TurboExpress
TurboExpress handheld
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| Manufacturer | NEC Home Electronics |
|---|---|
| Type | Video game console |
| Generation | Fourth generation |
| Retail availability |
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| Introductory price | $249.99 |
| Units sold | 1.5 million units |
| Media | HuCard |
| CPU | HuC6280 clocked at 7.16 MHz or 1.79MHz |
| Memory | 8KB RAM |
| Display | 400×270 pixels, 512 color palette, 481 colors on-screen |
| Power | 6 AA batteries or 6 volt AC adapter |
| Related articles | TurboGrafx-16 |
The PC Engine GT (Japanese: PCエンジンGT?) is a handheld video game console by NEC Home Electronics, released in Japan in late 1990 and later in the United States as the TurboExpress. It is essentially a portable version of the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine home console that came two to three years earlier. Its launch price in Japan was ¥44,800, whereas in the U.S. was $249.99, briefly raising to $299.99, soon dropping back to $249.99, and $199.99 by 1992.
The TurboExpress was technically advanced at the time, able to play all the TurboGrafx-16's HuCard games, and also featuring a TV tuner. It has a 66 mm (2.6 in.) screen, the same size as the original Game Boy, and can display 64 sprites at once, 16 per scanline, in up to 481 colors from a palette of 512. It has 8 kilobytes of RAM. The Turbo runs its HuC6280 CPU at 1.79 or 7.16 MHz.
The TurboExpress primarily competed with Nintendo's Game Boy, Sega's Game Gear, and the Atari Lynx. However, with 1.5 million units sold, far behind its two main competitors, NEC failed to gain significant sales or market share in the handheld market.
Due to a problem with cheap capacitors, sound failure is a frequent problem with the TurboExpress, sometimes even in new systems. The screen used in the TurboExpress was another source for problems, though it was state of the art when it was released. The LCD technology used was still fairly new and the rate of pixel failure was very high. Brand-new TurboExpress systems often had several bad pixels. Text is also difficult or impossible to read in certain circumstances, as many times fonts were written to be seen on a television screen, not on a small LCD screen. As a result, certain RPGs and adventure games can be difficult to play on the unit.
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