Did you know that the TurboDuo had first dibs on being the ONLY home video game console
that had Mortal Kombat??
But the Japanese head office said NO!
Saying they felt fighting games were falling out of favor.
Though some speculate this was a way to say they couldn't afford the rights, without losing
face.
The TurboDuo was a hybrid of the original Turbo Grafx 16 and it's CD-ROM attachment,
with a RAM upgrade.
The Turbo Grafx 16 never really caught on in America and wasn't properly released in
Europe.
But in Japan, its equivalent, the PC Engine was a best seller.
Even beating out the Famicom in sales for a while.
It's popularity allowed NEC, who manufactured the PC engine to experiment with different
hardware designs and upgrades.
The TurboDuo being one of them.
The Turbo Grafx looked promising after its release in August 1989, but lack of advertising
and strong competition from the Genesis/ Mega Drive and later, the SNES, left the Turbo
in non-entity in the 16-bit console wars.
Another of the troubles that faced the Turbo Grafx was that the system was a joint venture
between NEC and Hudson Soft.
NEC made the units and Hudson provided many of the games, and received royalties on each
sale.
But it led to a tug of war over which company was in charge.
In 1992, NEC and Hudson somewhat merged and formed a new company called Turbo Technologies
Incorporated, or TTi for short.
The new venture was to allow more independence from the two parent companies, and with all-new
hardware, turn things around.
The Turbo Duo debuted on October 10th, 1992.
A little over a year after it's Japanese counterpart, the PC Engine Duo.
It cost $299, which was equal to the price of its main competitor, the SEGA-CD.
To offset some of the cost, TTi threw in 6 games to get you started.
Gate of Thunder was the main game and on the same disc, Bonk’s Adventure and Bonk’s
Revenge were added.
Bomber man was also on the disc, accessible by entering up, right, down, left, II (two)
at the game selection screen.
On top of that the RPG Ys Book I & II was on its own disc, and non CD game Ninja Spirit
was also in the box.
TTi also gave $50 of game coupons at $5 off each on future games.
Do the math and that's the same amount of money just in games as the retail price of
the TurboDuo.
Unlike SEGA with the SEGA CD, The TurboDuo wasn't an add-on and CDs were the focus of
the company.
The upgraded CD software were called Super CD Roms, in Japan they had the slightly cuter
name of Super CD Rom-Rom.
If you had the old model Turbo Grafx 16 and original not so Super CD Rom, you could buy
the Super System Card which gave you the extra RAM needed for these Super games.
If you played one without it, you'd get a funny message urging you to upgrade.
Turbo Grafx game cards, called Turbo Chips, were eventually phased out in early 1993.
Also in 1993, TTi did something strange in their branding efforts.
They took the name Turbo out of everything!
The TurboDuo was shortened to just the Duo, Turbo Chips, were called Duo Soft cartridges—even
though they weren’t making them anymore—and despite this, the company retained the name
TURBO Technologies!
You got to wonder what they were thinking.
Even though the recharged effort to make the Turbo a main player was stronger than any
attempt before, the system didn't catch on, and the initial manufacturing order of 20,000
units never sold out.
In May, 1994, TTi shut down, and the system was no longer officially supported.
The TurboDuo did live on though Turbo Zone Direct, a company made up of a few TTi employees
who offered new, unopened stock games, peripherals, hardware and repairs via mail and later internet.
TZD also offered some import games, because the TurboDuo Super CD Rom were not region
locked, even though Turbo Chips were.
They also released a few games left unfinished by TTi such as Godzilla and Bonk 3 on Super
CD Rom.
TZD ran until 2007, when an eBay vendor named RedFrog bought up the few remaining games
that were left after all those years.
Beginning in 2006, many of the games that were Chip and CD started to appear on Nintendo’s
Wii Virtual Console, giving many gamers a first look at what the Turbo was all about.
Today, the TurboDuo is remembered as a quirky system with active fan base and very rare
and expensive games.
Magical Chase, Dynastic Hero, Beyond Shadowgate, Cotton, Bonk 3 and well, lets face it, pretty
much everything else, would fetch several hundred dollars on eBay years ago and has
now crept into the thousands in some cases.
As for the PC Engine Duo, it received a makeover in 1993 as the PC Engine Duo R and again in
1994 as the PC Engine Duo RX, with a huge internal memory upgrade for lots and lots
of saves and a 6 button Street Fighter style controller.
There was also another RAM upgrade in the form of the Arcade Card, designed for ports
of NEO GEO fighting games.
In japan
It lived all the way up until 1999, which was even longer than NEC’s 32-bit follow
up, the PC-FX.