I think that's a gross overstatement. As I noted earlier, it was carried at Toys R Us and certain mall chains before Gamestop, but it certainly wasn't as widely available as the NES or Sega Genesis. The advertising was also limited to game magazines for the most part and they only did one short and concentrated burst of TV advertising and then it was regional and not national in scope.Originally Posted by Koa Zo
Of course it wasn't as widely distributed and advertised as Nintendo and Sega, but anyone who was into games knew about it.
I remember the TV commercials for the Duo and the 3-pack of games, and Lord of Thunder commercials, that was pretty late in the TG-16's life and I was still seeing commercials on MTV or wherever.
I'd wager the TG-16/Duo has as much if not more TV advertising in the US than Saturn.
It's very well known that NEC badly bungled TG16 marketing in the US, particuarly in the first few years when it mattered most. They focused mostly on a handful of major cities; elsewhere, it just depended if you had a Toys R Us near you. They did not market it well or enough. Maybe serious, hardcore gamers knew about it, sure, but the mass market either didn't, or thought that it was worse than Genesis (or, once it released, SNES) based on hearsay, probably didn't see them on the shelves anyway because both of the low sales and because of the poor marketing efforts, and dismissed it.
Beyond what I mentioned above there was a decent-sized marketing push (in magazine ads, particularly) for the TurboDuo in '92-93, but it was too little, too late, and the Duo bombed. There's a reason why TTI was pretty much dead a year after the Duo released -- they didn't sell enough. Of course, it didn't help that some of their marketing was that controversial "Johnny Turbo" magazine ad campaign...TG-16 has substantial print advertising and television advertising. I don't really ever recall browsing videogame sections of stores and not seeing TG-16 games and products.
The SNES and Genesis didn't sell what they did because of people who knew about games... and as for Duo ads, as I said, that was a last, desperate attempt to make the system successful, and they completely failed, unfortunately.
As for TG16 (all models combined, but most of them would be the original model) vs. Saturn sales, Turbo CD/Duo sales were quite low, of course. TG16 HuCard systems did sell better though. The problem is, we don't really know how much the TG16 sold... the one source that says anything says 2.5 million, but that number seems far too high, I think. The Saturn sold 2-3 million in the US, and there's absolutely no way that the TG16 sold more than that... just look at EBay for instance, there's always a lot more US Saturn stuff than there is Turbografx. Several times more in fact. That TG16 sales number is likely wrong, but who knows that the real one is. http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/ind...45723#msg45723 (Post claiming maybe under a million? The number is very plausible, but we can't be sure it's accurate; I'd take that over that absurd "2.5 million" number for sure, though.)
For Duo sales... http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...&postcount=190 Victor Ireland of Working Designs here says that he thinks the Duo itself only sold 20,000 systems, and that the Turbo CD sold about that amount too, or less. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...51&postcount=8 Here he says how they destroyed some leftover unsold TG16/Duo hardware, in order to get a tax writeoff for it. They apparently had a lot left over.
Last edited by A Black Falcon; 01-08-2013 at 10:24 PM.
There's one lead we can look into: Try to figure out when the Kmart location in Oak Harbor was founded.
Off-hand the only big box retailer I can name within my peculiar criteria who may have both carried TG16 products and was active during that era. Walmart didn't reach this general area until later AFAIK.
Lum fan.
I'm not disputing that the TG-16/Duo failed in the US.
TG-16/Duo was regional. Notice what's in common with users who claim to have encountered it alive, their location.
My guess is multi-platform development practices. Xbox did NOT support 240p officially. Unlike even Gamecube.
Last edited by theclaw; 01-09-2013 at 05:19 AM.
Lum fan.
I have also heard the 1 million number. Seems plausible but still a bit high
Sounds more plausable than the 100k-200k range that some report but may be a bit low, that is on par with the Atari Jaguar CD which seems to have better numbers, but the Turbo CD seems to be a bit more common. It is rather hard to draw a comparison between the two since so many of each have been lost to hardware failures. For the record in 10 years I have seen 1 Jag CD, 1 Turbo CD and 2 Duos in videogame stores.
Last edited by Tokimemofan; 01-09-2013 at 05:25 AM.
My Buy/Sell/Trade list:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/show...Broadband-Unit
Totally off topic but I always think of this nutjob when anyone mentions Whidbey Island. I did a fair amount of research on crazy survivalist/militia groups when I was still in school so this crap is ingrained in my brain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jay_Mathews
I remember TG16 stuff being in the old JC Penney's and Sears Christmas catalogs, so they weren't that hard to get, unless you really were in East Tumbleweed c/o Middle of Nowhere.
Walmart and Target weren't really around in our area then, nor Best Buy or Circuit City, so I don't know what they might've done, but TRU, Children's Palace (an old TRU competitor, if you don't remember), Electronics Boutique, Babbages those were the main places to buy games back then, and they all carried it.
K-Mart, I don't remember if they carried it or not (I would guess not), but even their NES selection was pretty lacking back in the day. Yes, they carried NES, but they had maybe a dozen to two dozen games compared to the 50 to a hundred you might find at the other places at any given time. They weren't exactly gaming central, they were where you tried to beg your mom to buy you a game while she was dragging you along shopping. Hey, that's how I got the original Zelda.
I remember playing a demo kiosk of some sort when I was younger at either a Sears or Lechmere back when it was still in stores. I'm leaning more toward it being in Lechmere. This was in Nashua, NH all those years ago. There was also Toys R Us, EB, Kaybee Toys and I think maybe one or two other stores that carried TG16 IIRC. I don't recall ever seeing a Duo or TG CD attachment for sale.
Just because there's more Saturn stuff than TG16 on eBay doesn't mean that Saturn sales were higher than those of the TG16.
The TG16 came out at a time when video games were very much so thought of as disposable. I had many friends who's parents would throw games away when they weren't used anymore. We're talking late 80's/early 90's. No webernets, no eBay, and the only trade-in shops were locally owned. Lamestop didn't exist and places like Electronics Boutique and Babbages didn't do used games. There was really no reason for parents, or most anyone for that matter, to think that these things were worth holding on to.
That said, I do tend to agree with you regarding sales numbers. It's hard to imagine the TG16 sharing the same sales as the Saturn. But we can't know for certain either way...
Yeah that's still 3-4 times the population of Oak Harbor, WA. Getting likely at this point TG16 was in fact not released there.
Lum fan.
Oak Harbor, WA only had a population of around 17,000 people in 1990. I doubt you had much in the way of video game retail at all back then. The system and games were readily available mail order and certainly would have been available in larger population areas of Washington state. I'm sure you missed out on a lot of products living in such a small town.
Walmart and Target existed in my era in the early 1990's and I believe Walmart first came in 1989 or 1990 in my area. What I can tell is there was no tg-16 games in those 2 stores or for K-mart either at the time. Walmart and Target only carried Nintendo and Sega at the time.
True. Honestly I don't think Infinite Space for DS (yeah I know it's a modern game example) reached out that far either. Who knows what else I'm not even aware the area missed out on.
Then again I would've been too young at the time to fully comprehend reading and writing. Let alone concepts like mail order.
Lum fan.
Most people I know prefer the Saturn's import library over it's US one, especially since the US branch missed out on titles like Castlevania: SOTN, and the DBZ fighters, among other. Having said that, in my original post I said that although the US Saturn library is pretty weak it's still better than the US TG16 library. And even though I think it's US library is weak compared to the PS1 or N64 US libraries it's not like you can't find some good stuff to play. I just prefer playing the Japanese titles more than the US ones, where as you are the opposite.
ALL HAIL THE 1 2 P
I guess so. Taking the topic title literally just grants free passes to bash TG16. US Saturn vs US TGCD is a ludicrous blowout. TG16 needs hucards to compete with Saturn.
Last edited by theclaw; 01-10-2013 at 05:20 PM.
Lum fan.
And even then the Saturn still has far more variety. This is literally the same as comparing the PS to the SNES or the N64 to the Genesis. Just doesn't make sense.
Yea like which is better, Vending machines or a tiger handheld....personally I find it difficult to play anything on a vending machine. See makes sense right?
But when you win playing a vending machine you get a delicious snack as a treat. When you win at a Tiger handheld game you get a, um....The End screen. I'm gonna have to go with the vending machine on this one.
ALL HAIL THE 1 2 P
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