Oh Oh! There's Trouble in Pac-Land! Playing Pac-Land for the First Time on TurboGrafx-16

 A fairy princess has appeared in Pac-Land and it's Pac-Man's job to help her out! 

Leap over bridges, cross over rivers and face mountains, forests and deserts in your quest to save her. 

But watch out! Monsters are everywhere.

The latest game in my TurboGrafx journey is Pac-Land.

Pac-Land is a home conversion of the popular 1984 arcade game by Namco, and it's a very faithful port.

Unlike the original Pac-Man, Pac-Land is a side-scrolling action adventure game based on the classic cartoon series. The arcade cabinet had a somewhat unique control scheme where there were separate buttons to move left or right, and another button to jump.

The TurboGrafx version also offers this unique control style as an option (however I didn't know it was simply an option when I first started playing it). 

In this version you can either use "Button Control" where you move left or right with the I or II buttons and jump by pressing the D-Pad in any direction, or you can use "Level Control" which is a more conventional way where you use the D-Pad to move left or right and jump with the I button.

Like in the arcade version, the gameplay involves Pac-Man running to the left or right (it does vary between stages), jumping over obstacles and avoiding touching ghosts. There are power pellets which allow Pac-Man to eat the ghosts for a limited period of time (as you might expect) and the goal is to reach the end of each stage.

This game can grow rather difficult, which was the primary criticism back in the day. It looks good and the music and soundfx are fine, but some of the stages get really difficult to navigate without dying.

The water section shown above, for example, is one of the first such water areas that must be jumped over, however the game doesn't give you much indication as to how you are supposed to do that. There is a springboard, but it doesn't carry you over the entire length of the water by itself. 

Only upon Googling how in the hell you are supposed to get over this section did I discover that you can repeatedly press the jump button to have Pac-Man float downwards after his springboard jump to help you clear the entire length of the water. 

(Can you imagine getting to this section as a kid back in the day? It does cover this under "Long Jump" in the manual, but who the hell reads those things? LOL)

You can view some of my "awesome" gameplay via YouTube in the video below: 

You can also make your life a bit easier with this cheat code:

Press and hold the I and II buttons at the title screen, then press Run and it opens a helpful Game Options cheat menu where you can increase the number of lives you get per continue, up to a max of nine, and you can enable Stage selection, plus hear a sound test. 

Once you enable the stage selection cheat, you can skip all the way to Round 32 and beat the game if you want to (like I did). 

Then you can play "Pro" mode after the credits roll, as if the base game isn't already hard enough as it is.

As you might expect, Pro mode is just a harder version of the regular game, however there are some pallet changes.

While I didn't hate my time playing Pac-Land, the game does get very difficult and the odd controls make it more of a chore to play than I would voluntarily put myself though on a regular basis. There is an odd charm to it, however, and I find myself enjoying it more and more, the more time I spend with it.

If I had this game as a kid, I probably would have put a bunch of time into trying to learn how to play it properly, and try to defeat it without the level skip. 

As it is, I can see myself playing Pac-Land more from time to time, just like I tend to do with The Legendary Axe (another hard game that I keep going back to). 

Since I still have so many games in my TurboGrafx journey to play, however, I'm ready to move on.

The next game in my TurboGrafx journey is...

Military Madness!

This one looks interesting and I've never heard of it before. Should be fun.

Until next time...

Welcome to the Fast Lane! Playing Final Lap Twin for the TurboGrafx-16 for the First Time

Fasten your seat belt and get ready for "TurboCharged" racing action.

Final Lap Twin offers the most realistic video-racing ever. Plus a special racing adventure that pits you against a way-out gang of "Baby Four-Wheel-Drive Warriors".

Final Lap Twin was released for the TurboGrafx-16 in January 1990, just after the console's first holiday season. 

It was developed by Nova and published by Namco. It was a spin-off of the 1987 arcade game Final Lap.

The prior racing games I played for the TurboGrafx included Victory Run and Moto Roader, neither which I was too fond of, so I wasn't sure exactly what to expect from Final Lap Twin.

Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised. The game has two primary single player modes: standard circuit races and Quest.

The standard circuit mode is exactly what I was expecting from Final Lap Twin. You pick a car and challenge other racers across a number of locations and tracks, and whoever has the most points across all the races at the end wins. What I didn't expect, however, was for the general gameplay to be one of the better racers I've ever played. 

The cars handle well, and it took the frustration out of the experience for me, where other games like the classic Pole Position, and other racing games, make cornering so difficult that it really drives me crazy. The cars in this game handle well enough that it felt easier for me to be competitive, and ultimately this made it a much better experience than some other racers. 

However, Quest is the more interesting mode of the two. 

Ironically, I just played a game, almost exactly like this, with the Dragon Quest-like mode in World Court Tennis. Quest mode in this game works almost exactly the same way. You walk around a 2D map overworld. Visit people, shop at stores, and when you walk around the map, random enemies will challenge you. 

The gameplay is so similar, in fact, that I wonder if the same developer worked on both (I did try to verify it, but I'm not sure who developed the tennis game.) Overall, given how I usually fair with racing games, I enjoyed this one better than most, and it was a good time overall.

The only negative is the music wasn't quite as good as many of the other TurboGrafx games I've played to date. It's not bad, mind you, but the other titles on the TurboGrafx really shined in the music department, and this one seemed just ok.

You can check out my gameplay of Final Lap Twin in the YouTube video below: 

Now that my first game of 1990 is down, the next game in my TurboGrafx journey will be...

Pac-Land!

I don't think I've every played any versions of this, and certainly not for the TurboGrafx. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's about.

Until next time...

TurboGrafx-16 Launch Year In Review

Now that I've finished playing all of the games that launched during the first year of the TurboGrafx in the United States, I thought it would be good to review my time with the TurboGrafx's games thus far, before I move onto the games released in 1990. what it would have been like if I were a kid who received a TurboGrafx for Christmas in 1989.

To set the stage, lets first recap the TurboGrafx's launch in the U.S. 

The Turbografx-16 first released in late August 1989, in limited stores in test markets of LA and NYC, then released more broadly across the country.

The pack-in game for the TurboGrafx was Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, and three other games also released alongside the console: 

• Alien Crush

• The Legendary Axe

• Victory Run

 

I have been playing through all of the TurboGrafx releases in rough chronological order, so I started with Keith Courage, being the pack-in title, then proceeded to play Alien Crush, Victory Run, and The Legendary Axe. 

Keith Courage is a reasonably fun action/adventure game, but its also very easy. I can't see a lot of replay value in that one, and being the pack-in title was a very strange choice. 

Alien Crush is a fun video pinball game that looks great, plays really well and has excellent music. Some people regard the game VERY highly, and I do think its a good console-exclusive, but I can't see myself playing a ton of it over the long term. If I had it back in the day, I would probably play from time to time as I got bored with other games I had, or needed a break, but it wouldn't be a core title I couldn't live without. 

Victory Run is a very interesting Outrun-like game with additional strategic gameplay elements (like car wear-and-tear and part upgrades) but honestly these kinds of games just frustrate me, and I wouldn't choose it as a game I would own, given other options. Well made game for sure, and it certainly has its fans, but just not for me. 

The Legendary Axe is probably the strongest of the console launch games, and the last one I played in this group. It has been likened to the TurboGrafx's version of Castlevania, and while I'm not sure about that, it does have decent graphics, good music and interesting gameplay. Much better action game than Keith Courage, and the only other action game at launch. It's a difficult one though. I hope to finally beat it someday. 

 

Now to put the launch games in perspective, let's take a look at the rest of the U.S. video game landscape in 1989, leading up to August when the TurboGrafx first launched.

• December 1988: Zelda II and Ninja Gaiden are released on the NES (just in time for Christmas)

• May 1989: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is released on the NES, and Sega releases Golden Axe in arcades

• July 1989: Nintendo launches the GameBoy with pack-in game Tetris, and Capcom releases Mega Man 2 on the NES

• August 1989: Sega releases the Genesis with pack-in game Altered Beast (on 8/14/89), and Dragon Warrior releases on the NES

• Late August 1989: The TurboGrafx releases in select U.S. markets

Between the strong Christmas releases the year before on the NES (that many kids were still playing), and the launch of both the Nintendo GameBoy and the Sega Genesis just prior to its launch, the TurboGrafx-16 certainly had its work cut out for it.

TurboGrafx-16 ad in GamePro December 1989

After the initial console launch and the few games that launched along with it, there weren't any releases until November of that year, but they certainly made up for it. 

Just a few months after its initial launch, NEC released the TurboGrafx-CD add-on for $399.99, and two games for it: Fighting Street (a home port of Capcom's arcade game Street Fighter), and Monster Lair (a home port of Sega's Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair).

When you think about it, it's kind of crazy that the TurboGrafx-16 console released in late August, and by November they already released a CD add-on that was more expensive than the original console, and only released two games for it before the holiday season (and believe me, neither was a system seller).

In addition to the TurboGrafx-CD, there were five new Turbochip games released in November:

• Blazing Lazers

• China Warrior

• Dungeon Explorer

• R-Type

• Vigilante

 

After playing the November games, I can confidently say they had some pretty strong releases, even though their marketing and visibility was very weak. 

 

China Warrior is probably the worst regarded of the line-up, but I actually had a lot of fun playing it. Blazing Lazers is a great shmup, with excellent music. Dungeon Explorer is a very interesting mix between the gameplay of Gauntlet and more traditional RPG elements. R-Type is a near-perfect port of the arcade, but with more forgiving difficulty which makes it more fun to play. And Vigilante is a great mix between Double Dragon, Bad Dudes and Kung Fu Master; lots of fun with that one. 

 

The main challenge at this point (outside of weak marketing and awareness) was the system was still missing a console-seller title; something so desired and compelling that gamers would actively choose to pickup a TurboGrafx over the other video game options available that same year (like the Sega Genesis with Altered Beast, Nintendo GameBoy with Tetris, NES 1989 hits like Ducktales, Dragon Warrior and Strider).

Then in December (not sure exactly when, but assuming prior to Christmas) there were another eight games released on Turbochip (but no additional CD games):

• Dragon Spirit

• Fantasy Zone

• Galaga '90

• Moto Roader

• Power Golf

• Side Arms Hyper Dyne

• World Class Baseball

• World Class Tennis

Having played all the games released in December, I can confidently say the TurboGrafx lineup did not improve considerably over the games released up to this point. 

While Dragon Spirit, Fantasy Zone and Side Arms were all good arcade shmup ports, and Side Arms especially was a great improvement over the arcade, there weren't any killer games in the lineup to drive holiday console sales, even though many of the games are fun and well made. 

The sports games were generally enjoyable, and there could have been some families that decided to buy a TurboGrafx because of Power Golf (excellent by the way) or World Class Baseball, but generally I can't see any of them moving console sales in any significant way (which looking back, they didn't). 

Furthermore, in looking back at the Sears Wish Book from 1989, the TurboGrafx doesn't appear to even be listed (at least in the scanned versions I was able to find online). Kids today probably wouldn't understand, but the Sears Catalog, and more importantly their holiday Wish Book, was one of the main sources for Christmas lists and parent present buying inspiration back in the day. 

The TurboGrafx was featured in the Toys R Us 1989 holiday circular, but as you can see, it didn't match up very well when put side by side with the Sega Genesis and NES. $199.99 for the TurboGrafx-16 while the Sega Genesis, also released in 1989, was $189.99, and then there's the good old NES, which still had amazing games releasing consistently, sitting at $99.99. 

click to enlarge

Overall, the TurboGrafx-16 had a decent launch year, with a solid line-up of quality games, and was the first video game console to have a CD add-on, but honestly it seems like the timing, lack of quality marketing, and pricing mistakes, really hampered its success (although there may be additional reasons as well).

By holiday 1989, the TurboGrafx had 19 games available (including the two CD games), and many of them looked great, played great, and had excellent music. The trouble likely was, that the competition in 1989 was just way too strong, and the launch plan was too weak, for the TurboGrafx to really have a chance to be competitive.

If I were to assign a letter grade to the TurboGrafx's launch quality, I would give it a B. Good hardware and a solid lineup of good to great games, but no killer system-seller. 

However, if I were to assign a letter grade to the TurboGrafx's marketing, including pricing and launch timing, I would give it a D.

So between the two factors, I think the TurboGrafx launch gets a solid C, which is passing, but not good. 

While I would hope kids who received a TurboGrafx-16 for Christmas that year had a really good time with it, I would wager that most kids either didn't know it existed, or their parents went with other options.

For me, in Christmas 1989, I think I had just received an NES Power Set either earlier that year, or the Christmas before, and I would have wanted new games for it. 

Not "my" NES Power Set, but an example on eBay

Neither the TurboGrafx, nor the Sega Genesis were on my radar. After all, I had just received a new video game console recently, and I was trying to build my library for it. 

I remember receiving Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES, but I can't recall if it was for my birthday that year, or for Christmas. Either way, it certainly took up a lot of my time, and while it wasn't the arcade game I had been hoping for, it was still TMNT and I loved it.

Yes, this is my TMNT for NES - loved it and still have it!

Now that I've finished playing all the launch games, and I've taken the time to review the TurboGrafx's launch year, it's time to move onto the next game released for the TurboGrafx...

Final Lap Twin! Released in January 1990.

Can't wait to see how this one plays.

Until next time...