I love the Mega Drive with a burning passion, but the PC Engine has to rank as my all time favourite console. I just can't get enough of that little wonder machine. It was the system that truly made me a hardcore gamer back in '89.
Really impressed that the sprite scaling here outdoes the Genesis. I've always thought it weird that Sega clearly intended to leverage their arcade games with the Mega Drive, launching with Space Harrier & Thunder Blade day 1. Yet they gave it no capability to actually display those games properly.
Sprite scaling hardware was way too expensive to include in a home console back in 1988. Space Harrier 2 and Thunderblade were very early and rushed games, while Afterburner 2 was an outsourced port. Almost like Sega barely even tried. NEC were just able to put more time, effort and care into their ports. I do prefer the Genesis port of Outrun though. It has better detailed graphics and more accurate FM soundtrack. Of course, nothing software spite scaling on the PC-Engine touches what was accomplished in Panorama Cotton on the MD. That game really shows what could've been is Sega took more care with the superscaler ports. I am also very curious to see M2's new Space Harrier port on the Mini 2.
@@oatmeal7818 You can blame it on extremely volatile CRAM prices around the time the design was finalized.64 colors wasn't bad for the time though. 4x time the NES and better than most micros too. All 4th gen consoles were based on compromises in some ways though. NEC did not include hardware for multiple background layers at a time when parallax scrolling established itself as one of the staples of 16-bit gaming, making a lot of their games look very colorful, but flat. The SFC had the colors, sprites and background layers for a very pretty picture, but barely enough CPU power to move everything around at a decent pace. Of course, most SFC and PCE games ran at a very annoying horizontal resolution, making games look stretched.. At least most MD games are the 4:3 NTSC standard 320x240. Well, Neo-Geo did not compromise when it came to the hardware, featuring the best aspects of all 3 consoles, but this priced it out of the range of most consumers.
I remember drooling over the Turbo Grafx 16 CD demos at the store. The color pallet and visuals blew my mind . Of course I couldn’t afford one. I had an NES and my cousin had Sega Genesis. I bought a PC engine mini recently and was very impressed. I have a good number of Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo games and have to say that I’m every bit as impressed with PC-Engine. Even more impressed with games like Castlevania Rondo of Blood. The arcade ports are phenomenal and in many cases they actually look better than the same arcade ports I own. The 16 bit era really delivered with all 3 systems in different ways.
Loved the Pc Engine, was very hard to source games though, where I lived it virtually didnt exist. But it meant I had a collection of games that no one else had and that blew friends minds when they came over. 😁 Hope they release a mini of it!
Excellent video X. I appreciate it. I recommend though to inform people when talking about PC Engine Super CD games that they can be played on U.S. Turbo CD and Turbo Duo without any modifications or adapters due to them being region free. Keep up the great work. Thank you!
Great video man, can you do Capcom on the PC Engine next? Here i'll list all the games for you. :D * indicates games that were also released in NA Capcom games on the PC Engine/Turbo Grafx 16: 1941: Counter Attack (Supergrafx) 1943 Kai Daimakimura (Supergrafx) F1-Dream Side Arms Hyper Dine * Son Son II Street Fighter II Tiger Road * Capcom Games on PC Engine CD ROM²/Turbo Grafx CD: Adventure Quiz: Capcom World/Hatena no Daibōken Buster Bros. * Chiki Chiki Boys Fighting Street * Forgotten Worlds * Side Arm Special Strider It would be really cool if you did an episode on these games as well! Thank you!
How has yt never shown me one of your videos before? This was very well researched and presented. Looking forward to checking out your previous material!
Nice video and nice voice too! I've long considered buying a PC Engine with the CD-ROM unit for Bonanza Bros alone. The music is even better than the arcade original!
When I subbed to you which was fairly recently, you had a little under 10k subs, you blew up pretty quick since then and it’s well deserved. Keep it up!
@@SegaLordXfun fact: in Brazil, Wonder Boy in 2 of the games (The Dragon's Trap and Monster Land) are replaced with Monica from the successful comic series Monica's Gang. They're called No Castelo Do Dragão (The Dragon's Castle) and O Resgate (The Rescue) and both games were released here by Tec Toy.
There was no talk of two games, the Space Fantasy Zone parody and the supposedly canceled version of Galaxy Force that was originally supposed to be released on PC Engine but was transported to Supergrafx as 'Galaxy Force II' but with the failure of that system was permanently archived.
@12:24 The real draw of Thunder Blade in the arcade was the rad deluxe sit-down cabinet with the control stick that moved the whole thing from side to side
The crappy PC Engine ports of Golden Axe and Altered Beast suited SEGA just fine. They helped push SEGA’s narrative that you had to get a Genesis/Megadrive to get the best arcade experience.
Before the megadrive, there was the pc engine as an alternative to port games on, eventrough the cpu of the pce was 8bit,but it’s speed was insane and it also contained 2 16bit gpu chips, so the pce was more then just an ordinary 8bitter.
Although this is an 8-bit console, the PCE was built from scratch in 1987 with no need for backward compatibility, so in the end it is not so surprising that it comes close to the 16-bit graphics and animation level. What is more surprising is that Sega had another year before launching the MD and didn't try to at least match PCE on-screen palettes, let alone go beyond the 512-color master palette.
Sega chose to focus on other aspects of the overall performance and graphics, getting decent bulk deal on the fancy M68000 16-bit CPU and packing things like 3 background layers, crazy amount of sprites per line and ability to combine multiple sprites to form larger sprites in the GPU. Very flexible GPU in general, with a crazy fast system bus access. Took the devs a while to learn the hardware but by the end of the 16-bit gen, Genesis was putting out effects that the PCE and even the SNES could only dream of (e.g.: Red Zone, Toy Story, Panorama Cotton, Batman and Robin).
I get that, but in terms of the attractiveness of games and system perception from the public, colors were a factor which mattered in the 16-bit wars. A 4096-color palette was pretty standard by the late 80's, even the Lynx which was a finished prototype in 1987 featured one. Only the best game developers would make good use of the MD's palette in their limited time, when we got games like Thunder Force IV, Ranger X, Flink and... Toy Story of course! That said, the MD was and still is my favorite console, so Sega must have done something right with their design choices as you described ;)
@@jbmaru I read that the MD/Genesis' limited color palette had something to do with the volatile prices of VRAM, which really spiked exactly at the time when they were finalizing the design. At least, MD/Genesis had a really good default 512 color palette. The whole Genesis hardware architecture was designed by arcade board jockeys and not with ease of development in mind. It did take some talent to get good graphics and sound out of the machine. Luckily, this made only the average and crappy games look and sound mediocre. Because generally, the guys who could design a game worth a damn, were also capable of pushing the hardware in the right direction. When Sonic came out, it was more colorful, fast, smoother and better sounding that anything else out there.
@@Prizrak-hv6qk Yes the first Sonic really was something else when it came out, I was stunned when I saw the first level! What you said made me think of an example of an "early" & not-so-good-looking game; I wonder what constrained the developers of Midnight Resistance to use 16 onscreen colors only, I know it was their first game on the platform but still! Maybe that made it less CPU-intensive or RAM-hungry, like the 1-player-only gameplay. They definitely mastered their subject when they released Chelnov a year later though.
Thankfully, a few (not all unfortunately) of the Wonder Boy/Monster World games are on the Monster World Sega Vintage Collection that I purchased and downloaded on the Xbox 360 digital marketplace a while back (the collection comes with 3 games), otherwise I wouldn't be able to buy these games on the Turbo Grafx or any of the other retro Sega consoles due to how expensive they are in retro gaming shops, not to mention that they're also super hard to find. Compilation re-releases (either digital or disc) are mans best friend. Thank goodness for emulation.
It's too bad that some of these titles, like Shinobi and Space Harrier, didn't have 8 megabit ports, if not higher. The potential was so much higher, but unfortunately the expectations of the time gave us what we got.
You're right about the TG16 being underrated. I got a Duo in 2001, while they were still available for a decent price. Amazing system, deserved more of a shot.
Columns looks great, I never knew about that. I loved Columns on the Genesis until I could master it.. Actually, I still loved it even then but I dubbed it inferior to Tetris on NES.
2:40 What da bleep!?!?!? You quit the Afterburner sample at the exact moment the lead guitar is about to kick in! It is the only port that has this quintessential part of the soundtrack!
I played WonderBoyIII and Dragon's curse on original SMS/TG16 hardware many times in the 90s. Both are great and incredibly similar. More of a case where the SMS version looks as good as many 16 bit titles.
Afterburner reminded me so much of Blue Lightning on the Atari Lynx. Outrun, on the PSP is the BEST version of this arcade classic. In fact, I would go as far to say as it is BETTER than the original arcade racer itself. Beware, all those who suffer with motion sickness. Powerdrift, made me feel very very SICK! I think it was the garish colours combined with the feeling of motion which did not help at all. I never touched this racer again after playing only twenty minutes on it, back in the day.
The only game here that’s truly awful is the vaguely Golden Axe looking thing. Space Harrier isn’t bad, streets ahead of any other home version (except the X68000 version which is also by Dempa and is the PC engine version with better sound and more detail) until the 32X and Saturn versions arrived a few years later. I’m not sure if Outrun is any better than the MD version but the colour pallete is much more faithful to the arcade which does make quite a difference.
I agree. And same here. It's on play_roms.com Can play right off the browser with a contoller. Fantastic game. Same with Thunder Blade. They are just as good as Genesis but have their own great feel.
it's a tour de force given the pc engine limitations but the mega drive version is about as good (despite being rushed but while it has less detailed graphics and less content, it also has better gameplay and better sound) and the x68000 version is better than both (but it's rushed as well, both md and x68000 were made by dempa who went a bit lazy there)
Megadrive is more challenging imo. But both pc engine and megadrive lack a maneuver necessary to win in the arcade. In the arcade/32x/saturn version when an enemy comes from behind you "just like the scene in top gun" you speed up to get em chasing you, then immediately slow down for em to fly ahead of you to lock on and kill. In the 16 bit ports all you have to do is outrun the enemy like you would a missle. I actually like just being able to simply outrun the enemy and focus more on the planes ahead of me, but it definetly takes away a certain dynamic. I've never played the x68000. The original afterburner actually had no enemies chasing you from behind at all, it wasn't until afterburner 2 that was introduced.
I see your point, guys. But I really hoped more from Mega Drive port. They are Sega, they had the obligation to create something very close to Arcade, like Golden Axe did. In Mega Drive the landing scenes has gone. It might not be a big deal, but it charged personality. The PC Engine version, on the other hand, brought all those stuff. Moreover, the melody version of the songs has born there and became very famous (I really don't thing that it was necessary, but it's a remarkable fact).
Wow, the PC engine caused even more confusion with the Wonder Boy / Monster World / Adventure Island games, but now I think I have everything on note, literally
Great video, as always. The only downside is the "for an 8bit system" remarks. There's no reason for the backhanded compliment, especially when it's completely irrelevant (you drop a 68k CPU into the system at the same speed and nothing is going to change).
Calling the PC Engine/ TurboGraphX 16 an 8 bit system really does an amazing job of demonstrating how dubious the whole idea of classifying systems by 'bitness' actually is, especially when you start asking about the technicalities. The TurboGraphX 16 has an 8 bit cpu and 16 bit graphics chip. The 65816 CPU seen in the SNES and Apple IIGS performs 16 bit calculations but has an 8 bit data bus. The 68000 has a 16 bit data bus, but in spite of this accesses data at half the speed of a 65816 of the same clock speed. (making the distinction on bus size seem weirder), it's also capable of performing 32 bit instructions, even though it's poorly suited to them. The original 8086 CPU in the first PC's shares the same problem - 16 bit instruction set with an 8 bit data bus. The n64 does indeed have a 64 bit CPU (two of them in fact, given that the graphics chip contains it's own processor with roughly the same instruction set as the main CPU), but it's main bus is 32 bits, it's memory bus is 9 bits (yes, 9), the cartridge bus is 16 bit, and in spite of having 64 bit instructions, the vast majority of game code is 32 bit instructions. The Gameboy Advance's ARM/THUMB chip is similar - a 32 bit CPU with lots of 16 bit instructions, almost exclusively used in 16 bit mode by actual games. Meanwhile, on a different tack, both the Atari VCS and PC Engine are 8 bit systems, and even have the same CPU architecture, but you'd never mistake the games for one of these for the other in a million years... Kinda makes that classification seem kinda moot. In my Mind the TG16 is a 16 bit system since that's where it fits in best, when you compare games and how things look... Or, in different terms it's a 4th generation console, like the Mega Drive and SNES.... (first gen is Pong consoles. 2nd gen is the Atari VCS/2600. 3rd gen is Atari 5200,NES, Master System, etc.)
Nice video. I was wondering where Forgotten Worlds was and remembered that it was a Capcom game, oops! A video comparing Genesis, Turbo and SNES games would be nice. By the way Monster Lair was a regular CD, not Super CD.
The sega genesis can only display 61 colors at the same time. The turbografx-16 can do 481 colors. This is one of the reasons why colors look sometimes much better on the Turbografx.
Always thought this would make a fantastic subject for a video. Thank you for making it happen! Gain Ground SX is also my favorite of the Sega ports. I can’t bring myself to buy that awful Golden Axe port. It’s cheap, but I know I will never play it. It just sucks because if they had given it the same treatment as the others got, you know it would have probably been awesome.
First of all, I just want to say GREAT VIDEO! I'm a long time subscriber and love your videos. This narrative that the PCE/TG was an "8bit" console is old and tired. I honestly can't believe we're still having this conversation. The PCE/TG had an overclocked 8bit CPU, but had dual 16bit GPUs. Not to mention the massive colour gamut. More to the point, the 8bit CPU was set to read 16bit code. That's why the PCE/TG was able to pump out comparable, if not better, ports than their rivals. I'm sorry, but the 16bit narrative is completely subjective. Who ever said that 16bit meant the CPU? In any case, even if you want to call it an 8bit console, that just makes the Genny and SNES look bad in comparison. Personally, the TG/PCE was part of the 16bit rivalry. It didn't make huge ground in North America, but it was the champ for a long time in Japan.
It was the entire narrative during the life of the console. Consoles were defined by the CPU for a very long time, and the TG16 was often lambasted in the media for its "weak" 8-bit CPU. Ultimately the bits of your hardware don't matter nearly as much as what else it has under the hood, but I don't think calling the TG16 8-bit is derogatory. If anything, it showed the sheer power of the unit that despite its rather unimpressive CPU, it could still pump out the games it did.
@@SegaLordX See, I disagree. The CPU was impressive. The SNES's CPU was ridiculously slow in comparison. The SNES's CPU had other superpowers, but speed was not one of them. And the narrative in North America was literally a narrative. It was based on marketing, and nothing else. The same debate wasn't had in Japan. Anyway, I edited my first comment because I wanted to let you know I love your content. But let me say it here in case you don't catch it. I really do enjoy your content and keep coming back to it. To be honest, I relish having these 16bit debates. 😆 Keep up the great work, brother!
All good bro. I appreciate the civilized response despite not seeing things eye to eye. It's refreshing to see an actual adult act like an adult in this circumstance.
Fantastic video.. I will always love retro gaming above all, up to and including PS2/Gamecube as the highest system, and only for the plethora of 2D games on PS2 anyway.
One of the greatest things (and not much people are aware) about Sega is that the company licensed their games to other consoles and computers in the 80's, even with their own hardware avaliable. So, you didn't need a Sega console to play a Sega game;
Fun video. I think I mentioned it as a topic once, so it was definitely one I was happy to see. I forget where it was, but I saw someone claim Golden Axe for PCE was decent. I already knew better than that. I don't know what that guy was thinking. I think he turned the system off after seeing the title screen. It would be interesting to see a good version of Golden Axe with PCE's features and limitations. A real shame about Shinobi, especially since it was the only console version that retained the arcade game play. The real disappointment is that it's well done and looks great, but it's missing too much due to the constraints of a tiny Hu-Card. A typical four-megabit ROM might have been all they needed. The missing stage is unfortunate, but the missing melee attacks are the biggest loss for me as they factored into the game play in the arcade version. Not having them made certain areas harder. That's why my favorite of the console ports remains the version on the Master System.
After Burner 2 is a great example showing Sega's poor support and nearly non-existent love to their own console. Look at this PC-engine version, on an inferior hardware, it has the zooming effect of the aircraft carrier when the plane takes off, while the Sega MD version has no problem cutting it off at the very beginning of the game. Once the game starts, the PC-engine version has more variety of items like lake and barns on the ground while the only thing the MD version have across all its stages are ugly bushes of different color. The PC-engine version has the sky color fading toward the horizon while the MD version has just one color to the sky. The PC-engine version retains the missile supply stage landing at an air strip while the MD version cuts it and replaces it with in-air supply only. Overall, the PC-engine porting staff poured a lot of love to do their best retaining as much element from the arcade version, while the MD porting staff...simply provided a burger even without cheese. Not to mention Sega was so lazy that they didn't even bother to port this game to MD by their own while outsourcing it to Denpa News. Did they even care about their console. And other games covered in this video like Space Harrier and Thunder Blade....while they are not great on the PC-engine, at least they tried. This compares to Sega's coward approach: Making new but different games and calling them Space Harrier 2 or Super Thunder Blade, while simply didn't have the guts to port their own arcade hits. Oh, and they never brought Power Drift to MD. Sega just hate their consoles, and such attitude put themselves out of the console business.
The basic gist of fake scaling is largely based on changing full screen tilemaps rapidly and sprites prerendered to various sizes. Probably the best examples of this technique ever produced. :D Problem with Hu-Cards is there was little you could do to make them bigger other than thickening the back like SF2:CE did which was rare. No actual reason SH doesn't have a checkerboard ground on PCE other than a poor decision in porting. :\ I think the system could have done more parallax with tile animation like the NES did. GA on PCE is absurdly bad, doesn't seem possible it exists. :O-Barf!
The PC Engine is so confusing. It's 8-bit, but looks and sounds much better than NES and Master System. Outrun looks amazing on it! And then of course if you use the CD system, the music is insane.
That's because firstly the whole 'bitness' thing is nonsensical in the end. (everything from the first PC's to the SNES to the n64 to a million other things demonstrate pretty solidly that it's a nonsensical distinction) The PC Engine should be grouped in with the 16 bit consoles, because that's where it's features make sense. (Seriously it's graphical capabilities are on par with 16 bit systems and nothing like 8 bit ones.) The CPU being 8 bit is a barely relevant side issue, besides which it's one of the fastest 8 bit cpu's in any console...
@@KuraIthys Right? I mean the PCE's cpu's processing power is on level with the Genesis and definitely more so than the SNES, The SNES actually switches into 8bit mode quite often because of design limitations of the processor.. and yet no one ever talks about that haha.
I was interest in Turbo graphix 16 back in 1990 but, the price was too high and my whole entire family was a nintendo fanatic. I didnt get a Sega Genesis till 94 and a playstation in 97.
PC Engines neo geo arcade ports were in my opinion closer to the arcade compared to nintendo and genesis and NEO GEO console wasnt even out yet. Its up to the developers to put in the energy and time to make best of the hardware. Saturn had the same issue
I indeed am interested in this Space Harrier version, a game I first experienced via a glitch Master System adapter for MEGA DRIVE Mark I. I also have it on 32x and is a game I have grown into understanding and liking more and more all the way even when I do not get the High scores one could hope I like the athmosphere, and to be true to you in what I meaning and I mean what I say… I Think the slower movement in terms of velocity would come to serve me well being for the benefit of taking things slower I live Northern Europe and I am not sure if there was a turbografix here, I am sorry
I love the Mega Drive with a burning passion, but the PC Engine has to rank as my all time favourite console. I just can't get enough of that little wonder machine. It was the system that truly made me a hardcore gamer back in '89.
Though not a Sega game, the PC Engine's version of Street Fighter II is an amazing achievement.
Bithead1000 says it's the version of the game that plays the best on any home console from that generation.
it is indeed.
Agreed
@@TheRealJPhillips How dare you, sir!
@@Septer_Sever just kidding. He just always has a cold.
Another day, another video from Sega Lord X. Life is good!
Really impressed that the sprite scaling here outdoes the Genesis. I've always thought it weird that Sega clearly intended to leverage their arcade games with the Mega Drive, launching with Space Harrier & Thunder Blade day 1. Yet they gave it no capability to actually display those games properly.
Sega and Planning don't really go hand in hand.
Sprite scaling hardware was way too expensive to include in a home console back in 1988. Space Harrier 2 and Thunderblade were very early and rushed games, while Afterburner 2 was an outsourced port. Almost like Sega barely even tried. NEC were just able to put more time, effort and care into their ports. I do prefer the Genesis port of Outrun though. It has better detailed graphics and more accurate FM soundtrack. Of course, nothing software spite scaling on the PC-Engine touches what was accomplished in Panorama Cotton on the MD. That game really shows what could've been is Sega took more care with the superscaler ports. I am also very curious to see M2's new Space Harrier port on the Mini 2.
Worst them sprite scaling are the terrible lack of suficient simultaneous color in mega drive
@@oatmeal7818 You can blame it on extremely volatile CRAM prices around the time the design was finalized.64 colors wasn't bad for the time though. 4x time the NES and better than most micros too. All 4th gen consoles were based on compromises in some ways though. NEC did not include hardware for multiple background layers at a time when parallax scrolling established itself as one of the staples of 16-bit gaming, making a lot of their games look very colorful, but flat. The SFC had the colors, sprites and background layers for a very pretty picture, but barely enough CPU power to move everything around at a decent pace. Of course, most SFC and PCE
games ran at a very annoying horizontal resolution, making games look stretched.. At least most MD games are the 4:3 NTSC standard 320x240. Well, Neo-Geo did not compromise when it came to the hardware, featuring the best aspects of all 3 consoles, but this priced it out of the range of most consumers.
PC Engine was a great home for their Super Scalers imo
Man I don't know how you keep finding topics but you're killing it.
the libraries of retro game systems were huge
It's just passion
From 2022 - he’s still killing it lol
@@justinm6392 right?! All these years later and he STILL has plenty of topics and ideas!
I thought he’s been doing really well 🤷🏻
What an excellent episode. I feel appreciated by it. Thanks a lot, mate.
I remember drooling over the Turbo Grafx 16 CD demos at the store. The color pallet and visuals blew my mind . Of course I couldn’t afford one. I had an NES and my cousin had Sega Genesis. I bought a PC engine mini recently and was very impressed. I have a good number of Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo games and have to say that I’m every bit as impressed with PC-Engine. Even more impressed with games like Castlevania Rondo of Blood. The arcade ports are phenomenal and in many cases they actually look better than the same arcade ports I own. The 16 bit era really delivered with all 3 systems in different ways.
Loved the Pc Engine, was very hard to source games though, where I lived it virtually didnt exist. But it meant I had a collection of games that no one else had and that blew friends minds when they came over. 😁
Hope they release a mini of it!
That after burner port is one of the best ports of a super scaler game on non-scaling hardware ive ever seen.
Excellent video X. I appreciate it. I recommend though to inform people when talking about PC Engine Super CD games that they can be played on U.S. Turbo CD and Turbo Duo without any modifications or adapters due to them being region free. Keep up the great work. Thank you!
Yeah, I could have slipped that in there at some point.
Sega Lord X it's all good man. Your coverage of Sega's past more than makes up for that 😉😅.
Another great video man. I appreciate the OG knowledge.✌
bro your videos are money. keep doing what youre doing. sega forever.
These videos are great. There is definitely some binge worthy content on this channel.
After Burner looks so damn good... 8bit - unbelievable!
Turbo Lord X? lol, great episode
Those Afterburner and Out Run ports are black magic
Great video man, can you do Capcom on the PC Engine next?
Here i'll list all the games for you. :D
* indicates games that were also released in NA
Capcom games on the PC Engine/Turbo Grafx 16:
1941: Counter Attack (Supergrafx)
1943 Kai
Daimakimura (Supergrafx)
F1-Dream
Side Arms Hyper Dine *
Son Son II
Street Fighter II
Tiger Road *
Capcom Games on PC Engine CD ROM²/Turbo Grafx CD:
Adventure Quiz: Capcom World/Hatena no Daibōken
Buster Bros. *
Chiki Chiki Boys
Fighting Street *
Forgotten Worlds *
Side Arm Special
Strider
It would be really cool if you did an episode on these games as well! Thank you!
How has yt never shown me one of your videos before? This was very well researched and presented. Looking forward to checking out your previous material!
In all my years watching TH-cam I never seen a vid unique like this Sega vs. PC engine
I never had a turbo but i can emulate my 1990 childhood.
Nice video and nice voice too! I've long considered buying a PC Engine with the CD-ROM unit for Bonanza Bros alone. The music is even better than the arcade original!
When I subbed to you which was fairly recently, you had a little under 10k subs, you blew up pretty quick since then and it’s well deserved. Keep it up!
Thank you. Glad you still happy with the content.
@@SegaLordXfun fact: in Brazil, Wonder Boy in 2 of the games (The Dragon's Trap and Monster Land) are replaced with Monica from the successful comic series Monica's Gang. They're called No Castelo Do Dragão (The Dragon's Castle) and O Resgate (The Rescue) and both games were released here by Tec Toy.
Another great video! I've been exploring the TurboGrafx a bit lately and really having fun doing so.
One thing left unsaid about Gain Ground -- The replayability of this version takes a dive due to lack of a score!
If you are a fan of shoot em ups, genesis and pc engine is both amazing platforms for the genre!
17:30 Whoa, hold up. That's Gigan right there. What an unexpected cameo.
16:20
Oh man, you really have no idea what SEGA permitted US.Gold to do in the home computing era...
There was no talk of two games, the Space Fantasy Zone parody and the supposedly canceled version of Galaxy Force that was originally supposed to be released on PC Engine but was transported to Supergrafx as 'Galaxy Force II' but with the failure of that system was permanently archived.
Great video! Never realized all those sega games were released on the pc engine. Some great versions too. Keep up the good work Sega Lord X!
@12:24 The real draw of Thunder Blade in the arcade was the rad deluxe sit-down cabinet with the control stick that moved the whole thing from side to side
Idea for a future topic: SEGA UFO claw catchers and Gacha
Doing that topic and not mentioning Yakuza series :)
Seeing the NEC port of Altered Beast was freaky. The dragon mode attacks were particularly bizarre.
Big ups for the correct pronunciation of "Westone."
Really fantastic episode.
The crappy PC Engine ports of Golden Axe and Altered Beast suited SEGA just fine. They helped push SEGA’s narrative that you had to get a Genesis/Megadrive to get the best arcade experience.
Wow I am legit blown away by Afterburner! Outrun looks great too!
Is the opening "segaaa"from a game or did get some girl to sign it?
It's from the Sega Saturn game Astal.
Aw man, that gain ground sound track! Yes!
I never owned the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine. My mother owned it back when I was a kid. Her favorite game was Bonk.
Quality content!
for 8 bit it had some damn close arcade ports
Before the megadrive, there was the pc engine as an alternative to port games on, eventrough the cpu of the pce was 8bit,but it’s speed was insane and it also contained 2 16bit gpu chips, so the pce was more then just an ordinary 8bitter.
Interesting tech info, I was wondering how the hell it was running after burner so well.
the turbografx-16/duo was and is still my favorite system. gain ground is a great game on this system. i love watching these videos.....old and new.
PC-Engine and TG-16 don't get enough love.
Although this is an 8-bit console, the PCE was built from scratch in 1987 with no need for backward compatibility, so in the end it is not so surprising that it comes close to the 16-bit graphics and animation level.
What is more surprising is that Sega had another year before launching the MD and didn't try to at least match PCE on-screen palettes, let alone go beyond the 512-color master palette.
Sega chose to focus on other aspects of the overall performance and graphics, getting decent bulk deal on the fancy M68000 16-bit CPU and packing things like 3 background layers, crazy amount of sprites per line and ability to combine multiple sprites to form larger sprites in the GPU. Very flexible GPU in general, with a crazy fast system bus access. Took the devs a while to learn the hardware but by the end of the 16-bit gen, Genesis was putting out effects that the PCE and even the SNES could only dream of (e.g.: Red Zone, Toy Story, Panorama Cotton, Batman and Robin).
I get that, but in terms of the attractiveness of games and system perception from the public, colors were a factor which mattered in the 16-bit wars. A 4096-color palette was pretty standard by the late 80's, even the Lynx which was a finished prototype in 1987 featured one.
Only the best game developers would make good use of the MD's palette in their limited time, when we got games like Thunder Force IV, Ranger X, Flink and... Toy Story of course!
That said, the MD was and still is my favorite console, so Sega must have done something right with their design choices as you described ;)
@@jbmaru
I read that the MD/Genesis' limited color palette had something to do with the volatile prices of VRAM, which really spiked exactly at the time when they were finalizing the design. At least, MD/Genesis had a really good default 512 color palette. The whole Genesis hardware architecture was designed by arcade board jockeys and not with ease of development in mind. It did take some talent to get good graphics and sound out of the machine. Luckily, this made only the average and crappy games look and sound mediocre. Because generally, the guys who could design a game worth a damn, were also capable of pushing the hardware in the right direction. When Sonic came out, it was more colorful, fast, smoother and better sounding that anything else out there.
@@Prizrak-hv6qk Yes the first Sonic really was something else when it came out, I was stunned when I saw the first level!
What you said made me think of an example of an "early" & not-so-good-looking game; I wonder what constrained the developers of Midnight Resistance to use 16 onscreen colors only, I know it was their first game on the platform but still! Maybe that made it less CPU-intensive or RAM-hungry, like the 1-player-only gameplay. They definitely mastered their subject when they released Chelnov a year later though.
@@Prizrak-hv6qk What did the Megadrive Batman and Robin have over the snes version?
great video! PCE has always been one of my favorite consoles
Thunder Blade was from the Sega X Board, a sprite-scaling arcade board system by Sega.
Thankfully, a few (not all unfortunately) of the Wonder Boy/Monster World games are on the Monster World Sega Vintage Collection that I purchased and downloaded on the Xbox 360 digital marketplace a while back (the collection comes with 3 games), otherwise I wouldn't be able to buy these games on the Turbo Grafx or any of the other retro Sega consoles due to how expensive they are in retro gaming shops, not to mention that they're also super hard to find. Compilation re-releases (either digital or disc) are mans best friend. Thank goodness for emulation.
Is it wrong to hit the thumbs up before even watching the video? Love the PC engine!! Batman NES music is awesome!!!
Always awesome content!
It's too bad that some of these titles, like Shinobi and Space Harrier, didn't have 8 megabit ports, if not higher. The potential was so much higher, but unfortunately the expectations of the time gave us what we got.
You're right about the TG16 being underrated. I got a Duo in 2001, while they were still available for a decent price. Amazing system, deserved more of a shot.
Columns looks great, I never knew about that. I loved Columns on the Genesis until I could master it.. Actually, I still loved it even then but I dubbed it inferior to Tetris on NES.
2:40 What da bleep!?!?!? You quit the Afterburner sample at the exact moment the lead guitar is about to kick in! It is the only port that has this quintessential part of the soundtrack!
Great video some of these ports where impressive!
Love your channel SLX, keep it up!!!!
I played WonderBoyIII and Dragon's curse on original SMS/TG16 hardware many times in the 90s. Both are great and incredibly similar. More of a case where the SMS version looks as good as many 16 bit titles.
Afterburner reminded me so much of Blue Lightning on the Atari Lynx. Outrun, on the PSP is the BEST version of this arcade classic. In fact, I would go as far to say as it is BETTER than the original arcade racer itself.
Beware, all those who suffer with motion sickness. Powerdrift, made me feel very very SICK! I think it was the garish colours combined with the feeling of motion which did not help at all. I never touched this racer again after playing only twenty minutes on it, back in the day.
The only game here that’s truly awful is the vaguely Golden Axe looking thing. Space Harrier isn’t bad, streets ahead of any other home version (except the X68000 version which is also by Dempa and is the PC engine version with better sound and more detail) until the 32X and Saturn versions arrived a few years later. I’m not sure if Outrun is any better than the MD version but the colour pallete is much more faithful to the arcade which does make quite a difference.
After Burner in PC Engine is the best among the 8 / 16 bit, in my opinnion. And I just saw it through emulators!
I agree. And same here. It's on play_roms.com Can play right off the browser with a contoller. Fantastic game. Same with Thunder Blade. They are just as good as Genesis but have their own great feel.
it's a tour de force given the pc engine limitations but the mega drive version is about as good (despite being rushed but while it has less detailed graphics and less content, it also has better gameplay and better sound) and the x68000 version is better than both (but it's rushed as well, both md and x68000 were made by dempa who went a bit lazy there)
Megadrive is more challenging imo. But both pc engine and megadrive lack a maneuver necessary to win in the arcade. In the arcade/32x/saturn version when an enemy comes from behind you "just like the scene in top gun" you speed up to get em chasing you, then immediately slow down for em to fly ahead of you to lock on and kill. In the 16 bit ports all you have to do is outrun the enemy like you would a missle. I actually like just being able to simply outrun the enemy and focus more on the planes ahead of me, but it definetly takes away a certain dynamic. I've never played the x68000. The original afterburner actually had no enemies chasing you from behind at all, it wasn't until afterburner 2 that was introduced.
I see your point, guys. But I really hoped more from Mega Drive port. They are Sega, they had the obligation to create something very close to Arcade, like Golden Axe did. In Mega Drive the landing scenes has gone. It might not be a big deal, but it charged personality. The PC Engine version, on the other hand, brought all those stuff. Moreover, the melody version of the songs has born there and became very famous (I really don't thing that it was necessary, but it's a remarkable fact).
Wow, the PC engine caused even more confusion with the Wonder Boy / Monster World / Adventure Island games, but now I think I have everything on note, literally
Great video, as always. The only downside is the "for an 8bit system" remarks. There's no reason for the backhanded compliment, especially when it's completely irrelevant (you drop a 68k CPU into the system at the same speed and nothing is going to change).
Of all the great games that NEVER got ported from arcade to home, we definitely always got THUNDER BLADE. 😩
Calling the PC Engine/ TurboGraphX 16 an 8 bit system really does an amazing job of demonstrating how dubious the whole idea of classifying systems by 'bitness' actually is, especially when you start asking about the technicalities.
The TurboGraphX 16 has an 8 bit cpu and 16 bit graphics chip.
The 65816 CPU seen in the SNES and Apple IIGS performs 16 bit calculations but has an 8 bit data bus.
The 68000 has a 16 bit data bus, but in spite of this accesses data at half the speed of a 65816 of the same clock speed. (making the distinction on bus size seem weirder), it's also capable of performing 32 bit instructions, even though it's poorly suited to them.
The original 8086 CPU in the first PC's shares the same problem - 16 bit instruction set with an 8 bit data bus.
The n64 does indeed have a 64 bit CPU (two of them in fact, given that the graphics chip contains it's own processor with roughly the same instruction set as the main CPU), but it's main bus is 32 bits, it's memory bus is 9 bits (yes, 9), the cartridge bus is 16 bit, and in spite of having 64 bit instructions, the vast majority of game code is 32 bit instructions.
The Gameboy Advance's ARM/THUMB chip is similar - a 32 bit CPU with lots of 16 bit instructions, almost exclusively used in 16 bit mode by actual games.
Meanwhile, on a different tack, both the Atari VCS and PC Engine are 8 bit systems, and even have the same CPU architecture, but you'd never mistake the games for one of these for the other in a million years...
Kinda makes that classification seem kinda moot.
In my Mind the TG16 is a 16 bit system since that's where it fits in best, when you compare games and how things look...
Or, in different terms it's a 4th generation console, like the Mega Drive and SNES....
(first gen is Pong consoles. 2nd gen is the Atari VCS/2600. 3rd gen is Atari 5200,NES, Master System, etc.)
Just think about the Jaguar, it was "64 bit" but that didn't mean anything...
Nice explanation
Nice video. I was wondering where Forgotten Worlds was and remembered that it was a Capcom game, oops! A video comparing Genesis, Turbo and SNES games would be nice. By the way Monster Lair was a regular CD, not Super CD.
The sega genesis can only display 61 colors at the same time. The turbografx-16 can do 481 colors. This is one of the reasons why colors look sometimes much better on the Turbografx.
Some cracking conversions to the 8bit system. A few duff ones but overall good
Good video bro
Always thought this would make a fantastic subject for a video. Thank you for making it happen! Gain Ground SX is also my favorite of the Sega ports. I can’t bring myself to buy that awful Golden Axe port. It’s cheap, but I know I will never play it. It just sucks because if they had given it the same treatment as the others got, you know it would have probably been awesome.
Another great video 😊😊😊😊
First of all, I just want to say GREAT VIDEO! I'm a long time subscriber and love your videos.
This narrative that the PCE/TG was an "8bit" console is old and tired. I honestly can't believe we're still having this conversation. The PCE/TG had an overclocked 8bit CPU, but had dual 16bit GPUs. Not to mention the massive colour gamut. More to the point, the 8bit CPU was set to read 16bit code. That's why the PCE/TG was able to pump out comparable, if not better, ports than their rivals. I'm sorry, but the 16bit narrative is completely subjective. Who ever said that 16bit meant the CPU? In any case, even if you want to call it an 8bit console, that just makes the Genny and SNES look bad in comparison. Personally, the TG/PCE was part of the 16bit rivalry. It didn't make huge ground in North America, but it was the champ for a long time in Japan.
It was the entire narrative during the life of the console. Consoles were defined by the CPU for a very long time, and the TG16 was often lambasted in the media for its "weak" 8-bit CPU. Ultimately the bits of your hardware don't matter nearly as much as what else it has under the hood, but I don't think calling the TG16 8-bit is derogatory. If anything, it showed the sheer power of the unit that despite its rather unimpressive CPU, it could still pump out the games it did.
@@SegaLordX See, I disagree. The CPU was impressive. The SNES's CPU was ridiculously slow in comparison. The SNES's CPU had other superpowers, but speed was not one of them.
And the narrative in North America was literally a narrative. It was based on marketing, and nothing else. The same debate wasn't had in Japan.
Anyway, I edited my first comment because I wanted to let you know I love your content. But let me say it here in case you don't catch it. I really do enjoy your content and keep coming back to it. To be honest, I relish having these 16bit debates. 😆
Keep up the great work, brother!
All good bro. I appreciate the civilized response despite not seeing things eye to eye. It's refreshing to see an actual adult act like an adult in this circumstance.
Dude that port of Gain Ground looks awesome! Is it still two player?
Great Video the PC Engine for me is the greatest :)
Fantastic video.. I will always love retro gaming above all, up to and including PS2/Gamecube as the highest system, and only for the plethora of 2D games on PS2 anyway.
I love your video!
Another great video...thanks!
If anyone is interested, Saturn has a good port of powerdrift and 3DS has a perfect one.
One of the greatest things (and not much people are aware) about Sega is that the company licensed their games to other consoles and computers in the 80's, even with their own hardware avaliable. So, you didn't need a Sega console to play a Sega game;
Fun video. I think I mentioned it as a topic once, so it was definitely one I was happy to see.
I forget where it was, but I saw someone claim Golden Axe for PCE was decent. I already knew better than that. I don't know what that guy was thinking. I think he turned the system off after seeing the title screen. It would be interesting to see a good version of Golden Axe with PCE's features and limitations.
A real shame about Shinobi, especially since it was the only console version that retained the arcade game play. The real disappointment is that it's well done and looks great, but it's missing too much due to the constraints of a tiny Hu-Card. A typical four-megabit ROM might have been all they needed. The missing stage is unfortunate, but the missing melee attacks are the biggest loss for me as they factored into the game play in the arcade version. Not having them made certain areas harder. That's why my favorite of the console ports remains the version on the Master System.
I'd agree. The missing melee attacks hurt Shinobi more than anything. It made the game much harder.
i think its wrong to call it 8-bit, only because of the CPU, the graphics u see on the PC-Engine is 16-bit.
I think you can call it whichever you want, just so long as you understand its capabilities and the generation it was meant for.
After Burner 2 is a great example showing Sega's poor support and nearly non-existent love to their own console. Look at this PC-engine version, on an inferior hardware, it has the zooming effect of the aircraft carrier when the plane takes off, while the Sega MD version has no problem cutting it off at the very beginning of the game. Once the game starts, the PC-engine version has more variety of items like lake and barns on the ground while the only thing the MD version have across all its stages are ugly bushes of different color. The PC-engine version has the sky color fading toward the horizon while the MD version has just one color to the sky. The PC-engine version retains the missile supply stage landing at an air strip while the MD version cuts it and replaces it with in-air supply only. Overall, the PC-engine porting staff poured a lot of love to do their best retaining as much element from the arcade version, while the MD porting staff...simply provided a burger even without cheese. Not to mention Sega was so lazy that they didn't even bother to port this game to MD by their own while outsourcing it to Denpa News. Did they even care about their console. And other games covered in this video like Space Harrier and Thunder Blade....while they are not great on the PC-engine, at least they tried. This compares to Sega's coward approach: Making new but different games and calling them Space Harrier 2 or Super Thunder Blade, while simply didn't have the guts to port their own arcade hits. Oh, and they never brought Power Drift to MD. Sega just hate their consoles, and such attitude put themselves out of the console business.
I really really need to practice super scaler animation in Adobe
2:17 music kinda like starfox
The basic gist of fake scaling is largely based on changing full screen tilemaps rapidly and sprites prerendered to various sizes. Probably the best examples of this technique ever produced. :D
Problem with Hu-Cards is there was little you could do to make them bigger other than thickening the back like SF2:CE did which was rare. No actual reason SH doesn't have a checkerboard ground on PCE other than a poor decision in porting. :\ I think the system could have done more parallax with tile animation like the NES did. GA on PCE is absurdly bad, doesn't seem possible it exists. :O-Barf!
1:06 Batman on NES
The PC Engine is so confusing. It's 8-bit, but looks and sounds much better than NES and Master System. Outrun looks amazing on it! And then of course if you use the CD system, the music is insane.
Because it is 16 bit with its 16 bit gfx card!
That's because firstly the whole 'bitness' thing is nonsensical in the end.
(everything from the first PC's to the SNES to the n64 to a million other things demonstrate pretty solidly that it's a nonsensical distinction)
The PC Engine should be grouped in with the 16 bit consoles, because that's where it's features make sense. (Seriously it's graphical capabilities are on par with 16 bit systems and nothing like 8 bit ones.)
The CPU being 8 bit is a barely relevant side issue, besides which it's one of the fastest 8 bit cpu's in any console...
@@KuraIthys Right? I mean the PCE's cpu's processing power is on level with the Genesis and definitely more so than the SNES, The SNES actually switches into 8bit mode quite often because of design limitations of the processor.. and yet no one ever talks about that haha.
@@KuraIthys And everyone back then did lump it in with the 16 bit consoles. It just seems to be kids today that keep tagging it in the wrong era.
Didn't know about this
Who here's loves Sony Playstation And Pce Engine And Sega games🎮
I was just thinking this is the lineup of Sonics Sega Arcade collection for playstation 3!!! ITS FANTASTIC BC ITS ALL THE ARCADE VERSIONS!! ❤❤❤
The TG16's SPU had a very distinct sound all its own. It wasn't FM-Synthesis like the Genesis or a sample-based like the SNES.
When it was on, I loved the sound from the PC Engine. Though like the Genesis, when it was bad it could be really bad.
@@SegaLordX Yeah. But that's true of any sound hardware. There are some SNES compositions that are just plain shit too.
I was interest in Turbo graphix 16 back in 1990 but, the price was too high and my whole entire family was a nintendo fanatic. I didnt get a Sega Genesis till 94 and a playstation in 97.
Hey thanks again man this actually helped me out today
And I'm being serious too
How ever it helped, I'm glad to hear it. :)
PC Engines neo geo arcade ports were in my opinion closer to the arcade compared to nintendo and genesis and NEO GEO console wasnt even out yet. Its up to the developers to put in the energy and time to make best of the hardware. Saturn had the same issue
From where the theme in beginning is? So familiar.
It is from a Saturn's game called Astal.
I wonder why NEC Avenue didn't port Sonic the hedgehog to the PC engine.
So if they removed the melee entirely from that Shinobi, why does he have a sword on his back still?
Heck ya !!!
New vid
You should have showed Truxton / Tatsujin and how much harder the PC Engine version is lol
I indeed am interested in this Space Harrier version, a game I first experienced via a glitch Master System adapter for MEGA DRIVE Mark I. I also have it on 32x and is a game I have grown into understanding and liking more and more all the way even when I do not get the High scores one could hope I like the athmosphere, and to be true to you in what I meaning and I mean what I say… I Think the slower movement in terms of velocity would come to serve me well being for the benefit of taking things slower I live Northern Europe and I am not sure if there was a turbografix here, I am sorry
Shinobi on the PC Engine is still excellent; was there a better home console port?
The SMS version was an awesome game in its own right, but as far as arcade closeness, it's PC Engine.