Victory Run was one of the four original games launched with the TurboGrafx-16 in North America, in August 1989. At first glance it appears to be just another arcade racer, like Outrun, but it's actually much deeper than that.
The moment you start the game, however, you notice that you have to choose "support parts" for your vehicle, which is immediately different from a game like Outrun.
After you enter your initials, you select the support parts for your car, choosing from Tires, Gears, Engine, Suspension and Brakes. The idea is that you choose more of the items that will wear out the most over the duration of the entire race, but you should select at least one of each type so you aren't left without any backup parts in case something goes wrong. If a part does break during the race, and you don't have any replacements, its game over.
The race then begins similar to most racing games. You immediately realize you have to manually shift between four different gears, and in order to get the best time you need to keep track of curves and hills to try and go the optimal speed. Take a curve or hill too fast and you'll end up slowing down, and possibly damaging your car parts (or simply ending up upside down).
Honestly I like this game but I REALLY suck at all of the added complexity. I wish I could just enjoy the good graphics and jamming music without worrying about all the other stuff. But I can 100% appreciate how it differentiated itself from the other racing games at the time.
You can watch my first several runs on YouTube:
Overall I did enjoy playing Victory Run, and if I had gotten it as a kid, I probably would have spent a lot of time trying to learn the courses and how to best balance my car's performance.
As it stands, it would simply take too much time for me to get good at this game, and I have other TurboGrafx-16 games I'm eager to move onto, like...
My next game is The Legendary Axe, probably the highest regarded of the TurboGrafx-16 launch games. In this case, I purposely left the best for last, and I can't wait to get into it.
Unlike most of the games for the TurboGrafx-16, I HAVE actually played Alien Crush before...a long time ago and very briefly.
It's one of the more celebrated games for the TurboGrafx, so I decided to check it out when I first got into retrogaming, but honestly other it being an alien-themed pinball game, I couldn't remember much about it when I went to play it again for this article.
Also, just for context, I really suck at pinball, whether physical tables or digital games, so with that in mind...
I fired up Alien Crush and was immediately hit with the cool looking title screen and my first sampling of the game's great music.
When I pushed the Run button (the TurboGrafx's variation on the Start button) I was offered to either play in Fast or Slow mode (of course I chose Fast) and either of the game's two primary music tracks:
Lunar Eclipse
Demon's Undulate
Being the consummate heavy metal fan that I am, I had to choose Demon's Undulate.
Once the game began, it was clear that a lot of attention went into the graphics for the game, with parts of the board all animating as you play, really making it seem like the environment is an organic alien landscape. Alien tentacles and heads make up many parts of the game board.
There are bonus levels, like the green bordered level with the long centipede-like alien in the screenshot above, that you can earn extra points in, but with a few exceptions, I generally scratched pretty early in each one.
While pinball games aren't really my thing typically, I can see why this game is so well regarded. Other than the fact that it could use a few more boards, or other changes to the gameplay, it is much more fun to play than other video pinball games I've played.
I ended up getting over 7 million points in my first run, but less and less in each consecutive run. The worst was when I switched from Fast to Slow gameplay. Apparently I like Fast a lot better and my reaction time is better when the ball is moving quickly.
You can watch my first three runs on YouTube:
I don't know how much more of Alien Crush I'll play, but I did enjoy it and I can see how people hold it in pretty high regard.
For my next game, I'll tackle another August 1989 launch title: Victory Run.
I decided my first TurboGrafx-16 game would be the first title for the console, at least in North America: Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, which was the pack-in game for the TurboGrafx-16. While not a well-known title like Sega's pack-in game for the Genesis, Altered Beast, Keith Courage still provided new TurboGrafx-16 owners with their first taste of the console's capabilities.
Keith Courage came with a comic book in the back of its instruction manual that explains a bit of the story in order to set the stage. I did read this first before I played the game, however, as in many games from the 80s, the overall plot really doesn't impact or inform your gameplay at all.
Keith Courage is a side-scrolling action adventure game split into two primary segments: an overworld and an underworld.
In the overworld, Keith defeats lesser enemies, which occasionally drop gold, and interacts with shopkeepers to refill his hearts, buy bombs and upgrade his sword.
At the end of each overworld stage, which acts kind of like an intermission between the action levels, you are teleported to a level in the underworld, where you defeat enemies, avoid one-hit kill spikes and defeat a level boss. Once you defeat the level boss you are teleported to the next overworld area.
I did end up playing Keith Courage all the way to the end, even though I got stuck a few times, and I was tempted to give up once or twice. Keith Courage isn't a hard game, per se, but it does have a few sections where the action you want to take is unclear. There was one section towards the end of the game, in particular, that got me grinding for gold unnecessarily.
It was the second to the last stage and I ran into a shopkeeper that looked like the weapons dealer, but he only gave you a cryptic message that sounded like you needed to have more gold before you could buy the weapon.
So I ended up grinding until I had 9999 gold, which is the maximum you can get, but it didn't make any difference in that shopkeeper's message. Turns out that particular shopkeeper only says that one statement and there are a few others later in the stage that say different messages, until you eventually come across the actual shopkeeper with the sword upgrade you want (and it was only like 4600 gold, or something like that). Frustrating for sure.
Then the end stage is also a little frustrating with cheap deaths and the strategy to defeat the end boss is unclear at first. Turns out you can't damage his bottom half (although it seems like you can) and you have to attack the top half, which is easier said than done if you want to avoid getting hit.
Luckily GameFAQs came to my rescue with an awesome cheese method for the final boss (I guess it also works on other bosses) and I was able to defeat him with no sweat. Some people might say I didn't "really beat the game", but I don't care. I rolled credits and I'm moving onto the next game in the T-16 library.
You can watch my full (edited) playthrough of Keith Courage in Alpha Zones on YouTube on my Gamatroid Gaming page:
If you REALLY want to see the entirety of my first playthrough (including the few times I got stuck, died and continued like dozens of times) you can watch my unlisted full unedited playthrough, but I don't really recommend it.
So what did I think of Keith Courage in Alpha Zones?
It's fine.
Certainly doesn't hold a candle to other pack-in games from the NES and Sega Genesis, but it's better than some of the pack-in games for the Sega Master System were (hello Hang-On / Safari Hunt).
The graphics in Keith Courage are good looking enough, and certainly an upgrade to what you would typically see on the NES. The music is fine as well, but none of the tracks standout as bangers I would want to listen to outside of the game.
The controls in Keith Courage are also good enough, and really not an issue at all. The main issue in the game is that the levels are short, the enemies are generally pretty easy (even most of the bosses didn't give me any trouble), and its cheap deaths due to off screen spikes that are your main enemy.
Overall I enjoyed my time with Keith Courage enough to see it through to the end, but its not the kind of game that makes me want to replay it. I'm sure I would have replayed it back in the day if it was the only game I have, but since I have the entirety of the TurboGrafx-16 library ahead of me, I'm excited to move onto the next game, which will be...
Revisiting the launch of the TurboGrafx-16 in North America.
On August 29, 1989, more than 35 years ago, the TurboGrafx-16 was first seen in select locations across New York City and Los Angeles, then launched more broadly the following month.
It debuted at $199 (which would be about $500 in 2024) and included Keith Courage In The Alpha Zones as its pack-in game.
Keith Courage was a side-scrolling action adventure game, with two primary modes of play: 1) in the Overworld, where Keith traverses platforms and can visit shops to buy goods, and 2) in the Underworld, where Keith dons his Nova Suit, battles enemies and defeats stage bosses.
(I haven't had a chance to play Keith Courage yet, but I'll be doing it soon for my first gameplay video.)
The TurboGrafx-16 was a rebranded and redesigned version of the PC Engine, which was released the prior year in Japan.
TurboGrafx-16 (credit: Wikipedia)
PC Engine (credit: Wikipedia)
The PC Engine was developed as a joint effort between NEC and Hudson Soft, and it saw great success in Japan, beating Sega's Mega Drive to market by several months.
In contrast, the TurboGrafx-16 launched approximately two weeks after the introduction of the Sega Genesis in North America, and had significantly more competition from the newly released Genesis and the already well entrenched NES (which was still extremely popular).
While it's not known (at least not publicly) how many consoles were sold right at launch, by March 1991 NEC claimed to have sold 750,000 TurboGrafx-16 units.
In addition to the pack-in game, Keith Courage, three more games were released at launch: Alien Crush (an excellent video pinball game), The Legendary Axe (a very well regarded action platformer), and Victory Run (a racing game based on the Paris-Dakar rally).
(images from Wikipedia)
Before the end of 1989, 15 more games were released during the holiday shopping season, ahead of Christmas, which we'll dive into in a future article.
Overall, it's pretty universally agreed that the launch of the TurboGrafx-16 in North America was flawed at best, and a possible disaster at worst.
The timing wasn't great, the price wasn't competitive, and the pack-in game, Keith Courage, wasn't a well-known IP that could move units (unlike Sega, which included the arcade hit Altered Beast as the pack-in game for the Genesis).
This would put the TurboGrafx-16 in an underdog position from the start, which unfortunately plagued the console for the rest of its (rather short) lifespan.
Regardless, the TurboGrafx-16 still had some amazing games, and maintains a loyal fanbase to this day. I'm excited to get into playing some of its games for the next article, starting with its launch title: Keith Courage.
Gamatroid here, and I want to welcome you to the inaugural post on my new blog / fanzine here on Blogger, called Turbo Times: A TurboGrafx-16 Fanzine!
But I have a secret to confess... I never had a Turbografx as a kid.
Before I get into why I decided to create a fanzine about a console I never owned, let me tell you a little about myself.
I'm an 80s kid (meaning I'm old) who likes to play both retrogames and modern games, and I post quite a bit of gaming content across TikTok and YouTube (plus I'm on practically every other social platform imaginable).
I grew up in Western New York State in the early 80s. My first home console was the Atari 5200 (with the 2600 adapter) and I had a Sega Master System way before I ever played an NES.
Eventually my parents got me the NES that came with the Power Pad, since I could play games and also exercise (haha, yeah right).
I then got a Super Nintendo when it released, and a few years after that I finally got a Sega Genesis. Of course then I moved onto the original PlayStation, then Nintendo 64 and so on.
Today I play games across Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series S, PlayStation 5 and Atari VCS, plus a decently powerful PC (although I typically just capture and edit gaming videos on it).
So...why do I want to create a fanzine dedicated to a console I never had?
Well, there are a few reasons:
The TurboGrafx-16 wasn't as broadly popular in North America as the consoles from Sega and Nintendo (in fact I didn't know anyone who owned one) so I'm not as familiar with it, but it is beloved by a small but loyal and dedicated fan base and I'm curious what all the hype is about.
I get to explore and learn about a console I didn't get a chance to experience as a kid, so outside of a few of the more popular games I may have played over the years, like Splatterhouse and Rondo of Blood, most of the games will be completely new to me. (I'm hoping to find a few new favorites.)
My opinions aren't clouded by nostalgia, and I'm hoping I can bring a unique perspective to TurboGrafx commentary, by looking at the console and games through the eyes of a mature gamer experiencing them for the first time.
So there you have it. No epic, earth-shattering reasons for undertaking this adventure, but regardless I'm excited to begin my journey into the wonderful world of the TurboGrafx-16.
I plan to at publish stories to this blog / fanzine at least once per week, plus post dedicated YouTube videos showcasing my experiences. If that goes well and I'm enjoying the journey, I may consider additional content as well.
Whatever this journey brings, I hope you'll enjoy coming along for the ride.
