The TurboGrafx-16 in 1989 | Classic Gaming Quarterly

What a fantastic video. It’s easy for anyone to see that a lot of work went into this.

“Ga” “La” “Ga” we just say Galaga here on earth. With love respect appreciation for all you do for free thank you.

I have a weird history with this system. It came out when I was in high school. I had an after-school job and thus had ample spending money for the first time in my life. I already owned an NES and a Genesis, but I didn't want to miss out on this new TurboGrafx-16 system, so I bought a base model despite the high price. After bringing it home and setting it up, I discovered that to hook it up properly to the TV and stereo, I needed to go back to the toy store and buy a plug-in thing that attached to the back of it for an RCA hookup, making it even more expensive. In addition to the somewhat crappy pack-in game Keith Courage, I also bought Dungeon Explorer, which I really liked. However I was not able to play it with my sister without going back to the toy store yet again to buy the "Turbo Tap" and a second controller. This was getting ridiculously expensive. A few days later, buyer's remorse swept over me and I returned everything for my money back. Flash forward to a couple years later, I was in the army when the Turbo Duo came out. One of my buddies had bought one, and he had Gate of Thunder and Ys Book I & II. Those games were light years better than the ones I had seen on the TurboGrafx in high school, so I completely changed my mind about the system and bought a Duo, which I still have to this day. I got heavily into the import scene and bought all the classics from Japan like Gradius II, Ys IV and Dracula X: Rondo of Blood. It's still my favorite system of all time. But I also understand why it totally flopped in the U.S. It was overpriced, overly complicated to set up, and there just weren't enough good games to justify owning one until a couple years later when the Duo came out.

16 bit systems across the board were amazing.

I will never forget playing Splatterhouse on a TG16 kiosk in the electronics section of my local Fred Meyer when I was 9. It was the first time I felt scared while playing a videogame and I loved it.

One of my brothers really good friends had a Turbo Grafix 16. We had the Sega Genesis. My brothers friend would bring over his Turbo Grafix 16 all the time and we'd sit there taking turns playing each console. I was a "hard core" Sega Genesis fan. But, that Turbo Grafix 16 came incredibly close to winning me over. I thought it was a cool console and very classy looking.

I've learned more about the PC Engine/TG-16 in this episode than all the reading I ever did on the interwebs about the console, thanks Chris for such high-quality edutainment!

You're the first, and so far only, person I ever heard pronounce Galaga like that. I think we say it like gah-la-guh because of how we pronounce the word "Galaxy".

Ohya, being a day one TG-16 fan it was cool remembering all these cool games again. Great video!

These annual roundup episodes are evergreen. Love returning to them. I imagine doing one for each year would be a Herculean effort.

Your announcer voice is the best. Great episode! The love really shows in your work as usual.

I love how deep you go on general gaming history every time you get a chance to jump on it. I never knew maker of SFI gone to SNK and made FF, for example. Pure gold videos.

I've never had the opportunity to own or play a Turbografx-16 but with it's plethora of shoot em ups, it really seems like it would be right up my alley! Unfortunately, the games aren't getting any cheaper haha Great video and a fun look into what NEC was up to in 89! Now to work on finding a console of my very own... ;)

Watching 7 seconds of Virtua Tennis on the Dreamcast makes me want to dig through my garage and break that game back out again. The amount of hours we spent in college playing that game and unlocking everything is outright ridiculous. What a fantastic game. Thomas Johansson forever!

In 38 years, i never heard anyone call the game ga-la-ga

For me 1989-92 was my fav time in gaming. Loved having both the Turbo and Genesis. The games in those first three years were amazing

Thank you for making these. It is a real fun trip down memory lane.

been waiting for this one. awesome stuff Jibb

I still have my TG-16 from back in the day! I was the only kid I knew who had one. Guess I was one of the "weird" kids. 😄 cheers

The PC engine was awesome! They made games to complete with the famicom but with better graphics! Then when the 16 bit era started they ramped up the graphics to 16 bit graphics do to the two 16 bit graphics processors!! NEC really thought ahead knowing 16 bit was right around the corner!! Amazingly powerful 8 bit CPU running as fast as the Genesis CPU and it even had the same color palette as the Genesis of 512 available colors but unlike the Genesis 64 on screen colors! It was able to put 482 on screen! 241 for backgrounds and 241 for the sprites!!!! Such a great and underappreciated console!!!!!