How to Play TurboGrafx-16 and PC Engine Games in 2024 | Johnny Grafx #turbografx16

[Music] power up with the powerful turbo Graphics 16bit system I'm really glad to see a lot of new interest in the turbo graphics and PC engine games emerging over the last few years but one question that I'm getting a lot is what is the best way to get into the system what are the best ways to play these games whether it be turbo Graphics or PC engine so I guess now is probably as good a time as any to try to demystify this space a little bit maybe I can use some of the knowledge that I've gained over the past couple of decades and highlight some of the more practical ways to get into the turbo graphics and PC engine library at least as they stand right now in 2024 I don't know why I checked the time to see what year it was so I'm not going to go super indepth with any one thing here but I am going to do my best to sort of give you the broad Strokes of all the options that are out there sort of give you give you the lay of the land give you the pros and the cons and give you as good an idea as I can of the different paths that you can take now one qualifier I do want to get out of the way just from the jump this is not me trying to rank like best options to worst or anything like that I mean I do have my preferences and I'll definitely get into that but for the most part this is just me trying to help you decide what's best for you especially if you're starting from scratch you're not sure where to start or if you've already got your foot in the door in some way but maybe you're looking for a better way to continue down this weird Rabbit Hole so to illustrate that I'm going to put all of these different options on a spectrum again it's not about going from worst to best it's about going from authenticity to convenience cuz that's kind of how I look at Retro Gaming generally because usually in Retro Gaming the more authentic you go the more expensive and complicated it tends to get but the more convenient or the cheaper or the simpler way you go you tend to trade away some of those elements that you know that give you that authentic experience that those develop ERS intended at the time and there are some options that are sort of in the middle and kind of let you have your cake and eat it too but we'll get into that so if this video does its job and you know what mix of authenticity and convenience is best for you then you should be able to look at this spectrum and get a pretty good idea of what route to take and that's my goal so with that said let's get started with the most authentic possible option despite all the drawbacks original Hardware now the pros with original Hardware are of course you're getting the real authentic experience all the games the controllers the feel the sound the colors the visuals potatoes Tomatoes everything is going to be how the developer made the game this is the way it's supposed to be played in a perfect world however we do not live in a perfect world and there's a lot of drawbacks with going with original Hardware in the year of Our Lord 2024 one of them of course is that this is very expensive to do no matter what variant you go with no matter if it's PC engine or Turbo Graphics or the duo or the shuttle or the turbo Express I mean there's no way around that this is an expensive way to go another thing to consider is that the card slots on all of the systems are all region locked so a PC engine card slot will only play PC engine games a turbo graphics card slot will only play Turbo Graphics games now there are converters you can buy again you know these are not cheap they're not super easy to find these days they're not as easy as they used to be anyway they range at from 50 60 bucks to you know 200 I don't know why I got mine for about 50 bucks then again I got it about 10 years ago it it is a way around that but it's just another purchase you're going to have to make and of course all the CD attachments for the CD games those are region free you don't have to worry about region locking with those but we'll get to that in a minute another thing you need to think about when it comes to original Hardware is the general maintenance and the repairs any video game console that's 30 plus years old like this it's either going to need repaired now or it's going to need repaired soon you're going to need Recaps you're going to need maybe mods it's just something you're going to need to focus on you're going to need to set money aside set time aside to keep these things running correctly and keep them in good shape another thing you need to think about is that they put out um an RF signal right here that is what you're stuck with in terms of audio and video you know if you know anything about Retro Gaming then you know that that's basically the bottom of the barrel um you know the the picture is going to be noisy the sound is going to be mono it's just it's just not a great way to play the games it's better than nothing but I highly recommend upgrading at least to a composite signal ideally go higher to component but at least get a composite signal out of this thing and there are ways to do that plugging into the back here you can get the turbo booster that is an accessory it's an official turbo Graphics accessory they're kind of rare they're kind of expensive but you can get them and they do a solid job hyperkin also has third party device that you can plug into this that gives you that uh composite the red white and yellow signal I have not used one of those I've actually seen kind of mixed reviews on them but they're cheap they're out there feel free to try it out if you want it's certainly a lot cheaper than getting the official turbo booster now the next step up from a composite signal at least you know depending on how you look at it is this HDMI adapter now this is something there's a few different companies that make essentially equivalents to this now the reason I went with the pound variant of this and not any of the other ones is because the pound version the HDMI uh portion of it is removable you can swap out your own HDMI cable which I find that pretty valuable because the other ones the HDMI cable is hardwired into that box and if it's not long enough or if it's too long or if you break it something happens to it you're kind of screwed right so with this one you can swap out your own HDMI cable which I value a lot and you will get a cleaner better signal than the RF output for sure arguably better than composite I think it's a very viable option and it's also really cheap it's only about 30 or 40 bucks to get one of these things you get what you pay for of course it isn't super accurate I think that's the only real drawback with this it's it's a little darker it's a little more saturated than I personally like um you know you there's some spots where you do lose enough detail because of the darkness that it it just kind of turns me off personally but I think it's a it's for me it's a good backup um and if you have no frame of reference of what you know games look like and again if you're not super worried about being super accurate you just want an easy no fuss way to get your turbo hooked up to your TV don't feel bad about doing it you know whatever it's fine however for me I did want something a little bit more accurate so what I wound up with is one of these breakout boards that give you the component output and I think you also get composite yeah you get composite as well if you want it I don't know which one to recommend to you honestly because the eBay account that I bought this from no longer exists and I don't remember what it's called so I don't know what to tell you but there's a lot of these out there the Prices range usually around 50 bucks or so if it's any cheaper than $30 or $40 I would say maybe just don't get it um because I did buy another one before this one that was cheaper and it sucked do some research look into it find out what works best for you but that is a good option and the setup that I have when I want to use my original system is I I have this thing plugged into the turbo Graphics a nice set of component cables coming out of that those component cables go into this retrotink 2x which converts the that component signal to HDMI I believe it's 480p which most modern TVs should detect we might get to a point down the road where they don't but at this point most of them do it it's not a cheap way to go about it but it does work and in my opinion it's worth the money for that clearer more accurate representation of the game it does create kind of a mess you know yourself I have component cable I have an HDMI cable I have those two adapters it's a little bit unsightly um but it does produce a virtually LaGree sort of experience and um to me I feel like it was worth doing now there's other ways to take advantage of that RGB signal as well there's scar there's uh open source scan converters there's a lot of other things too I think but these are the two methods that I'm familiar with and those are the two that depending on your price range and what's important for you I think one of those two methods should appeal to most people buy turbo graphic 16 now and get one of 38 selected games free now in terms of the games themselves again there's a few ways to go you can always buy the games outright I mean that's the authentic way to go about it right if you're doing original Hardware your instinct is probably going to be to get original games whenever you can and that's totally fine but this is going to be the single most most expensive part of your journey without a doubt a lot of these games nowadays they cost a small fortune there's just no way around it everyone knows they're valuable no game store no Ebay listing no one is going to sell you Soldier blade for 50 bucks you know you're not going to find arzon for 50 bucks or you know these games are hundreds of dollars now of course not every game's expensive you can get pack land you can get deep blue games like China Warrior some of the more common games and some of the kind of middling quality games yeah you can get these games for 20 30 bucks still you know if you shop around a little bit but the better games especially the better Shooters it's I mean I just don't it's pushing it so some of these alternative Solutions I think are probably the better way to go for most people um and the two big ones are the turbo everdrive Pro which is essentially a souped up everdrive that has CD games on it as well as card games from all regions this thing is really expensive but after buying three or four or five of the actual games you will have spent more than you're going to spend on this thing so you know if you look at it that way I think this is worth doing once you get it you're done you know you don't have to buy any more games unless you just want to but you don't have to you have access to the whole library and you'll just be done there's also the super SD system 3 which is a terrible name but also is an appealing option um these devices they plug into the back of the system like those video adapters do which means of course they're not compa comp able with the variants of the system that don't have those ports namely the duo you know the super SD system 3 is not going to work on a Duo so if you get a Duo you can't get that you have to get the turbo everdrive Pro if you want that sort of everdrive style experience um and these ever drives and the super SD system 3 these methods give you access to those games without needing the super system cards or the CD attachments which is great because those are also a whole another ball of wax there's a few different variations of the CD attachment for the variations of the Basse consoles themselves um and there's super system cards that you're going to need to run most of the CD games if you're going with the attachment you know if you're going with that method you'll need Super system cards as well I do not recommend going this route mostly because these CD add-on units it's just another thing it's another expensive rare aging piece of Hardware that's going to need to be maintained repaired uh it's just an it's a whole another thing to maintain on top of the Basse console itself I mean by the time you get the base console up and running the CD unit up and running a couple of games I mean you're going to be out a grand easily by the time you just just getting started you're going to be out around a grand or so and you know and of course that's not counting the super system cards which are also rare also hard to find also expensive and with the other options out there which we're going to discuss I just don't really think that this route is worth it anymore um unless you're just a big time collector and you just like to have them for the sake of having them obviously you know if that's the appealing part of it to you then by all means goe with god um but in terms of it being a practical way to go about it this is one of the maybe the least practical thing to do which brings me to a point about the duo I think the duo if you are going to go original Hardware is probably the most practical way to go about it you know the duo is the CD the region free CD unit and the region locked card unit together in one console it's a simple clean way to have everything together it's one system so yeah I still recommend getting everything recapped and getting everything cleaned up and fixed up but it is a cleaner way to do it and they output that composite signal natively so you can totally bypass that whole RF problem and you know the video ups scalers and all that stuff if you want I'm not a composite hater like some people are I think composite is generally acceptable especially if you're playing on a CRT television um and of course needing the converter for the duo because the card slots are still region locked even with all that though I still think the Duo is probably the way to go if you're going to do original Hardware so bottom line with original Hardware is yes this is this is a fun way to go there's a collecting aspect to it that's really fun and if you're a tinkerer Lord knows you're going to have your hands full with things to Tinker with I mean there is there's a lot of value going this route um but it's just you know if you just want to play the games at this point it's so expensive it's so complicated there's so many ins and outs there's so many compatibility issues no matter what route you take it's just kind of a minefield and um unless you're there for the Minefield I think original Hardware at this point overall it's more trouble than it's worth I I generally don't recommend it to most people at this point in time all right next let's talk about the analog Duo I think this is a great option overall I do have a full review on this thing on the channel so if you want more of a deep dive feel free to check that out although you really need to hear what I have to say here as well because there are some updates to the situation first of all though the main thing is that compatibility is excellent every game I have that I've thrown at this thing it ran it fine cards from every region CD games from every region burned games from different types of discs um the only issue that I did have with it and I talk about it in my review is that the sound effects for a lot of the turbo card games were a little bit funky a little bit weird sounded like maybe one of the sound channels was either peeking or maybe it was too low I don't know but it was definitely off and um so they've released 1.3 the new firmware the current firmware as of making this that fixes that sound issue as far as I can tell it is gone it is fixed it also added save states uh for the card games not for the CD games but for the card games you have save states which is cool although I don't necessarily require that personally but that is you know that's that's a plus in in the column for the analog Duo for sure there's also a jailbreak for this thing of course analog didn't release it somebody else released it you can get a jailbreak you can put ROMs and everything on the uh the SD card pop it in and just just be done you can do that including CD games it does work I tried it it works however there is a catch with it because when I put the Jailbreak on after having the firmware update the audio issues of the original 1.0 version of the firmware those came back so you kind of you have to choose between the sound effects being correct or the jailbreak at this point so that's unfortunate but that's not analog's fault you know it's not really their job to put out a jailbreak plus you know if you get an ever drive or something there you don't need the jailbreak anyway right so I chose to just have 1.3 firmware I took the jailbreak off I put the firmware back on so bottom line for the analog Duo no it's not quite as great as I was hoping it would be especially at release but it's pretty close I mean and for the price which is about you know I think it's 250 bucks before taxes and before shipping it ain't cheap but it's a lot cheaper than getting a a uh you know an OG Duo and getting it fixed up and it's a whole lot cheaper than getting an original console and a CD attachment and getting them fixed up and ready any control I have my dual shock 4 my 8 bitd controller my original controllers all of them work you have to go into pass through mode for the original controllers to work but the point is they all work it's simple it's clean there's not a bunch of adapters and cables and you know converters and crap everywhere runs everything you throw at it so given that mix of elements I put the analog Duo right in the middle of that Spectrum it's got a good mix of authenticity it's got a good mix of convenience it's not perfect in either of those departments but the mix of the two that it does have is pretty good pretty compelling now let's talk about the poly Mega which I don't own but I have done extensive research on and I think it is a viable route as well it is technically emulation and the base unit is extremely expensive at over $500 even more after getting the detachable module for the card games but it is a straightforward way to run all of the games from all of the regions and the base disc unit also plays PS1 Saturn and Sega CD games so there's a lot of value there even though it is is really expensive but the poly Mega really is more for somebody who's looking to kind of unify and simplify their entire Retro Gaming experience right it's not just about playing Turbo Games and that's why it's so expensive you can get original controllers working on it which is nice and that kind of nudges it more towards authenticity but also given that it doesn't work with ever drives and apparently some games just straight up don't work the compatibility just isn't quite there yet I'm not sure where I put it on the Spectrum but um I will put it on here as an option especially if you're looking to condense your entire Retro Gaming experience as well just keep in mind it's so expensive that it's just I wouldn't really recommend it if Turbo Games is all you're really looking to do so here is the turbo Graphics 16 mini I did a full review on this thing when it came out feel free to go check that out if you want um but basically the 30,000 ft view of this thing is that it's it's a really good secondary option it's a really good backup um it has a lot of really good games on it it has two USB ports so so you can have two controllers what you'll probably end up doing is you'll have the controller that it comes with and if you want a second one you'll probably end up with one of those 8 bit do or 8bit do controllers um that's what I have I have one of each of those and I like them both for different reasons but they're both totally acceptable unfortunately though it is a closed box that's the downside you only have so many games on it I think there's about 50 or so it's a good selection you know they have splatter house they have Bonk they have a lot of great Shooters several of the CD games are on here which is good I mean it's it's a totally good sampler platter of the library so I would only recommend this as a primary method if you're just you just want to dip your toe into the turbo Graphics you just kind of want to see what it's all about you just kind of want a sampling and then and and you're not really interested to go any further than that or if you just value the convenience of just having this HDMI ready device just plug it up and go I mean if you value that more than having access to all the games then this is a good choice but for me this is a backup I I keep this plugged in in the living room upstairs when I have friends over or family over and we just want to you know mess around with power golf or something for a little bit it's real easy you just plug it in you turn it on no big deal you don't have a bunch of adapters and crap everywhere um but it is a closed box and you know I guess there were a couple efforts a couple of attempts by people to get a jailbreak going for this thing but at this point it has not happened um and of course there is because it's you know it's not an actual analog system there is a little bit of input lag as well but again you know I'm I can play Lords of Thunder on this thing fine I think it runs the games fine the lag is very very minimal I don't find it to be a big deal some people do look into it yourself to see if it's something that's going to bother you in my opinion it's a great backup option um and it's a good convenient option to have say in a bedroom or in a living room maybe not in your main game room it's fine all right now this thing is not available yet as of the making of this video but I have it on good authority that we are going to be getting more information on this sooner rather than later now given what I already know about this thing and making a couple logical assumptions this is something that will run your Hue card games from both regions which is great but that might be it super Graphics games we might get that it's looking like CD games are unlikely given the form factor of the unit and whether or not the turbo ever drive Pro works on it I don't know but that will be a major deciding factor I think for me because if the CD units are not going to work on it then really I would like to see compatibility with the turbo everdrive Pro so there is a least one way to get CD games to run on the device something I like about the Retron GX is that we have original controller ports here so I'm assuming you should be able to use original controllers but at the very least I do expect it to work with hyperkin's specialist controller and that's a really solid option these are probably my favorite non-official turbo controllers that I've come across also there's two ports which is nice for whatever reason the analog Duo decided to go with one I guess out of just pure authenticity but I think that was a dumb decision so this would actually have you know something over the duo in that regard we have USB ports as well so I think that probably means we're going to get the 8bit do controllers to work maybe the hory controllers from the uh turbo Graphics mini will work so a lot of good signs there for compatibility again we're going to have to wait and see for sure though but with their recent history of their consoles being pretty reasonably priced and being halfway decent I mean I like the the Retron 77 um their Sega Genesis system I thought was totally acceptable so if they're able to be at at least that level if not maybe a little bit better and they're able to come in with a price point that's at you know 100 bucks or so or less like their other consoles I think they're in a really good position to give the analog Duo some much needed competition and there's definitely a market of people who would like to have a consolized experience for these games but they don't want to spend 300 bucks or more to do it right I mean there's a whole big swath of people there who would gladly pay 70 80 90 maybe even 150 bucks for a system that could do a a respectable job running these games and there's just nothing for them currently right now I mean there's there's nothing in that price range and I think the Retron GX is in a really good position to capture that market if they can come out swinging so we'll see all right so why am I holding a laptop well it's time to talk about emulation this is kind of a bad word in some circles in the Retro Gaming Comm Community I was pretty opposed to it for a long time um but I've warmed up to it but what I've basically done if you're going to do emulation I say go all the way take an old laptop or maybe a tablet or something and basically just consolized it find a way to get it set up on your TV you know with me I just HDMI out I just plug it into my TV and it's one of the inputs on my TV now and um my dual shock 4 hooked up to that and I'm playing NES I'm playing Atari I'm playing Turbo Graphics I'm playing Genesis I'm playing and Super Nintendo really anything PS1 and back seems to work pretty flawlessly for me um when I go Dreamcast or PS2 or even N64 it gets a little weird but I think that has more to do you know with the limitations of the laptop cuz it's kind of an old laptop right but um that's a totally suitable option it's of course other than buying the laptop and the May flash adapter and you know a controller would you probably already have it's basically free to do it's a little bit of a pain in the butt to get set up of course but it is all the way on at the convenient end of the spectrum simply because it's free and you can do it right now you know the way the games play and the way the games sound yeah it's not quite it's not quite as good as maybe the analog duo or original Hardware but it is really really really close I mean I've got retroarch I think version 16 on this laptop I have all my cores updated I have everything updated I have everything I have a lot of settings that have been tweaked I have hard GPU sync turned on which doesn't eliminate lag but it drastically reduces it you know this it's almost a primary method I wouldn't quite go that way though for most people because I think if you're going to play Turbo Graphics games and PC engine games I think it's it's it's worth a little bit more of your investment than just emulating it for free and of course you know instead of doing the laptop you could do a retro Pi that's another thing that I'm sure you know people are sitting like this waiting to say it in the comments um also misters that's a whole another can of worms that I really I need to be more familiar with that um but from what I understand they're a little bit more of an fpga style method similar to The Analog Duo where it's more about emulating the hardware rather than the software but it it gives you a similar result right you get a little device you can run all the games from that straight to your TV or your computer monitor or whatever and that is a viable option you know a few hundred bucks down you you can get you started and you know it's it's like any of these options they're all rabbit holes you know if you want them to be rabbit holes you know the more you dig into them the more there is to discover um but for me just throwing retro Arch on an old laptop and basically consolized it that's it's it's a really fun option and it works okay so that's more or less the long and short of different ways to get into the turbo graphics and PC engine library and my overall thoughts on this ecosystem are still kind of mixed honestly I'm a little bit disappointed that there is no one option that I feel like checks all the boxes yet even after all this time we're still not quite there with a definitive sort of blend blanket solution but on the other hand we do have several compelling options that have a lot of strong points and I think we're we're very close to to an overall blanket solution with the analog Duo here um although I would still argue it's not quite there so while there isn't really a clear sort of objective winner and everything sort of has its drawbacks there's enough out there that I think most people who want to get into this Library should be able to find a way that they'll have fun with and is accessible to them you know for me the analog Duo is is a good mix for me that's a compelling mix for me it lets me play my original games it lets me use my original controller and it lets me sit on the couch and look at the TV and and have a pretty you know authentic Retro Gaming experience without you know the fuss and the you know all the nonsense of adapters and cables and converters and everywhere but let me know what method you prefer and why I'm really interested because I know there's a lot of different schools of thought on this and there's a lot of different opinions um so you know let's keep the conversation going I'm looking forward to seeing where this ecosystem heads in the future I think you know it's been a slow climb to get where we're at um but I think we are going in the right direction I think that's something we can all agree on we're definitely heading in the right direction so as always thanks for watching I forgot the Pioneer laser active [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Johnny Grafx

Views: 2,159

Keywords: turbografx, turbografx16, pc engine, johnnygrafx, how to play turbografx games, analogue duo, retron gx, turbografx-16 mini, turbografx mini, everdrive

Id: 0cWmCDsXuOM

Length: 27min 18sec (1638 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2024