Johnny Turbo and poor marketing's role in the failure of the Turbografx-16.

[TurboGenesis]

I don't think the TG-16's failure can be blamed on Johnny Turbo, the comic was just as bad as so many other gaming comic/advertisements back then (remember GamePro's comic?). Like most people here have been saying, the TG-16 and Duo died because of lack of distribution and marketing. The ONLY place I ever saw a TG-16 around here (SE Michigan) was at Babbages on their advertising video they used to play in the front of the store (god I miss those days). I never saw one at TRU, K-Mart, K-bee, or anywhere else that sold video games. In fact the only other place I saw coverage of it was in GamePro, which made me want one so badly.


EDIT: I take that back. In the TG-16's last days I do remember seeing it at TRU. They had a tiny little TG-16 (might have been CD and Duo stuff too, I can't remember) section because they had a little kiosk there with Air Zonk in it and I loved playing it. The section was super tiny and no one was ever there. It disappeared shortly after.

Tempest

I grew up in SE Michigan too (Canton) and TG-16 was available at K-Mart - that's where I bought mine at in June of 1990! I also bought all my games at Children's Palace in Westland til they closed then went to TRU through the mid 90s… (still have some receipts - $59.99 for Splatterhouse!)

games could be rented at Movies & More and Game Masters (where I worked in high school) I bought many of the games from both stores when they started selling off their stock…

I know the system wasn't very popular… I originally got suckered into getting it but I was really happy with it and love it to this day!