Last year, I undertook an investigation into the mysterious back-catalogue of the ill-fated TurboGrafx-16 console with a screenshot LP series named TurboMento-12, which eventually culminated in Octurbo; a far breezier daily series that stopped after about an hour into each game. While the NEC TurboGrafx-16 enjoyed more than moderate success in its home nation as the PC Engine, the TG-16 did not fare quite as well in the US. NEC didn't even try to sell the console in Europe and as a result the TG-16's been something of an enigma to me, a UK videogamesman. Wanting to better understand what I missed out on, I endeavored to look into its history, its high-profile games, its low-profile games, its low-brow games (that Lady Sword incident...) and a few PC Engine exclusives that didn't make the cross over to the States for (usually) explicable reasons.

However, what I didn't do last year was check out the console's CD library. NEC is famous for developing the first console with a CD-ROM drive in 1988: the creatively-named TurboGrafx-CD (and, in 1992, the Turbo Duo, which played both CDs and the original system's HuCards). The PC Engine equivalent is the even more creatively-named PC Engine CD-ROM². This edition of Octurbo will look at as many of these CD games as possible or, to be a bit more realistic, about twenty-four or so. As before, I'll be taking a scenic route through some of its best-known (and lesser, forgotten) titles. It's worth noting that while the TurboGrafx-CD only saw 45 official releases (to the PC Engine CD-ROM2's 400+), the CDs were not region locked. You still had to know Japanese to play any of the text-heavy stuff like adventure games, visual novels or RPGs, but the few lines of backstory at the beginning of any number of great JP-exclusive shooters and action games for the system were an acceptable casualty (though the import fees were probably more of a dealbreaker). Just from a historical perspective, it's interesting to see how those early CD-ROM console developers handled having several magnitudes more memory space to work with but the same limited computing/graphical power. At least the music was better. Redbook audio did a lot for VGM.

I've brought it up before, but there are some amazing resources out there for TG-16/PCE games and the discussion thereof. There's Hardcore Gaming 101, which is usually the best place to look if you need a lot of info on some obscurity or other; there's Chronturbo -- the sister series of Doc Sparkle's excellent Chrontendo -- which is an ongoing video series that explicates on every video game released for the TurboGrafx-16 and PCE in chronological order; The Brothers Duomazov, a trio of guys who are systematically challenging everything for the system and writing up their experiences; and I <3 The PC Engine, an intermittent and presently defunct series from video game historian VIP Magweasel a.k.a. former GamePro editor Kevin Gifford, who goes into detail about individual games and the history of the console also in chronological order. There's more, of course -- it seems the TG-16's mystique inspired more than a few people, especially those who followed its far more plenteous and varied PC Engine output -- but that's probably more than enough reading material. Hell, you still have all of the below to get through first. Chop, chop.

At any rate, I'll be using this blog as a contents page of sorts, adding new items to the table below and linking back to this page after every entry. Thanks for checking out some weird 16-bit CD games with me, everyone. Hope you like anime cutscenes.

I have to say, I've been looking forward to another month of you slogging through the enigma that is the "PC-Engine", this time with lots of Japanese voice acting because CD ROM technology.

Rondo of Blood is the obvious Turbo CD game to start with, but I wonder how you'll react to the Turbo CD port of Might and Magic III with its amazing/trippy soundtrack. That's literally the only other Turbo CD game I am aware of.

Man, I wish I hadn't started looking at all of the games for this system on the wiki. I love all of those old-style anime covers. I just want to buy them all and display them... That sounds like a pretty awful/costly rabbit hole to fall into though.

The only game I am aware of is Kaze Kiri Ninja action. I watched someone playing it about a year ago, and thought it looked rather wonderful. It's probably one of those games that's about a billion quid these days.

Out of all the pre-SoTN CastleVania games, Rondo of Blood is the one I sorely wish I could play! Richter is such a fun sonafabitch to control, but I unfortunately found that 'Richter mode' was ill fit for SoTN's design. I look forward to reading your thoughts on it anywhoo!

So, all right, I had the first part ready to roll but the site's broke my ability to post images again, so there might be a delay. Hopefully I can get that Rondo up soon. Not a euphemism.

Edit: Never mind! The engineers fixed the issue later the same day. Thanks Top Men!

Bumped, because it's finally done. Twenty-four straight days of TurboGrafx-CD action, as promised. Thanks for reading, everyone.

I'm still not sure if I'll bring this feature back next year, what with the general lack of interest coupled with the fact that I'm running out of stuff to cover, but maybe I'll find some other way to celebrate the enigma that is the TurboGrafx. Possibly some wiki completion feature, like the Super '93 project? Or get deeper into all the super obscure stuff I didn't cover. I guess we'll see in October 2015.

(Psst, I might be making some bonus episodes once Extra Life is over with. If nothing else, I have a particularly spooky game to cap off the month with.)