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.
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).
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.
Until next time...
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