The Turbo Express wanted so bad to be in the race. The gaming community had voted with their money and that put only two players on top, the Gameboy and the Game Gear.
 The Turbo Grafx 16 and Bonk goes portable!




I Released in Japan by NEC in 1990.
Turbo Express Review
      Sega had a hard time in the Japanese market against the PC Engine, but in the US, Sega was experiencing success with the launch of the Genesis, their 16 bit gaming console. At around the same time NEC was experiencing runaway success of the PC Engine in Japan, they renamed it Turbo Grafx 16 and introduced it into the US marketplace thinking that they could repeat the same success. The Turbo Grafx 16 just couldn't seem to get off the ground, it was overshadowed by the Genesis's success and shortly crowded out of the market by the introduction of Nintendo's SNES. The overtly flavored Japanese cultural feel that was strongly present in its games marked the system. So the system was not well received by the US gaming community. The company also seemed to be confused as to what the US gamer wanted. With faltering sales, along with a controversy by the rivals concerning whether the system was 8 or 16 bit (maybe a hybrid of both). And with a very, very weak, poor and pitiful advertising campaign and "Bonk" as a pack-in too late in the race, the company soon pulled its system out of the US marketplace and focused their efforts on Japan. But before that took place, Nintendo had launched their 8 bit Gameboy, Atari their Lynx, and Sega was gearing up to launch their Game Gear. In an already crowded portable world, with casualties already being seen in the forecast, NEC launches their portable called the "Turbo Express."


      The gaming community had made it clear that the contenders of the portable market were the same as the consoles, clearly Nintendo and Sega. The Turbo Express weighed in at a hefty $299 USD. This price tag was one of the reasons it was considered the Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce of portables. And the price of admission proved to be a bit too much for the average gamer.
I still remember getting my Turbo Express. My wife got it for me as a Christmas gift. They were selling them as a clearance item at Toy-R-Us for $129.99 USD in 1993. I still have the sales receipt. The Turbo Grafx 16 system is my favorite gaming system. Unique to this system is the ability to use the same game cards, or carts, as the home system used. The carts are called Hucards.
      Holding the system in your hands you will notice that it is fatter, hhmmm.. a little bigger than the Gameboy and has the same outward aesthetic design. Maybe a Gameboy that has been stung by bees and is swelled all over. It is smooth to the touch and black. When you play, you are really holding it in your fingers (like a gamepad) and you will notice in the back that there are recessed areas on both sides to accommodate your fingertips.
      Sadly the years have not been kind to my Turbo Express. Presently I have to hook mine up to the AC adapter, put in a game card, turn it on and let it set for a couple of minutes before playing. Seemingly it needs to warm up. The audio and video capacitors have a tendency to deteriorate over time and die because of cheaply used components in the manufacturing process.








Pros:
 That beautiful LCD screen
 Bonk to go
 A shumup fans dream machine
 Shares the Turbo Grafx 16 game library
 Sharp looking black unit
 
 
 Cons:
 With 6 AAs only 2.5 hours of battery life
 Bad audio and video components that either deteriorate over time and die
 Regional lockout
 No Game save feature
 The high price tag for the game converter to experience the whole game library
 If you are not into shooters, because they dominate the game library?


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The bottom right corner is the Hucard of the Turbo Express. It could easily fit in your pocket. It was more like a card than a cart.

 
A converter is a must have to increase your library of gaming choices. I got this right after I received the Turbo Express, this was before I saw any commercial converter available. Someone was building them and making them available, I remember purchasing this for a little over $20 USD. I have seen this exact same type converter on eBay as a "buy it now" for $160 USD, Wow?


The Turbo Express portable had the unique feature of sharing the same game carts as the Turbo Grafx 16 home console!

 		Games:
     The game carts are like cards called Hucards, and are a little smaller than a credit card only a little thicker, so they are very convenient to carry around. They have a nice soft plastic sleeve to use for storage and they come in a CD case that is modified especially for these little cards, which also contains the game manuals. As I have said before, this portable runs the same games as the home console. It has the same internal hardware. The one type of game that dominates the gaming library is shumups. I am a shumup fan to the max! This is the main reason that this system has ended up being my favorite system of all time. I just love sitting down to a game of Blazing Lasers, Soldier Blade, R-Type (the best home conversion on any console), Rabio Lepus Special, Side Arms, W-Ring, Dead Moon, Raiden, and Super Star Soldier, to name a few. This hardware seems to be designed for shumups and they are here in a large supply.
       For those who have a taste for something else, there are some nice platformers on this system too. The Bonk series are a must have, must play, Bonk's Revenge is my favorite. There are catchy tunes from the Bonk series that are forever burnt into the cells of my brain. There is Adventure Island, Ninja Spirit (a great shinobi ninja game), Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble, Liquid Kids, Legendary Axe, New Zealand Story, is a good start to get you gaming.
There are two excellent highly addictive pinball games, Alien Crush and Devil's Crush. And Bomberman originally appeared on this system. There are a few RPGs, but the text was meant for TV screens. On the Turbo Express tiny screen you may find it very hard to read any text from an RPG, or any small text for that matter.
      There is regional lockout, so to increase the game library you will need a converter. There are a couple of commercial ones that I have seen available. I feel that it would be to anyone's advantage to have a converter to give more choice in gaming titles. The US library could seem somewhat shallow if you are not heavy into shumups. There are many games that are great fun from the "Japanese only" library. Street Fighter 2 was released for it only in Japan.
       Another thing that really hurts its game library is the lack of third party support. Very few really backed it with games, so most of the library came from Hudson Soft.
      There is no save feature. They left it out! The home console needed the turbo booster attachment that had the flash ram for game saves. This would only be very disappointing if playing something like Tiger Road or Neutopia. Or maybe if you had the desire to save your high scores in a game like Blazing Lasers, Soldier Blade, or R-Type. With all of the arcade like shooters that this system has It sort-of makes your say, "What were they thinking?" The booster attachment almost seems like an afterthought.
     Here is a list of shooters: R-Type, Galaga 90, Fantasy Zone, Space Harrier, Dragon Spirit, Kyukyoku Tiger (Japan), Blazing Lazers, Side Arms, Ordyne, Atomic Robo Kid, Psychosis, Cyber Core, Armed F, Psycho Chaser, Super Star Soldier, Image Fight (Japan), After Burner II, W-Ring or Double Ring (Japan), Rabio Lepus Special (Japan),  Aero Blasters, Burning Angel (Japan), Violent Soldier (Japan), Dead Moon, 1943 Kai (Japan), Final Soldier (Japan), Parodius Da! (Japan), Air Zonk, Sinistron, Soldier Blade, Mr. Heli (Japan), Download (Japan), Gradius (Japan), Heavy Unit (Japan), Magical Chase, Mesopotamia, Coryoon (Japan), Deep Blue, Detana! Twinbee (Japan), Raiden, Final Blaster (Japan), Metal Stoker (Japan), P-47 (Japan), Salamander (Japan). There may be a couple of repeats because they are the Japanese version of the game.

Controls:
 It is the same setup as NEC had on their home console, disc shaped cross directional button, select, run, "1," and "2" buttons with analog volume and brightness control. There was a special feature about the Turbo Grafx 16 control pads and it is included here on the Turbo Express, there are switches with three settings for each of the two buttons, 1 and 2. These switches are for turbo settings, at the highest setting means auto fire in the shumups! You can only get the full Turbo Grafx experience by using the original hardware. No emulator can give you that Turbo feel in playing the games. There is nothing like flipping it into turbo while playing Bonk. There is a power switch located at the top. Turning it on worked similar to the Original Gameboy, it held the game card in place preventing removal during play. There is a jack on the bottom for a link cable to hook two units together for two player games and a TV Tuner input on the side of the unit, both are separate purchases. With the demise of the analog signal and the advent of Digital Broadcasting, the TV Tuner has become useless.
 
 Power:
It takes 6 AA batteries giving you maybe 2.5 hours of playtime! Yes, that is correct 2.5 hours!! This has got to be the most power hungry beast of a portable that was ever made and it is the biggest downfall of this system. There is, thankfully, an AC adapter input. And it is of a special odd voltage, 7 volts, which might mean that you need to have the official NEC adapter or you could burn your unit up. I really haven't tried any other adapter other than the original.

Sound:
      It has 6 channel stereo sound, but only if you use headphones. There is another thing about the sound that you should know, in case you decide to hunt one of these down. To begin with, the sound is low, especially when using batteries. On some units, at the time, the sound went out on them in a short period of time after owning. This is because they used inferior components on the PC board for their audio. I have noticed that my audio has degraded over the years. Presently at full volume I have to use ear buds or headphones, the sound is noticeable without them, but very low. If there is no other noise in the room there is no problem. There are instructions on the Net on how to fix this problem. I do not have soldering experience. And I will not open any of my stuff up unless it is really broken. I have this fear of breaking things and they not ever working again.





 This is the main reason I bought the game converter. I imported this game to have the first portable Street Figher 2. The game converter stuck out a mile past the system, as you can observe in the pics above, that it is very long.





Bonk, lower left corner, just had to move when I took this picture. The active matrix LCD still looks good after all these years, such a nice high resolution.
 Screen:
  A beautiful, gorgeous, vibrant rich color 2.6" backlit LCD screen. The screen can still stand on its own today beside the modern backlit TFT LCDs we see on portables, it is that good. This is another reason it was considered the Rolls Royce of portables. It was the best screen of any portable of its day. It has an analog screen brightness control. There is also an automatic battery saver with a built in timer that will turn off the screen if there is no activity for 5 to 6 minutes.


     I had Street Fighter in my hand. As you can see from the picture here, it looked very nice and played that way too. The Express did not have enough buttons to play the game. But it did have a few tricks with flipping the switches for some of the different moves that made it too awkward to fool with. I usually just picked the moves that seemed best and played. The console had a special controller with the needed six buttons just for Street Fighter 2.
Final Thoughts: Technically the system has an 8 bit CPU and a 16 bit graphics chip, so you can look at that any way you want. There are those games that have that 8 bit feel about them. But I will emphasize that there is gameplay here that you will not find anywhere else. Games that are unique to this system and that are a delightful experience in themselves. It is the games that make a system, not the hardware.
      If you are a shumup fan, like me, and looking for some retro old school shooter fun, this system is a real treat. I have really enjoyed this system. It had better sound, a nicer LCD screen, and was technologically superior to any of its competitors in its day. To me, it is one of my most treasured portables. Too bad it never really went anywhere here in the US. Most gamers at the time never knew it existed. The gaming world was focused on the console war between Sega and Nintendo. And that about sums it up. How can you compete when no one notices that you are in the same room. Presently, hardcore gamers and collectors cherish this system. Therefore sometimes it doesn't come cheap, but with a price tag. It has not aged very well either with some of the on board components going bad. There are places on the Net that shows you how to replace those problems, but you will need some soldering skills. If you are into retro shumups then this “big thumbs up” is for you!

 


Redesigned by Retro Junkie