History of Hardware: The Game Boy Competitors - Part II

This is the second of a three part series on the history of retro handhelds. If you haven't, you'll probably want to start with Part I. I imagine that'll make a bit more sense.

Round 2 — NEC and Sega, again

When we last left our heroes, they were doing their best to take down the nefarious Game Boy with... limited results. Atari and Sega gave it their best shot, and while they had their successes, Nintendo remains on top. We now turn our attention to the next contender, NEC's TurboExpress.

The NEC TurboExpress / PC Engine GT

While it's rather obscure in North America, NEC's PC Engine was a fairly substantial success in its day, particularly in Japan. The console was formed as a collaboration between Hudson Soft — best known as the developer of Bomberman — who developed the cartridge format, and Japanese PC giant NEC, who managed the rest. The system released in 1987 in Japan and then spent two years being redesigned for the worldwide audience, where it was known as the TurboGrafx-16 (yes, with an 'x'). If you thought Sega went a bit wild pumping out different console upgrades and attachments, they had nothing on the amount of different PC Engines they were trying to sell you. I'll save most of it for what will 100% be its own article someday, but for now, just know that by 1990 they too were looking at getting into the handheld space, and what better way to do it than with their own established platform.

Known as the PC Engine GT in Japan and the TurboExpress everywhere else, the system set itself apart by supporting the full range of TurboGrafx "HuCard" cartridges. In many ways, the closest modern equivalent is the PlayStation Portal — designed as a handheld supplement to your pre-existing console library. It had a 2.6" backlit screen, comparable in size to the Game Boy, but could display 512 colors. Somewhat strangely, I have no idea what resolution its screen used, as I find three different cited sizes. You would assume it would display at the same resolution as a Turbografx-16 — 256x239 — but I've also seen both 336x221 or 400x270. At the time of writing this, its Wikipedia page says both in different places, I suppose serving as a lesson towards doing your own thorough research. Maybe I'll someday get a TurboExpress of my own and count the pixels myself to confirm one way or another.

The TurboExpress naturally had the same control layout as a home Turbografx controller, with a D-pad, I and II (rather than A and B), Select and Run buttons. The TurboExpress also includes the common Turbografx controller feature of turbo toggles. These three-way switches provides built-in turbo functionality, where the I or II button would automatically be repeatedly pressed for you. Rounding out the hardware is a mono speaker with stereo headphone jack, as well as a curious port and screw mount on the right-hand side. Much to my joy, this port was used for optional accessories, and the wise developers at NEC had the same idea Sega did and offered a TV tuner accessory named the "TurboVision".

As you've likely expected, the woes of using a color screen affected the TurboExpress as well, as it too used six AA batteries for a measly 3 hours of battery life, putting it about on par or even slightly worse than its non-Nintendo competition. While the advantages of leveraging the entire Turbografx library might have been enough to push it above some of the competition, what really killed the TurboExpress was the price. Launching at a whopping $249.99 (¥44,800 in Japan) in December 1990. The analogies to the PS Portal continue, as its low margins actually led NEC to raise the price of the unit to $299.99 after just four months in March 1991, although the price did drop in the years that followed. For reference, the home Turbografx-16 unit debuted at $199.99, with the later CD attachment going for an eye-watering $399.99.

Those years actually were pretty kind for the TurboExpress. It definitely never sold Game Boy numbers, but compared to the Turbografx-16, it did pretty well. NEC sold around six million Turbografx products, four million of those being HuCard-only models, and two million being CD units or TurboDuos. The TurboExpress, in comparison, sold 1.5 million units. That's not too bad, considering it was $50-$100 more than the home console, although I'm not sure how many users really doubled dipped for both systems. I imagine many players saved up to get one or the other.

The TurboExpress ran alongside the Turbografx-16 for entirety of its run, being discontinued along with its sibling in 1994. It was a pretty clever idea, leveraging the strength of your home platform to better entice the handheld system. It's a lesson that Nintendo themselves would learn over 25 years later with the release of the Switch, finally unifying their handheld and home development efforts. However, Nintendo was selling both home and handheld hardware to the same customers, doubling their potential install base. By releasing the TurboExpress alongside the Turbografx, many customers simply chose between them. Perhaps it would be wiser to rejuvenate an already successful console with a later handheld release. I wonder how that would work out...

The Sega Nomad

Yes, I did make that same joke twice. While the Game Gear was a moderate success for Sega, it never sold the gangbuster numbers that the Game Boy did. By 1995 it was abundantly clear that it would continue play second fiddle, but that there was still money to be made in the handheld console scene. To that end, Sega decided to perform the same ploy that NEC had, leveraging its home console base to make a new handheld console immediately appealing with its pre-existing libraries of games. The Mega Drive itself was on its last legs too, and while it had never done well in Japan or Europe, it was an incredible hit in North America, with the Genesis out performing the SNES at various stages. Thus, they decided to create a North American exclusive handheld console that would effectively be a portable Genesis system. This was no small feat, as this new unit would need to have all of the hardware capabilities as a home console, but was never designed to be power efficient enough to be a handheld. That did not deter them though, and in late 1995, the Sega Nomad was released.

The Nomad, I will admit, has some weird industrial design. Most handheld systems, even to this day, are largely symmetrical. The button layout and ports may unbalance one side over another, but the shell of the unit itself was both thicker on the left-hand side, but also taller, as the entire system tapered in two different axis towards the right. This is a far cry from the left-hand friendly Atari Lynx, with the bulged side largely being home to the six AA batteries again required to power the unit. Five years had passed since the Game Gear's battery intensive screen devoured its batteries, but any technological improvements to the display were offset by the rest of the power hungry components, and the Nomad too yielded a measly 3 hour battery life. This was perhaps even worse by 1995, as all of the similar competition had vanished, leaving consumers largely used to the Game Boy's much superior efficiency.

Aside from the industrial design, the system is about what you would expect for a handheld Genesis. Although the original standard controller only had three face buttons, the six-button ABCXYZ controller had become well supported by the end of the Genesis's life, and thus carried over to the Nomad as well. The D-pad too resembled a version of that six-button controller, with Mode and Start buttons to round out the ensemble. The screen is a 3.25" backlit 320x224 pixel display, required to match the Genesis's resolution. A single mono speaker and stereo headphone jack rounds out the ensemble, yeah yeah we've heard this before. What we haven't heard before are a few things that the Nomad really did to set it apart. Atop the right-hand side of the console is an "A/V out" port, making the Nomad the first handheld to offer output to a television. Even more excitingly is a standard Genesis controller port on the bottom. This makes sense, that would allow players to use their typical controllers when the Nomad was plugged into a TV, effectively making it into a Genesis unit- just kidding. The controller port only functions as a player 2 controller. Meaning that player one would need to play via the Nomad's controls, and your friend would need to look over your shoulder or something. That actually sounds pretty cool in a slightly punkish 'do what you want where ever you want to' vibe, but it wasn't exactly ergonomic.

The Nomad launched at $179.99, and was immediately a bit of an odd system. The Genesis had done really well, but it was well past its prime. The Nomad was infamously Sega's third attempt to give new life to the aging hardware, with the Sega CD and 32X being two prior — and largely poorly received — attempts. The Nomad faired no better, and although it sold around 1 million units, was considered a bit of a failure. No single thing really killed the Nomad, instead it was a combination of being a handheld version of a system that was aging and receiving few new titles, a focus on the next-generation Sega Saturn (which had already released), and harsh competition.

The Game Boy itself wasn't immune to the harshness of time, and its star too had begun to fade by the mid to late 90s. By 1996, the console had become obsolete in an era of rapidly evolving hardware, and it was on the verge of being retired just like its competition. That is, until a series of fortunate events all occurred making the Game Boy the hottest thing on the market, for the second time. The system would gain new life and with it new competition. However, that is a story for our third and final entry in this three-part saga.

Comparison