Is the TurboGrafx-16 Mini worth it? – Retail Reviews – Mike Matei

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq3jeg4njDQ

I watched Mike’s recent stream where he played games from the TurboGrafx-16 Mini.  It was four hours but I enjoyed it.  There were some funny moments because he was completely unfamiliar with the games.  “I’ve never played this before”, you could say.  I had a TurboGrafx as a kid so I played a fair number of these games.

For instance, he was playing Air Zonk, a game that I’ve played extensively, and when he would die he would get confused.  “Why does he turn into a robot when he dies?”  It’s because the character is a cyborg.  It’s supposed to be like when Terminator’s human…whatever…coating comes off and his cybernetic skeleton is exposed.

Also, he didn’t realise that if you hold the shoot button down (and not on “turbo”) you can charge your shot.  And if you hold it down longer, you release a bomb.  So he was just shooting throughout.

In Dungeon Explorer, he went to the wrong section of the map.  You have to do things in order.  The first, and easiest section of the map is to the south.  But he went to the west.  It’s impossible to advance anywhere if you go there and the monsters are of too high a level for a beginning character.  So he kept getting destroyed and then saying things like, “Man, this is the hardest game ever.”  He never figured it out.

For JJ & Jeff, the characters do a little kick so he just showed that a bunch of times.  Then he showed a few references to urinating and defecating in the game and said something like, “James would like this.”  It’s true.  There’s a lot of excrement in that game and that’s right up James’ alley.  There’s even more scatological humour in the Japanese version of the game, Kato-Chan & Ken-Chan.

So let’s check out this fucking Retail Reviews.  As usual, it seems to follow the pattern where it’s Mike talking about something that he did a recent stream on.  It really cuts down on the work.  Why work on something new when you can just re-purpose your streams?

3:00 – “China Warrior is funny for about five seconds because the character is really big and the character is getting crap thrown in his face.”

This is something that Mike mentioned on stream too.  He kept insisting that the character was having faeces thrown at him.  It’s bizarre.  They’re clearly rocks.  I had the game as a kid and played it far more than it deserved and not once did I think it was faeces.  But here’s Mike with the easy, “Poop!  Poop!  Look at the doo doo!”

Also, he mentioned earlier in the video that the TurboGrafx was mainly for shooting games.  It may be true that there were a lot of shooting games released on it but I only had one that I can think of: Air Zonk.  I didn’t like particularly like shooting games (although, I liked Air Zonk) so I didn’t buy them.  It was perfectly possible to own a TurboGrafx and play games other than shooters.

3:30 – He shits on Fantasy Zone.  I rented this is a kid, remarkably there was a store that rented TurboGrafx games, and I really liked it.  But years later, when I was trying to track down what this game was, and I actually played it, I thought, “God, this is awful.”  So I don’t know what the appeal was.

5:00 – He complains about Bonk 3 not being on the system.  I guess.  I don’t know.  I don’t know why anyone even buys these things.  What’s the possible market?  For people who don’t know about emulators?

6:45 – Ryan talks about his fondness for Victory Run.  I had that game too.  I liked it but it got impossible early on.  Like the second or third track.

9:00 – Ryan complains that this thing only comes with one controller.  No mention of the fact that the TurboGrafx only came with one controller.  And indeed, there was only one controller port.  You had to buy an adaptor to have more than one controller.  He must not have known this.

15:00 – Ryan says that a lot of these games are fine but he’d rather play them on another system.  The example he gives is Bomberman 93.

Where else is going to play that?  It was a TurboGrafx exclusive.  And TurboGrafx was the place to go for Bomberman games.  There was one shitty Bomberman game on the NES and then everything Bomberman was exclusive to TurboGrafx, for as long as TurboGrafx was around.  It was closely associated with the system.

But Ryan wants to play Bomberman 93 on a Genesis or something.  Good luck with that.

15:30 – Then Ryan says, “Dungeon Explorer?  I’d rather play Gauntlet on NES”

I never even made the connection.  He has a very shallow understanding of these games.  This is like Erin playing a game for 20 seconds and then doing a “review”.

In some superficial ways, Dungeon Explorer is similar to Gauntlet.  But Gauntlet is a shallow arcade game.  Dungeon Explorer has a story and levelling up and…it’s an RPG.  Not a good one but it’s a significantly deeper game than Gauntlet.

17:00 – Then Ryan goes on about how awesome Castlevania Rondo of Blood is.  Go fucking play your Nintendo games.  I know that the game was released on TurboGrafx but Castlevania was not closely associated with the system.

And previously they were talking about how the arcade port of some game was better than the TurboGrafx one.  Thanks for that great insight.  Go play the arcade game then.  This stupid “system” is geared to people who owned a TurboGrafx, I guess, and perhaps therefore played the TurboGrafx versions of these games.

Try to appreciate the thing for what it is.  But instead, you have Ryan comparing everything to fucking Nintendo or whatever.

19:00 – Ryan claims that TurboGrafx games are really expensive now.  Is that right?  Let me look this up.  Maybe I could retire.

No.  Not according to pricecharting.com they aren’t.  $45 seems to be the average loose price.  That’s less than what they cost new, adjusting for inflation.

21:30 – Mike says that JJ & Jeff reminds him of “an NES game”.  Whatever that means.  And Ryan agrees, saying that it’s like Wisdom Tree.  Again, I don’t get it.  If you boys want to play Nintendo, go play Nintendo.

22:15 – Mike says that Neutopia is a Legend of Zelda clone.  That’s true, of course.  But he continues that if you want to play Legend of Zelda, you should play Legend of Zelda.

How can they be this dense?  You couldn’t play Legend of Zelda on the TurboGrafx.  Doesn’t he know that there was a Nintendo household and a TurboGrafx household?

23:00 – Mike says, “You have 30 or 40 games and you’re going to put on a Zelda clone?”

Again, the game was popular on the system and there’s no way that I’m aware of to play Zelda on a TurboGrafx 16.  I played the game extensively, I’ve never played Legend of Zelda.  Neutopia clearly has better graphics than the NES Legend of Zelda and it has different gameplay mechanics.  An obvious one I can think of is the fire wand.

24:30 – Then Mike excitedly describes the Ninja Gaiden TurboGrafx game.  I’ve never even heard of this.  But once again, Mike is excited to be talking about Nintendo games.  He can’t appreciate the TurboGrafx for being TurboGrafx.

27:00 – Ryan says that the only way to play some game is to either buy this mini-system thing or spend $2000 on the game.  How can he possibly not know about emulators?

Anyway, this is the first time that I’ve noticed that Mike (and Ryan) really don’t have any experience with anything other than Nintendo.  People would levy this criticism against James and Mike in regards to them shitting on Sega.  But yeah, they’re definitely doing this with TurboGrafx as well.  Everything that sucks about the system, it’s because Nintendo is better.  Everything that’s good about the system is because it’s a Nintendo franchise or it somehow reminds them of Nintendo.

It’s a nerdy thing to get worked up about but it made for a poor review.