed some more units.

That CD add on is still too god damm expensive tho.

 

[TruxtonTatsujin]

For what it's worth: Please for the love of all that is good in this world DO NOT FORCE PEOPLE TO BUY A PERIPHERAL JUST SO THEY CAN PLAY WITH A FRIEND.

there's quite a few ports to the PC Engine that excluded multiplayer because they knew most didn't own the multi tap. This could have been something the overseas branched fix considering how much bigger the base Turbografx is.

That CD add on is still too god damm expensive tho.

Was still pretty new technology, not much they could do. Blu-ray drives used to be crazy expensive when they first came out. Just a result of being the first home console with a CD drive. It's the reason the CD drive was split off as an add-on. The base unit was the entry point, with them eventually wanting you to get the CD unit. CD drive was released roughly a year after in Japan.

 

[DG!]

Was still pretty new technology, not much they could do.

The price of new technologies. Yeah, I understand that not much could be done.
It still stings a little

 

[PhaseJump]

Launch with the same design as PC Engine. Release TG16 console in fall of 88, throw in The Legendary Axe and Galaga 88, have 2 controller ports onboard the console.

Push on 89's lineup, making sure they are localized for the holiday. Big advertising on Blazing Lasers, Dragon Spirit, Bonk, R-Type, Military Madness, Neutopia, get Shubibinman 1 localized. (This only happened recently. The translated rom can be extracted from Cyber Citizen Shockman 1)

For 90 you push the CD Rom and Ys Book 1 and 2, Bonk's Revenge, Super Star Soldier, and Tiger Road.

If the Japanese economy being in the toilet hasn't killed NEC while all of this is hypothetically going down, have them sit down to wine and dine developers like Enix and Capcom, pushing that CD Rom devkit.

 

[aquova]

Launch with the same design as PC Engine. Release TG16 console in fall of 88, throw in The Legendary Axe and Galaga 88, have 2 controller ports onboard the console.

Push on 89's lineup, making sure they are localized for the holiday. Big advertising on Blazing Lasers, Dragon Spirit, Bonk, R-Type, Military Madness, Neutopia, get Shubibinman 1 localized. (This only happened recently. The translated rom can be extracted from Cyber Citizen Shockman 1)

For 90 you push the CD Rom and Ys Book 1 and 2, Bonk's Revenge, Super Star Soldier, and Tiger Road.

If the Japanese economy being in the toilet hasn't killed NEC while all of this is hypothetically going down, have them sit down to wine and dine developers like Enix and Capcom, pushing that CD Rom devkit.

Then, call up Sony and ask them if they want to cooperate on an "NEC PlayStation" before Nintendo gets the chance

 

[UnDubious]

There's also another thing that slipped past me at the moment.
NEC actually had a chance to make Mortal Kombat a Turbografx exclusive instead of it going multiplatform. However, somewhere in the discussions, they turned it down. The reason?

They thought people were getting tired of fighting games. This is during the fighting game craze, and Mortal Kombat was getting a massive amount of attention since it hit arcades.

NEC was about as incompetent as Microsoft is today. Some things just never change.

Have you played the fighting games on Turbografx? The console can hardly handle them unless you're using a Duo with the last system card or whatever, and even then they're underwhelming. Not an area in which it could really compete with the Genesis and SNES. Also Mortal Kombat came out in the arcades in 1992, I really doubt NEC could have secured that exclusivity at that point in time, whether or not the discussions really took place. Midway couldn't have been that stupid. Sonic was out and so was the SNES by then, it was already over for the TG-16 in the West, and even in Japan the plain PCE was about to get phased out for the CD/Duo (look at new games release - by 1993 they were hardly releasing new HuCARDs, while CD games exploded).