The TurboGrafx-16 Mini is a much-welcome visit back to the ‘Xennial’ of consoles
Here's the good news: This is probably the best mini console released so far, and that's surprising considering the obscurity of the console and the 57 games included. At $99, I was prepared to write this off as expensive home decor for retro collectors. But after browsing through its library, I'm convinced the TurboGrafx-16 Mini provides more value than most people would know.
It's got Soldier Blade! It's got famously homoerotic shooter Cho Aniki! It's got Ginga Fuke Densetsu Sapphire! It even has Akumajo Dracula X Chi no Rondo!
A lot of those titles may not excite you, but it's worth knowing that buying them could run you hundreds or thousands of dollars on the collector's market. Released in Japan as the PC Engine, the TurboGrafx-16 suffered in the 90s for simply not being distinctive enough, choked at the end by extraneous peripheral upgrades like a CD-ROM drive. The console was between generations of the 8-bit Nintendo era and the 16-bit years defined by the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.
I never owned a TurboGrafx-16, but I've racked up hours playing it, mostly when I was left alone at the department store while my family shopped, in the early '90s. It was never in reach for me or my family, but playing it was always an event because of the limited, designated times I played it. And it wasn't exactly a hot item, so it wasn't sold everywhere. Having these titles at home may be worth the price of admission alone.
But if the chance to own these rare titles don't excite you, maybe you're a fan of classic shooters like Space Invaders, Galaga or R-Type? Well R-Type is here too, but this mini console is basically mostly shooters, including other classics like Gradius, Fantasy Zone, Space Harrier, and yes, even Cho Aniki, which has more phallic imagery than you can shake a stick at.
There are actually "two sides" to this mini console, including 25 games from the Western TurboGrafx-16 releases. The PC Engine side of the machine is the better, and larger, collection. That Dracula X game I mentioned earlier? That's actually a rare Castlevania game that's only seen rereleases in recent years, and it's one of the better ones ever made. RPG series Ys Books I and II are also preserved perfectly. The problem is that they're all in Japanese. That's a shame, since this console is one of the few legal ways today to obtain Snatcher, Hideo Kojima's first game after creating the Metal Gear series. Fans of Kojima's cult visual novel cyberpunk tale have waited decades for an English rerelease. Sadly, this isn't it.
There's also the fact that most of the games that aren't shooters haven't aged well. Console mascot Bonk has his first title here. Too bad, because Bonk 3 was far superior and more distinctive than his first Mario-inspired adventure. Fighting game The Kung Fu (no, that's not a typo) is terrible, but at least funny enough to boot up for the first five minutes.
I consider myself a fairly well-versed historian of old video games, and I had only heard of platformer J.J. & Jeff. It tooks seconds to realize it's a deeply uninspired Mario ripoff starring two detectives that looked like coked-out Wall Street bros.
As for the actual console itself, it's actually not that mini. It's only a little smaller than the original console, and kudos to Konami (who published a bulk of the games in this collection) for staying as close to the original design as possible, even including the weird plastic pop-off cover that hid the video inputs.
The user interface is above and beyond what we saw in the Sega and Nintendo mini consoles. The TurboGrafx-16 mimics the sound of its cards (or CDs) being loaded every time you launch a game. The graphics options allow for CRT-like scan lines, as well as neat, late-80s vaporwave backgrounds, which are back in style.
It's hard to recommend this console to just any user. It's mostly for specific groups of people: gamers who remember the TurboGrafx-16, gamers who felt like they missed out on it, or fresh gamers who are really into retro genres. These are highly specific niches — and if you're really into rare games, this collection is missing some key titles like Magical Chase or Super Air Zonk: Rockabilly Paradise.
While the Nintendo and Sega consoles have a much larger market for nostalgia, the TurboGrafx-16 brings a unique, rare commercial opportunity to newly experience the old. Like Xennials, it lives on the borderland of time, bookended by the two loud generations. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised it brought so much comfort.
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