I of course knew very well of the TurboGrafx-16, and wouldn’t have minded having one back in the day, but that wasn’t the case, and none of my friends had one either, so I never got to play those games other than at demo kiosks at the mall. For some reason, during the holiday break, I decided to go and visit that part of gaming history that I knew so little about. I used the OpenEmu app on Mac to play them – although I truly would have loved to play those games with the original TurboGrafx-16 controller – and then looked up some lists of recommended best games for the console (and got some suggestions from friends too). What’s pretty interesting is that not only did I have a great time sampling a whole bunch of those games, but I found myself really enjoying a lot of them, and I’m still playing some of them now. What was a very pleasant surprise for me is that the TurboGrafx-16 (or PC Engine, as it was known in Japan) has such a strong lineup of shooters, a genre I really love. After being bummed out at how punishing that version of R-Type is, I found a lot of great titles I had so much more fun with, like Blazing Lazers, Super Star Soldier, and Cadash – and surprisingly, the one I found myself playing the most was Galaga ‘90. Other great titles included Bonk’s Adventure, Devil’s Crush, Ninja Spirit, and more.
