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Post by dshadoff on Jun 29, 2023 18:57:11 GMT
I believe that we probably still have one or two UK-based members here who remember "the old days"...
You may recall that there was a PAL version of the TurboGrafx - essentially it looked like overstock of the American system, in a gray case, with different boxes, and a PAL video output.
From my own recollection, these were first "found" and discussed on Bt's turbo-list simetime in the late 1990s in some warehouse in Spain, and actually obtaining one was told to be a crazy experience with prices changing each contact, and so on. A few people got them, but I didn't.
Anyway, today I was told that Telegames in the UK was the original source of these, and that they prepared them in 1990 and were selling them at that time... and this person cited various internet references to "prove" this statement.
The only problem is that nobody on the turbo-list (which had several UK members) had ever heard of such a thing when it was "found" in that Spanish warehouse.
So I'm asking today, for people who were there at the time - perhaps Paul is among them - was Telegames actually selling these things ? And if so, was the market just completely ignoring them ? Or did anybody actually have one ?
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Post by elmer on Jul 5, 2023 17:36:30 GMT
It's very quiet in here, isn't it?
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Post by sunteam_paul on Jul 8, 2023 7:39:11 GMT
As far as I recall, the 'official' PAL PC Engine was a european thing only (France?) and never officially launched in the UK. I would guess that Telegames imported them maybe, but I don't know for sure. If it was an official UK release I'm sure the games magazines would've actually mentioned it, which I don't remember them doing.
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Post by dshadoff on Jul 8, 2023 11:46:36 GMT
As far as I recall, the 'official' PAL PC Engine was a european thing only (France?) and never officially launched in the UK. I would guess that Telegames imported them maybe, but I don't know for sure. If it was an official UK release I'm sure the games magazines would've actually mentioned it, which I don't remember them doing. Thanks Paul ! The person who made those unexpected claims to me, also directed me to this video about the origins of the PAL TurboGrafx: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWdhTlwtgPgBut the thing is... The video actually doesn't corroborate any of the claims made to me by that person (i.e. Telegames being "THE" official place, release date 1990, etc.)... The video does seem to tell a somewhat believable story of what actually happened (i.e. official release planned and built, but cancelled, then an eventual attempt to trickle-sell via mail-order companies). I'd appreciate it if you could try to verify the claims in this video which are much more realistic.
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Post by sunteam_paul on Jul 12, 2023 18:12:22 GMT
All I've got to go is is vague memories from decades ago. The info it in the video does sound fairly legit - although he calls it the UK TurboGrafx, he does make it clear it wasn't properly officially released over here. Telegames was one of the biggest name in the import business back then, so that all seems to track that they might have done a mail order deal. I think everyone who wanted one would have had a modded import by then, so it's no wonder it wouldn't have sold well.
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exodus
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 161
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Post by exodus on Jul 17, 2023 23:23:11 GMT
I would assume the UK grey market ones were imported from the ones the guillemots were making in France?
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