Huge Genesis/Sega CD discussion(some questions)

[todesengel]

Unless you have a Japanese PlayStation 2, although I still haven't played the PS2 version of the game to be able to tell if the port is better or worse.
I remember reading that a few things were changed in the PS2 port but I'm not 100% sure.

[Gameguy]

I mean honestly, sure Willy Beamish has voice acting here but not on the PC, but that's not enough when the load times are such a horrendously annoying problem... play it on PC.
Actually, there was a CD-ROM version of Willy Beamish for the PC that has voice acting. Another reason to play the PC versions over the Sega CD ports.

There may not be too many great Sega CD games once you ignore the ports or enhanced Genesis games, but the games that are left are still worth getting the system for.

[j_factor]

In the US it crushingly outsold the Turbo CD and Duo combined (20,000 each is a reliable estimate for those two), but those two sold very, very poorly here, so that isn't saying much.

Definitely. But what I meant was that I think Sega CD even outsold the Turbografx-16 itself (US only of course).


I don't know of any really reliable estimates for US TG-16 sales really. As for worldwide, I'm sure the PCE in all its forms combined outsold the Sega/Mega CD due to how much better it did in Japan.

Just comparing the CD addons, though, that'd be tough... honestly, the estimates for both systems are so iffy that I don't know if I can rely on either at all, so I'm probably better off just saying that I have no idea and it could be either way. The PCECD blew out the Mega CD in Japan, but wasn't even released in Europe and sold horribly in the US, so did that make up for it? I'd guess perhaps not, but it's possible.

I would assume that worldwide, the PC Engine CD did better. But you're right that sales estimates for these systems are very iffy/unreliable. Hell even Genesis numbers are very iffy.


So basically, here you first say that advertising it as an FMV system was stupid, and then that a lot of people bought it because it was an FMV system... um, that doesn't make sense, and it's because you are falsely applying more recent standards to something that they do not apply to at all -- the early to mid '90s, when CD games were new and FMV popular.

Really, Sega marketed it as the FMV system, and released so many live-action-video games for the system, because they knew that that was popular at the time. That was a smart move, not a stupid one. Try to sell it just based on the non-FMV games and sales would certainly have been even lower, at least through the 1992-1994 period.

Of course, by 1995 the FMV craze was beginning to fade a bit, and the Sega CD was losing its identity, so then Sega perhaps did have a problem... and instead of trying to solve it they just dumped a last few live-action-video games on the thing and called it a day. So yes, I do think that Sega should have had more non-live action video games on the Sega CD... but I don't really think that their focus on them in their advertising, or the number of the games that they made, were mistakes. Those games were POPULAR then. People actually wanted them. Why should Sega deny people something that they wanted?

Hmm. I don't know how popular they were, really. I know Night Trap and Sewer Shark were reasonably popular, but I don't know about anything else. I always assumed the top-selling Sega CD games were Sonic CD, Lunar, Ecco, Mortal Kombat, Thunderstrike, and Eternal Champions (and Night Trap and Sewer Shark). I never imagined that Ground Zero Texas was one if its most popular games. But I could be totally wrong.


The Sega CD probably had too many cart-to-CD ports as it was... and of course it's not possible to do everything on a CD that you can on a cart due to the system limitations so not all games would be possible 100%. But looking at other addons, for the most part most games are exclusive, and once they go to a mostly-also-on-the-main-system strategy, as did also happen to the FDS I believe, it was one of the signs of the system's fading from prominence.

I mean, more of those wouldn't have been bad really, it might have resulted in some interesting alternate versions of games... but what the system really needed were exclusives and games that really used the power of the system, not just more ports. Ports don't usually convince someone to buy a system, I think.

I personally would've enjoyed more cart to CD ports, but you're right about them. However, I do think more computer or arcade ports might've helped. A very timely port of Myst would've been very popular, even though it would've looked like shit.


Actually, there was a CD-ROM version of Willy Beamish for the PC that has voice acting. Another reason to play the PC versions over the Sega CD ports.

Trying to get old PC games to run (unless you have an old PC of course) is a total crapshoot, in my experience. I'll take just about any console port over a PC version, unless they're horribly butchered like the SNES version of Ultima 7.

[A Black Falcon]

Actually, there was a CD-ROM version of Willy Beamish for the PC that has voice acting. Another reason to play the PC versions over the Sega CD ports.

There may not be too many great Sega CD games once you ignore the ports or enhanced Genesis games, but the games that are left are still worth getting the system for.

Willy Beamish CD for the PC? Didn't remember that one... so yeah, there's no reason to consider playing the Sega CD version.

As for your second statement, I agree. The Sega CD's a nice system with a quite decent library of games. The PC ports are just ones that I'd avoid if at all possible...


Definitely. But what I meant was that I think Sega CD even outsold the Turbografx-16 itself (US only of course).

Okay, yeah, I'd agree with that, the Sega CD most likely did outsell the TG16 plus Duo. I'd be pretty surprised if it didn't, really.


I would assume that worldwide, the PC Engine CD did better. But you're right that sales estimates for these systems are very iffy/unreliable. Hell even Genesis numbers are very iffy.

Yeah, and if Genesis numbers are that iffy, which they definitely are, I wouldn't be too confident with the Sega CD's stated sales numbers... :)

3-6 million seems like the likely range, worldwide, but where in that range it was I have no idea. As for the PCE/TG16 there's a 10 million number out htere, but I think that includes ridiculous things like "2+ million US" or something, which I'm pretty sure is delusionally high. I don't know of any remotely accurate PCE/TG16 numbers aside from the "at most 20,000 Turbo CD addons and around 20,000 Duos sold in the US" numbers.


Trying to get old PC games to run (unless you have an old PC of course) is a total crapshoot, in my experience. I'll take just about any console port over a PC version, unless they're horribly butchered like the SNES version of Ultima 7.

DOS games are easy as long as they work in DOSBox, which most do, but with Windows games it can be a pain, yes... some are just impossible to get working on anything other than an older machine. Most can be made to work somehow, but I do have a few Windows games that won't work on my Vista machine, so I have to use them on my older WinME machine.


Hmm. I don't know how popular they were, really. I know Night Trap and Sewer Shark were reasonably popular, but I don't know about anything else. I always assumed the top-selling Sega CD games were Sonic CD, Lunar, Ecco, Mortal Kombat, Thunderstrike, and Eternal Champions (and Night Trap and Sewer Shark). I never imagined that Ground Zero Texas was one if its most popular games. But I could be totally wrong.

That's wishful thinking, I believe. The FMV games sold well and were popular. One of the most frustrating things about owning a Sega CD is trying to actually find the non-FMV titles... FMV games, prerendered-CG games, etc. show up all the time, but actually finding the non-FMV games if you're not buying them online... good luck, you'll need it!

The high prices of a lot of the better games support this. They're pricier because everyone with the system wants then, yes, but also because supply is kind of low because a lot of people with Sega CDs back in the early '90s was just buying FMV games.

This also explains why CD Backup RAM Carts are so uncommon, I believe -- people weren't buying many copies of the RPGs and strategy games, which were the ones that really made you need one.

I've been looking locally for Sega CD games since I got the system in 2006, and here's what I can think of that I've seen... you will note the dominating presence of live-action-video FMV games on the list.

This is everything I can remember seeing in person around here when I've looked in the past few years, as I said. Live action video titles bolded.

Sewer Shark - at least 4 copies
Lodestar - 3+ copies
Ground Zero Texas - 3+ copies
Rebel Assault - 3+ copies (all drawn art)
Mansion of Hidden Souls - 3 copies (all prerendered CG FMV)
Fahrenheit (CD/32XCD) - 2-3 copies
Sonic CD - 2 copies
Bram Stoker's Dracula - 2 copies (digitized sprites of actors with video clips between levels)
Midnight Raiders - 1 copy
Double Switch - 2 copies
Kris Kross: Make My Video - 1 copy
Battlecorps - 1 copy
Willy Beamish - 1 copy
AH-3 ThunderStrike - 1 copy (videos are just between levels, actual game is not FMV)
NFL's Greatest: San Francisco Vs. Dallas - 1 copy
Ecco 1 - 1 copy (disc only)
Flink - 1 copy (disc only)
Mickey Mania - 1 copy (disc only)
Jurassic Park - 1 copy (live-action videos are just in between actions or locations; interactive part of the game is all drawn)
Tomcat Alley - 1 copy, maybe two
Iron Helix - 1 copy
Starblade - 1 copy (100% pre-rendered CG FMV backdrops with wireframe 3d enemies in front, but no live actors)
Supreme Warrior - 1 copy (32XCD version)
Star Wars Chess - 1 copy (digitized sprites/animations of people, not sure if this should count or not but I will for now)
Third World War - 1 copy (all drawn art)
Dracula Unleashed - 1 copy
Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Darkside - 1 copy (disc and manual only)
World Cup USA '94 - 1 copy
NHL '94 - 1 copy [/B](live-action videos are only in between play, actual gameplay is sprites) (though I do have a copy of some other game that came in the back of a NHL '94 case...)
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers - 1 copy
NBA JAM - 1 copy (live-action videos are only in between play, actual gameplay is sprites)

And that's all I can think of.

I know that personal experience means nothing, but I doubt that my personal experience is all that rare... it'd be nice to hear other people's thoughts, though.

[Aussie2B]

I always thought the Mega CD got pretty good support. Obviously given the nature of the Sega CD being an add-on, its library is smaller and probably sold less than that of the Mega Drive, but it seemed like it left a bigger impact while most Japanese gamers couldn't care less about the cartridge-based games. And when you look at it from the perspective of an importer, I'd say the Mega CD easily has a larger assortment of interesting Japan-exclusives. But this is all just my opinion on it.

[Sosage]

Third World War - 1 copy (there is live action video but it's not the point of the game, the main game and strategy game are all ingame graphics)

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa...whoa...whoa...whoa (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_vVyUARny0)...I've played this game a ton and never seen live action. It's all hand drawn, charmingly I may add, from what I've seen. :P

Sorry. I really like this game. :)

[A Black Falcon]

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa...whoa...whoa...whoa (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_vVyUARny0)...I've played this game a ton and never seen live action. It's all hand drawn, charmingly I may add, from what I've seen. :P

Sorry. I really like this game. :)

... Yeah, you're right, aren't you. I even own that game (bought that copy), I should remember... :) It does have cutscene stuff, but as you say it's all drawn. I'll fix that.

Also I remembered a few more games I've seen...

World Cup USA '94
NHL '94 (live-action videos are only in between play, actual gameplay is sprites)
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers
NBA JAM (live-action videos are only in between play, actual gameplay is sprites)

I had the PC CD version of the terrible World Cup USA and I don't remember any FMV, but I'm not sure if they put any in this one... I don't exactly want to play it to find out. If I thought it was bad back in 1995...

As for NHL I think it has some live-action video stuff in between parts, as NBA Jam does, but for both cases should that count them in the "Live-action video" category? I guess so, but not for gameplay...

[tomaitheous]

Sega CD - 220 games released worldwide (most successful in the US)

Counting duplicates (same game different region)? You got the master list, so I can weed through it? :2gunfire:



Yeah, the Sega CD was heavily advertised in 1992-1993 in the US, that's for sure. Sega really wanted people to buy that system... and it did okay, but not quite as well as they were initially expecting here.

I do remember stores being sold out of it during the first week or so.




In the US it crushingly outsold the Turbo CD and Duo combined (20,000 each is a reliable estimate for those two), but those two sold very, very poorly here, so that isn't saying much. I don't know of any really reliable estimates for US TG-16 sales really. As for worldwide, I'm sure the PCE in all its forms combined outsold the Sega/Mega CD due to how much better it did in Japan.

20,000 for the Duo? I can't decide of that's insulting or just ignorant. Maybe both.



So basically, here you first say that advertising it as an FMV system was stupid, and then that a lot of people bought it because it was an FMV system... um, that doesn't make sense, and it's because you are falsely applying more recent standards to something that they do not apply to at all -- the early to mid '90s, when CD games were new and FMV popular.


I'm saying people were stupid/fools for buying into the hype of FMV junk. And Sega sucked for releasing those damn titles that flooded the system pretty much for the first two years, but idiots feed the production of more empty FMV games. I mean, they really aren't even video games in the. It's like going back to Atari 2600, or worst those digital hand held LED games from the 70's - but with fancy FMV and sound. I'm not an fool. I know why Sega pushed the FMV during the launch of the system. They needed a fairly big reason why someone would shell out an additional $300 on an addon that still couldn't deliver stuff the SNES had brought to the market (incredible/beautiful graphics/colors, transparency, etc). I'm sure SOA would have loved a video upgrade on the system, but the MegaCD was developed in Japan, not the US. I don't think thought the FMV craze was gonna last, and with pretty no top tier titles coming out of Japan, appears to me the milked it for all that it was worth. The only thing that keeps the SegaCD from being completely pathetic, the support they eventually got form EU devs. I really don't like/care for those kinds of games - but I'd sure as hell pick those over FMV anyday.

Final Fight was the fist and last SegaCD game that I was actually hyped about. After that, SegaCD was dead to me.



Really, Sega marketed it as the FMV system, and released so many live-action-video games for the system, because they knew that that was popular at the time. That was a smart move, not a stupid one. Try to sell it just based on the non-FMV games and sales would certainly have been even lower, at least through the 1992-1994 period.

Smart move? I'd say it was pretty much their only option once realized. That still doesn't change any facts about the system. At all.


Of course, by 1995 the FMV craze was beginning to fade a bit,


FMV and FMV game are two different things. And by 1995, I'd say more than a "bit". By 1995, the Genesis was pretty much dead, let alone the SegaCD (and I'm sure the Japanese MegaCD much-much earlier than that). FMV game fad was washed out by then.


but I don't really think that their focus on them in their advertising, or the number of the games that they made, were mistakes. Those games were POPULAR then. People actually wanted them. Why should Sega deny people something that they wanted?

Well, I really didn't care what was good for Sega - particularly. I cared what was good for the "gamer". I wouldn't categorize people that played FMV games as gamers. Who would even want to play a FMV game when you could have something awesome like Sonic 2/3/or whatever. You know, a real game.



So yeah, I understand their strategy and think it wasn't a bad one. I just think that the Sega CD needed more focus from the company and more games, which it could only have gotten had Sega not been splitting its focus so much between so many different platforms.

I would say it was there only one, really. Practically no Japanese MegaCD support? And have you seen the first release titles for the MegaCD? I got a chance to see them about 6 months before the release of the SegaCD, and let me tell you - it was pretty damn disappointing. After reading ALL the hype in EGM about the MegaCD and such. Didn't look any better than what I already saw/played on the TGCD. Probably one of the biggest let downs in gaming history for me. Now way those were going to sell the $300 addon. And those were almost all unique games to the MegaCD.





The Sega CD probably had too many cart-to-CD ports as it was...

And how many were equivalent to the top tier badass Genesis carts? None. That's how many. Imagine if Shinobi 3 was on MegaCD!? Or Sonic 3? Or PSIV? I could just on and on. But I don't need to. It's an easy enough concept to understand.


Ports don't usually convince someone to buy a system, I think.

No, but they fill the gap so to speak. Give the system more respect for real (multi console) gamers. Draws developers of "real" games to the system, etc.



Hey, Sewer Shark was pretty popular... yeah now most people can't understand why, but then people wanted that kind of thing...

I knew of a few people that wanted that game too. They were the kids that we laughed at. The odd ball gamers (if you can really call them gamers). I'd say akin to "wii" only gamers nowadays. You know?


I think it boils down to this; SegaCD's hype and potential that is possessed. Given the popularity of the Genesis, the SegaCD addon success was possible. They had the user base for it. NEC, in comparison, pretty much had non left by the time the newly formed TTi had released the Duo. The Genesis popularity and success, the tons of great titles. Who couldn't fore see how badass the SegaCD was gonna be. Sure, you have the show-y FMV at first - but I'm sure most gamers were anticipating much more than hollow FMV games. The novelty is nice at first, but wears thin fairly quickly (and for no explanation needed). And FMV was the biggest difference you could see between a Sega product and Nintendo's SNES. SNES had nothing like it. No spoken narration or video cut scenes. I was sure Sega was gonna come around to its senses and so I held off until some real games were coming out. And that did happen. Not every game on the SegaCD is FMV, but on the other side of the coin - only a handful of "good" games relative to the SNES and even just the Genesis. Definitely nothing top tier on the system. And definitely nowhere near as many great titles that came on just the Genesis. There's a difference between buying good games, and games that are just "ok" - but you buy them for system because you need to justify the cost or just owning the system (you want something to play on it). I remember a friend of mine that got a Jag early on, went through this very same phase. You start making excuses for the games and what not ('cause he normally had good tastes in games). I think I'm getting off point here.. (it's late)

Failure is relative term here, and while it's (SegaCD) not the virtual - it doesn't need to be in order to be an epic fail to me. Comparing the price the system, the requirement of the original Genesis (which should be a cost factor), comparing all the top tier/great/good titles on the Genesis to that of the SegaCD. Taking those things into consideration, it's and epic failure. Was it a market success? I think someone stated 2million world wide, so I'd say that's pretty good. N64 sold a lot more than 2 million systems and I very much so consider that an epic failure of a system. Number of games I wanted to play on it BITD? About 3-4 total. Heh, that makes the SegaCD a more worth while console than the N64. Maybe that's why I have any N64 games for my console, yet still have some SegaCD games on my shelf. In that respect, maybe the SegaCD isn't such an epic fail :bareass:

[j_factor]

Oh great, now you've done it. You bashed N64 in a thread with A Black Falcon. Here is the exact point at which this thread takes on an entirely different subject.

[Sosage]

Oh great, now you've done it. You bashed N64 in a thread with A Black Falcon. Here is the exact point at which this thread takes on an entirely different subject.

I thought the money repulsive quote out of that wall of text was this:


I mean, they really aren't even video games in the. It's like going back to Atari 2600, or worst those digital hand held LED games from the 70's

Holy Cizow!

[Icarus Moonsight]

Oh great, now you've done it. You bashed N64 in a thread with A Black Falcon. Here is the exact point at which this thread takes on an entirely different subject.

This thread weather report was brought to you by j_factor, the letters C and J and the number Ham.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_i7IqN0dMk7g/SNG8XzDerUI/AAAAAAAACWI/z0k3Bcz80UM/s400/shitstorm-flyer.jpg

[Zoltor]

I thought the money repulsive quote out of that wall of text was this:



Holy Cizow!


I don't know, this statement was pretty bad as well:

"I knew of a few people that wanted that game too. They were the kids that we laughed at. The odd ball gamers (if you can really call them gamers). I'd say akin to "wii" only gamers nowadays. You know?"

Was that statement meant as an attempt at making a bad joke or something?

PS. how a thread calling the Sega CD a Sleeper, and talking about some great games on it(including the upcoming Pier Solar), evolved into an Epic Fail or just fail debate, I will never know.

[A Black Falcon]

Oh great, now you've done it. You bashed N64 in a thread with A Black Falcon. Here is the exact point at which this thread takes on an entirely different subject

He's European, right?

Outside of the United States, the N64 was much less successful than it was here...

I mean, overall the N64 sold 32 million systems, which puts it at the second most successful second place console before this generation (behind only the Genesis), but two thirds of that total sold in the US... 21 million systems in the US (only 2-3 million less than the SNES sold in the US -- pretty good!), but only 5.5 million each in Europe and Japan. I'd say it was pretty successful in the US, but much less so elsewhere... but overall it was certainly a success.


Holy Cizow!

Yeah, that comment is even worse, I agree.


"I knew of a few people that wanted that game too. They were the kids that we laughed at. The odd ball gamers (if you can really call them gamers). I'd say akin to "wii" only gamers nowadays. You know?"

Was that statement meant as an attempt at making a bad joke or something?

... Gah... as if only owning one console makes you worse? Or as if the Wii is a bad system or something? How stupid... sure it has fewer "hardcore" games, but fewer is not zero. There are a quite reasonable number of good and great Wii games out there. Not as many as there should be considering how well it has sold, but a quite reasonable number.

I don't actually have a PS3, 360, or Wii yet, I mostly play PC, DS, and older console games, but when I do get one of those three, it will definitely be a Wii (sometime this year I'm sure). But of course, as I've been a Nintendo fan ever since the NES days, that probably isn't THAT surprising. :)


20,000 for the Duo? I can't decide of that's insulting or just ignorant. Maybe both.

20,000 for the Turbo Duo in the US. That does not include any Japanese sales of course.

As for the numbers, why do you find them hard to believe? They're quite believable. The TurboDuo is a rare system; the TG16 itself is quite hard to find (I have seen exactly one locally), but the Duo... yeah right, you'd need great luck. It was also on the market for a fairly short period of time.

The Turbo Duo was released in the US in late 1992. TTI went bankrupt in early 1994 and the system vanished from its remaining few retail outlets. So there is only a less than one and a half year window for the system to sell in. On top of that, the system was mired far behind in third place, and by 1992 most people had forgotten the TG16. They tried to make a comeback with the Duo, with the Johnny Turbo ads and such, but it didn't work, it didn't work at all.

That 20,000 number comes from Victor Ireland, head of Working Designs. Here's the quote from NeoGAF:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=17589981&postcount=190

Well, the TurboDuo (which is all I cared about, doing CD games and all) sold less than 20,000 units. The add-on TG CD drive was that or less. It was really bad, but for the size we were then, we were regularly selling through to 50% or more of the installed base which is incredible and we'll never match that again.

He should be in a position to know to guess, considering that he released two TG16 HuCard games and four CD games before moving over to the Sega CD for WD's next four releases.


Well, I really didn't care what was good for Sega - particularly. I cared what was good for the "gamer". I wouldn't categorize people that played FMV games as gamers. Who would even want to play a FMV game when you could have something awesome like Sonic 2/3/or whatever. You know, a real game.

So your personal opinion about what kind of games you like matters more than any consideration about what sells better or worse. That is, your entire post is irrelevant because you are not considering the thing that actual companies consider above all other factors: Potential profitability!

I know Sega did innumerable stupid things that hurt their profitability, but still, I don't think that at the time they were doing them because they thought they would fail. :)


FMV and FMV game are two different things. And by 1995, I'd say more than a "bit". By 1995, the Genesis was pretty much dead, let alone the SegaCD (and I'm sure the Japanese MegaCD much-much earlier than that). FMV game fad was washed out by then.

Not really, they were still making live-action-video PC games into 1998 at least. Remember, Sega didn't have an exclusive license on live-action-video games... more were on the PC than any console, but on consoles lots of them were on the CD-i, the 3DO, and the Sega CD, and a few on the Jaguar CD, Playstation, and Saturn. The genre, especially FMV-based adventure games of various kinds, lasted for years, and for a little while, 1992-1994 particularly, was quite successful. They could only be done on CD. Yet you think Sega should have IGNORED THAT and basically turned away the one thing that their system did that could not be done on carts? That'd be insane!

I mean, it's not like there is anyting else the Sega CD can do that both cannot be done on carts and convinces people to buy the system, considering the high price. Scaling and rotation? Yeah it looks great, but people aren't going to buy a $300 addon just for SoulStar, I think. Particularly not when they want FMV games, so they get a CD drive for their PC or a 3DO or something. Now if first-party titles that showed off that power were out, from early on in the system's life, perhaps that could have been different...

I mean yes, by 1995 the genre was on the downswing, though certainly not dead yet. But that shouldn't have been the deathknell of the Sega CD if Sega had had a better genre variety from the beginning... because yes, of course on that point I agree with you as I have said.


I would say it was there only one, really. Practically no Japanese MegaCD support?

Quite true, as I said it was poor. Sega of Japan had too many platforms to support and not enough people to support them all with games. Systems less successful at home like the Sega CD and 32X bore the worst of the problem. Then of course they "solved" it by discontinuing everything other than the Saturn in late 1995, but we all know how abysmally bad a decision THAT was. They needed to have fewer systems in the first place... don't release the 32X, for starters! But anyway.



And how many were equivalent to the top tier badass Genesis carts? None. That's how many. Imagine if Shinobi 3 was on MegaCD!? Or Sonic 3? Or PSIV? I could just on and on. But I don't need to. It's an easy enough concept to understand.

No, but they fill the gap so to speak. Give the system more respect for real (multi console) gamers. Draws developers of "real" games to the system, etc.

Still, look at the PC Engine CD... 400+ releases, and very few of them were also released on cart! Altered Beast, Bonk 3 (CD version US only)... there weren't many on both. People made new games, not ports of old ones. That's what happens when a system is actually successful.

And that is where we probably agree, I think -- while I think that Sega's FMV-games strategy was a good one, they needed to significantly boost the non-FMV part of the system's library. They put it all on one pillar, and that wasn't enough to make the system as big a success as they wanted. Part of the problem definitely was the lack of colors, but there was nothing they could do about that except wish that they had put more colors in the original Genesis, really. But had there been more games, like say good Sega CD versions of Space Harrier, After Burner, Outrun, etc, more than one major Sonic title, Phantasy Star (leave PSIV on Sega CD instead of moving it to Genesis, or make both), etc... they needed more games, period. Not less FMV games, but more OTHER games. I don't think that those two goals are counterproductive, Sega of America mostly made the FMV games, but Japan was doing very little as you say... get them to actually do something and part of the problem is solved.

Oh yeah, bringing over games like Night Striker, The Ninja Warriors, Devastator, etc. would be nice too... nothing huge or anything that would affect the success of the system, but it'd have been cool to see. I can understand why all the Japanese-PC-RPG ports got left there, but stuff like that... not so much.

Sega of Japan just didn't care much and Sega of America was too blinded by live-action-video's coolness to realize that they needed more other stuff too, though even if they did realize it, they probably couldn't have done too much about it. so it's more Japan's fault.


Definitely nothing top tier on the system.

Uh, wha? The two Lunar games, Sonic CD, etc... or SoulStar, Battlecorps, Dark Wizard, Popful Mail... those aren't top tier HOW, exactly? I'd say they are! And that's just a few... Robo Aleste and Silpheed are pretty awesome too... Keio and Android Assault too, though the latter feels a bit more like a cart game somehow (music aside) and the former is way too Japanese to do well here. Etc.

If you just mean "all-time greats" or something, though, Sonic CD is lots of peoples' favorite Sonic game ever, and the two Lunar games are two of the best RPGs of the generation; Lunar 2 for Sega CD is my favorite 16-bit RPG, for instance. :)




Failure is relative term here, and while it's (SegaCD) not the virtual - it doesn't need to be in order to be an epic fail to me. Comparing the price the system, the requirement of the original Genesis (which should be a cost factor), comparing all the top tier/great/good titles on the Genesis to that of the SegaCD. Taking those things into consideration, it's and epic failure. Was it a market success? I think someone stated 2million world wide, so I'd say that's pretty good. N64 sold a lot more than 2 million systems and I very much so consider that an epic failure of a system. Number of games I wanted to play on it BITD? About 3-4 total. Heh, that makes the SegaCD a more worth while console than the N64. Maybe that's why I have any N64 games for my console, yet still have some SegaCD games on my shelf. In that respect, maybe the SegaCD isn't such an epic fail

Your definition of failure is critically flawed and makes no sense, but I think I said that already at the top.

[Zebbe]

Why do ALL threads on retro forums focus on or derail into how bad/failing/how much worse X is than Y etc.? Analysing which failed hardest, N64 or Sega CD? Why? I have a PlayStation 2 which has sold like 140 million and a 32X that has sold less than 1 million... I don't really care about that, I care about how fun the games are.

I'll just say the Mega-CD has plenty of fun, exclusive games that are not FMV or cart ports, making well worthy of a purchase at least these days. What about the old days? I don't know, they are gone anyway.

[Zoltor]

To A Black Falcon: What the hell are you replying to me for, please learn how to read. That was from someone elses post, that I was quoting to make fun of the moron who posted it.

To Zebbe: Yea It's pretty bad.

[A Black Falcon]

To A Black Falcon: What the hell are you replying to me for, please learn how to read. That was from someone elses post, that I was quoting to make fun of the moron who posted it.

I know, I was agreeing with you that he was saying stupid things... was that really not obvious?

[Zoltor]

I know, I was agreeing with you that he was saying stupid things... was that really not obvious?

Oh sorry then, my bad, it really sounded like it was dirrected at me, and there was no indication that it was otherwise(a he remark or something would've helped).

[Sosage]

Oh sorry then, my bad, it really sounded like it was dirrected at me, and there was no indication that it was otherwise(a he remark or something would've helped).

This is what happens in a shitstorm...you can't tell who your friends are anymore and everyone just start firing wildly in all directions in a panic.

So. The Sega CD. Quite the add-on.

[j_factor]

He's European, right?

I'm pretty sure he's American.


Outside of the United States, the N64 was much less successful than it was here...

I mean, overall the N64 sold 32 million systems, which puts it at the second most successful second place console before this generation (behind only the Genesis), but two thirds of that total sold in the US... 21 million systems in the US (only 2-3 million less than the SNES sold in the US -- pretty good!), but only 5.5 million each in Europe and Japan. I'd say it was pretty successful in the US, but much less so elsewhere... but overall it was certainly a success.

Oh, the N64 was definitely a success. He just said it was a crap system with almost no worthwhile games. Which I know is a no-no with you. ;)


20,000 for the Turbo Duo in the US. That does not include any Japanese sales of course.

As for the numbers, why do you find them hard to believe? They're quite believable. The TurboDuo is a rare system; the TG16 itself is quite hard to find (I have seen exactly one locally), but the Duo... yeah right, you'd need great luck. It was also on the market for a fairly short period of time.

The Turbo Duo was released in the US in late 1992. TTI went bankrupt in early 1994 and the system vanished from its remaining few retail outlets. So there is only a less than one and a half year window for the system to sell in. On top of that, the system was mired far behind in third place, and by 1992 most people had forgotten the TG16. They tried to make a comeback with the Duo, with the Johnny Turbo ads and such, but it didn't work, it didn't work at all.

That 20,000 number comes from Victor Ireland, head of Working Designs. Here's the quote from NeoGAF:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=17589981&postcount=190


He should be in a position to know to guess, considering that he released two TG16 HuCard games and four CD games before moving over to the Sega CD for WD's next four releases.

Yeah, that seems pretty accurate. I would like to note that most of the time (if not all of the time), the TG16 (original hucard system) was actually worse than third place. After SNES came out, it was Genesis, then SNES, and third was NES. I don't think the TG16/Duo was ever outselling the NES, or Genesis, or SNES, or Sega CD (if that counts), at any point in time. I wouldn't be surprised if, early on, it was being outsold by the Master System.


I know Sega did innumerable stupid things that hurt their profitability, but still, I don't think that at the time they were doing them because they thought they would fail. :)

On the subject of Sega's profitability, here's a fun fact that few people know about. Excluding their early days, the first fiscal year that Sega posted a loss was 1997-1998.


Not really, they were still making live-action-video PC games into 1998 at least. Remember, Sega didn't have an exclusive license on live-action-video games... more were on the PC than any console, but on consoles lots of them were on the CD-i, the 3DO, and the Sega CD, and a few on the Jaguar CD, Playstation, and Saturn. The genre, especially FMV-based adventure games of various kinds, lasted for years, and for a little while, 1992-1994 particularly, was quite successful.

Hell, they still make 'em. There's a couple on Wii, and one in particular, called 428 (Japan only), got very good reviews.


I mean, it's not like there is anyting else the Sega CD can do that both cannot be done on carts and convinces people to buy the system, considering the high price. Scaling and rotation? Yeah it looks great, but people aren't going to buy a $300 addon just for SoulStar, I think. Particularly not when they want FMV games, so they get a CD drive for their PC or a 3DO or something. Now if first-party titles that showed off that power were out, from early on in the system's life, perhaps that could have been different...

Well, the other thing they touted was the large capacity of CD-ROMs. Sonic CD couldn't have been done on a cartridge (at the time), even if you take out the CD audio. Shining Force CD also couldn't have been on a cart. Mortal Kombat CD advertised itself as having a lot of added animation (although it's barely noticeable). Other cart to CD ports, especially Earthworm Jim, used added content as a selling point. If you look at the back of the box on a bunch of Sega CD games, you'll see many of them stating that they have X number of enemies, stages, or hours of gameplay, or X, Y, and Z features.

It's anyone's guess as to how many people bought the system for FMV games vs. how many bought it for "bigger" CD games.

[chrisbid]

a quick addendum for the discussion, 299 was the price point for the sega cd1. the model 2 was priced at 229 and is far more common in the wild, unofficially indicating it sold much better than the model 1.

[A Black Falcon]

I'm pretty sure he's American.

Oh, the N64 was definitely a success. He just said it was a crap system with almost no worthwhile games. Which I know is a no-no with you. ;)

Well of course he's wrong, but I don't need to argue with everyone who disagrees with me, you can't do that all of the time...

The N64 is my favorite console though, so of course I disagree.


Yeah, that seems pretty accurate. I would like to note that most of the time (if not all of the time), the TG16 (original hucard system) was actually worse than third place. After SNES came out, it was Genesis, then SNES, and third was NES. I don't think the TG16/Duo was ever outselling the NES, or Genesis, or SNES, or Sega CD (if that counts), at any point in time. I wouldn't be surprised if, early on, it was being outsold by the Master System.

Well, I was only talking about 4th-gen systems... but yes, I doubt it was ahead of the NES, perhaps ever, or at least not before 1991 or 1992... and by then the TG16/Duo had faded so much from its already weak start that it's possible that even the NES's later life stayed ahead of it. Probable even, now that I think about it, around here at least; back then I only remember seeing Turbografx stuff at Toys R Us, while NES stuff was commonly available at least until 1994.

As for the SMS, I'm not so sure... that system was discontinued here in mid 1991 of course, and quickly faded out after the Genesis launched. So while it may have been ahead of the TG16 in late 1989 and maybe into early 1990, I doubt it lasted long.

Also, remember that the SMS was actually third place in North America that generation; the Atari 7800 actually finished second. It's kind of odd from my perspective, because around here SMS stuff is a lot more common than 7800, but the numbers don't lie... but like the SMS, by 1990 the 7800 was definitely dying off. Its last game in the US was released in 1990 I believe, though it technically wasn't discontinued until Jan. 1 1992. So I'd guess that the TG16 got past the 7800 and SMS in not that long, but probably never got past the NES (probably; maybe some random months later on or something?), and definitely not the SNES or Genesis.

As for the TGCD/Duo considering their horrible sales I doubt they were ahead of much of anything. Even the Jaguar sold better than that... :)

It is too bad, because in Japan the PCECD has such a fantastic library, but we got so few titles for the thing here, and the price was so high, that it's not that surprising unfortunately. The Duo was their last chance, but it came too late and with TTI too poor for it to make enough of a difference to get many people to buy it -- though if the Duo sold under 20,000 in a year and a half it was a least more successful than the TGCD considering that that had been on the market for three years before then and sold that well at best. Of course the Duo includes a TG16 inside too, so that is not a fair comparison.

But yeah, if NEC hadn't been so stupid, had marketed it better, and had brought over a lot more of the actual good games (for both HuCard and CD), the Sega CD may have had some competition... both systems are pretty cool, but the TGCD/Duo is really expensive. It'd be nice if it'd done better so the thing would be cheaper now, and more games would be in English. :) As it is Sega CD makes a lot more sense to collect for in part because the prices are so much lower...


On the subject of Sega's profitability, here's a fun fact that few people know about. Excluding their early days, the first fiscal year that Sega posted a loss was 1997-1998.

[QUOTE]On the subject of Sega's profitability, here's a fun fact that few people know about. Excluding their early days, the first fiscal year that Sega posted a loss was 1997-1998.

Fiscal year 1997, do you mean? Wouldn't that be starting in spring 1996? That would make sense to me, considering that that's when the Saturn losses really caught up to Sega after 16-bit sales stopped covering for it anymore thanks to Sega of Japan's completely bungling everything.



Hell, they still make 'em. There's a couple on Wii, and one in particular, called 428 (Japan only), got very good reviews.

True, but a lot less than they used to of course.

I do think that it's kind of cool that the Command & Conquer games still use live-action-video cutscenes... it makes for cheesy, entertaining stuff, just like it should be for those games. :)


Well, the other thing they touted was the large capacity of CD-ROMs. Sonic CD couldn't have been done on a cartridge (at the time), even if you take out the CD audio. Shining Force CD also couldn't have been on a cart. Mortal Kombat CD advertised itself as having a lot of added animation (although it's barely noticeable). Other cart to CD ports, especially Earthworm Jim, used added content as a selling point. If you look at the back of the box on a bunch of Sega CD games, you'll see many of them stating that they have X number of enemies, stages, or hours of gameplay, or X, Y, and Z features.

True, the CD ports often do have added content, but they also have load times, which is a consideration... I mean, I like Sega CD, but I don't like load times that much. For something like NBA Jam or Mortal Kombat I'd rather play it on cart, the CD adds little but the load times are annoying. For platformers it's usually tolerable, but it something to consider.

Also of course carts are much more durable and much less likely to fail on you. I like carts. :)


It's anyone's guess as to how many people bought the system for FMV games vs. how many bought it for "bigger" CD games.

Considering how common FMV games are I'd bet that a lot of people bought it for FMV above most other factors, but yes, that isn't everyone. It would definitely be interesting to see that kind of information, but I doubt we'll ever find any. If we can't even find any reliable sales data...

[nectarsis]

Not sure on the accuracy of the #'s but:

http://www.gametunnel.com/html/section-printpage-126.html

http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/111822/the-10-worst-selling-consoles-of-all-time/

Sounds close to reasonable. If true even if only 1/4 of people that had a TG got the cd player, or a Duo...that's still 625,000 people.

Besides the only thing stated is a comment by Vic Ireland, that's IF he had the real info, plus he's been well known for making some out there comments to begin with ;)

[A Black Falcon]

I would be completely shocked if the TG16's acual US sales number was even remotely close to 2.5 million...

Also that chart isn't completely accurate -- look at how it claims that in the third generation the NES had 83% and the SMS 17%. Wait, where's the Atari 7800? It outsold the SMS in the US, where Nintendo had 80% of the third-gen marketshare, while up to/in 1990 at least Atari had a higher share than Sega of the remaining 20%. The 7800 doesn't even show up on that chart. It's an interesting page, but as it says there, don't expect it to be entirely accurate... because that's relying on us actually knowing the numbers, which we do not. Just look at the debate over what the Genesis actually sold to see proof of that!

As for that 2.5 million number, that is what Wikipedia uses, so that's where that it comes from the same Gamepro article as a bunch of other numbers that I find fishy. The article is entirely unsourced, so there is no proof behind any of the numbers in it. Some of the numbers there agree with current estimates, such as the Saturn and Dreamcast, but others are wrong -- the 32X sold at least 665,000 worldwide, not 200,000 as that article says. The "10 worst selling handhelds" article is even less accurate I think... I mean, 1 million Nomads? Really? Give me some sources if you want me to even begin to believe you. Without them the article isn't useful at all. It's too bad that Wikipedia sources these two articles for the sales numbers for like ten systems... in some cases just because we never heard any other numbers. If we never heard any other numbers, why should we just trust that they managed to find accurate ones, if they won't tell us where they got the data from?

Plus there's proven-wrong stuff like the 32X numbers to make me seriously question the value of the numbers that we don't have corroborating evidence for, like the Saturn and Dreamcast.

Here's that handhelds article: http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/125748/the-10-worst-selling-handhelds-of-all-time/

I have trouble believing that 2.5 million number. It's possible, sure, but seems like it might be high...

You can find another guess, which I'd put just about as much weight on as Gamepro's (that is not much, but it should be looked at), here:

http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=5210.0

I seem to remember Bill Kunkel speculating in one of his Game Doctor columns late in the Turbo's life that sales of the "various Turbo units" were still "under a million." Seems like a safe guess to me. The Turbo's performance in the States was pathetic.

Honestly I'd also tend to think taht the system's sales were more in line with that article's estimate than Gamepro's high guess.


Besides the only thing stated is a comment by Vic Ireland, that's IF he had the real info, plus he's been well known for making some out there comments to begin with.

Oh come on, I think there's no doubt that he wouldn't have said that if he didn't have proof. Why in the world would he lie about that? The point was answering a question about why support the TGCD when it did so badly here... the answer was that even though it did really badly, WD's games actually sold to 50% of the people who owned TG16s, which is a truly amazing number.

Also, you think that the TGCD+Duo sold to anywhere remotely near 25% of TG16 owners... well, no. Add-ons do not do that well, with perhaps the singular exception of the PC Engine CD in Japan. The only ones with any kind of a chance are ones that come packed in the box with a game for no more than a normal game, like the N64 Expansion Pak, and even there not everyone got one...

Also, remember that at first the Turbo CD, when it came out in late 1989, was $400 and came with no games. There were very few games released in the US for it, even compared to the TG16 -- again only a couple of dozen over its entire five-year lifespan. There was minimal third party support at best. That is not the sign of a system that sold hundreds of thousands of systems.

Counting on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TurboGrafx-CD_and_PC_Engine-CD_games ) I see 42 US releases (of the the games with no region listings, the only one I know did get a US release is Terraforming). I think that's all there is. And that's in 4-5 years out there... the 32X managed 37 US releases in just a year and two months! That says a lot about how poorly the Turbo CD drive sold.

And of those 42, I count a full 22 Super CD games! Super CD games require either a Duo or System Card 3.0, and in the US the Duo was released in late 1992 and the System Card 3.0 shortly after the Duo. So that means that in the first 2 1/2-3 years of the Turbo CD's life, it got a full 20 games released for it.

But wait... it wasn't even 20. Some of those regular CD games came out after the Turbo CD's launch in September or October 1992 -- Terraforming, Buster Bros., and perhaps more. So between late 1989 and fall 1992 the Turbo CD had at most 18 games released for it in the US, unless I'm missing any US releases. If I am it's not many. (There were two unofficial releases sometime during the system's life, if those "games" count, but those are the only other ones I know of.)

I'm believing Victor Ireland's numbers more and more now.

[j_factor]

Also, remember that the SMS was actually third place in North America that generation; the Atari 7800 actually finished second.

I've heard people say that, but I've also heard people say the opposite. That just doesn't make sense if true. I mean the 7800 is practically a big fat nothing. It has so few games that are even noteworthy. What games made it sell better? Pole Position II is so blah. Midnight Mutants doesn't exactly seem to me like it was a hit (great game though). And I can't imagine ports of old arcade games being a significant factor in the late 80s, especially compared to the types of games that were available for NES and SMS (and even C64) at the time.

Like you, SMS games and systems have always been a far more common sighting for me personally. When I was a kid, I'd seen the SMS, and I knew of games like Out Run and Shinobi, but I don't think I even knew what a 7800 was, and I certainly don't remember Scrapyard Dog or anything. *shrug*


Fiscal year 1997, do you mean? Wouldn't that be starting in spring 1996? That would make sense to me, considering that that's when the Saturn losses really caught up to Sega after 16-bit sales stopped covering for it anymore thanks to Sega of Japan's completely bungling everything.

No. The year 1997 to 1998. Meaning, they actually managed to end the fiscal year of '96-'97 in the black.


True, the CD ports often do have added content, but they also have load times, which is a consideration... I mean, I like Sega CD, but I don't like load times that much. For something like NBA Jam or Mortal Kombat I'd rather play it on cart, the CD adds little but the load times are annoying. For platformers it's usually tolerable, but it something to consider.

Those two are probably the absolute worst Sega CD ports. I can't think of any other Sega CD ports that should be avoided. I do prefer the cartridge version of Flashback, but the CD version at least shows effort, and the load times are very reasonable. Everything else that's on Sega CD and a cartridge system is better on Sega CD, IMO. I mean, not counting games I don't care about either way.


Considering how common FMV games are I'd bet that a lot of people bought it for FMV above most other factors, but yes, that isn't everyone. It would definitely be interesting to see that kind of information, but I doubt we'll ever find any. If we can't even find any reliable sales data...

I don't know if FMV games are so common because they were that popular back then, or just because almost nobody wants them now.

[nectarsis]

Also, remember that at first the Turbo CD, when it came out in late 1989, was $400 and came with no games. There were very few games released in the US for it, even compared to the TG16 -- again only a couple of dozen over its entire five-year lifespan. There was minimal third party support at best. That is not the sign of a system that sold hundreds of thousands of systems.



True the numbers...looking more into it don't make much sense. Also just shy of 50 CD/SCD games is a fair bit more than a "couple dozen" :P

"WD's games actually sold to 50% of the people who owned TG16s, which is a truly amazing number."

Now that I would def had a hard time believing. Maybe that's an overestimation of how many they were hoping to sell through.

[j_factor]

I don't find that unbelievable. Working Designs was a big fish in a small pond. The Turbo CD had practically nothing else going for it in 1992-93, except maybe Lords of Thunder and Dungeon Master. Not that there aren't other games that I like, just nothing else that would be noticed. Most TTI games were just kind of quietly put out there. Many were scarcely in stores. Nobody knew who TTI was or why they should buy games from them. Working Designs was able to get their product out there in a way that it wasn't so completely unknown, and they cultivated a small but devoted fanbase that bought their games.

[nectarsis]

I don't find that unbelievable. Working Designs was a big fish in a small pond. The Turbo CD had practically nothing else going for it in 1992-93, except maybe Lords of Thunder and Dungeon Master. Not that there aren't other games that I like, just nothing else that would be noticed. Most TTI games were just kind of quietly put out there. Many were scarcely in stores. Nobody knew who TTI was or why they should buy games from them. Working Designs was able to get their product out there in a way that it wasn't so completely unknown, and they cultivated a small but devoted fanbase that bought their games.

On the flip side they also were a company even then known for notoriously small print runs. It's a 50/50 split on the TG 3 games are dirt common, 3 games are uncommon to rare.

[Zoltor]

Ok, for the innocent people that may wonder into this shitstorm of a thread, let me try to recap this:

After hearing the amazing quality of the Pier Solar sound track, I decide I so need to pick up a Sega CD. I then figured, if I'm gonna own a Sega CD anyway, I might as well see if there are other good games for it(turns out, there are alot of good games, even some great games, so many in fact, It's hard to grasp why it failed. Let's put it this way, the PS3 wishes it had the Library/3rd party support the Sega CD had, yet the PS3 is still around), so I look up on the internet, to see what some of their good/great games were, and then realized it was a far better system/addon then people gave it credit for.

After some research on its library, I was pretty excited/shocked(who wouldn't be, not only am I gonna beable to play Pier Solar with godly sound Quality, which is so high, It's almost unheard about even today, but I'm also gonna get a chance to play a ton of old school games, that I have never played before), so I created this thread as a dicussion thread, called it a sleeper system(which that probally can't be denied, with a library like that), and more or less, was wondering what other games were good(some I may have left out).

It was going good, everyone was listing their favorite games for the Sega CD, and whatnot, but then out of nowhere, it turned into a debate about rather it was a fail or Epic fail of a system(don't ask me how, I wasn't involved, and personally have no clue on how that happened).

Now is that the end of it/this thread, oh no, somehow it evolved into a debate on how well the TG16 sold. WTF does the TG16 have to do with Sega CD, what they both use CDs? That's all I can think of, but how does a debate about the Sega CD being a Fail or Epic Fail evolve into how many TG16s sold? Well, your guess is as good as mine.

PS. Atleast before all this BS started, I got some useful posts, and basically what I was looking for.

I'm still surpised this kind've stuff happened, It's not like this topic was about,which is better, the Sega Genesis or the SNES(which will be an ongoing war to the end of time, I'm sure), but this lol(wow people must be really bored).

[Icarus Moonsight]

Shitstorm Classic Gaming '10 Aftermath coverage brought to you by Zoltor, a block of rancid cheese and a sharp pointy stick that impaled a rat once on a bet, but would do it again. Just for fun.

http://img4.ifilmpro.com/resize/image/stills/films/resize/istd/2888579.jpg

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

I don't find that unbelievable. Working Designs was a big fish in a small pond. The Turbo CD had practically nothing else going for it in 1992-93, except maybe Lords of Thunder and Dungeon Master. Not that there aren't other games that I like, just nothing else that would be noticed. Most TTI games were just kind of quietly put out there. Many were scarcely in stores. Nobody knew who TTI was or why they should buy games from them. Working Designs was able to get their product out there in a way that it wasn't so completely unknown, and they cultivated a small but devoted fanbase that bought their games.

Not really. Most anyone who had a Duo or cared to know what one was at least knew what TTI was. Sadly Johnny Turbo also set out to let people know who they were...... TTI was handling all the major marketing of the system when the Duo hit. Turbo Technologies was just parts of NEC and Hudson combined. TRU, Babbages, EB, and Software Ect pretty much carried most all of the TTI titles except the last ones that were only sold via TZD. Then again those stores also carried pretty much anything under the Hudson, TTI, and NEC label until the end of things retail wise for the system.

The same stores that carried WD titles carried everything else hu-card and Scd wise, and they were on the same shelves. This held true until the end of the systems retail life around the beginning of 1995 when everything was being discounted via clearance and TZD was taking over sales of software completely with Smartworks taking over hardware sales due to their settlement with NEC.

WD honestly did not maintain that much of the software market for the system, only 6 releases. 2 for hu-card, 4 for cd, and their releases were spread out thin between 91 to summer of 93. Due to that there was a lot more TTI/NEC published titles then WD titles on the shelves. WD was the only real repeat 3rd party publisher AND developer in the USA for the Duo, sure, but that's the only thing that made them special really. Sales wise they honestly could not have done that great, their stuff was filling up the clearance bins just as much as Necs was in the end. Im sure they did make some kind of profit though. Surely enough to keep them going from title to title, otherwise they would have tanked much sooner.

The other thing to mention too is that Cinemaware, Namco, Data East, ICOM Simulations, Irem, Victor Interactive, Face, Accolade, Aicom, Naxat Soft, Taito, Quest, Westwood Associates, Atlus, NCS, Natsume, Radiance, Red, Hudson, Telenet, NEC Ave, ect all developed the stuff for the USA side Turbografx/Turbo Duo, but NEC/TTI did the publishing mostly, so it wasn't that like WD was the only one developing on the USA side of things.

They were definitely no big fish developer wise. Most of their work was tweaking and translating too, not developing titles from the ground up. In the end WD only published 6 games out of the TG/TGCD/Duos 145 or so. 2 of WD's titles were originally programed by Taito before WD did their work on them. 3 were by Telenet, and one by Human.

If I do remember right though, Victor had planned to try to get the rights to completely develop and release ports of King of the Monsters and World Heroes 1 for Scd, but the deal fell through. Too bad too, those two woulda put WD up to 8 titles and would have been a nice way to bid farewell before jumping over to the Sega CD . But then again, I can only wonder how those two ports would have fared being only Scd, and not Arcade Card Cd ports. I think they would have been too ambitious a project for WD in the end. I mean hell, they kinda fucked up Wicked Phenomenon as it was.

Back to the Sega CD side of things, WD's releases on that platform are really what made them so popular back then, not the TG ones, regardless of Cosmic Fantasy 2 being voted RPG of 92 by EGM. Their work on Lunar Silver star and Eternal Blue really was something. They did what they could with Vay, not much else to say on that one. Popful Mail was great, easily.

[A Black Falcon]

I've heard people say that, but I've also heard people say the opposite. That just doesn't make sense if true. I mean the 7800 is practically a big fat nothing. It has so few games that are even noteworthy. What games made it sell better? Pole Position II is so blah. Midnight Mutants doesn't exactly seem to me like it was a hit (great game though). And I can't imagine ports of old arcade games being a significant factor in the late 80s, especially compared to the types of games that were available for NES and SMS (and even C64) at the time.

Like you, SMS games and systems have always been a far more common sighting for me personally. When I was a kid, I'd seen the SMS, and I knew of games like Out Run and Shinobi, but I don't think I even knew what a 7800 was, and I certainly don't remember Scrapyard Dog or anything. *shrug*

The source for the 7800 > SMS percentage is a 1990 New York Times article.

For hard data, there's this: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/144552-happy-25th-7800-sales-figures-attached/page__p__1756601#entry1756601

3.7 million Atari 7800 systems sold in North America between 1987 and 1990.

Unfortunately as with all of their systems we do not know precise Sega sales data, but it's pretty unlikely that the SMS sold that much. I haven't seen any estimates that put SMS sales that high, I think. The NYTimes article (sorry, can't find it at the moment) corroborates that, if I am remembering it correctly; but I think the Atari sales data alone is some pretty good evidence, compared to estimates of SMS sales.

I find it hard to believe too, as I said around here SMS stuff is much more common than 7800, but it seems to be true...

Oh, and the 7800 was profitable for Atari. Yeah, they put in little effort, but they also put in little money, and because people bought the things anyway, it paid off with some profits.

As for why it sold better, easy: The Atari name, I would guess! Sega was a nothing in 1986, but Atari? A tarnished name sure, but a name everyone knew.


No. The year 1997 to 1998. Meaning, they actually managed to end the fiscal year of '96-'97 in the black.

What, was their arcade business actually still doing well that year or something? Because their home console business sure couldn't have been making money... the Saturn was losing millions, and the Genesis had collapsed badly thanks to Sega of Japan mismanaging and bad decisions by all.

I know that when Sega made money again in the 2002-3 fiscal year, they said that they had lost money for four years in a row before that... so yes, that does align with what you say there. I'm just wondering how much money they were still making in 1996... somehow I doubt it was very much. :)

... Haven't I seen a graph or something of Sega profits, showing how it peaked in 1993 or 94 and then dropped each year after that until 1999 or 2000 or something?


Those two are probably the absolute worst Sega CD ports. I can't think of any other Sega CD ports that should be avoided. I do prefer the cartridge version of Flashback, but the CD version at least shows effort, and the load times are very reasonable. Everything else that's on Sega CD and a cartridge system is better on Sega CD, IMO. I mean, not counting games I don't care about either way.

2d fighting games on early CD consoles should often be avoided, I think... they often have some of the worst load times. This was true all the way through the Playstation, for sure.


I don't know if FMV games are so common because they were that popular back then, or just because almost nobody wants them now.

That's a good point... I think it's probably more the former, but the latter has got to be a factor too. But of course, when I said that I was also thinking of how Sega's advertising and marketing hype focused so centrally on the FMV games, and how thin Sega's first-party, non-FMV lineup was... they weren't making enough other stuff to focus on much else than FMV most of the time, sadly, I think.


True the numbers...looking more into it don't make much sense. Also just shy of 50 CD/SCD games is a fair bit more than a "couple dozen" :P

"WD's games actually sold to 50% of the people who owned TG16s, which is a truly amazing number."

Now that I would def had a hard time believing. Maybe that's an overestimation of how many they were hoping to sell through.

Even if the total is under 40,000 systems selling to 50% does sound hard to believe, but it is worth mentioning that people with Turbo CDs were mostly not casual fans... casual gamers didn't own those things, they'd never even heard of it most likely. The TGCD had a bunch of odd, Japanese stuff on it that was very much niche market.

To try to clear some things up:

Okay, this should be complete and accurate. 44 licensed games were released for the system in the US, evenly split between CD and Super CD titles. The four 1993 CD titles came out after the Duo did; as for the seven 1992 titles, there's no way to really know, release dates for US TG16/TGCD releases are pretty much nonexistent. Release years is the most precise you can be.

But we do know that between launch in December 1989 and December 1991, 12 CD games were released. Twelve. Ouch. Then in 1992-1994 32 games were released, with only 1-3 of those being in 1994. It's clear that it wasn't until the Duo/Super CD/Johnny Turbo era that the Turbo CD took off at all... but it didn't take off well enough, and TTI went bankrupt, hence only a few 1994 releases.

US Turbo CD Games

44 officially licensed titles. 2 unlicensed releases during the system's life. 3 modern fan-made releases.

CD-ROM2 - 22 games (plus 2 unlicensed)

1989
--
Fighting Street
Monster Lair
Ys Book I & II

1990
--
The Addams Family
Final Zone II
J.B. Harold Murder Club
Last Alert
Magical Dinosaur Tour
Valis II

1991
--
It Came From The Desert
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
Ys Book III: Wanderers from Ys

1992
--
Exile
Cosmic Fantasy 2
Jack Nicklaus Turbo Golf
Lords of the Rising Sun
Splash Lake
Valis III

1993
--
Buster Bros.
Vasteel
Syd Mead's Terraforming ("Super CD" packaging in the US, but in fact it is a regular CD game)
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Volume 2 ("Super CD" packaging in the US, but in fact it is a regular CD game)

Unlicenced
--
Hawaiian Island Girls - 1993?
The Local Girls of Hawaii - 1993?


Super CD-ROM2 - 22 games (plus 3 recent homebrew titles)

1992
--
Gate of Thunder
Lords of Thunder
Forgotten Worlds
Prince of Persia
Shadow of the Beast
Loom
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes

1993
--
Beyond Shadowgate
Super Air Zonk: Rockabilly Paradise
Camp California
Cotton: Fantastic Night Dream
Riot Zone
Exile: Wicked Phenomenon
John Madden Duo CD Football
Might & Magic III: Isles of Terra
Shape Shifter
Sim Earth: The Living Planet
Dungeon Explorer II
Dungeon Master: Theron's Quest

Godzilla (may have been early 1994 release)
The Dynastic Hero (may have been early 1994 release)

1994
--
Bonk 3 - Bonk's Big Adventure CD


Recent Homebrew Releases (all Super CD-ROM2)
--
Implode
Meteor Blaster DX
Insanity


PS. Atleast before all this BS started, I got some useful posts, and basically what I was looking for.

Ask about any of the Sega CD games I've mentioned earlier in the thread then, and I'll talk about that instead... :)

[A Black Falcon]

Not really. Most anyone who had a Duo or cared to know what one was at least knew what TTI was. Sadly Johnny Turbo also set out to let people know who they were...... TTI was handling all the major marketing of the system when the Duo hit. Turbo Technologies was just parts of NEC and Hudson combined. TRU, Babbages, EB, and Software Ect pretty much carried most all of the TTI titles except the last ones that were only sold via TZD. Then again those stores also carried pretty much anything under the Hudson, TTI, and NEC label until the end of things retail wise for the system.

The same stores that carried WD titles carried everything else hu-card and Scd wise, and they were on the same shelves. This held true until the end of the systems retail life around the beginning of 2005 when everything was being discounted via clearance and TZD was taking over sales of software completely with Smartworks taking over hardware sales due to their settlement with NEC.

1994 you mean, not 2005. :)

But anyway, I don't remember ever seeing TG16 stuff at EB or Software ETC. around here, in the early '90s at least... maybe it was there hiding somewhere, but I don't remember seeing it. I do remember seeing it at Toys R Us as I said earlier though (complete with demo station, I played some vertical-scrolling shmup. Shocking. :)), but that's the only place. TG16 didn't do very well around here... like most places in the US, obviously, considering that it may not have even reached a million systems sold.


WD honestly did not maintain that much of the software market for the system, only 6 releases. 2 for hu-card, 4 for cd, and their releases were spread out thin between 91 to summer of 93. Due to that there was a lot more TTI/NEC published titles then WD titles on the shelves. WD was the only real repeat 3rd party publisher AND developer in the USA for the Duo, sure, but that's the only thing that made them special really. Sales wise they honestly could not have done that great, their stuff was filling up the clearance bins just as much as Necs was in the end. Im sure they did make some kind of profit though. Surely enough to keep them going from title to title, otherwise they would have tanked much sooner.

So basically, you think he's lying, or at least exaggerating the truth? I doubt that, he'd have no reason to lie now about how well the TurboDuo sold, or about how well his games sold on it... that was quite a while ago. I think what he said is accurate, or as accurate as memory can be. I mean, it could be a bit off, but not by as much as you're saying I think.

But hey, just like Sega, it's not like there are any official sales numbers out there... so how many did the Sega CD sell, anyway? Estimates vary from a couple million worldwide up to 6 million worldwide, but I have no clue which ones are more accurate...


The other thing to mention too is that Cinemaware, Namco, Data East, ICOM Simulations, Irem, Victor Interactive, Face, Accolade, Aicom, Naxat Soft, Taito, Quest, Westwood Associates, Atlus, NCS, Natsume, Radiance, Red, Hudson, Telenet, NEC Ave, ect all developed the stuff for the USA side Turbografx/Turbo Duo, but NEC/TTI did the publishing mostly, so it wasn't that like WD was the only one developing on the USA side of things.

They were definitely no big fish developer wise. Most of their work was tweaking and translating too, not developing titles from the ground up. In the end WD only published 6 games out of the TG/TGCD/Duos 145 or so. 2 of WD's titles were originally programed by Taito before WD did their work on them. 3 were by Telenet, and one by Human.

Many of those you mention were just developers, not publishers. There is a difference in most peoples' eyes. Also many of those did not make US-released Turbo CD games, which is the topic here -- note that in that NeoGAF discussion Vic Ireland didn't say that WD's two HuCard releases sold really well, but that the CD releases did. HuCards aren't the topic here, and nor are games TTI licenced out and then published.

There are some more things to say, as well. Victor Ireland said that nobody at NEC sought him out; he came to them, and had to convince them to let him publish on their system. NEC was pretty much totally incompetent and was suspicious of third-party publishers...

WD's CD games stood out from the crowd right from the start. For one thing, they had actual decent voice acting, while NEC and Hudson had abysmal audio atrocities like the Last Alert and Final Zone II voiceovers. People noticed the difference -- in fact, he pushed Hudson to use better voice acting, and this showed in the audio voiceover for Dungeon Explorer II. Notice how it has way, way better English voice acting than previous NEC/Hudson US CD games? Yeah, that's because of WD's input. They may even have done that voice recording themselves, I forget. Point is, he was a bit more than just your average Turbo CD publisher... he was pretty much the only Turbo CD publisher who wasn't a first party, and the games he published were better produced than theirs! And you're acting like that's somehow irrelevant and no one noticed? I just don't think that's true.


If I do remember right though, Victor had planned to try to get the rights to completely develop and release ports of King of the Monsters and World Heroes 1 for Scd, but the deal fell through. Too bad too, those two woulda put WD up to 8 titles and would have been a nice way to bid farewell before jumping over to the Sega CD . But then again, I can only wonder how those two ports would have fared being only Scd, and not Arcade Card Cd ports. I think they would have been too ambitious a project for WD in the end. I mean hell, they kinda fucked up Wicked Phenomenon as it was.

Actually I believe that World Heroes and War of the Monsters were supposed to be Arcade Card games. The idea was that TTI would release the Arcade Card in the US, with some of the Japanese Arcade Card titles, and WD would make those two games as well, I think, unless I am mixing my rumors. He really liked the system, and wanted to do what he could on it... it'd have been pretty cool to get the arcade card here, but TTI was just in too bad shape to do it I believe, and the package would have been pretty expensive (card plus game).


Back to the Sega CD side of things, WD's releases on that platform are really what made them so popular back then, not the TG ones, regardless of Cosmic Fantasy 2 being voted RPG of 92 by EGM. Their work on Lunar Silver star and Eternal Blue really was something. They did what they could with Vay, not much else to say on that one. Popful Mail was great, easily.

Yeah, because the Sega CD sold way better than the TGCD here, so WD's games sold better too. 50% of 40,000 is still only 20,000.

Also the WD Sega CD games were better than their TGCD games for sure, in my opinion. :)

I mean, the Exile games are pretty good (though he did mess up the second one, I'm not sure if it affected sales much because of how front-loaded most sales are), and Vasteel a solid strategy game from what I've heard, but Cosmic Fantasy 2... I guess then it was interesting for being a CD game, but now it looks extremely archaic. If they were involved in Dungeon Explorer 2's audio that's something more, but still. The two Lunar games are amazing, amazing games, and Popful Mail also fantastic... Vay's not great, but Popful Mail and Lunar 1 and 2... just amazing stuff...

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

1994 you mean, not 2005. :)

But anyway, I don't remember ever seeing TG16 stuff at EB or Software ETC. around here, in the early '90s at least... maybe it was there hiding somewhere, but I don't remember seeing it. I do remember seeing it at Toys R Us as I said earlier though (complete with demo station, I played some vertical-scrolling shmup. Shocking. :)), but that's the only place.

Couldn't speak for every store in every state, but all of them in our state and the states nearby carried the stuff. Software Ect in my state also carried NeoGeo AES, go fig.Also, actually I meant 1995 lol, not 2k5. TZD started in May 94, but did not take over sales of new un-opened software completely until all the retail stores had discounted, then removed, all of their remaining titles in stock. These clearances in retail at some stores did not even start until late 94 around Nov, like at TRU, and went on well into the beginning of 95 when they finally yanked off the floor what did not sell.

Here is a couple of scans from a EB catalog for Turbo stuff in case you wanted to see one:
http://www.huguesjohnson.com/scans/ebspring93/EBSpring93_16_TurboDuo.jpg and
http://archives.tg-16.com/EB/EB_1992_03_021.jpg
Yea, sorry, no WD titles on those page lol. :P
Tiny Software Ect. one:
http://archives.tg-16.com/EGM/EGM_1992_04_007.jpg
Sears also:
http://www.huguesjohnson.com/features/sears_catalog/sears-catalog-1990-pg1450-TG_full.jpg
http://www.huguesjohnson.com/features/sears_catalog/sears-catalog-1992-pg505-TG_full.jpg





So basically, you think he's lying, or at least exaggerating the truth?

I think Vics version of history is the one he prefers to believe in himself. I have no doubt Vic was doing well enough to stay in business, but in no way was WD becoming rich off their Turbo related releases. Theres a reason why Cosmic Fantasy 2 and Exile were popping up in masse a couple of years ago new sealed still. It wasn't because they sold out. WD's hu-card titles actually sold well, in part due to the low production numbers done for them. The same can be said for Vasteel and Exile 2. They had a much lower production numbers done for them then Exile 1 and CF2 had, so they were easier to sell through by the time final clearance had occurred in retail.



Many of those you mention were just developers, not publishers. There is a difference in most peoples' eyes.
I would hope there is.... Developers develop, publishers just handle the marketing, ect. Big difference. I worry for the guy who doesn't know the difference between the two and what those two roles entail. That being said, without a developer, you have no game. WD never developed any games from the ground up, so their cost was minimal compared to those who did. That gives them a better profit margin as long as they are not having to pay too much to the original developer. Thats part of how they were able to do well enough to survive as long as they did originally before their Sega Cd releases.



HuCards aren't the topic here, and nor are games TTI licenced out and then published.
Well actually it was the Sega CD that was on topic originally, not WD's TGCD titles. You wanna open one door, might as well open others.....



WD's CD games stood out from the crowd right from the start. For one thing, they had actual decent voice acting, while NEC and Hudson had abysmal audio atrocities like the Last Alert and Final Zone II voiceovers.


Actually neither NEC nor Hudson had any decision over how Telenets US titles voice quality was. That was handled by Telenet in Japan. The voice actors used were on Telenets payroll, and have been used on other titles of theirs for PCE, ect. Want to hear some more horrible Telenet voice acting?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRht1kBYFNc

WD's cd titles did indeed have great voice acting, but that in no way made people think of their 4 titles only and ignore anything else on the TG-cd format.


Victor Ireland said that nobody at NEC sought him out; he came to them, and had to convince them to let him publish on their system.

Why would they? They had no reason to seek him out. People/companies had to go to Nintendo every day trying to convince them to let them publish titles for the Nes. Nuthin new.



he was a bit more than just your average Turbo CD publisher... he was pretty much the only Turbo CD publisher who wasn't a first party

Think I basically said that already....
"WD was the only real repeat 3rd party publisher AND developer in the USA for the Duo, sure, but that's the only thing that made them special really"


and the games he published were better produced than theirs! And you're acting like that's somehow irrelevant and no one noticed?

If you think so, fair enough, but I got to tell you, there are plenty out there that will take Ys 1&2, Lords and Gates of Thunder, Forgotten Worlds, Dungeon Explorer 2, Dragon Slayer, Valis 2&3, Beyond Shadowgate, Godzilla, Dungeon Master, Dynastic Hero, Might And Magic 3, Super Air Zonk, and Cotton over any of the WD titles on TG-Cd any day of the week. Thankfully though that's not a decision that has to really be made in this day and age.

And no, Im not making out like the few titles WD released were irrelevant, but Im calling it like I see it, and saw it at the time. Their stuff was no more important then any of the quality titles Nec/Hudson/TTI had published. It sat on the same shelves, during normal sales, and at the end during clearance in bargain bins. Honestly too, Vasteel was not that widely liked here early on in the Turbo crowd compared to even Exile.

Most people who nabbed it were the ones hungry for more Military Madness type action. Its enjoying its popular status now due to being so rare more then anything. If someone just wanted to play the game, they can import it for around 5 bucks before shipping. Its easy to play regardless of language.


Actually I believe that World Heroes and War of the Monsters were supposed to be Arcade Card games.


Alas, they were not. There was no real talk of releasing the Arcade Card here, and when World Heroes and King of the Monsters were announced, it was for Super Cd Rom2 only, and far before the Arcade card was even out in Japan. They were announced in early 93, around Feb or March I do believe. Small details can be found here on bottom left:
http://archives.tg-16.com/GPRO/GPRO_1993_03_014.jpg
Pretty sure they were also listed in the same coming soon catalog TTI/NEC sent out that had Macross listed if I remember right. In regards to the Arcade Card, it did not hit with support until Mar 94, with AOF and FF2 as the first NeoGeo fighter ports for it.

[A Black Falcon]

Alas, they were not. There was no real talk of releasing the Arcade Card here, and when World Heroes and King of the Monsters were announced, it was for Super Cd Rom2 only, and far before the Arcade card was even out in Japan. They were announced in early 93, around Feb or March I do believe. Small details can be found here on bottom left:
http://archives.tg-16.com/GPRO/GPRO_1993_03_014.jpg
Pretty sure they were also listed in the same coming soon catalog TTI/NEC sent out that had Macross listed if I remember right. In regards to the Arcade Card, it did not hit with support until Mar 94, with AOF and FF2 as the first NeoGeo fighter ports for it.

From the page that article is from:

http://archives.tg-16.com/magazine_database.htm

Working Design wanted to release the Arcade System Card, World Heroes and King of the Monsters in North America. Ultimately, KotM was never ported to an NEC system.

I know I've read that elsewhere as well... now you could be right that KotM and WH were supposed to be Super CDs and not Arcade CDs, I'm not certain, but they did have at least partially progressed plans for the Arcade Card in the US as well.

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

"Working Design wanted to release the Arcade System Card, World Heroes and King of the Monsters in North America. Ultimately, KotM was never ported to an NEC system."

Nec never stated that themselves officially. That quote there is just from the guy running that site, not taken from any publication. Back when they were wrapping things up the last 2 years or so you used to be able to call the Turboline (think thats what they called it back then) at NEC and hound them for info. A typical phone call would last around 15-20 mins between my friends, me and them on 3-way getting info on imports and tips on games. I had a few friends who had Turbo systems back then. Half the time we'd call, there was always this one guy playing California Games and other stuff on the Lynx, so you'd hear it in the background. They really seemed to have much of nothing to do.

Those guys there were very adamant about stating Nec themselves never announced the Arcade Cards release when asked about the Neo ports coming out in Japan, so I imagine they got asked that alot. They also had no qualms about telling you how impressive the stuff was. I think if the Duo did well they would have wanted to, sure. But Im also sure they wanted to bring a ton more titles to the US then what we ended up getting. When TZD was opened by those ex-TTI guys, those were the guys who pointed me in that direction, so I could buy imports,ect. That and Turbo CD decks from Smartworks.

A couple of magazines Im sure had brought it up when they got a glimpse of what Hudson was doing on it, but that was just wishful thinking. That wishful thinking tended to happen alot in mags back then. The Duo was just not selling enough to justify releasing a card upgrade that would have cost over $100 for the Duo, and $150 for the TG-Cd.

By the time the card was even ready to program for, WD was jumping ship and programming for the Sega CD soon after they announced WH and KOTM (if not before in the background). I imagine most of their 93 year really was just spent on Lunar SS completely so they could hit that December 93 release. Though I would think WD probably could have just been told the specs and started programming anyway, since the card was just extra ram, I doubt they would have started jack shit until they had everything finalized with SNK. I know Die Hard covered the stuff on Arcade Card, but they tended to cover a lot of PCE imports in general too. If nothing else, I miss that magazine for that.

Publishing a few titles for the Turbo CD was good for WD, even if they did not make alot of cash off the releases. It allowed them to sharpen their tools and build their rep/resume before heading off for Sega Cd land to do the Lunars, Vay, and Popful. I doubt they would have been able to land any deal with Game Arts with no prior release/localization experience. So it all worked out well for them, at least in regards to that.

[j_factor]

Not really. Most anyone who had a Duo or cared to know what one was at least knew what TTI was. Sadly Johnny Turbo also set out to let people know who they were...... TTI was handling all the major marketing of the system when the Duo hit. Turbo Technologies was just parts of NEC and Hudson combined. TRU, Babbages, EB, and Software Ect pretty much carried most all of the TTI titles except the last ones that were only sold via TZD. Then again those stores also carried pretty much anything under the Hudson, TTI, and NEC label until the end of things retail wise for the system.

The same stores that carried WD titles carried everything else hu-card and Scd wise, and they were on the same shelves. This held true until the end of the systems retail life around the beginning of 1995 when everything was being discounted via clearance and TZD was taking over sales of software completely with Smartworks taking over hardware sales due to their settlement with NEC.

WD honestly did not maintain that much of the software market for the system, only 6 releases. 2 for hu-card, 4 for cd, and their releases were spread out thin between 91 to summer of 93. Due to that there was a lot more TTI/NEC published titles then WD titles on the shelves. WD was the only real repeat 3rd party publisher AND developer in the USA for the Duo, sure, but that's the only thing that made them special really. Sales wise they honestly could not have done that great, their stuff was filling up the clearance bins just as much as Necs was in the end. Im sure they did make some kind of profit though. Surely enough to keep them going from title to title, otherwise they would have tanked much sooner.

The other thing to mention too is that Cinemaware, Namco, Data East, ICOM Simulations, Irem, Victor Interactive, Face, Accolade, Aicom, Naxat Soft, Taito, Quest, Westwood Associates, Atlus, NCS, Natsume, Radiance, Red, Hudson, Telenet, NEC Ave, ect all developed the stuff for the USA side Turbografx/Turbo Duo, but NEC/TTI did the publishing mostly, so it wasn't that like WD was the only one developing on the USA side of things.

They were definitely no big fish developer wise. Most of their work was tweaking and translating too, not developing titles from the ground up. In the end WD only published 6 games out of the TG/TGCD/Duos 145 or so. 2 of WD's titles were originally programed by Taito before WD did their work on them. 3 were by Telenet, and one by Human.

If I do remember right though, Victor had planned to try to get the rights to completely develop and release ports of King of the Monsters and World Heroes 1 for Scd, but the deal fell through. Too bad too, those two woulda put WD up to 8 titles and would have been a nice way to bid farewell before jumping over to the Sega CD . But then again, I can only wonder how those two ports would have fared being only Scd, and not Arcade Card Cd ports. I think they would have been too ambitious a project for WD in the end. I mean hell, they kinda fucked up Wicked Phenomenon as it was.

Back to the Sega CD side of things, WD's releases on that platform are really what made them so popular back then, not the TG ones, regardless of Cosmic Fantasy 2 being voted RPG of 92 by EGM. Their work on Lunar Silver star and Eternal Blue really was something. They did what they could with Vay, not much else to say on that one. Popful Mail was great, easily.

Most of this is way irrelevant. My point is simply that WD's games stood out and were somewhat known about. I owned a Turbo CD at the time and I had no idea what Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes was. My local EB carried it but it just sat there on the shelf and didn't stick out in any way. But I certainly knew about Cosmic Fantasy 2 and Exile. I don't think there's any way The Legend of Heroes did anywhere near as well. It's as good of a game as anything WD put out for the system, but it's not exactly a standout name. Neither is Terraforming. Neither is practically anything else TTI put out.

And like I said, Working Designs actually communicated with, and solicited input from, their fans.

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

Man, I swear, people and their Working Designs obsessions.... Its never ending. All this is stated as opinion from you, not FACT. Just because one game didn't stand out to you over Exile or Cosmic Fantasy 2 doesn't mean it didn't to the next guy.... seriously. The games released on the Turbo by TTI tended to be the ones the fan base wanted in that niche market. The only thing TTI didn't do is get enough of them out on the market in time before the demise of the format here. TTI also had to focus on the Hu-cards, not just the Cd releases. That is why I take that into account too.

And like I said prior,
"If you think so, fair enough, but I got to tell you, there are plenty out there that will take Ys 1&2, Lords and Gates of Thunder, Forgotten Worlds, Dungeon Explorer 2, Dragon Slayer, Valis 2&3, Beyond Shadowgate, Godzilla, Dungeon Master, Dynastic Hero, Might And Magic 3, Super Air Zonk, and Cotton over any of the WD titles on TG-Cd any day of the week. Thankfully though that's not a decision that has to really be made in this day and age."

Want to put that to the test, go join the Pcenginefx forums and ask around. What holds true now held true back then too among the Turbo fans. Take into account TTI had excellent Hucards for sale back then too, like Soldier Blade, Air Zonk, Bonk 3, Adventure Island,ect. The hu-cards sat on the same shelves as the cd games did, not separately. Those sold well also. It isn't like with the Sega crowd. Turbo fans tend to treat the Cd platform with equal importance to the Hucard one.

There is plenty of folks who love the Genesis and could care less to have a Sega CD, but in regards to the Turbo, not many would own one and not want to be able to play the CD stuff, and vice verse. Just how it is. Its treated as being all in one library, not separate.

Back to standing out on a shelf:
The only thing that even made Vasteel and Exile Wicked Phenomenon stick out on a store shelf was the interesting packaging. In Vasteels case it wasn't even art related, just that the game had a double jewel case and a slip cover. At TRU this wouldn't even have been noticed originally, because TRU used a ticket system for the stuff until it was clearanced out completely. Cosmic Fantasy 2 and Exile 1, well, umm, no I don't care what shelf you put them on, there is no way these two lame ass box covers
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a66/Amakusa666/exile1.jpg
could ever stand out visually more then these on a shelf except on a extreme case of weird preference only.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a66/Amakusa666/tticovers.png

If you chose them you more likely then not did so because you looked at the back packaging to see the gameplay pics, or you knew what the games were prior due to reviews. CF2 was highly rated in magazines on its release. Not one you could ignore back then, same as Ys. If you didn't know about this though, no reason to pick it up then over anything else.

Also, Dragon Slayer sold pretty well, that's part of the reason TZD didn't end up with a large amount of them for stock. The only TTI games that actually did extremely poor seemed to be Simearth, John Madden, Prince of Persia, and Shadow of the Beast as far as TTI period releases go. As for Terraforming, it did decent enough that TZD was even able to sell out of what they got while keeping them priced well and now the game demands a decent dollar amount.

In regards to putting there name out there, WD didn't advertise their Turbo games any more then TTI did. Both placed advertisements for their games in magazines. TTI took it even further with promo videos and newsletter catalogs. When CF2 and Exile were released, WD hadn't been around long enough to listen to what the fans wanted. They just ported over what they felt were great games released in Japan at the time. The "listening to what the fans wanted" shit didn't happen until later, you know, when they had a actual fan base of people who knew what was being released in Japan. No one told them to release CF 2, Exile 1, Parasol Stars, or Cadash.

[A Black Falcon]

Couldn't speak for every store in every state, but all of them in our state and the states nearby carried the stuff. Software Ect in my state also carried NeoGeo AES, go fig.Also, actually I meant 1995 lol, not 2k5. TZD started in May 94, but did not take over sales of new un-opened software completely until all the retail stores had discounted, then removed, all of their remaining titles in stock. These clearances in retail at some stores did not even start until late 94 around Nov, like at TRU, and went on well into the beginning of 95 when they finally yanked off the floor what did not sell.

Here is a couple of scans from a EB catalog for Turbo stuff in case you wanted to see one:
http://www.huguesjohnson.com/scans/ebspring93/EBSpring93_16_TurboDuo.jpg and
http://archives.tg-16.com/EB/EB_1992_03_021.jpg
Yea, sorry, no WD titles on those page lol. :P
Tiny Software Ect. one:
http://archives.tg-16.com/EGM/EGM_1992_04_007.jpg
Sears also:
http://www.huguesjohnson.com/features/sears_catalog/sears-catalog-1990-pg1450-TG_full.jpg
http://www.huguesjohnson.com/features/sears_catalog/sears-catalog-1992-pg505-TG_full.jpg

Interesting stuff to see. I'd imagine that EB had TG16 stuff at some point, probably, but as I said, I have no memory of seeing it, while I do remember seeing it at Toys R Us -- in part because the system was so uncommon that I remembered actually playing a TG16 because that one time there was the only time I did so for many years.

Personal experience doesn't mean that much though, so sure, those ads show that yes many EBs did carry TG16 stuff.

Note though that about half of those ads there are of TG16 stuff, not TGCD/Duo.


I think Vics version of history is the one he prefers to believe in himself. I have no doubt Vic was doing well enough to stay in business, but in no way was WD becoming rich off their Turbo related releases. Theres a reason why Cosmic Fantasy 2 and Exile were popping up in masse a couple of years ago new sealed still. It wasn't because they sold out. WD's hu-card titles actually sold well, in part due to the low production numbers done for them. The same can be said for Vasteel and Exile 2. They had a much lower production numbers done for them then Exile 1 and CF2 had, so they were easier to sell through by the time final clearance had occurred in retail.

From this thread, you've made it obvious that you don't think that much of WD, so I don't exactly think we can take you as an impartial observer either... you think that he's not telling the truth about how well his Turbo CD games sold and how well the system sold. There's no real evidence to support that position and you know it. He has said that they actually did pretty well considering how awful system sales were; you don't believe him, but I think the word of the person who owned the company counts for more than some random internet fan's...

You could be right that he's remembering it as being higher than it was, but still, from that it was clear that WD had profited from TGCD development, which is supported by the fact that they did release four games for the system. Perhaps he's right, perhaps the truth is somewhere in between, I don't know... but I very much doubt that he just completely made that up or something.

Oh yeah, and "getting rich" is a very subjective statement... it'd be hard to prove or disprove that I think, considering that every person will see the question differently.


I would hope there is.... Developers develop, publishers just handle the marketing, ect. Big difference. I worry for the guy who doesn't know the difference between the two and what those two roles entail. That being said, without a developer, you have no game. WD never developed any games from the ground up, so their cost was minimal compared to those who did. That gives them a better profit margin as long as they are not having to pay too much to the original developer. Thats part of how they were able to do well enough to survive as long as they did originally before their Sega Cd releases.

No, my point is that no matter who the developer is, many people look first at the name on the front of the box, that company whose logo often shows up first when you start the game -- the publisher. The developer is ACTUALLY more important, but do kids know that? Often not. That Working Designs logo absolutely meant a lot, and people would definitely buy games just because WD published them that they would not otherwise have bought.


Well actually it was the Sega CD that was on topic originally, not WD's TGCD titles. You wanna open one door, might as well open others.....

Given that Vic Ireland's quotes say little about the HuCard games though, and after that one year they never published another cartridge game, he obviously didn't think too much of them... I don't really agree with that, as I've said I like carts a lot too, but it was clearly his thinking. Or at least, he liked the things you could get from CD games that could not be done on carts... and on that I agree, that's why the Sega CD and Turbo CD are worth owning. :)


Actually neither NEC nor Hudson had any decision over how Telenets US titles voice quality was. That was handled by Telenet in Japan. The voice actors used were on Telenets payroll, and have been used on other titles of theirs for PCE, ect. Want to hear some more horrible Telenet voice acting?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRht1kBYFNc

Whoever was responsible, it was miserably bad and WD's stuff really stood out from it.


WD's cd titles did indeed have great voice acting, but that in no way made people think of their 4 titles only and ignore anything else on the TG-cd format.

Of course not "only" and "ignore", but look at the Sega CD... the four WD games get put on a pedestal, as if they are the four best games on the system and most everything else is an afterthought. While I love several of them and one is my favorite Sega CD game, that is something of an exaggeration -- there are lots of other great games too.

I think that tendency is a little less true on the Turbo CD, but it's clearly at least partially true... and the sales quotes of his show how it was even true back then.


Why would they? They had no reason to seek him out. People/companies had to go to Nintendo every day trying to convince them to let them publish titles for the Nes. Nuthin new.

No, you missed my point -- NEC didn't really think that they NEEDED any third party studios supporting them in the US, a lot like Atari. In both cases it ended up being an awful strategy that helped bring down both companies here. He had to struggle to convince them that they needed American third party help at all... incredibly stupid considering how bad a position they had quickly gotten themselves into, thanks to mistakes that even Sega at their worst might not have made!

Really, you want to make Sega look better, just look at how NEC managed to completely bungle their US launch... in 1989 a lot of people expected NEC to easily win, the PCE had crushed the MD in Japan, so it'd do it here too, right? But no, NEC only launched and focused on some big cities, which doesn't work that well here, launched far too late (two years after the Japanese launch...), never brought over a bunch of the best games, etc, etc. Sure success turned to failure.


Think I basically said that already....
"WD was the only real repeat 3rd party publisher AND developer in the USA for the Duo, sure, but that's the only thing that made them special really"

And that does make them special.


If you think so, fair enough, but I got to tell you, there are plenty out there that will take Ys 1&2, Lords and Gates of Thunder, Forgotten Worlds, Dungeon Explorer 2, Dragon Slayer, Valis 2&3, Beyond Shadowgate, Godzilla, Dungeon Master, Dynastic Hero, Might And Magic 3, Super Air Zonk, and Cotton over any of the WD titles on TG-Cd any day of the week. Thankfully though that's not a decision that has to really be made in this day and age.

And no, Im not making out like the few titles WD released were irrelevant, but Im calling it like I see it, and saw it at the time. Their stuff was no more important then any of the quality titles Nec/Hudson/TTI had published. It sat on the same shelves, during normal sales, and at the end during clearance in bargain bins. Honestly too, Vasteel was not that widely liked here early on in the Turbo crowd compared to even Exile.

Most people who nabbed it were the ones hungry for more Military Madness type action. Its enjoying its popular status now due to being so rare more then anything. If someone just wanted to play the game, they can import it for around 5 bucks before shipping. Its easy to play regardless of language.

I said "produced better". I didn't say "better games", I said "produced better". The two are different -- I meant that they had higher production values, better voice acting, listened to fan feedback, etc. I wouldn't say that their games are the best ones on the system, no. They aren't in my opinion. But when I look at the stuff above, or how NEC never listed to their fans while WD did, I can start to see why people became their fans...

That is, then and now their fans and gamers in general give WD releases a cache that other games do not have... and that is deserved localization-wise, but yes, as you say, it does lead to some great games being under-rated because they weren't WD releases. This is perhaps even more true on Sega CD than Turbo CD, as I said above, but it does seem to happen on both...

Still though, considering that attitude, I'm sure WD's game sold well.

Even if I definitely do think that it was Lunar that really got them to serious popularity. I mean, even in the best case scenario of WD TGCD sales they were still only in the low tens of thousands. Lunar for Sega CD was a much bigger hit than that I'm sure, and a better game too as I've said.


Alas, they were not. There was no real talk of releasing the Arcade Card here, and when World Heroes and King of the Monsters were announced, it was for Super Cd Rom2 only, and far before the Arcade card was even out in Japan. They were announced in early 93, around Feb or March I do believe. Small details can be found here on bottom left:
http://archives.tg-16.com/GPRO/GPRO_1993_03_014.jpg
Pretty sure they were also listed in the same coming soon catalog TTI/NEC sent out that had Macross listed if I remember right. In regards to the Arcade Card, it did not hit with support until Mar 94, with AOF and FF2 as the first NeoGeo fighter ports for it.

I'm pretty sure that I've read that they did have some early plans, but they were dropped before they got very far along, yes. TTI just wasn't in good enough shape by late 1993 to consider it, and then of course in April 1994 or so they went bankrupt and it became impossible. And yes, the Arcade Card was March '94 in Japan. TTI was just in too bad shape to pull off an Arcade Card release, after they failed to sell nearly as many Duos as they needed to stay or become profitable.


Most of this is way irrelevant. My point is simply that WD's games stood out and were somewhat known about. I owned a Turbo CD at the time and I had no idea what Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes was. My local EB carried it but it just sat there on the shelf and didn't stick out in any way. But I certainly knew about Cosmic Fantasy 2 and Exile. I don't think there's any way The Legend of Heroes did anywhere near as well. It's as good of a game as anything WD put out for the system, but it's not exactly a standout name. Neither is Terraforming. Neither is practically anything else TTI put out.

And like I said, Working Designs actually communicated with, and solicited input from, their fans.

Exactly what I said -- considering game quality the "WD games are the best" reputation probably isn't deserved, but considering all those other factors, that theirs are some of the best known and most highly regarded among the US releases isn't hard to understand.

(Terraforming is awesome... very cool backgrounds, quality shmup gameplay)


There is plenty of folks who love the Genesis and could care less to have a Sega CD, but in regards to the Turbo, not many would own one and not want to be able to play the CD stuff, and vice verse. Just how it is. Its treated as being all in one library, not separate.

I kind of think they are separate, the CDs are often thought of as being better than the cards overall... I mean sure, yes, there are a bunch of great HuCards, but as you kind of say everyone says "if you have a TG system you need a CD drive to make it worth it if you are any kind of real fan". Sure HuCards exist... but if you're missing the CDs you're missing a lot of the best stuff. I would say something similar with the Genesis and Sega CD if it were possible -- sure the Sega CD is good, but if you don't have a Genesis you're missing a lot of the best stuff. As much as I like the Sega CD, I just can't really say that the other way around considering how huge the number of great Genesis games is. Sure without a Sega CD you miss some great games, but it's hardly essential like the Genesis is... except with the TG16, thanks to all those great Japanese CD releases, it's pretty much the same thing but the other way around.

I mean, HuCard games stopped coming out in Japan in 1994, and there were only a couple that year; for the most part 1993 was it for them. Yet CD games were released every year until 1997, and then one final game was released in 1999. Of course early on the focus was the opposite, but still, overall, it's clear where the focus was when you look at the system as a whole.

HuCards
Japan - 1987 - 1994
US - 1989 - 1993

CDs
Japan - 1988 - 1993
US - 1989 - 1993

Super CDs
Japan - 1991 - 1999
US - 1992 - 1994

Arcade CDs
Japan - 1994 - 1996

Of course there are a lot of great HuCard releases, and I'm not saying that fans ignore them I don't think they do... but compared to Sega for sure you must agree that there is a much, much stronger focus on the CDs with the Turbografx than with the Genesis! You agree with this I think, and it only serves to enhance the WD point.


In regards to putting there name out there, WD didn't advertise their Turbo games any more then TTI did. Both placed advertisements for their games in magazines. TTI took it even further with promo videos and newsletter catalogs. When CF2 and Exile were released, WD hadn't been around long enough to listen to what the fans wanted. They just ported over what they felt were great games released in Japan at the time. The "listening to what the fans wanted" shit didn't happen until later, you know, when they had a actual fan base of people who knew what was being released in Japan. No one told them to release CF 2, Exile 1, Parasol Stars, or Cadash.

I can't say anything either way about this, I wasn't a WD fan back then and only infrequently read gaming magazines that weren't Nintendo Power... but from everything I hear I think it's clear WD had a lot of fans. There were also plenty of people who came to dislike them of course, that is obviously true (just look now at how many people question their propensity to use modern references in their game translations), but lots of fans as well.


What do I think? I think that the TGCD/PCECD's best games are shmups, not RPGs. 8/16-bit style RPGs are games I usually do not play for long. My favorite CD games on the system would probably be, like, Castlevania Dracula X, Nexzr, Sapphire... I don't know what else to mentio0n, there are too many good ones for me to be able to narrow it down easily. :) Other than a bit with Exile (which is good) I haven't played WD's TGCD games much. I do like strategy games a lot though, so I definitely should try Vasteel sometime...

I'd like Cadash too, I have it for Genesis and it's good, but the two missing characters really hurt the game... the TG16 version has all four.

I'm somewhat defending WD because I'm not so sure that you're right, not because of a lot of personal experience with their Turbografx games.

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

From this thread, you've made it obvious that you don't think that much of WD, so I don't exactly think we can take you as an impartial observer either... you think that he's not telling the truth about how well his Turbo CD games sold and how well the system sold. There's no real evidence to support that position and you know it. He has said that they actually did pretty well considering how awful system sales were; you don't believe him, but I think the word of the person who owned the company counts for more than some random internet fan's...


I'm somewhat defending WD because I'm not so sure that you're right, not because of a lot of personal experience with their Turbografx games.

I'm not exactly sure how Ive made it obvious that I did not like WD. Anything I played that they had localized I liked alot, except Vay and Exile Wicked Phenomenon. Vay had other issues going on though, as it was subpar in general as a game compared to the Lunars. Regardless of this however, I'm not a Victor Ireland zealot. Working Designs did some fantastic localizations, and as a company over all I thought they were great.

That being said, it doesn't wipe out the fact Victor himself has made it common practice to say some really stupid shit over the years, pick un-need fights with companies, and often have tantrums when he doesn't get his way. His latest tantrum seems to be with Xseed I'm told. Nothing new coming from the guy who had a hissy fit with Gamefan when he didn't agree with their review of Eternal Blue, even though they ranked the game high, and who abandoned Sega over a booth feud, among other numskull moves. Seems like I remember right he even demanded a apology from Gamefan which was absurd. To me, you reap what you sow, so I wasn't surprised to see him go to Sony after all of this and have that move be the undoing of WD eventually.

So I mean, hey, you want to believe everything the guy says, that he did mind blowing sales/profits on the TGCD releases, whatever. If he claims to be blast mining the moon for chocolate syrup and you believe it, big deal. Thats your business and you have to be your own man. I'm not telling you to do otherwise. Wont ruin my day one way or the next what you choose to think, whether true or make believe. If you confused my post above for me being someone who cares what you believe to be true in regards to Ole Saint Vic, and that I'm trying to be on some righteous path to enlighten you and steal away your loyalty to Vic, I'm sorry, you're mistaken. I could care less and you wasted your time replying about it.

[DigitalSpace]

Now is that the end of it/this thread, oh no, somehow it evolved into a debate on how well the TG16 sold.

I'm actually kind of surprised that it hasn't somehow completely derailed into another N64 discussion.

[j_factor]

I'm actually kind of surprised that it hasn't somehow completely derailed into another N64 discussion.

I think it would have, but I headed it off at the pass. ;)

[josekortez]

I finally played the PS2 version of Switch (aka Panic) thanks to a DP member. They didn't do very much to improve the video quality of the game. The visuals are indicative of early PS2 jaggies. I would have thought that Sega or Wave Master might have tried to smooth the visuals, but they didn't.

Also, I have finally played Robo Aleste thanks to another DP member and discovered that it is definitely overrated. That game needs a smart bomb.

[Oldskool]

Jesus Christ.. but yeah anyways.

The Sega CD has some gems out there, you just have to look for them. One thing I never understood is why everyone slams Sega for having a CD add-on and the 32X. How's the any different than the Turbografx with a CD-ROM add-on, then later an arcade card (for PC Engine)?? Sounds about like the same to me but.. ohhhh yeah, let's talk crap about the Sega, cause the Turbografx is too cool to talk shit about.

[j_factor]

Jesus Christ.. but yeah anyways.

The Sega CD has some gems out there, you just have to look for them. One thing I never understood is why everyone slams Sega for having a CD add-on and the 32X. How's the any different than the Turbografx with a CD-ROM add-on, then later an arcade card (for PC Engine)?? Sounds about like the same to me but.. ohhhh yeah, let's talk crap about the Sega, cause the Turbografx is too cool to talk shit about.

Well, the arcade card is specifically for the CD system. There are CD 32x games, but that wasn't the focus of the 32x. It was its own separate thing. It also cost a lot more (initially). Plus, the arcade card was only released in Japan, and it didn't do that well itself. A lot of Turbo/PCE fans will tell you that the arcade card is skippable.

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

A lot of Turbo/PCE fans will tell you that the arcade card is skippable.
Yea definitely. The only reason you'd really want it is for the fighters and Sapphire. If you don't care for the fighters, then I'd def say its not needed. There are better shooters then Sapphire on CD and Super Cd, let alone hu-card.
Striders nice and all, but not a must, and the hybrid titles are just fine in Scd mode.

[A Black Falcon]

Also, I have finally played Robo Aleste thanks to another DP member and discovered that it is definitely overrated. That game needs a smart bomb.

Bah, no way. Robo Aleste is a fantastic game... MUSHA is more popular, I think, but I like Robo Aleste more. Compile made such great shooters... not the hardest ones in the genre, sure, but not every shooter needs to be impossible. With such great gameplay, Compile shmups really stand out, and all of their console vertical shooters are very good games well worth playing. Robo Aleste's great... doesn't make a lot of use of the Sega CD's scaling and rotation chips, but it does do a little of it, which is nice; some of the other Sega CD shmups don't use that at all. And the gameplay is classic Compile, awesome stuff. Decent plot too I guess, and good visuals. I'd put it third for Turbo CD shmups, which isn't an insult; despite having only a few of them the ones the system has are mostly great... any of the top five would be in the very top tier of Genesis shmups, no question.

Really, Robo Aleste, Silpheed, Keio Flying Squadron, and Android Assault are all fantastic games, and Sega CD exclusive. Lords of Thunder is great too, but is also on Turbo CD and, now, Wii VC (Turbo CD version), and is generally regarded as slightly better on Turbografx than Sega CD. The Sega CD version is still really good though, and a must have for anyone who doesn't have it on Turbo CD or Wii VC. As for Sol-Feace, it's good, but could have been better. It's also pretty much the same as the Genesis version Sol-Deace), just with CD audio and an intro. I'd say it's the least worth getting of all the Sega CD shmups.

I really love Silpheed. Some people don't, but I think it's a great game. The visuals are very impressive, and it's a real technical showcase for the system; sure, it's not really rendering those backgrounds, they're just FMV, but still the game is extremely impressive looking. The gameplay's just as good, too. Silpheed: The Lost Planet for PS2 is kind of disappointing, but the Sega CD game is still great. It's long at 10+ levels, so with only five continues and no saving it'll take a while to finish. Still, it's a great game. Probably my second favorite Turbo CD shmup. The cinematic design, great graphical style, and fun gameplay make it a very good game.

Keio Flying Squadron is probably my favorite Sega CD shmup. It is sadly rare and expensive in English, but the game's really great... it's a "cute 'em up", and has great art design and graphics. It's early '90s anime-styled and looks really nice. The core shooter gameplay is challenging and fun, and it'll be a real challenge to beat the game with the few continues you are given! Great, fitting music, a silly and entertaining plot, and the cartoony graphics and interesting environments make this game a great experience. I love this game. The price is steep though, sadly...

Android Assault... hmm. It's good, very good. It just feels more generic than the above three games. It's very reminiscent of Gate of Thunder, I think, with some Thunder Force mixed in perhaps. Now, those are exceptional games that it's copying, of course, but still, it does end up feeling less original. Still, it looks nice and is a classic, well designed 16-bit shmup, and even if it feels somewhat like other games, it is a little different, and is Sega CD exclusive. Plus you won't be paying as much as you would for Keio... but I would rank it fourth. It's just not as unique or memorable, for me.

For imports there's also Devastator, which isn't really a shmup (Ranger-X might be a better comparison, perhaps, though that's not quite right either), but has enough shooting that it's worth a comparison... very good game, too. Hard, but good. It's another one with a giant robot shooting things. :) There are some cutscenes from the anime too, with Japanese voice acting of course, but the game itself is quite straightforward and easy to understand.

[Sosage]

Bah, no way. Robo Aleste is a fantastic game... MUSHA is more popular,

Yes. If anything it is underrated from living in MUSHA's shadow, otherwise it is a fun shmup within the context of the time/machine. I think Silpheed is the overrated shmup on Sega CD, but even then only by a hair or two.

The NA release of Silpheed: The Lost Planet was embarrassingly bad. Even the lunatic fringe of the Treasure fan club won't defend that thing with a straight face. Since we conjured his name before in this thread, I believe rumblings were that this was one of Vic's "gameplay tweaked" releases. Although I say that without having the import version to compare and knowing that the port took suspiciously long for a shmup. Yet people swear the import gameplay is way better...??

Then Mars Matrix released for DC and spanked everything. ;P

Point is, Robo Aleste was a darn fine tootin' game.

[josekortez]

Then Mars Matrix released for DC and spanked everything. ;P

Point is, Robo Aleste was a darn fine tootin' game.

Yeah, I think playing Dreamcast shmups has ruined a game like Robo Aleste for me. For what it is, Robo Aleste isn't bad. I'm kind of playing shmups going backwards from modern to early, if that makes sense. Although I like Raiden on Genesis, but hey, what do I know?

[pseudonym]

I never cared too much for Keio Flying Squadron. It has a lot of wacky Japanese stuff that goes on during the game, but the game play itself is fairly standard. I like Lord of Thunder and Robo Aleste more myself.