TurboGrafx
From NEC Retro
- For the North American model, see TurboGrafx-16.
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The TurboGrafx is the European variant of the TurboGrafx-16.
After the US release of the TurboGrafx-16, NEC got cold feet upon seeing the sales numbers and decided to cancel their planned European releases. All of the stock planned for release in Europe - US systems modified to run on PAL televisions - was instead sold to various distributors to handle themselves. As well as having a different logo, the European TurboGrafx is a lighter shade of grey than its American counterpart.
Internally, it's more or less identical to the US system, with some minor changes to make it work with European televisions - it's been downclocked to 50hz and an additional Sony CXA1145 chip intercepts the NTSC video output and converts it to something more PAL-friendly.
PAL-specific TurboChips were never produced. Instead, all US games will run on a European console without any modding, although due to the downclocking there may be slowdown and/or timing bugs.
Distribution
The UK's allotment of consoles was bought up and handled by Telegames, who elected to sell the console via mail-order. Telegames reportedly found supporting the system difficult, as PAL consoles would no longer be manufactured, resulting in limited supplies.