Back in my "golden age" of gaming I was one of the few people that had access to a TG-16. For various reasons, mostly the stiff competition between Sega and Nintendo at the time, the marketplace didn't really have space for any more consoles and the Turbo-Grafx 16 mostly went by unnoticed and unpurchased by Americans. Me and my buddy who lived across the street from me when I was a teenager had one and it quickly became my favorite system. I loved the simplicity of the games and the various styles of games that they focused on were my favorites across most platforms. The TG16 didn't have very many titles that appeared on other consoles and that was just fine by me. To me it was a more unique experience and other than the fact that I didn't have anyone to talk to about it, I thought it was fantastic.
Here we are 30 years or so later and I found at my friend's house a dust-covered TG-16 mini just hanging out not being used. I asked him if I could borrow it and he said "yeah no problem, I actually forgot I had that thing."
I was so excited! And this quickly wore off as I began playing it.
src
The TG16 mini retails for $100 to $150 and initially I thought this was a very fair price considering that you were getting basically the entire library of games that were released in USA and also a lot of other ones, mostly space shooter types of games, all in one thing.
At first I was just so damn excited to revisit my youth and indeed it was exciting for a bit, but I think it took me about 20 minutes of playing this thing to realize that the memories of these games are actually quite a lot better than actually playing them now.
src
Take Neutopia for example: At the time of its release it was an obvious Zelda clone. It was actually in many people's opinion a better version of Zelda and at the time of its release I agreed fully. However, going back in time the game is just a bit too slow not to mention extremely pixelated on today's screens. I didn't last very long playing this and found that certain mechanics of games that exist today, such as the ability to skip cutscenes, hadn't yet been introduced to gaming back when this was released.
Then there are the two games that probably captivated me the most on this system, Alien Crush and Devil's Crush both of which were pinball games. I don't recall a pinball game ever having my attention for as long as these two did back in the day and I remember just being wowed by them in the 90's. Well time can be a cruel bitch when it comes to gaming because this didn't stay interesting for very long at all.
src
once again the major problem here was pixilation and music being very subpar by today's standards and it being put up on a 50 inch TV, which would have been something ridiculous for anyone to own in the 90's, didn't do the graphics any favors.
Then I moved over to Y's, which is a franchise that I have stayed interested in over the years mostly because of the simple gameplay and outstanding music. The graphics on the TG-16 CD were nothing to get excited about but the music, as the "CD" would indicate, was the best music I had ever heard in a game up until that point. I'll admit that playing this game brought back a bunch of memories
src
I grew tired of the fact that in order to progress you simply just ran into enemies to kill them and whether you hurt them or they hurt you seemed to be completely arbitrary. There was no sword or block button, you literally just ran into stuff and if your level was higher than theirs more often than not you would hurt them and vice-versa.
Instead of actually playing the game I just went online and listened to the music on YouTube instead.
The last game I remember really enjoying as a teen was R-Type. In the 90's especially on Genesis and TG16, shooters were the go-to for easily accessed fun and R-Type was known for being the toughest as well as the best looking. This actually held up a bit better than the other games over time but I actually found myself having the same opinion of it now that I first did when I played it back in the early 90's. It's too hard.. haha
src
Is it actually "too hard?" Not by a long shot and certainly not by today's shooter standards. I had much more fun with this than I did with the others but again, the lack of graphical clarity was something that was a massive turnoff for me. I had been playing these games on something the size of a laptop screen back in the day. Something like 16 inches at most. These days I don't think they even make monitors that small.
Games that made me laugh and I thought were super-inventive at the time such as Bonk and Splatterhouse failed to even hold my attention briefly. They are just too slow and even though Splatterhouse caused some controversy back when it was released for being too graphic, it is extremely tame by today's standards. What can I say? A lot has changed in 30 years.
So I suppose you would say that I am very happy that my friend let me borrow this because had I bought my own it would have likely ended up in the same situation that it did at his house... just sitting in the corner gathering dust. I think that some things that you really enjoyed as a child are likely best left in your memories rather than trying to relive them. But hell, at least I now know that I probably shouldn't buy any of these "mini" systems and instead just save up some dosh for when my PS4 eventually craps the bed. I will not be buying one of the overpriced PS5 pros though, I can tell you that much.