Quote Originally Posted by Polygon View Post
I never played Keith Courage but I can tell you that wasn't a deciding factor in the short life of the TG-16.

It had poor marketing and there wasn't a lot of advertising for the system. They tried the same marketing campaign that worked in Japan which didn't work here as we all aren't packed into metropolitan areas. It sold well in large cities, but wasn't well known outside those markets. It didn't have a lot of support from developers. Which could have something to do with the fact that it was beaten to market by the Genesis and also because of Nintendo and their business practices. If you look to the Japanese market you'll see that the PC Engine beat the Genesis to market by one year. That gave them time to solidify a user base and get developers on board. There were also developers who weren't allowed to develop for the TG-16 due to agreements with Nintendo, such as Konami. It's apparent by the abundance of good PC Engine games that we never saw here. There was only one controller port and you had to get an add on to do two. It was odd looking. The add on CD attachment and attachments just don't work. Just ask Sega. On top of that the CD attachment was hard to find and released at $400 which was way too much. The lack of a solid mascot was also a real problem.

Oh, and it wasn't even a true 16-bit console.
Well, it worked in Japan. There was a big push/transition from hucard to CD and NEC replaced the Duo as THEE replacement/main system for the PC-Engine. The CD addon was released at $400 in the US (some stores had it for $350), it quickly dropped to $350 and then $300. It was the lack of software that really hurt it. The SegaCD in the US sold something like 2million units total. That's pretty damn good for a pricey addon with very few must have titles. The CD addon unit for the US TG16 might look kind of funny/odd now, but back then (because I had one) - the tech made it the coolest thing ever. I never had one friend that made statements about it being odd or funny looking. It was more like "wow, CD games! Badass!".