The TurboExpress is a

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...

handheld game console A handheld game console, or simply handheld console, is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the con ...

NEC Home Electronics is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered at the NEC Supertower in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It provides IT and network solutions, including cloud computing, artificia ...

, released in late 1990 in Japan and the United States, branded as the PC Engine GT in Japan and TurboExpress Handheld Entertainment System in the U.S. It is essentially a portable version of the

TurboGrafx-16 The TurboGrafx-16, known in Japan as the , is a home video game console developed by Hudson Soft and manufactured by NEC. It was released in Japan in 1987 and in North America in 1989. The first console of the fourth generation of video game con ...

home console that came out one to three years earlier. Its launch price in Japan was ¥44,800 and in the U.S. The TurboExpress was technically advanced for the time, able to play all the TurboGrafx16's

HuCard The (Known as the TurboChip in regions where the PC Engine was marketed as the TurboGrafx-16) is a ROM cartridge in the form of a card, designed by Hudson Soft for NEC's PC Engine and PC Engine SuperGrafx video game consoles, which were or ...

games, featuring a backlit, active-matrix color

LCD A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not em ...

screen, and optional

TV tuner A TV tuner card is a kind of television tuner that allows television signals to be received by a computer. Most TV tuners also function as video capture cards, allowing them to record television programs onto a hard disk much like the digital vi ...

. The TurboExpress primarily competed with

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

Game Boy The is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-ga ...

Sega is a Japanese video game company and subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings headquartered in Tokyo. It produces several List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises for arcade game, arcades and video game cons ...

Game Gear The is an 8-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth-generation handheld game console released by Sega on October 6, 1990 in Japan, in April 1991 throughout North America and Europe, and in 1992 in Australia. The Game Gear primarily ...

, and the

Atari Lynx The Atari Lynx is a Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth-generation handheld game console, hand-held game console released by Atari Corporation in September 1989 in North America and 1990 in Europe and Japan. It was the first handhe ...

. With 1.5 million units sold, far behind its two main competitors, NEC failed to gain significant sales or market share in the handheld market.

History

The TurboExpress's

codename A code name, codename, call sign, or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in ...

was ''Game Tank''. A working prototype was revealed in the April 1990 issue of VG&CE. It was eventually released in December 1990 in both Japan and the U.S. Its price in the U.S. was briefly raised to $299.99 in March 1991 due to higher costs of the display, before dropping back to its launch price of $249.99, and lowering the price again to $199.99 in 1992. Regardless of its technical advantages upon its release, the TurboExpress was not widely recognized or adopted by consumers. In addition to NEC's marketing issues, the handheld was initially released for $249.99, significantly higher than popular competitors. Because of this price tag, it was labeled as the "

Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to: * Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct Automobiles * Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...

of handheld systems". On the other hand, the ability to run the same software as its console counterpart meant that additional portable system specific software did not have to be purchased if already owning the console, resulting in a (oftentimes substantial) cost savings.

Hardware

The screen is sized 66 mm (2.6 in.), the same as the original

. It can display 64 sprites at once, 16 per scanline, in up to 481 colors from a palette of 512. It has 8

kilobyte The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for Computer data storage, digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix ''kilo-, kilo'' as a multiplication factor of 1000 (103); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000&nbs ...

s of RAM, and it runs a HuC6280 CPU at 1.79 or 7.16

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...

, same as TurboGrafx-16. The TurboExpress had a backlit display. Handheld market leader

did not have a backlit handheld until the release of the Game Boy Light in 1998. Its keypad layout is similar to that of the original

, with the unique addition of two "turbo switches" that engage two levels of high-speed controller button re-triggering to assist the player. Due to a problem with faulty

capacitor In electrical engineering, a capacitor is a device that stores electrical energy by accumulating electric charges on two closely spaced surfaces that are insulated from each other. The capacitor was originally known as the condenser, a term st ...

s (an industry-wide issue in the early 1990s), sound failure is a frequent problem with the TurboExpress, sometimes even in new systems. The screen used in the TurboExpress was another source for problems, though it was state of the art when it was released. The

technology used was still fairly new and the rate of pixel failure was very high. Brand-new TurboExpress systems often had several bad pixels. Text is also difficult or impossible to read in certain circumstances, as many times fonts were written to be seen on a television screen, not on a small LCD screen. As a result, certain RPGs and

adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...

s can be difficult to play on the unit. The TurboExpress plays the same game cartridges as the TurboGrafx-16 home console. Some TurboGrafx-16

s save game data to the internal memory of the

TurboGrafx-CD The TurboGrafx-16, known in Japan as the , is a home video game console developed by Hudson Soft and manufactured by NEC. It was released in Japan in 1987 and in North America in 1989. The first console of the fourth generation of video game con ...

unit, TurboDuo, or TurboBooster Plus (a peripheral for the core TG-16 console). The TurboExpress lacks this internal memory and, as a result, is not capable of saving in this manner. Most games provide a password save mechanism as an alternative. The battery life is about three hours for 6

AA batteries The AA battery (or double-A battery) is a standard size single cell cylindrical dry battery. ANSI and IEC battery nomenclature gives several designations for cells in this size, depending on cell features and chemistry. The IEC 60086 system c ...

. This is also a problem for other color and backlit or sidelit handhelds of the time, such as the

at 5–6 hours, the Sega Nomad at 2–3 hours, and the

at more than 4 hours. Nintendo's Game Boy had a 12- to 40-hour lifespan on 4 AA batteries.

Specifications

* CPU: HuC6280 * CPU speed: 7.16 MHz or 1.79 MHz (switchable in software) * Resolution: 400x270

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...

s *

Color palette In color theory, a color scheme is a combination of 2 or more colors used in aesthetic or practical design. Aesthetic color schemes are used to create style and appeal. Colors that create a color harmony, harmonious feeling when viewed togethe ...

: 512 colors; 9-bit RGB *Max simultaneous colors: 481 on screen *Max sprites: 64 *Audio: 6-voice wavetable synthesis

TurboLink

The TurboLink allows two-player play. ''

Falcon Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Some small species of falcons with long, narrow wings are called hobbies, and some that hover while hunting are called kestrels. Falcons are widely distrib ...

'', a flight simulator, includes "head-to-head"

dogfight A dogfight, or dog fight, is an air combat manoeuvring, aerial battle between fighter aircraft that is conducted at close range. Modern terminology for air-to-air combat is air combat manoeuvring (ACM), which refers to tactical situations requir ...

and cooperative modes that can only be accessed via TurboLink. This technology was also used for '' Bomberman '93'' Com-Link multiplayer. Although it was released after the TurboExpress launch, very few TG-16 games offer co-op play modes especially designed with the TurboExpress in mind.

TurboVision

TurboVision is a

adapter for the TurboExpress converting the TurboExpress into an handheld television. The accessory was available at launch for . It allowed a player to either watch television, or go back to playing games with the flip of a switch; in other words, one may use the TurboExpress as a video monitor. It includes an RCA audio/video input for external

composite video Composite video, also known as CVBS (composite video baseband signal or color, video, blanking and sync), is an analog video format that combines image information—such as brightness (luminance), color (chrominance), and synchronization, int ...

signals. Due to the widespread adoption of

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using Digital signal, digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an ...

and the

HDTV High-definition television (HDTV) describes a television or video system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since at least 1933; in more recent times, it ref ...

standard, however, the adapter will no longer function as a television in most places due to the lack of any HDTV digital processing circuitry (the tuner can only process an

analog signal An analog signal (American English) or analogue signal (British and Commonwealth English) is any continuous-time signal representing some other quantity, i.e., ''analogous'' to another quantity. For example, in an analog audio signal, the ins ...

for television). Due to this limitation, the TV tuner adapter is now relegated to a collectible for most people, although its RCA audio/video input function will still be operational (albeit limited with its low screen resolution).

Reception

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...

'' favorably compared TurboExpress to the Game Boy, but stated that the NEC handheld "gobbles power like crazy ... almost forcing players to ''immediately'' purchase an

AC adapter An AC adapter or AC/DC adapter (also called a wall charger, power adapter, power brick, or wall wart) is a type of external power supply, often enclosed in a case similar to an AC plug. AC adapters deliver electric power to devices that la ...

". The magazine nonetheless praised its compatibility with TurboGrafx games, and concluded, "to see this machine in action is to fall in love with it". ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American online magazine, digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, ...

'' praised the new 16 bit computer architecture of the system and the graphics of the games, but warned that the small screen is a downgrade for those used to playing the games on a big screen.

References

Other sources

*''The Electronic Gaming Monthly 1991 Video Game Buyers Guide''. {{Handheld game consoles Handheld game consoles TurboGrafx-16 Products introduced in 1990 1990s toys Discontinued handheld game consoles