http://www.megalextoria.com/wordpress/index.php/2017/07/07/turbografx-16-commercial/
The TurboGrafx-16 is one of the more underrated video game consoles. It was released around the same time as the Sega Genesis and had roughly the same capabilities. Like the Genesis, a CD add-on was developed for the TurboGrafx-16. The TurboGrafx-16 took it one step further and later released an enhanced all-in-one unit called the Turbo Duo and on the whole had far better CD software than the Genesis/Sega CD did. There was even a portable TurboGrafx-16 called the Turbo Express. Technically impressive but not all games were reasonable on the small screen and battery life was not so great.
The real killer as far as the TurboGrafx-16 is concerned is the same as all systems who die a premature death. Lack of software. While there were many impressive titles available in Japan and the console was very successful there, the same can not be said of U.S. releases. Far fewere games were released and the Japanese and U.S. divisions did not work well together.
The above commercial is dated 1991 but must have come out before the Duo was announced later in the year because it isn't featured. However, you do get glimpses of the TurboGrafx-16, Turbo CD and Turbo Express as well as some of the games.
I got a TG16 for Christmas in 1990, primarily because I so badly wanted to play Splatterhouse. I have a lot of great memories of that system. Its a shame that it never got the respect it deserved, but I don't think they understood how to properly market the machine in the US. Only a fraction of the PC Engine library was localized, the boxart for nearly every game is embarassingly awful and distribution was poor.
That being said, they launched the first CD-ROM attachment for a home console and released many games that have become classics in the retro scene, like Ninja Spirit, Bonk's Adventure, Blazing Laser, Legendary Axe and Devil's Crush, to name a few.
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I don't think distribution was all that bad. The TurboGrafx-16 and its games were readily available at places like Toys R Us for example. Now by the time the Duo came along it was probably a different story. At a time when system mascot's, franchises and arcade conversions were a big deal, NEC just wasn't very good at that. They finally got a Mascot of sorts with Bonk but there were few popular franchises or popular arcade game conversions. That and a slow trickle of titles in general is really what killed it.
The marketing was ok in terms of advertising (though there wasn't enough of it) but better packaging could have helped. The game packaging reminded me somewhat of old Atari 2600/7800 game packaging. Only with less interesting art.
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It was available in specialty stores, but not so much in the big boxes. In the 90's, without being widely available in Walmart, Kmart, Target and Sears, a console was really being held back.
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Good point about retail location. I tried to think back but could not remember ever seeing Turbo Grafx-16/Turbo Duo in Walmart or Target - the two largest retailers in the world. That certainly did not help them sell any consoles. Course, Walmart product acquisition executives are often named in lists of "most powerful people in gaming". There is a reason for that - if they don't agree to support your product you are in for an uphill battle.
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NEC sucked at print advertising and their television ads were not great. I remember their montage ads on television - they pushed China Warrior hard yet ignored Splatterhouse and didn't show much of Legendary Axe I or II as the ads went on.
The box art was truly horrible, which I am sure didn't help sell any games.
NEC had a strong opening with their titles but they lost their way quick thanks to not being able to control what they released here.
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The Turbo line (Turbo Grafx-16, Turbo Duo, and Turbo Express) died in North America due to lack of support from the Japanese headquarters. There are many instances of employees of the North American branch back then detailing the headquarters dictating what games could be released here with no input from the local office. This led to some rather obscure choices - Chew Man Fu (I liked it but bought it at discount YEARS later rather than new), Bravoman, JJ and Jeff, Yo' Bro, etc.
This was after such a great starting lineup including early releases like Legendary Axe, Dragon Spirit, Vigilante, Blazing Lazers, Dungeon Explorer, etc.
Just imagine if NEC USA was allowed to bring over the Konami games (Salamander, Gradius I & II, Castlevania, Snatcher, etc) and even Hudson Soft had a ton of games in Japan for the NEC machine that never made it here.
The lack of software was not because NEC USA was slow or anything, they simply had no control over what they were allowed to bring over. This situation was so bad that my local Electronics Boutique featured more imports for the CD-ROM and HuCards than they did localized games.
It was a sad affair because the TG-16 was a quite good console for the period. Sure, as time went on it was obviously underpowered. I believe they should have brought over the Super Grafx myself and just did their best to eat the higher price tag to stay competitive.
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If I remember right, Nintendo was strong-arming game publishers and threatening them that if they published games on any other consoles, Nintendo wouldn't give them approval. This eventually got settled in the courts, but you can see with the Genesis there were many publishers that supported it that were not on the SNES (Renovation, Razorsoft, Psygnosis, etc.) and vice versa. NEC never stood a chance.
They even had a solid port of Street Fighter II on the PC Engine that would have benefited the TG16 dramatically, but it couldn't get released in the US. I can't believe they got it running on the TG16 and fit it on a Hu-card. And Castlevania Rondo of Blood would have been a system seller, but it never left Japan either.
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Arcade games were off the table as far as the agreements with Nintendo. Capcom used this to license out Ghouls 'n Ghosts to Sega for the Genesis. The agreements Nintendo had were pretty air tight in that the developer could not take a title released on the Nintendo platforms (at the time NES and Gameboy, later SNES to an extent) before a certain time period passed (I have heard it was at least nine months to years, probably depending on licensee).
I understand that in Japan things were different, that is why there were so many third parties for the NEC line of consoles, many of which were Nintendo licensees also.
I could have sworn that I read somewhere Capcom would not license NEC USA Street Fighter II because they didn't want to mess with sales on Genesis/SNES which were much bigger markets. Street Fighter II would easily have fallen outside the licensee situation involving Nintendo as it was an arcade license and Capcom didn't develop it. Same for Gradius, Salamander, etc.
Castlevania would have been fine too if NEC could have swung a release as it was not the NES game, it was a wholly new game.
Many of the companies you mentioned (Razorsoft, Psygnosis, etc) all supported the Genesis for various reasons. I believe Psygnosis was a fan of the hardware (they were big on the Commodore Amiga line of computers that shared similar hardware architecture while the NES/SNES were completely new). Early on, it just makes sense to support the platform that is easiest to make games for, proven by Psygnosis later supporting the Super Nintendo with games also.
Razorsoft, well, just look at their games and you can see why they supported Genesis over SNES. Nintendo would have required so many edits to Razorsoft releases (Death Duel anyone?).
I agree, it is amazing what the programmers were able to accomplish on the Turbo Grafx-16/PC-Engine when they ported Street Fighter II over. That was just stupifyingly cool.
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Street Fighter II was impressive but the TurboGrafx-16 as a whole wasn't really that underpowered when compared to the SNES and Genesis. Each had their own advantages. While the TG-16 had only an 8-bit processor (basically a supercharged 6502 running at 7+ MHz) it had a 16-bit graphics processor. And while the SNES CPU was a 16-bit version of the 6502, it ran at a much lower clock speed. And while the Genesis had less sophisticated graphics hardware, it had a much more powerful CPU in the 68000.
One big advantage that the SNES and Genesis had was that game developers often added hardware upgrades to the game cartridges themselves (additional processors, memory, etc.). This was something that simply couldn't be done on the TurboGrafx-16 with the Hu-Card format.
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I see your points about the various consoles. The problem is that developers had no reason to make the TG-16 hum like they did with the SNES as time went on.
Technically, developers could have added chips to the TG-16 HuCards. For instance in the area that is not inserted into the console, that could be made "fatter" to accommodate add-on chips. Again, no incentive to do this as the console was floundering at best in the United States.
Plus, it was obvious that NEC/TTI's focus was that CD-ROM drive which never really penetrated the already small market share the console had.
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