NEC/Hudson Soft versus Sega

The PC Engine has an 8-bit main processor with a 16-bit graphics processor, so it can be counted as a fourth-generation console. She competed with the 8-bit machines NES and Master System as well as the 16-bit representatives SNES and Mega Drive.

In the USA, the console was released under the name TurboGrafx-16 Entertainment SuperSystem, or TurboGrafx. When it entered the US market in August 1989 (almost at the same time as the Mega Drive), the PC Engine was already available in Japan for two years. NEC and Hudson Soft were able to use a very wide range of software to offer the TurboGrafx in the west directly with matching titles. However, the two companies did not take advantage of this advantage.

Several factors explain the PC Engine’s modest success in the USA. Most PC Engine games were aimed primarily at Japanese tastes. The gaming website usgamer.net describes the problem: “American gamers tend to gravitate more toward realism, character-driven action, and sports: Areas that PC Engine developers had been slow to build in.” Comparing the games available for the PC Engine and Mega Drive illustrates this difference. Sega adapted the Mega Drive’s software to American preferences. Fast-paced action games such as Streets of Rage, Sonic the Hedgehog and Out Run quickly won over US players. Madden and Tommy Lasorda Baseball specifically catered to their sporting interests. By contrast, PC Engine games such as Toilet Kids, Wonder Momo and even the platform series Bonk seemed unusual to American audiences. Ironically, some PC Engine games with excellent prospects never reached the West, including Rondo of Blood, a spin-off of Konami’s Castlevania series, which was popular in the USA. American PC Engine players also missed out on Irem’s futuristic shooter Image Fight.

It is not the case that NEC and Hudson Soft did not take any localisation measures at all to adapt the PC Engine to US preferences. The original Japanese version of the PC Engine is one of the smallest consoles in the world. It is about 14 centimeters long and wide, the height is about four centimeters. As a small square box, the console is only slightly larger than its associated gamepad. The device sold in the USA is technically identical, only about twice as large. It therefore looks very massive and is also held in a striking black (compared to the rather conservative grey-white of the Japanese version).

Sega was the winner of the duel Mega Drive versus TurboGrafx. Technically, the two systems hardly differ. Both build on an approximately seven megahertz fast main processor and use 64 kiB video memory. The greatest divergences result in the medium and the colour representation. While the TurboGrafx modules hold a maximum of 20 Mbits, Mega Drive modules have a capacity of up to 32 Mbits. TurboGrafx and Mega Drive have 512 colors available, the Mega Drive can represent 61 colors at the same time, while the TurboGrafx has a rich 482. In addition, the TurboGrafx has a very high resolution of up to 565 x 242 pixels for that time. De facto, however, these support only a few games, most of them content with the standard resolution of 256 x 239.

Despite the fact that the TurboGrafx could never really jeopardize the popularity of the Mega Drive in the USA, the practices of Sega and NEC/Hudson Soft were similar. Like Sega, NEC and Hudson Soft saved their console with subsequent hardware updates from losing the connection quickly. In fact, the TurboGrafx was the first video game console to be equipped with a CD-ROM drive.