Turbografx 16

The TurboGrafx-16 is the US version of the original Japanese PC Engine. It was the first fourth generation console. It has a 8-bit CPU but is coupled with a 16-bit graphics processor. The PC-Engine was released in 1987 in Japan, and the TurboGrafx-16 was released in 1989 in North America. In Europe the console was also released as the PC Engine after the Japanese model was imported and distributed in the UK and France for a while. The system was intended to be launched as a competitor to the Famicom, but the delayed US release meant that it ended up competing with the Sega Genesis and the Super NES.

The Console has an 8-bit CPU and a dual 16-bit graphics processing unit. The GPU consists of a Video Display Controller (VDC) and a Video Color Encoder (VCE). This GPU is capable of displaying 482 color simultaneously out of a palette of 512 colors.

Games were released on HuCard cartridges and later on CD-ROM format. For the CD-ROM games a separate TurboGrafx-CD add-on had to be purchased. The TurboGrafx-16 received some criticism as it was marketed and labeled as a 16-bit machine, but only the GPU was 16-bit, the CPU was an 8-bit Hudson Soft HUC6280 CPU running at 7.16MHz. The machine was equipped with only 8 kByte RAM, and 64 kByte Video Ram.

The System was a collaboration between Hudson Soft, which created the video game software, and NEC, which had success in the Japanese market with its PC-88 and PC-98 platforms. NEC was struggling to find a suitable vendor to create video games, as NEC itself lacked experience in this field, and Hudson had failed to attempt to sell designs for their advanced graphics chips to Nintendo. The two companies successfully joined to then develop the PC Engine/TurboGrafx systems.