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Turbo Express: A Loving Tribute
Written by Señor Cha Cha on Friday, May 5, 2006
Oh Turbo Express... your batteries lasted a just a couple hours and your library wasn't all that great, but we loved you anyway. A tribute, to this most classic "portable" system!
...Continued From Page 2 Handy dandy...wrist strap...
Like most portable systems, the Turbo Express came with a wrist strap. It's not especially well made but it does what it's supposed to do. However, it's probably not a good idea to actually use it. I've never tested the system's durability, and I'm not about to start now.
The king of all media...
Turbo Express games are contained on these credit card thin things called HuCards. They're just extremely easy to carry around and they look extremely cool to this day. They can also take quite a beating, as you can see from some of the scuff marks.
Certainly there's a "resolution"...
Compared to the DS Lite and PSP, the Turbo Express screen is ass, but then again it should be considering it's a forefather of portable gaming. In its heyday, the screen was superior to the Game Boy's as well as the Lynx's, which is just terrible. However, I prefer the Game Gear's screen resolution to the Turbo Express, but the fight was pretty close. I just wish that, for all of the unused real estate on the front of the system, that NEC would have enlarged the screen. I'm not sure how doable that was back in 1990, but it sucks seeing this tiny screen surrounded by this large, black border. And it's especially annoying with text because it's practically unreadable. When my parents said that I was straining my eyes, they were right.
The epic conclusion...
There's no way in hell that a Turbo Express can compete with the likes of a DS Lite or a PSP, and it's technically not supposed to. Its screen is inferior, its sound is too low, and that battery life...damn...it makes the PSP look good. But naturally, this is how evolution is supposed to work. However, I still love this machine because it looks good, feels great in the hands, and of course, plays TurboGrafx-16 games. Hit the jump for a look at some of my favorite games for the system (with video)!
posted May 8, 2006