TurboDuo

The Japanese PC Engine Duo R

When the PC Engine Duo launched in Japan on September 21, 1991, it retailed for ¥59,800. The product garnered a Good Design Award.

NEC later revised the design of the console to reduce both manufacturing costs and the sale price. This new version, the PC Engine Duo R (PCエンジンDuo-R, Pī Shī Enjin Duo Āru), went to market on March 25, 1993[1] with a retail price of ¥39,800. The Duo R omits the 3.5 mm phone connector for headphones, and the locking switch for the lid of the Duo's top-loading CD-ROM drive. The Duo R has an differently shaped, off-white casing.

NEC released its final variation of the PC Engine Duo on June 25, 1994.[1] The PC Engine Duo RX (PCエンジンDuo-RX, Pī Shī Enjin Duo Āru Ekkusu) has a bluer case, and was bundled with the Arcade Pad 6, a six-button controller, instead of the standard Turbo Pad controller.

TTI released the TurboDuo to consumers in North America in October 1992, at a retail price of US$299.99. The price was, in part, a consequence of the relatively high cost of CD-ROM drive manufacturing.

Since TTI understood that the price was too high for many people in their target market, they included a booklet of coupons for TurboDuo games and accessories, plus several pack-in games on two CD-ROMs: Ys Book I & II (1990) and a Super CD compilation of four of Hudson Soft's more popular TurboGrafx-16 titles: Bonk's Adventure (1989), Bonk's Revenge (1991), Gate of Thunder (1992), and Bomberman (1983). (Bomberman was hidden in an Easter egg.) The package also included one TurboChip game: Dungeon Explorer (Hudson Soft 1989). Later, TTI replaced Dungeon Explorer with one of a variety of TurboChip titles, such as Ninja Spirit (Irem 1988) and Final Lap Twin (Namco 1989).

With the release of the TurboDuo, TTI reduced the retail price of the TurboGrafx-CD peripheral for the TurboGrafx-16 to $150.00, and began marketing the Super System Card, which enabled the TurboGrafx-CD to play the new Super CD games. The Super System Card is programmed with the updated v3.0 BIOS, and increases the TurboGrafx-16's RAM by 192 kilobytes. The TurboGrafx-CD requires the updated BIOS to read Super CD discs, and the additional RAM to run the software capably. The Super System Card retailed for US$65 or, when bundled with the TurboDuo's Super CD compilation disc, US$95.

Unlike the previous consoles which used actual game characters as mascots, for the TurboDuo marketing campaign TTI created a character called "Johnny Turbo".[3] Turbo, a superhero character, was the alter ego of Jonathan Brandstetter, who himself was based in part on real-life game developer and TurboDuo brand manager John C. Brandstetter.[4][5] Consisting of a three comic campaign that ran in issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly,[6][7][8] the stories featured Johnny opposing agents of the company "FEKA" (a thinly veiled parody of Sega) who were tricking children into buying their CD-based add-on instead of the TurboDuo.[9] Reactions to the advertising campaign were negative, with Jonathan J. Burtenshaw of GameSpy descring them as "petty" and "overly confrontational," and further conjectured that it hurt TurboDuo sales.[10] Despite this Turbo would later resurface as a playable character voiced by Brandstetter in the 2019 puzzle game Crystal Crisis,[11] and in name and image only for Johnny Turbo's Arcade, a Data East arcade game compilation for the Nintendo Switch produced by Brandstetter's company Flying Tiger Development.[12]