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NEC TG-16/TE/TurboDuo => TG-16/TE/TurboDuo Discussion => Topic started by: guyjin on May 02, 2011, 01:17:46 PM
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So, looking at the Turbo Magazine archive, I noticed a "top 10" list of games for the TG16 as of June, 1990.
http://archives.tg-16.com/archive-one/TP-02-07.jpg
They were, in order:
Bonk's Adventure(platformer)
Double Dungeon(RPG)
Legendary Axe(platformer)
Taking it to the hoop(sports)
Cyber Core(shmup)
Neutopia(adventure)
King of Casino(gambling)
Dungeon Explorer(adventure)
World Class Baseball(sports)
Millitary Madness(strategy)
Note that only one of those is a shmup.
From that list, we can tell that the tastes of early turbo fans were highly questionable (taking it to the hoop? king of casino? seriously?) But we can also see that they wanted platformers, adventure games, and RPGs.
Given this, did NEC/TTi spend too much time on Shmups, when they should have been porting RPGs?
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NEC/TTI surely must have brought over so many shmups since they didn't have to do much translating in the first place, which is not a bad thing in my book since I love that genre. But yeah, a few more J-RPGs would have been much appreciated.
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How many shooters had even been released by then?
That list doesn't look like a proper top ten anyways, with the sports titles included. It looks like they tried to do a balanced list simply of 10 games with some variety.
Given this, did NEC/TTi spend too much time on Shmups, when they should have been porting RPGs?
They should've just stuck to quality over quantity and only brought over the better games, no matter how much slower the process or lower the overall number of titles would've been. They also shouldn't have funded any crappy original games.
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RPG's were still pretty niche at that time...plus the fact they would have taken longer, and even more of their meager funds to translate, it prob wouldn't have changed much.
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I think the shmups were a self fulfilling prophecy, people bought the Turbo because it had lots of shmups, the shmups sold well on the system which led to more shmups being localized.
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I think they just picked shit out of a hat, and got really unlucky.
Noone in their right frigging mind would have neglected some of the games they did.
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How many shooters had even been released by then?
http://www.pcedaisakusen.net/2/27/list-games--2-0-100-year-asc-50.htm
By my count, at least 9, and probably closer to 12.
That list doesn't look like a proper top ten anyways, with the sports titles included. It looks like they tried to do a balanced list simply of 10 games with some variety.
it looks like a top 10 games in sales list to me. I am frequently mystified by gamers' tastes, and this is no exception.
They should've just stuck to quality over quantity and only brought over the better games, no matter how much slower the process or lower the overall number of titles would've been. They also shouldn't have funded any crappy original games.
Won't argue with you there.
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it looks like a top 10 games in sales list to me. I am frequently mystified by gamers' tastes, and this is no exception.
So early after the launch, whichever games just happened to be available anywhere anyone lived likely influenced the sales numbers the most.
I think that many of the games released in 1990 wouldn't have been released yet or had only been available for a short time. But looking at what is listed for 1989, half of them actually are shooters. I think that shooters is a great genre to be heavy in, since they tended to be proportionately more reliable for enjoyment (to me anyway) than most other genres at the time, which were mostly experimental o early in the new generation.
If they had brought over all the HuCard RPG/Adventure'ish games that were released before 1990, it might have included:
Bikkuriman World
Necromancer
War of the Dead
Shada
Susa No Ou Densetsu
Benkei Gaiden
Although I would've been happy, I don't think that most other Turbo fans would've rather had these games in place of any of the shooters that were or weren't brought over instead.
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if the turbo would have had more RPGs, it would have done way better against the Genesis and SNES.
The strictly US library can't really compete with Phantasy Star 2,3 and 4, Shining Force 1 and 2, Vay, Popful Mail, Lunar 1 and 2, Traysia, a M&M game, D&D, Super Hydlide, Sword of Vermillion, Crusader of Centy and other crap I forgot, as far as RPGs go.
likewise, Secret of Mana, FF4 and 6, Lufia 1 and 2, Illusion of Gaia, Brainlord, Chrono Trigger, Mystic Quest (its not that bad!), 7th Saga 1 and 2, and some other stuff.
We got hosed as far as RPGs go. Neutopia 1 and 2, Cosmic Fantasy 2... annnnd....uhhh....
Necromancer and War of the Dead would have been f*cking KILLER.
Zombie Apocalypse action RPG? YES.
Outlive would have been nice to have in the US
Necross No yosai and Sindibad also.
Thats just Hucards. Lets get serious here.
If they would have had the brains/balls to bring over the CD games, holy shit.
mouth breathing neckbeards all over the states would be rubbing themselves all over English copies of games they can barely fumble through otherwise.
Babel, the startling odysseys, la valeur, anearth, the rest of the Cosmic Fantasy series......... Xak and Fray, I mean what the hell.
Howd they let a power house RPG catalog just slip by ?
Too much Yo bro'ing it up?
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We got hosed as far as RPGs go. Neutopia 1 and 2, Cosmic Fantasy 2... annnnd....uhhh....
Dragon Slayer, Might and Magic III, Double Dungeons
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The problem wasn't that they had too many shooties, it was that they didn't have enough of everything else.
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We got hosed as far as RPGs go. Neutopia 1 and 2, Cosmic Fantasy 2... annnnd....uhhh....
Dragon Slayer, Might and Magic III, Double Dungeons
and Order of the Griffon! yeah and thats it basically!
Might and Magic III is a niche game though. so are DD and ootg...
Console RPG wise, Double Dungeons, M&M 3, and OotG are a bit of a loss for alot of people. I have friends that absolutely hate first person RPGs. I tried getting the one to like it, and by the end of it he was swearing and saying I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU SAY "JUST DRAW A MAP AS YOU WALK" ONE MORE TIME IM GOING TO BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN.
They are great games, but don't fit the bill for alot of people who want Dragon Quest / FF excitement.
f*ck, the NES had so many good ones around the same time as the TG. The TG could've had good games to compete, but they just didn't bring them over. It's depressing.
War of the Dead would have been amazing. What, did they think Americans dont like zombie horror ? We invented that shit.
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First off, the answer to you question is, "no".
Secondly, the term "shmup" is f*cking retarded. Please stop using it. Please also suspend,
"Are you working hard, or hardly working?"
"TGIF!"
"LOL" (actually spoken just like that, in a non-internet situation.
"I could care less..." (when what you actually mean is the exact opposite)
"Really? Really? Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Really? Really?" (over and over again at least 5 times a day.
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When I bought my first console, a Super Nintendo, as an 8-year-old in 1992 (with my own hard-saved money), I'm positive I didn't think about the balance of the game selection on the system. On the other hand, I also hadn't even heard of the Turbo. The key factors were Mario and marketing, and that's why I think that the balance wouldn't have mattered much if NEC had just had a visible killer-app that worked like Mario or Sonic. That was the name of the game in those days.
As someone who liked shmups then and now (sorry SignOfZeta, economy wins), along with most of my friends, I wouldn't have had a problem with having lots of them. Here's a question that I think is interesting: could the killer-app/mascot game have been a shmup?
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First off, the answer to you question is, "no".
Secondly, the term "shmup" is f*cking retarded. Please stop using it. Please also suspend,
"Are you working hard, or hardly working?"
"TGIF!"
"LOL" (actually spoken just like that, in a non-internet situation.
"I could care less..." (when what you actually mean is the exact opposite)
"Really? Really? Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Really? Really?" (over and over again at least 5 times a day.
f*cking awesome, right there.
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First off, the answer to you question is, "no".
Secondly, the term "shmup" is f*cking retarded. Please stop using it. Please also suspend,
"Are you working hard, or hardly working?"
"TGIF!"
"LOL" (actually spoken just like that, in a non-internet situation.
"I could care less..." (when what you actually mean is the exact opposite)
"Really? Really? Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Really? Really?" (over and over again at least 5 times a day.
no way Jose!
It's either my way or the highway!
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: could the killer-app/mascot game have been a shmup?
http://pcengine.co.uk/HTML_Games/PC_Denjin.htm ???
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The TG had tons of awesome RPGs, they just arrived too late and most of them required the CD-Rom or Duo which were way too expensive for the average kid.
Dungeon Explorer
Double Dungeons
Neutopia
Neutopia 2
Order of the Griffon
Ys 1-2
Ys 3
Exile
Exile 2
Cosmic Fantasy 2
Might and Magic 3
Dragon Slayer
Dungeon Master
Loom
Dungeon Explorer 2
Yes, some of these belong to debatable genres, but I'll argue that roughly one-fifth of the CD games could be classified as RPGs. Other sames like Beyond Shadowgate, Dynastic Hero, Shape Shifter, Dragon's Curse, JB Harold, etc. are also popular with RPG fans.
That said, the TG doesn't have many of the dumbed-down, turn-based, linear RPGs that tend to become wildly popular. Like Arkhan pointed out, first-person RPGs are a bit of a puzzler for mainstream gamers. I'd go one step further and say that the average Final Fantasy fanboy rarely gets into any of the old-school, computer-style RPGs that are closer to the D+D roots of the genre. They're just as lost in top-down Ultima as they are in first-person Wizardry. The whole reason Dragon Quest found mass appeal is because it was the first time game designers took all of the esoteric D+D mechanics that early, unlicensed, RPGs had stayed fairly close to and streamlined it (for better or worse). Gone was the hour of character building. Magic Missile become "Hurt" spell. Slow, non-linear exploration was sacrificed for an easy-to-grasp plot and so on. The Final Fantasy series kept the simplification and refined the concept with a more attractive combat system and epic storyline. The only TG RPGs along these lines are CF2 and Dragon Slayer, which is why no one thinks our fairly RPG-heavy system has enough RPGs.
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The first person games are definitely a different cup of tea, and Dungeon Master in particular is more like a puzzle game than an RPG.
Then the rest, some of them are pretty friggin pricey. Even at the time, requiring Sys3.
We got hosed, pretty bad. There needed to be more HuCard ones
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.....There needed to be more HuCard ones.....
Only problem there is you then had to use a password system like:
asdrtewDSDd354@#%28
sd2#$%s321!#Fdstwedf
8==D~~o-:fdsWERFsdfs
And who wanted that?!?
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We got hosed, pretty bad. There needed to be more HuCard ones
By 'we' you must mean everyone (Turbob and PCE). There weren't many HuCard RPGs in Japan either, and none of 'em were anywhere near as good as the better disc games.
Only problem there is you then had to use a password system like:
asdrtewDSDd354@#%28
sd2#$%s321!#Fdstwedf
8==D~~o-:fdsWERFsdfs
And who wanted that?!?
But HuCards can save too.
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Anyone who thinks RPGs, regardless of format, would cause the TG-16 to be massively more popular evidently doesn't remember that most console RPGs at that time sold in very low numbers. Square skipped FF II-V, and every other RPG that had a Japanese release during that time. Enix skipped Dragon Quest V and, IIRC, left the US completely after Ogre Battle came out.
It really wasn't until FFVII, long after the Turbo was dead, that RPGs became mainstream enough in the US to effect the success of a system. In 1990 RPGs were basically a money loser. Think of the Genesis, which made money hand over fist. How many RPGs did it have? Not many more than the Turbo. Maybe less? The SNES, equally successful, had a couple more. I think even if you used the looser definitions of RPG to include Shining Force, the 1st person dirges, and even action RPGs like Zelda and Oasis. What are we looking at, maybe 50 RPGs during the entire lifespan of SNES and Genesis combined? And maybe 4 or 5 of them are best sellers?
Never mind this top ten list (which was compiled...how, by who?). If anything I'd say the shooters helped the system since all my friends who moved on from 16-bit ages ago probably have a better memory of Lords of Thunder than any other game.
What killed the Turbo, in addition to the high price, was that the sorts of games that eventually came to define it in Japan, the stuff it really kicked ass at, the sims, the RPGs, the anime licenses, the digital comics, this stuff...it wasn't something you could bring to the US. You'd spend 100x as much money localizing a game 1/100 as many people would want to buy. They games that did sell in the US (Madden, Mortal Kombat, Mario, Sonic) don't have very good representation on the PC Engine. Sure, the system loyalists here seem to think Blue Blink is as good as Sonic 2, but most people don't see it that way (US or Japan) and marketing has nothing to do with it.
It just wasn't meant to be. The only thing that would have saved the TG-16 (aside from Americans just spontaneously deciding they'd like to read in a video game) would have been if NEC/TTI suddenly started producing dozens of grade A original software for the US, which I'm not sure they could have done with any sum of money.
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The TG had tons of awesome RPGs, they just arrived too late and most of them required the CD-Rom or Duo which were way too expensive for the average kid.
Dungeon Explorer
Double Dungeons
Neutopia
Neutopia 2
Order of the Griffon
Ys 1-2
Ys 3
Exile
Exile 2
Cosmic Fantasy 2
Might and Magic 3
Dragon Slayer
Dungeon Master
Loom
Dungeon Explorer 2
Yes, some of these belong to debatable genres, but I'll argue that roughly one-fifth of the CD games could be classified as RPGs. Other sames like Beyond Shadowgate, Dynastic Hero, Shape Shifter, Dragon's Curse, JB Harold, etc. are also popular with RPG fans.
That said, the TG doesn't have many of the dumbed-down, turn-based, linear RPGs that tend to become wildly popular. Like Arkhan pointed out, first-person RPGs are a bit of a puzzler for mainstream gamers. I'd go one step further and say that the average Final Fantasy fanboy rarely gets into any of the old-school, computer-style RPGs that are closer to the D+D roots of the genre. They're just as lost in top-down Ultima as they are in first-person Wizardry. The whole reason Dragon Quest found mass appeal is because it was the first time game designers took all of the esoteric D+D mechanics that early, unlicensed, RPGs had stayed fairly close to and streamlined it (for better or worse). Gone was the hour of character building. Magic Missile become "Hurt" spell. Slow, non-linear exploration was sacrificed for an easy-to-grasp plot and so on. The Final Fantasy series kept the simplification and refined the concept with a more attractive combat system and epic storyline. The only TG RPGs along these lines are CF2 and Dragon Slayer, which is why no one thinks our fairly RPG-heavy system has enough RPGs.
Even with your stretching of the definition of the genre, which I prefer to call 'games for RPG fans', the Turbo isn't RPG-heavy, as it amounts to 10% or less of the library and is still much lower than Genesis/Sega-CD and SNES in the number of titles.
Just like with the Sega platform though, people who say that the Turbo has nothing or very little to offer RPG fans are incorrect, but it does have few "traditional" JRPGs, which thanks to the SNES is what most people think of when you say RPG. The way that some Genesis fans stretch the definition, it includes basically everything but sports games.
The PC Engine does have as much as or more RPG and RPG-fan-friendly games as the SFC.
But as Zeta said, RPGs weren't popular during the 16-bit generation. FFIII was noteworthy at the time, because even non-RPG fans noticed it. That helped set up Chrono Trigger to attain its instant "legendary" status by people who'd played very few RPGs and were blinded by the trendy aesthetics.
If we're talking about what was good for the Turbo commercially and to strengthen its brand, it would've been best off with more impressive games from Japan and fewer unimpressive ones. Imagine if people's impression of the Turbo was that it had killer graphics and games instead of being a fake 16-bit console with such random quality? I think that it would have done better and be remembered more fondly by non-Turbo fans.
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I dunno I think if there were more US RPG options, it would have helped give it more oomph. RPGs were raved about in lots of old magazines. EGM and GamePro did tons of OOMGOMGOOMGOMGOGM when chrono trigger came out, and Lufia wasn't exactly a fart in the wind!
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I have to disagree about RPGs, Zeta. While they certainly weren't as influential as games like Sonic and DKC, a lot of people did play them. Me, my brother, and most of my friends did, I think I actually only had one game playing fried who didn't. For me and my brother, RPGs were 60% of what we bought (which amounted to a few new games a year).
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all i played growing up was RPGs for the most part. Anti social ftw
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While true many of us (and like minded friends) bitd played rpg's...by in large they were largely ignored by the majority of gamers for a long time. It's true (as Zeta stated) FF VII really did break rpg's into a MUCH larger mainstream presence.
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In this crowd, I'm obviously an exception, as I didn't touch RPGs until adulthood. That stuff was boring to me as a kid and even into young adulthood. I stuck to action games, and more importantly, shooters. This fact alone made the Turbo the console of choice during the 16-bit era. The Genesis was an attractive option, but a Turbo is what I ended up with.
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In this crowd, I'm obviously an exception, as I didn't touch RPGs until adulthood. That stuff was boring to me as a kid and even into young adulthood. I stuck to action games, and more importantly, shooters. This fact alone made the Turbo the console of choice during the 16-bit era. The Genesis was an attractive option, but a Turbo is what I ended up with.
whats funny is as far as action games went, I usually turned to my turbob growing up. RPGs on the rest of the stuff.
but not much on the SNES really touches the Turbob in the action department..
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I actually bought my Duo primarily for the RPGs I hoped would come out for it (but didn't). That, and GoT/LoT.
I too played a lot of RPGs on NES, Amiga, Mac, whatever, but I assure you only the small nerd minority did that in the US. When I worked at a video rental chain the mid 90s there would basically be two to three people who always rented the RPGs, then there the other 25,000 customers who wanted Mortal Kombat, licensed stuff, and sports shit.
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Well, it does get tiresome after a while but it's eased by the fact that a lot of them are actually good shooters. For every ten games like Galaga '90, Blazing Lazers, and Gradius II, there were some lame ones like Deep Blue. So, it's a good ratio.
But then again, saying that the Turbo Grafx/PC Engine had a lot of shooters is like saying that the Atari 2600 has a lot of space games.......
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Well, it does get tiresome after a while but it's eased by the fact that a lot of them are actually good shooters. For every ten games like Galaga '90, Blazing Lazers, and Gradius II, there were some lame ones like Deep Blue. So, it's a good ratio.
But then again, saying that the Turbo Grafx/PC Engine had a lot of shooters is like saying that the Atari 2600 has a lot of space games.......
The PC Engine actually didn't have that many shooters compared to the overall number of games. It's around 10% of the catalog, during the peak of shooter popularity in history. The Turbo catalog though, is around 20% shooters.