Games That Push The Limits of The TurboGrafx/PC-Engine
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 มิ.ย. 2024
- The TurboGrafx-16, The PC Engine, I don't know what to call it, but it had some amazing games. With the release of the new mini console on the horizon I take a look at some of the games that took it to the limit!
Music:
Bad Snacks
/ @badsnacks - เกม
There was something about the TG16 sound chip that made its music so distinctive and memorable. The Bloody Wolf and Dungeon Explorer soundtracks are absolute jams.
Dungeon Explorer ?
i like this Gauntlet clone but the difficulty is insane.
can't manage to level up once.
The Turbo could do high-frequency sounds the Genesis couldnt. Compare the sound of the corner-pocket launchers in Devils Crush with Dragons Fury on Genesis.
The Genesis has a dull sound effect that sucks compared to the Turbo
@@worsethanhitlerpt.2539 And the MD had horrible stereo. You could put a sound left, right or left and right. The PCE had 16 step placement from L to R. Many awesome soundtracks: Neutopia II, Dragon Spirit, After Burner, Jackie Chan, Kyukyoku Tiger, Bomberman 94, Cross WIber, Final Soldier, Space Harrier
I picked up a Turbo Grafx 16 when it went on clearance at Toys 'R Us back in the day. It was a fun system, and I loved the novelty of the Hu-cards. I mainly played R-Type. I always thought the TG16 had a great color palette!
I think gnensis had better resolution and Turbografx had more colors on screen.
Wow how much did you pay?
It did. It actually passed the SNES with max colors on screen, where Sega Genesis has 64, SNES had 256, and the TG16 had a whipping 512 colors on screen.
@@worsethanhitlerpt.2539 That was true, even surpassed the SNES with 512 colors on screen.
@@MaxOakland I think I paid $30 or $40 at the time, and games were like $6 - $10
I remember being a kid and cutting school and heading over to my friend's house to play this game system. Left a lot of memories I really loved it Keith courage in Alpha zones with one of my favorite game along with blazing lazer's.
The main power of the PC Engine is believe or not its "8bit CPU".
Unless your game needs a lot of 16bit precision math, the 6502 CPU is faster than the 68000 or Z80 per clock cycle, having a minimum of 2 cycles per instruction, while the other two have a minimum of 4 cycles per instruction.
And with this CPU running at blazing fast 7.1Mhz, it runs 8bit stuff really, really fast, and sprite position setup is a pure 8bit math on the 256x224 screen resolution of the PC Engine, so it is very darn good at positioning a bunch of sprites at solid 60 FPS.
It also has a 16 bit vpu
@@brianhedley5139 While it is marketing wise 16bit, there's nothing actually 16bit there.
The tiles use 4 bits per color and the palette use 9bits on a 333 RGB scheme.
But that puts it on par with the sega genesis in total number of colors, that is a "16bit system".
But it blows the genesis out of water in terms of total number of colors per screen, because it has 16 palettes of 16 colors each, while the genesis only have 4 palettes of 16 colors.
@@dan_loup I guess we have Hudson and NEC to thank for it then
Final sprite position may be 8-bit, but in the whole mix of things that doesn't matter too much, since most objects will have many 16- bit fixed point variables.
@@big_b_radical3985 Objects is the key word here.
A game object will generally be made of several sprites, so you only need to do the 16bit fixed point math once, then setup the sprites with 8bit offsets of the final result of the fixed point math.
And in many genres of games and cases, you can get away with just 8bit coordinates, such as space shooters and bullets in general.
Capcom did an amazing job in the early/mid 90's at their home ports of Street Fighter II
I remember when the SNES came out and I couldn't believe how close to the arcade they got despite being on a 16 console, the TG16 one was no exception either, they didn't skimp on it
I was impressed with the Turbo version of Street Fighter. The Turbo has 512 colors like Genesis but the Turbo looks closer to SNES many times.
I loved the reference "... it was BIG IN JAPAN.... " .. good one !
:-)
I remember when I was a kid, my dad used to play Blazing Lasers all the time, but he could never get past the 4th stage.
After _months_ of watching him play, I gave it a shot.
I got to stage 7 on the first try. I'm not sure he ever forgave me for that, lol.
buuuuuuulllshiiiiitt!
@@craigcotter7476 And yet, true.
@@edale2 And somehow, not
@@patsfan4life I don't know what's so hard to believe about it.
I played all sorts of video games all the time, just not that particular one.
He played video games rarely, and only 2 or 3 of them.
Is it _that_ hard to believe I was able to get further than him after seeing ahead of time what was coming in the first few stages?
@@patsfan4life And as to the whole "never forgave me for it" thing, this was the same man who refused to ever play a game of chess with me again after I beat him once when I was 7.
He didn't take losing competitions well.
bithead1000 loves this system
I do too
Hibris was one of the first titles to introduce me to Amiga. I couldn't believe that an arcade worthy title like this could be enjoyed from home. Nevertheless, I do think the PC Engine was a very capable and heavily underrated console in North America. It could compete with Genesis, yet was originally created to compete with the NES.
U had an Amiga in the states? Wow
@@j0nnyism I live in Canada, but yes I started with an Amiga 500 in 1988 and then a 1200 in 1992. The Amiga 500's were only sold in Kmart back in the day.
All of this series across the consoles is amazing, thanks for your hard work putting these together.
The Turbo had a good Street Fighter 2 the colors look almost like SNES. Lack of scrolls is weak though
Had one growing up, loved every game i got.. legendary axe, blazing lazers, alien crush, tv sports football were all awesome!
Somehow I've never noticed that the TGX-16 is just a PC-Engine with a tumor on the left side of it.
sorry to be so off topic but does anybody know of a method to get back into an Instagram account?
I was dumb forgot the password. I would appreciate any tricks you can offer me!
@Maddox Zakai instablaster =)
The fact that the CPU had an 8-bit word size doesn't make the system 8-bit as many keep saying. The graphics are clearly comparable to the Mega Drive, it's definitely a 16-bit system in practice.
Amazing review again! Thanks!
I really enjoy your videos. Glad I found and subscribed!
Street Fighter II on PC Engine is a fabulous port...... very playable
1987!? That's some powerful tech!
Love these system pushing to the limits videos
NEC didn’t have a Kalinske or Phillips to coordinate the marketing strategy for this thing. Damn shame given how much potential it had, especially the CD add-on.
Art of fighting on the Neville does its scaling in a quite interesting way. It's apparently done by changing the resolution on the fly as well as with some horizontal interrupt magic.
Having a bit of a binge to catch up with your excellent videos. My preferred name for the console is the Turbo PC graphics engine.
Turbo Graphx was an underrated system and I cannot wait for the mini to come out
Did that happen?
I love the color pallet of the TG16. The games are always very bright and colorful. Not quite as good as the SNES but better than the Genesis. I still can't understand why it didn't do well outside of Japan. The shoot em ups were the very best in the genre. Bonk was just as fun as Mario or Sonic. Rondo of Blood was the very best of Castlevania until Symphony of the Night.
Bad marketing and management played a big part, but truth is, no matter how strong its shoot em up library is, the console relied too heavily on them. Genesis, while also having a strong shoot em up library, also had a strong platformer, racing, fighting, puzzle, and sports library, and a decent RPG one as well. Super Nintendo had a strong platforming, racing, fighting, RPG, puzzle, and a decent shooter library. Also, it had all the heavy hitter first party titles, from Mario and Zelda, to Donkey Kong and Yoshi, to Metroid and Star Fox, to F-Zero and Mario Kart. And also, both the Genesis and Super Nintendo had MUCH stronger third party support than the Turbo.
The Turbo had a strong library of quality titles, but you needed to play them to realize that, where the Super and Genesis, you could just watch watch a commercial or look at the back of the game's box and know you were in for some fun.
OH! And speaking of box, so much of the Turbo's American box art was trash. Like NES-era Capcom trash.
Sega and Nintendo of America did a lot more to make their systems successful in the US. The TurboGrafx team in the US wasn't as successful. Software titles like Mario 2 and Sonic were the result of strong US leadership making sure they had the right software for their audiences.
Yeah, and there's something about their use of dithering and the Anime style that make their games look so cool.
actually better than snes snes games used various color counts turbo used 512 colors at once in every game
Love these old games!
that was a really cool video ! keep em coming :)
Thanks!
I can recall seeing pc engine games and the 16-bit graphics and being amazed. Really sad that that it was never officially released, I could have gotten an import but didn't wanna risk it, and went with the Megadrive and ultimately the Snes
Been watching your channel for a while, first one being nes games that pushed the limits. For some reason, I love these videos. I've now subscribed. Well done
Thanks for watching and thanks for the sub!
@@Sharopolis no worries mate. I really enjoy your videos. First one I watched was NES games that pushed the limit. Excellent stuff and quite surprising what they were getting out of it.
Also, as an Australian, commodore 64 and amiga were huge here too. Great memories. Here's hoping your channel continues to grow. You deserve it!
Gradius II and Fatal Fury 2 were pretty stellar ports on PCE.
Great show!
I remember lusting after the TG16 when i was a kid. I eventually did get it and Bonk and Rondo of Blood , sooooooooooo good =)
You are the David Attenborough of video game commentary
Thanks!
Thanks!
Game commentary is annoying for me. I didnt watch this video to the end because of it and useless background music. Sometimes less is better.
My friend had a turbo graphics and I had a genesis we used to trade our console and whole collection for weeks on and weeks off so I was fortunate enough to experience the system when it came out. I gotta say my two favorite games where Ninja Spirit, and Legendary Axe 2
Great vids.
That last game looks amazing
This is such a good channel. Always enjoy these videos - like a good sunday lunch. :) What about sharopolis; games that pushed the limits of the mattel aquarius ...... lol. No seriously - my favourite 8 bit is the vic 20. I'm sure you have plenty in store.
A great system with a lot of incredible games, it is a shame only the lack of Mortal Kombat games....
Don’t know if this will come off as a compliment or an insult but you sir are the David Attenborough of video game content. Could listen to you talk about this stuff for days.
"You might be tented to write this one off as another impenetrable Japanese mahou shojo (?) manga thing but..."
Hey ! I like those !
Sapphire looks like a Saturn game. Truly impressive
Overlapping bg layers on the PC Engine are always done using sprites.
There are some beautiful JRPG's that really pushed the system but rarely ever get mentioned as they are in Japanese.
Seiya Monogatari (Anearth Fantasy Stories) was a visually stunning RPG with some of the best and most detailed tilework on the system. The Legend of Xanadu I and II were also graphical masterpieces and Gulliver Boy had video cutscenes that are only seen in a handful of CD games. Tengai Makyou II Manjimaru is a massive RPG with stunning cutscenes and more audio dialogue than any other title - when it was released it was the biggest RPG made and the best selling game for the console in Japan.
Exile was one of my favorite games on the TGCD
The SFII port is fantastic on the PC Engine. Even playable with 2 buttons. US Gold and the Amiga port could have learned a thing or two.
SFII was a first party title.
Amazing what they got from the pc engjne/turbo grafx. Bought their mini, having to order it from the us and costing me close to a switch lite when you factor in exchange rates and shipping. I haven't regretted it at all.
Didn't want coregrafx mini?
Love the channel my friend! Glad I stumbled onto it 🙂
I'm surprised there was no mention of Lords of Thunder or Time Cruise.
100% agreed
I know that Lords of Thunder is on PC Engine CD that might explain that
@@samuelthehobo4441 I thought CD games were open since Dracula X (or rather Rondo of Blood) is on the list.
@@andsoooo yeah true
I recall the PC Engine as import sales in the magazines of the time, it always looked amazing at a time when 16-bit were available officially. Then the SNES finally arrived and the jealousy wore off. But I still recall Batman on the PCE looked ace.
Xanadu 2 is another game that really pushed the PC-Engine CD. looks like a late era SNES game!
I loved this console! 8 bit console! But it was so powerful it could make 16 bit quality graphics!! Such an amazingly powerful console!! I think it was because it hard two 16 bit graphics processors running side by side with the really fast 8 bit CPU!!
The 'bit' thing did in fact have nothing to do with graphics. Good for marketing more powerful machines, though. The Mega Drive in particular - harder to explain to kids what a wonder machine it was.
you said it right. " Ko nom ee" 😁
No game can push the limits of PC Engine :)
Truth. I tried. It's not possible.
Art of Fighting hurts my eyes. They're basically just changing the screen resolution to simulate the zoom in effect
When I was a kid I used think that the PC Engine was "12 bits"...Something like between the Master System and Mega Dribe :-)
Sapphire (I'm mot going to try to write the full name) is one of the biggest technical achievements in relation to its platform I've ever seen, the fake transparencies and poligons were already something special, but when I see the morphing sprites it was like "Whaaat!?, you have to be kidding me!!", and everything happens without slowdowns showing that not only the art direction is great but also that there are some very solid programming behind the pretty exterior.
Other games worth mentioning were "Coryon" and "Air Zonk", two good cute'em'ups with a lot going on screen and multiple layers of parallax, "Spriggan Mk.II", another shooter nearly on the same technical level of "Sapphire" but horizontal instead of vertical and with a less appealing artwork, "Wings of Thunder", perhaps not as technically accomplished as "Sapphire" or "Spriggan 2", but the OST is one of the best ever, and "Dragon Ball", wich is an interactive retelling of some of the first adventures of the popular manga, although I've never been able to understand this game mechanics.
Apparently there are also some very good RPGs and adventures, but the language barrier blocks my path here.
To run Sapphire you needed the arcade Card which added over a meg of more memory on the card
@@brianhedley5139 2MBytes, 16mbits with the Arcade Card Duo. The Super System Card already brought the system to 2mb so the Arcade Card Pro actually adds 18megs to the base system. That's as big as some of the larger cartridge games of the era. Imagine having a new 18Mbit cartridge for every level in a game where they could dedicate the entire 18meg cartridge memory to excessive sprites and animation in that one level. There wasn't really "sprite morphing" or anything fancy like that... just using the brute force of all that memory to hold a ridiculous number of sprite variations to manually animate a "morph." Just look at the fluid animations the SNES could do with a 32mbit cartridge for all of Donkey Kong Country and then imagine having more than half of that dedicated to a single level on PC Engine and you really start to get a picture of what it was capable of (though horribly under-utilized). Sapphire is the only one that even begins to show this as they use the gobs of memory to add superfluous animated text and morphs and so much more, but I still wish someone would have made a platformer or something along the lines of Yoshi's Island/Earthworm Jim while fully utilizing 18megs of RAM for every level. It would've been INSANE.
You know, Ryuko no Ken/Art of Fighting required the Arcade Card too, so it's a bit weird to see it only mentioned for Sapphire.
Good point, should have mentioned that too.
It werks!
It actually werks!
I don't know how it compares to the games on this list, but Forgotten Worlds (Lost Worlds) on the turboduo was by far the best home version you could get until over a decade later on the Playstation 2. Albeit, it could unfortunately only play single player. The Genesis (Mega Drive) version was still a worthy version since it had 2 player capability ... but with so many graphical compromises! Many of the weapons use the same bullet sprites, but the Turbo Duo version maintained the graphical appearance of all the different weapon sprites.
The Genesis version was released three years prior and like most early Genesis games, was a victim of the 4 Mbit ROM size curse, as well as a rushed development cycle. It did have parallax scrolling through, while the PCE version has totally flat backgrounds, but that's a given, considering that Genesis gets a "free" second background layer in the hardware. Things obviously do get a lot more busy (and processing power intensive) with two players on screen. But yeah, other than the one player limit and lack of parallax, the PCE version looks way closer to the CPS1 version. On the other hand, the PCE version of Strider did not work out so well compared to the Genesis one, even though it uses the Arcade Card. Genesis port had the benefit of a 8 Mbit ROM that time.
@@Prizrak-hv6qk Thanks for the info!
"Terraforming" was on TG16 and had insane psychedelic FX. Shouldve been on the list.
@@Prizrak-hv6qk Strider had a very limited audience since it was only released in Japan, on CD and required the ACD upgrade. I wonder it ever made its investment money back. That had to affect the moral of the team building it.
@@bobfrasure8436 I recall reading that it was originally being developed as a SuperGrafx game, which was then moved to SCD2 and then ACD, getting delayed a bunch of times. Something obviously went wrong with it, as even ignoring the lack of parallax scrolling, it looks and moves all kinds of off, making the hardware look weak. Either the screwed up development cycle or perhaps also something about Strider specifically hit certain limitations of the system. I mean, it is a particularly fast and busy CPS1 game. Even the SNES Strider rip-off game, Run Saber, had to scale down and slow the action by quiet a bit compared to its inspiration. The Genesis/MD seemed particularly well-suited for fast, arcade style action games with a lot or large, animated sprites moving at the same time.
I'm hoping they will be hacked to play every game on the system like the Nintendo minis. If they are I'm defo getting one. Never played on one before.
Konami released the PC Engine Mini in March 2020 in Japan, in May 2020 in the United States and in June 2020 in Europe.
This plug and play features the best of the PC Engine games on it along with hidden unlockable games and the ability to change regions.
In Europe magazines talked a lot about this connsole but nobody ever saw one!
The Neville has always been my favorite home console
It's great!!
A 8bits console running 32bits looking like games 🤩
I liked the tg16. didn't get one till the late 90s used.
You are the Stuart Maconie of retro gaming commentary.
Thanks! That is a compliment, right?
@@Sharopolis Ha! Absolutely!! Your writing and delivery is cock on. Looking forward to the next one.
Soldier Blade was the best game to me, and the pinnacle of the Blazing Lazers type games on Turbografx. Star Soldier and Super Star Soldier were available on other consoles, but Soldier Blade didn't come to Nintendo until the Wii Virtual Console.
Try Final Soldier. I like that one the best.
The boss at 13:57 looks like it influenced the Star Fox creators. That is clearly Andross’s head doing the telekinesis attack with the flying monoliths. He even shakes as they spew out.
Star Fox came first, so I'd wager it was the other way around
So now you have looked at the PC Engine you need to look at the Super Grafx and the PC FX
"Turbo Engine" would've been a cool western name for the system.
With Konami's recent performance, I wouldn't expect too much from them, unless the PC Engine Mini comes loaded with Pachinko machine emulators xD
RefractionPCSX2 they're actually getting M2 to do it, who are famous for going the extra mile, so it might be promising.
when they did the konami ds collection they even added a mode that allowed you to push the dip switches on a virtual arcade board to change settings
@@amr-OH that is good to hear!
Oh stop with that stupid meme. People need to stop thinking that's funny or accurate, anymore. Konami STILL has a gaming division and they STILL release games, and keep their old brands going. Far more than many still do, actually. I swear to god, 2 or 3 kids mistranslate a Japanese press statement about a very long-established and Japanese respected Pachinko market getting a FEW games announced for it and suddenly everyone is losing their shit, falling all over themselves to make shitty, inaccurate, unfunny jokes, just because they have a few executives that are shitheads to their employees and because they stabbed Kojima in the back.
At the very least, if you're going to keep up with that lame ass "fuck konami" shtick that got old a fucking year ago, at least hold them accountable for the right reasons and not shit that a few dumb people ignorantly misread and somehow think it's funny even though it's just blatantly false, untrue urban-myth bullshit that isn't even nearly as important as their ACTUAL faults. Entitled little manchildren really need to get over themselves and actually look at the real history of what's going on, and not get all their "woke" knowledge from garbage memes.
@@the-NightStar Wow, nobody mentioned "fuck konami" and you went off on a massive rant. I think you need to treat your anger issues, buddy.
The scrolling in Street Fighter is kind of janky but considering the TG16 is not supposed to be able to do parallax at all, it's pretty impressive.
Somebody should port Rondo of Blood to the Sega CD. I need that world of lumbering eldritch horrors on MY add on.
Shame it was never ported to the add-on back then. Even pce cd games were ported late on the sega cd.
I still have mine.
jumping on a crouching guile is too suicidal for me to watch
N...Nevil? I like it.
The TurboGrafx/PC engine is a true hero!
I have a engineering respect for the PC engine hardware. It is a 8-bit system with 16 bit graphics. It is a clean design and with the right programmer it can easily compete with the true 16bit boys
The cd system is even better designed than the Sega CD because of the massive amounts of ram it can be upgraded to with the Arcade Card.. It's biggest weakness is also it's biggest strength...
I have no idea why you chose to call it Neville, but I'm absolutely tickled that you did.
the last one was the only one worth of being on this list.
sure Blazing Lazer is fun and all.. but it's nothing that "pushes" the system to its limits.
The first Legendary Axe would definitely belong on this list. scaling, scrolling, HUGE sprites, flashy visual effects.
This game, was ahead of its time.
Blazing Lasers looks cool but the slight left and right scrolling of the screen in a vertical shooting just makes it kinda unplayable for me as the screen keeps wobbling everything back and forth when I move.
Never had that problem...
I always found the PCE space shooters to have this..."too smooth" feel, which is great for shoot 'em ups but kinda weird feeling for some other types of games like platformers.
I think I may have seen that shakyness in an emulator I used before, though.
The only PCE emulator I remember using that didn't suck was called Magic Engine, I think.
482 colors?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Almost as big as it's color pallete of 512 9 bit RGB. OMG
My little brother left 3 copies of Magical Chase in the box when he moved. I don't have a TG16. Why would he have 3 copies of that?
I fail to see how Blazing Lazers pushed the system haha. It was a first gen game for the system too
I like your choosing to call Sega's 16 bit offering the '' Megasis ''. Well we DO have to be all inclusive......wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feeling Americans and Europeans alike can feel equally represented with this new moniker. Good man!!!! :)
Can you please do an episode on Atarti game ports from other more advanced systems?
Awesome. Mark Radcliffe has taken a break from radio, renamed himself Sharopolis and started reviewing games 🥳
yeah Blazing Lazer!!!
The PcEngine was the best system at the time but Nec completely failed it's marketing
Remember that it was released 3 years before the superNes and just one year after the sega master system.
Despite this, It was really above the nes and the master system and a bit below the SNES and Sega Genesis
Do an NES video, but remember that some of the limits of the NES changed over time. Before 1986, basically everything was NROM. Everything from the '85-'86 rollout was NROM, except Gumshoe. By 1990 however we had the MMC3, and graphics reached their peak with the MMC5 and its ExGrafix mode somehow allowing per-tile palette control and 2-byte tile indices.
That is literally next on the list! I'm going to try talking about how mappers changed things and maybe also try and focus on some slightly lesser known, more surprising additions to the NES library.
It always saddens me that the SuperGrafx wasn't a success.
Yes it was just two PC-Engine video-processors stacked together, but this actually gave it some formidable capabilities.
A second background layer, yes, but also 128k graphics memory (twice that of the Genesis and Snes) and a whopping 512 sprite-pixels on a horizontal line!
It only had 32k work-ram though.
A lot of the graphics in Blazing Lasers remind me of Xenon 2 on the PC
3:27 The Magical Chase developers ripped off the Mario franchise's Bullet Bill 🤣
Maybe this is common knowledge but I couldn’t help noticing the wrong character names in Street Fighter II.
Those are in fact the right character names! That's the Japanese version we're seeing. Things were switched around for western release, I assume because of the obvious M. Bison/M Tyson thing.
I wonder how awesome SFII could have been if it was an arcade port on cd instead of a SNES port on hucard. Arcade sized sprites? Redbook audio? Full parallax ?
I wish Super Street fighter 2 turbo was ported to the PCE CD.
You should make 60fps videos, games look better like this.
Yep, you got me there, it would look better. Next video will be 60fps!
@@Sharopolis thanks!
Thank you!
But aren't old games 30 to 60fps, starfox is 15fps how would 60fps video make 30fps screen recording game better!?
@@rustymixer2886 It will benefit other games, most of them run at 50/60 depending the region.
I would've love to see how the TG16 could handle Mortal Kombat. I bet it would've been really good
And pit fighter including other 2D digital graphics games.
2:23 That one didn't age quite so well
Did the game at 13:56 rip off Andross from Star Fox on the SNES?
rarely.mentioned the turbografx had 512_480 resolutiion capabilty thats higher than even neogeo the supercd really made it shine sucks we didnt get more supercd games shadowgate 2 looks stunning
Kanye a man of taste? On this 1 game system maybe
This was one of those systems where everyone knew someone whose cousin totally had one, but were always mysteriously unable to describe what it looked like, and were unaware that it didn't use cartridges.