bonkzonkmcgonk
Gun-headed
Posts: 54
Fave PCE Shooter: Air Zonk
Fave PCE Platformer: Dragon's Curse
Fave PCE Game Overall: Bonk's Adventure & Revenge
Fave PCE RPG: Legend of Valkyrie
Currently Playing: Son Son II
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Post by bonkzonkmcgonk on Oct 10, 2021 18:20:28 GMT
The Turbografx 16 came with only one controller port and controller. Does anyone know why they made it this way? Did they just underestimate the demand for two player games? It seems like it was a big factor in why the Turbo never caught on with the American market. Not too many kids could afford the expensive Turbo Tap add on...
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Post by spenoza on Oct 10, 2021 18:45:38 GMT
The Turbo Tap retailed for 17.99 USD. While that’s not dirt cheap, it’s not actually so bad. Adjusted for inflation that’s under 40 USD, so still cheaper than many modern accessories.
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 10, 2021 19:34:12 GMT
In truth, it made certain that games weren't *limited* to two players. 5-player Bomberman, Dungeon Explorer etc.
But in truth, the majority of games on any system are 1-player, so I'm not sure that it's a limiting factor - just the extra expense of the Tap (and the fact that it's effectively the first "dongle" I ever saw...)
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bonkzonkmcgonk
Gun-headed
Posts: 54
Fave PCE Shooter: Air Zonk
Fave PCE Platformer: Dragon's Curse
Fave PCE Game Overall: Bonk's Adventure & Revenge
Fave PCE RPG: Legend of Valkyrie
Currently Playing: Son Son II
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Post by bonkzonkmcgonk on Oct 10, 2021 20:40:09 GMT
Yeah, I never had the Turbo Tap so maybe it was just expensive for me, but hey I was only 8 years old and my allowance was 5 dollars a week. But in general, there weren't enough two player games for the Turbo. Games like JJ & Jeff or even the Bonk series could have benefited from that option. If there had been two controller ports in the system from the start, there would probably be more pressure to include more multiplayer games like the NES and Genesis had.
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Gaijin D
Punkic Cyborg
Yare yare da ze.
Posts: 136
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Post by Gaijin D on Oct 10, 2021 22:21:11 GMT
I imagine it's because the PC Engine is so tiny it didn't have room for more than one port, and they didn't want to reengineer the system board for the US. Somebody else would know better than I would, but I think there are potential compatibility issues if you hardwire a tap inside the case. Aren't there some peripherals that need to be connected before the tap, for instance?
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 11, 2021 1:28:25 GMT
Fundamentally, I don’t think kids in Japan visited each others’ houses as often as we did in the west (back in those days)… so the second player was likely going to be a sibling, which had a 50% chance of being female (and they weren’t so interested in games back in the early days).
They had ideas about using the port for expansion from day one, so it made sense to make the multitap optional.
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nicole
Gun-headed
Posts: 50
Fave PCE Shooter: Magical Chase
Fave PCE Platformer: Legendary Axe II
Fave PCE RPG: Ys III
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Post by nicole on Oct 11, 2021 2:47:14 GMT
I imagine it's because the PC Engine is so tiny it didn't have room for more than one port, and they didn't want to reengineer the system board for the US. Somebody else would know better than I would, but I think there are potential compatibility issues if you hardwire a tap inside the case. Aren't there some peripherals that need to be connected before the tap, for instance? They did rearrange the circuitboard for the US, oddly enough...
I think including a built-in Turbo Tap probably would've been a better use of their time than whatever it was they did do... I don't think the other peripherals would have been much of an issue, were they ever released in the US anyway?
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 11, 2021 4:05:15 GMT
No they weren't, but they had high hopes for sales, and no hope to understand what was coming from Japan in terms of how that port might be used in future.
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gilbot
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 137
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Post by gilbot on Oct 11, 2021 12:48:45 GMT
I don't know whether this was one main factor that led to the TG16's demise, but IMO the inclusion of only one single controller port was a design oversight, which at the end created more annoyance than good, be it the PCE or the TG16.
The original design principle of the PCE was the Core Concept, in which the console itself was a very tiny (at least for the PCE; just ignore the TG16) box with very bare bones (but very powerful) features, so that different features could be added via different peripherals, not unlike how you set up a PC (its not called the PC Engine Core Graphix without reasons, and that NEC was the major PC manufacturer in Japan at that time), mainly via its two expansion ports, one in front (the controller port) and another behind the box (the errr... expansion port).
They had clear goal right from the beginning: multiple-player games, and they're not content with just two players, and it showed. Hudson Soft had since became an expert in multiple-player games that support more than 2 players (Bomberman and such) and that's why they developed all the Mario Party games for Nintendo until the company... folded (blame Konami). This could be clearly seen by the fact that the only 1st party multi-tap was the 5-player version (by first party I meant released by NEC HE; Note: Hudson Soft was 1st party for software and NEC HE was 1st party for hardware; so even though Hudson Soft did release a 3-player version and some other company did release a 2-player version, these were just licensed peripherals and not official ones). In other words, they wanted you to play a lot of party games with your friends. However, not every game player needed or wanted to play with that many people at the same time (or even had friends in the first place, heh). It's otherwise very common for, say, 2 brothers playing together in the same household. The PCE was also marketed to have faithful conversions of arcade games, in which 2-player support was the norm. The availability of only one controller port, and that a number of early arcade conversions had only 1-player support unfortunately led people think that the console was not powerful enough. (Fun fact: It was originally planned to have 2-player support in Super Darius but the idea was eventually scraped, probably after the developers realised it would become a flicker fest., so there was some truth to the not powerful part.)
I think it was a miscalculated step. The original Famicom already supported 2 players out of the box (it had two hardwired joypads) and could easily support 3 players (for supported games of course) by pluging in an extra controller to the front expansion port (and could even support a fourth player if you chained two extra controllers to the expansion port), so in some sense it was a step backwards for the PCE.
Also, the tiny size of the console was also catered to the small living space in Japan, so having more complicated wires dangling around kind of defeat the point. IMO it would be best if the console came equipped with two controller ports (even though there might only be one bundled controller) and you needed a multi-tap if you really want to play with more friends.
The situation had become even more ridiculous when they decided that the CD-ROM add-on was the must-have de facto peripheral to attach to the expansion port and they cancelled every other add-ons, and that the Duo didn't even have the port meant that they had abandoned the Core Concept completely, so that when they really needed to have more add-ons they had to attach them to the controller port. It was stupid and hilarious when you attach both a MB128 and a multi-tap, and some controllers to the same port (well, if there were two controller ports it might not be much better but at least you could have say putting a multi-tap and the controllers in one port and the MB128 in the other). The dangling wires were awful and it was very easy to yank loose one of the in-between connectors, especially if you're short of living space (e.g. Japan and here).
The chaining of a lot of stuff to the same port created even more problems. If your games have to support multiple add-ons you need to be very careful otherwise there will be conflicts. I remembered Lemmings had a paper insert warning people that the game was not compatible with MB128 and it wouldn't even work if one was connected, and for Magicoal... well it supported everything, MB128, multi-tap, mouse... but it actually had a bug if the multi-tap and MB128 were used at the same time, that you could save your games to the MB128 but when you load it next time the game would freeze.
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Post by turboxray on Oct 11, 2021 16:45:13 GMT
I think two ports on the PCE would definitely ruin the design/look of the console. I think the tap extension was a great idea and was directly in line with what the PCE represented in Japan; it's a premium high tech system in a small form factor - something that definitely reflected Japanese culture (regardless that space was the driving factor for it). In a time when Japan's economy was booming, and Japanese were spending/indulging in the latest overpriced high tech stuff, the PCE build as a premium and modular system was a perfect match. It's was customizable. You weren't stuck with a toy looking system that had the controllers hard wired.
The Duo's oversight isn't a miss step in the original systems design. That was a miss step of the Duo's design. The famicom having two hard wired gamepads is a much bigger design mess up than a single port with an expansion option right out of the gate, so it's an odd comparison example to cite. In relation to the cord mess comment.. you can put the extension cable between the tap and the system and it alleviates a lot of cord mess. Imagine, instead, having extension cables for all 5 gamepads! Gross hahah. But hey, you've got both options. I think the TG16 isn't the most appealing in looks/design department, but in a retro way it's charming I guess. I do like the off-centered look of the hucard port though. So I'm not sure if a 2nd game port wouldn't ruin the look (design wise as-is). Probably.
There is also the thing that if you put two ports on the TG16, then the original TAP design is no longer directly compatible with the TG16. So.. you need to change the game code or/and somehow have the US made tap disable the second port when it's plugged into the system, etc. It's not just as simple as putting another connector there - there are logistics to deal with. Probably not a deal breaker, but it was something they had to think about when they brought the system over to North America.
Having been a young teen, and having owned the tg16, nes, snes, genesis, and Duo.. (and the SGX in 1993), I loved the fact that the PCE/Duo look wasn't a cookie cutter clone of the other systems. The controllers, tap, etc were an extension of that standout flair. Probably stupid, but I remember thinking back when the Duo came out.. the mini-controller port ends were new/hi-tech looking. Because it looked like the connections found on Mac/PCs/etc - stuff that was much more expensive.
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pokun
Gun-headed
Posts: 85
Homebrew skills: HuC6280 assembly
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Post by pokun on Oct 11, 2021 17:37:11 GMT
The PC-Engine wasn't released in Sweden, but I do remember that me, my brother and my dad would regard anything with 2-player an important thing. 2-player modes, and especially 2 players simultaneously, was a great thing as that meant less waiting when taking turns with my siblings and friends that all wanted to play. I have a brother at a very close age so I nearly always had someone to play with.
A console with only one controller port would probably be looked down upon by us, and at least the multitap would have to be marketed with it or we would be very discouraged to buy it. Still to this day, a second controller is the first thing I buy for any console I buy, just in case someone else wants to play with me. In Japan only-childs are a bit more common so I think that might had been a factor.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 11, 2021 17:58:47 GMT
Out of the other US launch titles I think Legendary Axe would be the only other possible contender.
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bonkzonkmcgonk
Gun-headed
Posts: 54
Fave PCE Shooter: Air Zonk
Fave PCE Platformer: Dragon's Curse
Fave PCE Game Overall: Bonk's Adventure & Revenge
Fave PCE RPG: Legend of Valkyrie
Currently Playing: Son Son II
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Post by bonkzonkmcgonk on Oct 12, 2021 16:05:32 GMT
Out of the other US launch titles I think Legendary Axe would be the only other possible contender. Blazing Lazers would be another good option. I know it's a shooter, but still a great game. They were originally considering JJ & Jeff and I doubt that would have worked as good as a pack-in.
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Post by goldenwheels on Oct 12, 2021 16:41:10 GMT
I certainly don't think it would have hurt...even bad sports games (ahem) are often bearable fun with two people.
Now, if they just brought any existing design over, I totally get why they didn't want to waste time. But they wasted time just to make the PC Engine bigger, without actually adding anything (and kind of making it worse). You took the time and added case space...why not add that P2 port? I do believe my parents back in the day would have looked at the turbo and been like...we can only occupy ONE kid at a time with this thing? And the other machine occupies BOTH kids? (my parents legit got me an Atari XE instead of a NES because "I could play games and learn to program too", so they had an odd idea of "value".)
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 12, 2021 17:32:58 GMT
My understanding is that the PC Engine - without modification - was going to fail EMI emissions testing in the USA. The USA was bringing in more stringent rules around this (compared to Japan) at that time.
Having said that, they didn't need to change the machine's design to the extent that they did... and they likely spent quite a bit of time in EMI emissions-testing hell, as the whole process wasn't as uniformly-well understood as it is today (and yet even today there is still a lot of confusion...).
The turbotap was introduced at roughly the same time as the machine, so it could have been bought together... the second controller was an additional expense for every system out there too (though I can't recall what their relative costs were).
"Learning to program" was the big reason why consoles didn't completely smash home computers at that time... a lot of families had the same feelings.
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