Talk:TurboGrafx-16

I'm making a quick adjustment in the Turbo Duo section. There was no "official" pack in HuCard game for the Duo. NEC changed the promotion several times, at one point it was Dungeon Explorer, at another time it was Ninja Spirit. A number of games were offered as a pack-in as well as after a time a random pack in. Another note that is unecessary is the note about the TurboExpress and having dead pixels. TurboZoneDirect can confirm this as can many consumers who own their portables with dead pixels. Simply put it's a real problem and I'm not sure who edited that but the disclaimer is absolutely unecessary.

Hucard size

they were not the size of a credit card, they were smaller. Making a change. Jafafa Hots 08:32, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Ouch, I wish I caught this sooner. Actually, HuCards are indeed the same size as a credit-card, except they are THICKER. Please verify before editing :) Esteban666 00:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I have a turbografx, I have dozens of hucards, and I have several credit cards, and the hucards are smaller than the credit cards. Is that enough verification? Jafafa Hots 07:51, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I just put a credit card and a HuCard in a stack, and I was right. A HuCard is one 32nd inch narrower. Doh! OK, they're essentially the same. For some reason the white edges of the HuCard made me think they were narrower. I'm a dumbass!!! Sorry. Jafafa Hots 04:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Page in need of an overhaul?

Hi folks. Anyone interested in fixing up this page (perhaps structuring it differently)? It has improved over the years, somewhat, but I always felt like these were bandaids slapped onto a weak foundation. I am not even happy with my edits -- I think we can do a lot better :)

Nintendo Revolution virtual console

I don't see very much towards the Nintendo Revolution virtual console. I think we'll see alot more visitors to the page now that it has benn confirmed for the VC. (After all, it's what brought me hear ;) )

As I'm, clumsy and new to the wiki, I don't think I can or will do it. ;

Thanks,

ComKeen 23:46, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

merger

No other console entry on wikipedia combines the Japanese name and the American one into the same article. I'm removing the merger request. 68.229.165.237 03:47, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Um yes it does Sega Genesis/Sega Megadrive. Please do not remove requests before consensus has been made -- larsinio (poke)^(prod) 23:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I merged the articles. It's a bit sloppy, but it was the only logical choice. Famicom and NES are the same article, Mega Drive and Genesis are also in the article, and Super Nintendo and Super Famicom as well. –KAMiKAZOW 17:14, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

The reason "Mega Drive" is in the name of the Genesis/Mega Drive article isn't because it's the Japanese name. It's because it's the name used in English-speaking countries outside North America. If Famicom and Super Famicom were used in PAL/SECAM territories for what are known outside Japan as the NES and SNES, then those articles would probably have those names in the title as well. --Evice 05:10, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, now for the million dollar question, why didn't the TurboDuo and SuperGrafx pages get merged into this one as well? BcRIPster 07:26, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

8-bit , 16-bit or hybrid?

HARDWARE: Not to be overly technical, but is it accurate to label the PCE / TG-16 hardware as fundamentally 8-bit, as the intro states? I don't know the answer, that is why I am asking. Is the answer clear-cut? Or is there some debate, technically, on how to classify hybrid hardware like this? I know that the PCE / TG-16 is *not* a true 16-bit, but it seems to exist somewhere on the continuum between "proper" 8- and 16- bit systems (NES <-> SNES, SMS <-> Genesis).

GENERATION: Again, this isn't clear cut for me. Clearly, in North America, the TG-16 is associated with the 16-bit generation, since it launched at the same time as Sega's Genesis and both companies marketed their consoles as "the next era" in video games.

However, when we look at the larger picture and include the PCE and Japan, the PCE is clearly associated with the 8-bit generation (being a contemporary of Nintendo's and Sega's 8-bit consoles in Japan).

Therefore, I submit that the PCE spans both the 8-bit and 16-bit generations.

RECOMMENDATIONS: Now that the PCE and TG-16 entries at wikipedia have merged, we have a big headache to deal with. Each console has a distinct history and we really can't generalize about them. All future edits and revisions should keep this in mind -- lest we confuse folks! Clearly state whether you are discussing / referring to PCE, TG-16 or both.

Thanks Esteban666 00:52, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

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My follow up:

The PC-Engine is an 8-bit system in every sense (8-bit CPU with 8-bit data bus). It's video chips have a selectable 8-bit/16-bit interface which is used in 8-bit mode, not that it matters: We could argue semantics about the video chips working in units of 16 bits, but for that matter so does the Sega Master System and plenty of other consoles which are decidedly 8-bit. If that was how we measured bitness of a console, the Genesis has hybrid 16-bit/256-bit video (!) but is well known as a 16-bit system based on it's CPU specfications.

The misunderstanding about it being 16-bit can be blamed on the "TurboGrafx-16" name. That was marketing spin, it is not a 16-bit system. (likewise, the SNK Neo Geo wasn't 24-bit though marketing decided it's 16-bit + 8-bit CPUs made it 24-bit)

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REPLY: Excellent, thanks for clearing that up. OK, so if you are correct, then TG-16 / PCE can be definitively categorized as 8-bit hardware. However, as far as the "Generation" is concerned, TG-16 and PCE span both 8-bit and 16-bit eras and are considered the comtemporaries of Famicom, MegaDrive and SuperFamicom (in Japan) and contemporaries of Genesis, SNES (in North America). Esteban666 20:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

PAL Turbografx

According to this Hudson Soft forum thread, a PAL Turbographx was never officially released, but was rather, a grey market item. This information appears to have come from John Greiner, president of Hudson Soft. A Hudson employee has posted Greiner's response to the question about half way down the page

"Because I love you guys, I went and pestered Mr. Greiner for you this morning! The Turbo Grafx was never officially released in Europe. It was however, given distribution as a "gray market" item through the Guillemot brothers (now owners of Ubisoft). The sold around 50,000 units and it made them a lot of money. They basically took the PC Engine and put PAL conversion units onto them and enabled them to play US games.

As stated, the Turbo Grafx was a gray market item, therefore there was no advertising, official Hudson marketing, or other aspects involved in the process - though we gave Guillemot a lot of support. NEC handled the distribution of games in Europe which were basically the American titles you all know and love. The system could be found on store shelves throughout Europe and received a lot of press coverage as well from the various magazines there."

Here is the thread http://hudsonent.com/viewtopic.php?t=44&sid=f236051d12b1668bbdf7f5cf64646054 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Andrew WD (talk • contribs) .

Please keep in mind that PAL territories and Europe do not coincide. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Palpalpalpal (talk • contribs) .

For what it's worth, there is apparently a company named "Raven Games" that will convert these PAL units (as well as NTSC units) to SCART. I only became aware of them when I found one of their Duo conversions for sale on e-bay. BcRIPster 16:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The "Struggles in North America" segment

It's like reading from the worst of EGM. The history information is completely wrong on the hows and why's behind software distribution in the U.S. I've been strugling with this re-write for almost 30 minutes now and I'm about to just trash the whole segment and go from scratch. To start with ...the situation as of October of 1993 as I tried to explain to members of the Turbo-List mailing list...

Here is the chain of events that would get a game released by TTI in the U.S.... unless TTI directly negotiated a deal with a Third party developer such as Working Designs.

For a Japanese release to come over to the U.S., Hudson would aquire the rights to it for use on the PC-Engine. At this point if TTI (U.S.) wanted to get this game, they would first have to purchase the rights from Hudson Japan, then do a conversion on the title themselves in the U.S. (localization, etc...).

This literally created a situation where if a game came out in the U.S. first, without a direct partnership agreement with TTI (say, a game on another platform), and TTI wanted to release it. Hudson Japan would have to aquire the rights for the Japanese release and convert it to Japanese. Then TTI would buy the rights from Hudson and convert it back to English. I am not kidding about this! They can not skip this step and port the English version directly. This was pretty much the same process prior to the change over to TTI, only in the earlier case Hudson U.S. had to buy the title from Hudson Japan before they could do the conversion.

Therefore as you can guess, it cost a chunk of cash for games to be brought into U.S. Towards the end it was an even slower process since they had hardly any staff to do localization and conversions. This explains why you never saw all that many japanese conversions to begin with, and rarely any top-tier games.

Seriously! This was confirmed to me by various contacts I had within TTI, Hudson U.S. and Hudson Japan whom I would talk to during that time period. It was so insane I kept tracking down other people and asking them if this was true. It still boggles the mind.

Towards the end, 3DO swiped TTI's head of P.R. in the U.S. (although she quickly left 3DO for Sega), and Sega eventually hired some of their remaining U.S. programming staff away to work on Saturn development. BcRIPster 07:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there any ideas out there on how to go about integrating this data? BcRIPster 07:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

1. Well, assuming your info is accurate (and I have no reason to doubt it, plus we can try to corroborate it with the folks at Hudson), it certainly warrants inclusion in the article. I think it would be a great addition since the process was / is not common knowledge. I'll try to add your info soon, though I must admit I'm still confused by the process you described. Any clarification would be helpful. Thanks.

2. Although I think this article is a mess, I didn't see any glaring errors in the "Struggles" section. Could you explain the errors you see? I'd be willing to fix the problems. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Esteban666 (talk • contribs) 08:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC).Esteban666 08:33, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

1. 2 first... In hindesite the general information is ok, I hit this page at the tail end of reading a lot of bad content on the site, and was more overwealmed than anything on how to address the page. I'm sorry for being so abrupt and I've struck my initial comment from what I first wrote. In response to #1, while I have lots of names of people I would speak with at these companies, I would have no idea how to contact any of them now. Most of them, I know, left the industry at one point or another. The guy running what's left of TTI (his name is eluding me at the moment) might be able to coraberate some of this though. I think there is a good bit of work to still go on this page as a whole, but it's a good start. BcRIPster 11:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

No need to apologize. Also, you personally don't have to verify stuff, since we can ask former NEC/TTi personnel. If we are lucky, the moderators at the Hudson forum will ask the president about this and we'll get a definitive answer (I was the one who asked them about the PAL TurboGrafx, and they were kind enough to answer it). Steve at TTi would also be a good resource, as you said. I haven't been to the Hudson forums for a long time, but I'll post a question about this. Cross your fingers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Esteban666 (talk • contribs) 02:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC).Esteban666 02:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not really a case of verification, this how Terri Tang (I'll have to confirm that spelling) and others at the company explained it to me when I was inquiring on behalf of our magazine. But it would be interesting to hear what you're told now. BcRIPster 04:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

TurboGrafx-16 → PC Engine — PC Engine is the more recognized term for the platform internationally, and the more sucessful product line of the two. TurboGrafx-16 should redirect to PC Engine. Effectively swap how it is now. BcRIPster 20:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Add  # '''Support'''  or  # '''Oppose'''  on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Please remember that this survey is not a vote, and please provide an explanation for your recommendation.

Survey - in support of the move

Strong Support: PC Engine is the name it first went by and the one I and many knew the console by. It amuses me that you can download "TurboGrafx" games from Nintendo's Virtual Console in europe yet I keep seeing everyone refer to them as PC Engine games. Even the UK Nintendo site feel inclined to add "PC Engine" in brackets everytime they mention the TurboGrafx. Dave anime 20:05, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Survey - in opposition to the move

Strong Oppose: I think That Console Machines Should Be Kept By itself. Should Not Be Merged. You don't see the Gameboy Color getting merged to Gameboy.72.144.20.10 02:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)Pendo 4

You do understand that the TG-16 and PCE are the same machine just different region. Your example is flawed. I'm talking about renaming the page. It was already merged anyways some time ago.BcRIPster 08:19, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't change the name then. I knew this machine by "TURBOGRAPIX" for the name.Pendo 4 20:53, 7 February 2007 (UTC)Pendo 4

I have no intention of frustrating folks, but in North America everyone knew of this console as TurboGrafx-16, first and foremost. Neither the introduction of the TurboDUO (DUO) nor the recent renewed interest in "retro" Japanese consoles has changed this fact. All of NEC's North American video game products, for better or for worse, fall under the umbrella of the "TurboGrafx-16" moniker. PC Engine? That's the Japanese version of the TurboGrafx-16, right? TurboExpress? That's the portable TurboGrafx-16, isn't it? TurboGrafx-CD? That's TurboGrafx-16's CD-ROM, right? TurboDuo? That's the TurboGrafx-16 combined with a CD-ROM, isn't it?

The fact that Wii's Virtual Console refers to the console as "TurboGrafx-16" is further evidence that an overwhelming majority of English-speaking gamers associate the moniker with the console. Name-recognition is the prominent issue here, and books (documenting the history of consoles) and gaming magazines (past and present) still refer to the system as TurboGrafx-16.

Furthermore, despite the robust PC Engine import scenes in North America, France (and other countries, I'm sure), there is no evidence that the PC Engine user base was large enough -- or influential enough -- to challenge the name-recognition of TurboGrafx-16.

Consider this: Famicom was incredibly popular, but an overwhelming majority of English-speaking gamers recognize the console, first and foremost, by its North American name, "NES." Esteban666 02:25, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

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