Turbografx Hardware

[mastodon]

I had a Turbografx-16 back when it released. I have been thinking of picking one back up and can use some advice on all the different hardware. I know I am going to want to get some of the CD games. Castlevainia: Rondo (which i know is a Japanese exclusive) and Lords of Thunder (i think is maybe NA). I gotta have a hue card for Blazing Lasers too. I have seen some modded as well. Thoughts?

[tpugmire]

I don’t know much about the PC Engine, but I did both an AV mod and region mod to my TG-16. The AV mod is really easy, and the region mod isn’t hard, just time consuming. Lots of soldering on that one.

[tirade78]

Well since mastodon brought it up perhaps I can give anyone who reads this reply a few of my recommendations for anyone wanting to get into the PC-Engine / TurboGrafx-16 hardware.

First off, some of the best games to come out for this platform on HuCard format were not released outside of Japan so if you're looking to play these without needing to mod the console or get a converter, I would recommend picking up a PC-Engine system from Japan like the gray Core-Grafx console. These usually run around 100$ on Ebay but I've seen some going for less than that. An all-round solution would be to try and pick up a Turbo-Duo RX system which affords you the ability to play Japanese HuCards and Turbo CD's (Super CD's on older drives require the System 3 Card and these are pretty expensive) without modding but these go into high money territory and unfortunately the optical CD drives on these systems are a bit finicky and break down over time, or at least from what I've heard. A more viable option would be to pick up a used TurboGrafx-16 if you are only interested in playing NA releases and then invest in a Turbo Everdrive to play the Japanese titles. Finally, speaking from personal experience, I don't recommend getting a PAL region console unless you're into collecting due to the fact that these operate at 50HZ and run on 220V and don't have CD support. The games run slower and because of the PAL video signal the image is slightly stretched. I picked one up new in box a few years back and got myself an Everdrive but the slower framerate and audio ruined the experience for me.

Anyways, you can always go the route of emulation even if you decide to pick up the original CD's like Rondo of Blood since these can be run from a PC optical drive with no issues. This is how I've been enjoying these games for the past couple of years and allows me to focus on acquiring the games and not investing in the hardware and all the costs and hassles involved. Besides that, the original turbo pads are not very comfortable to play with the original hardware and these days owning a system is more of a collector/nostalgia trend and not as viable for anyone who just wants to play the games and have fun.



 

[ferraroso]

I've owned a PC Engine Duo-R for a very long time now and have never had any issues with it... It plays every Hu-Card and CD-ROM² game ever released. The only exceptions are the five SuperGrafx, the twelve Arcade Card exclusive ones and Jūōki (A.K.A. Altered Beast) that, for some reason, is only compatible with the System Card 1.0.

They seem to be going up in price recently, but if you are patient enough, you may end up finding one for the equivalent to US$150,00 on Yahoo! Auctions (in Japanese).
https://bit.ly/2EiAhPc

You may need an adaptor to play US Hu-Card (or Turbo Chip) games, but since I always hear about how hard it is to find Western TurboGrafx-16 games and how much cheaper they are here in Japan, I'd say the Duo-R is the way to go!
(No need to invest on a Duo-RX though. The only major differences between it and the Duo-R are the color of the CD tray's "open" button and the joystick that comes with it, which has 6 buttons... Just go for the Duo-R)

[aliensstudios]

I bought a cheapo PC Engine and a kit to do a region switch mod so it can play Japanese Hu-Cards as well as North American ones. It was pretty easy even for a dummy like me. I also got a piece of equipment which plugs into the back of the PC Engine and can output composite, component and s-video which I feed into my framemeister. The whole setup costed me about 100 bucks give or take. I've only got a smattering of Turbo Grafx 16 titles and a couple of CD games including Rondo of Blood but the CD unit is too expensive. I'm thinking of getting one of these:

Here's a video outlining what the device can do + how it works https://youtu.be/embglSBWF8E

[mastodon]

Well since mastodon brought it up perhaps I can give anyone who reads this reply a few of my recommendations for anyone wanting to get into the PC-Engine / TurboGrafx-16 hardware.

First off, some of the best games to come out for this platform on HuCard format were not released outside of Japan so if you're looking to play these without needing to mod the console or get a converter, I would recommend picking up a PC-Engine system from Japan like the gray Core-Grafx console. These usually run around 100$ on Ebay but I've seen some going for less than that. An all-round solution would be to try and pick up a Turbo-Duo RX system which affords you the ability to play Japanese HuCards and Turbo CD's (Super CD's on older drives require the System 3 Card and these are pretty expensive) without modding but these go into high money territory and unfortunately the optical CD drives on these systems are a bit finicky and break down over time, or at least from what I've heard. A more viable option would be to pick up a used TurboGrafx-16 if you are only interested in playing NA releases and then invest in a Turbo Everdrive to play the Japanese titles. Finally, speaking from personal experience, I don't recommend getting a PAL region console unless you're into collecting due to the fact that these operate at 50HZ and run on 220V and don't have CD support. The games run slower and because of the PAL video signal the image is slightly stretched. I picked one up new in box a few years back and got myself an Everdrive but the slower framerate and audio ruined the experience for me.

Anyways, you can always go the route of emulation even if you decide to pick up the original CD's like Rondo of Blood since these can be run from a PC optical drive with no issues. This is how I've been enjoying these games for the past couple of years and allows me to focus on acquiring the games and not investing in the hardware and all the costs and hassles involved. Besides that, the original turbo pads are not very comfortable to play with the original hardware and these days owning a system is more of a collector/nostalgia trend and not as viable for anyone who just wants to play the games and have fun.

I have seen region mods and AV mods for these. Do these get modded to RGB or S-Video? Have you heard of anyone using these with a Framemeister?

[aliensstudios]

Well since mastodon brought it up perhaps I can give anyone who reads this reply a few of my recommendations for anyone wanting to get into the PC-Engine / TurboGrafx-16 hardware.

First off, some of the best games to come out for this platform on HuCard format were not released outside of Japan so if you're looking to play these without needing to mod the console or get a converter, I would recommend picking up a PC-Engine system from Japan like the gray Core-Grafx console. These usually run around 100$ on Ebay but I've seen some going for less than that. An all-round solution would be to try and pick up a Turbo-Duo RX system which affords you the ability to play Japanese HuCards and Turbo CD's (Super CD's on older drives require the System 3 Card and these are pretty expensive) without modding but these go into high money territory and unfortunately the optical CD drives on these systems are a bit finicky and break down over time, or at least from what I've heard. A more viable option would be to pick up a used TurboGrafx-16 if you are only interested in playing NA releases and then invest in a Turbo Everdrive to play the Japanese titles. Finally, speaking from personal experience, I don't recommend getting a PAL region console unless you're into collecting due to the fact that these operate at 50HZ and run on 220V and don't have CD support. The games run slower and because of the PAL video signal the image is slightly stretched. I picked one up new in box a few years back and got myself an Everdrive but the slower framerate and audio ruined the experience for me.

Anyways, you can always go the route of emulation even if you decide to pick up the original CD's like Rondo of Blood since these can be run from a PC optical drive with no issues. This is how I've been enjoying these games for the past couple of years and allows me to focus on acquiring the games and not investing in the hardware and all the costs and hassles involved. Besides that, the original turbo pads are not very comfortable to play with the original hardware and these days owning a system is more of a collector/nostalgia trend and not as viable for anyone who just wants to play the games and have fun.

I have seen region mods and AV mods for these. Do these get modded to RGB or S-Video? Have you heard of anyone using these with a Framemeister?

I believe most a/v mods opt for the Sega Genesis model 2 port which supports RGB and composite video but if you sits you can get it modded for S-Video too. You can also use HD Retrovision's Sega Genesis component cables which give nearly identical results to RGB albeit in component video. It should work fine with the Framemeister. I use a PCB which plugs into the back of my PCE and output component to my Framemeister and it looks pretty great.

[masamune]

I wish I bought a Turbografx system in its heyday. I remember seeing them at Toys R Us for $50 near the end of its run in the U.S.

[shadowzero]

Well since mastodon brought it up perhaps I can give anyone who reads this reply a few of my recommendations for anyone wanting to get into the PC-Engine / TurboGrafx-16 hardware.

First off, some of the best games to come out for this platform on HuCard format were not released outside of Japan so if you're looking to play these without needing to mod the console or get a converter, I would recommend picking up a PC-Engine system from Japan like the gray Core-Grafx console. These usually run around 100$ on Ebay but I've seen some going for less than that. An all-round solution would be to try and pick up a Turbo-Duo RX system which affords you the ability to play Japanese HuCards and Turbo CD's (Super CD's on older drives require the System 3 Card and these are pretty expensive) without modding but these go into high money territory and unfortunately the optical CD drives on these systems are a bit finicky and break down over time, or at least from what I've heard. A more viable option would be to pick up a used TurboGrafx-16 if you are only interested in playing NA releases and then invest in a Turbo Everdrive to play the Japanese titles. Finally, speaking from personal experience, I don't recommend getting a PAL region console unless you're into collecting due to the fact that these operate at 50HZ and run on 220V and don't have CD support. The games run slower and because of the PAL video signal the image is slightly stretched. I picked one up new in box a few years back and got myself an Everdrive but the slower framerate and audio ruined the experience for me.

Anyways, you can always go the route of emulation even if you decide to pick up the original CD's like Rondo of Blood since these can be run from a PC optical drive with no issues. This is how I've been enjoying these games for the past couple of years and allows me to focus on acquiring the games and not investing in the hardware and all the costs and hassles involved. Besides that, the original turbo pads are not very comfortable to play with the original hardware and these days owning a system is more of a collector/nostalgia trend and not as viable for anyone who just wants to play the games and have fun.

I have seen region mods and AV mods for these. Do these get modded to RGB or S-Video? Have you heard of anyone using these with a Framemeister?

I believe most a/v mods opt for the Sega Genesis model 2 port which supports RGB and composite video but if you sits you can get it modded for S-Video too. You can also use HD Retrovision's Sega Genesis component cables which give nearly identical results to RGB albeit in component video. It should work fine with the Framemeister. I use a PCB which plugs into the back of my PCE and output component to my Framemeister and it looks pretty great.

I use the HD Retrovision's Sega Genesis component cables for my modded TG-16 and it does look very nice.  However, it does NOT work with every TV.  Just because your TV has component ports on the back doesn't mean this will work.  It has something to do with up scaling the signal.  They explain it all very clearly on their website.

[aliensstudios]

Well since mastodon brought it up perhaps I can give anyone who reads this reply a few of my recommendations for anyone wanting to get into the PC-Engine / TurboGrafx-16 hardware.

First off, some of the best games to come out for this platform on HuCard format were not released outside of Japan so if you're looking to play these without needing to mod the console or get a converter, I would recommend picking up a PC-Engine system from Japan like the gray Core-Grafx console. These usually run around 100$ on Ebay but I've seen some going for less than that. An all-round solution would be to try and pick up a Turbo-Duo RX system which affords you the ability to play Japanese HuCards and Turbo CD's (Super CD's on older drives require the System 3 Card and these are pretty expensive) without modding but these go into high money territory and unfortunately the optical CD drives on these systems are a bit finicky and break down over time, or at least from what I've heard. A more viable option would be to pick up a used TurboGrafx-16 if you are only interested in playing NA releases and then invest in a Turbo Everdrive to play the Japanese titles. Finally, speaking from personal experience, I don't recommend getting a PAL region console unless you're into collecting due to the fact that these operate at 50HZ and run on 220V and don't have CD support. The games run slower and because of the PAL video signal the image is slightly stretched. I picked one up new in box a few years back and got myself an Everdrive but the slower framerate and audio ruined the experience for me.

Anyways, you can always go the route of emulation even if you decide to pick up the original CD's like Rondo of Blood since these can be run from a PC optical drive with no issues. This is how I've been enjoying these games for the past couple of years and allows me to focus on acquiring the games and not investing in the hardware and all the costs and hassles involved. Besides that, the original turbo pads are not very comfortable to play with the original hardware and these days owning a system is more of a collector/nostalgia trend and not as viable for anyone who just wants to play the games and have fun.

I have seen region mods and AV mods for these. Do these get modded to RGB or S-Video? Have you heard of anyone using these with a Framemeister?

I believe most a/v mods opt for the Sega Genesis model 2 port which supports RGB and composite video but if you sits you can get it modded for S-Video too. You can also use HD Retrovision's Sega Genesis component cables which give nearly identical results to RGB albeit in component video. It should work fine with the Framemeister. I use a PCB which plugs into the back of my PCE and output component to my Framemeister and it looks pretty great.

I use the HD Retrovision's Sega Genesis component cables for my modded TG-16 and it does look very nice.  However, it does NOT work with every TV.  Just because your TV has component ports on the back doesn't mean this will work.  It has something to do with up scaling the signal.  They explain it all very clearly on their website.

Yeah, I've ran into this issue before with my old 720p LG TV which I now use as a computer monitor. It would not accept 240p signal over component at all, but running it through a component to hdmi converter did the trick. My Samsung does accept 240p over component and I was using that for SNES and Genesis for a good while and was happy with it. A bit later I won an eBay auction for a used Framemeister for 180 bucks and have been using it ever since and won't look back.

[scoobs22]

I wish I bought a Turbografx system in its heyday. I remember seeing them at Toys R Us for $50 near the end of its run in the U.S.

That's precisely when I got mine. Except I only had Keith Courage and Power Golf, so it got sent away to the back of the closet in record time.

It truly is a beast, though. I'm really glad I never got rid of it.

[grevegarf]

I also got a piece of equipment which plugs into the back of the PC Engine and can output composite, component and s-video which I feed into my framemeister. The whole setup costed me about 100 bucks give or take.

A Super SD System for $100? Good Lord..

[aliensstudios]

I also got a piece of equipment which plugs into the back of the PC Engine and can output composite, component and s-video which I feed into my framemeister. The whole setup costed me about 100 bucks give or take.

A Super SD System for $100? Good Lord..

Ha, I wish. I was just saying it cost me about $100 for a PC Engine and a cheapo device that plugs into the back of it that outputs various video signals. I wish the Super SD System was that cheap.