Could Mortal Kombat have saved the TG16?

[Koopa64]

This is of course assuming the TG16 was previously successful enough to even have a port of Street Fighter 2 make it to American shores.

 

Let's pretend Mortal Kombat 1 was in the cards for the TG16 and would have been uncensored like the Genesis version. Could a blockbuster game like this have helped?

[Lostdragon]

Would it of been a real shot in the arm for the system? Most likely yes.. 

 

Would it of saved the system? 

 

No. 

 

 

Mortal Kombat was ported to so many popular home systems at the time, consumers were spoilt for choice as to what system to play it on. 

 

Amiga, GB, PC, SNES, MD, Mega CD, GG, MS... 

 

 

 

[Tanooki]

Minimal impact at best, not like it would have been the premium version let alone exclusive so there would be no reason to get a TG to buy it, and let's face it, MK was popular because of the gory nature of it, not because the franchise on the whole is all that good.  The story and backstory on stuff is far more fun than the gameplay.

[+GoldenWheels]

Saving the TG (making it a bigger success anyway) would probably have more to do with starting off better.

 

Release (ASAP) it in the US without pointless the case redesign. Get the drop on the other 16 bit systems.

Include a "Twin Commander" style controller to easily allow 2p play.
Pick better games to localize from Japan.

[Steven Pendleton]

No

[Lost Monkey]

Dracula X wouldn't have saved it. 

[MrMaddog]

Neither could the NeoGeo ports made for the Arcade CD-ROM² Card, and that's in Japan where the system was extremely popular.

[electricmastro]

I think having more console crossover games like Tetris or Lemmings would have helped.

[Leonard Smith]

One game wouldn't save it.

Just like MK3 wouldn't have saved the Jaguar.
 

The installed base just wasn't there to make a game like this sell in sufficient numbers.

[Pixelboy]

8 hours ago, GoldenWheels said:

Release (ASAP) it in the US without pointless the case redesign. Get the drop on the other 16 bit systems.

Include a "Twin Commander" style controller to easily allow 2p play.
Pick better games to localize from Japan.

I agree with the case redesign issue. They should have just gone with the same PC Engine case with "Turbografx-16" printed on it. Doing that, NEC would have come to market earlier than it did, and would have had a better chance against the Genesis and SNES.

[electricmastro]

One of the biggest things for TurboGrafx-16 is that it might have needed a more enticing game early on to encourage more people to buy it. Even with Genesis, even though Shinobu and Phantasy were perhaps its biggest games early on, that still might not match the enticing appeal which Sonic would bring two years after the Genesis launched.

 

Games like Bonk or Bomberman prob would have been better choices to push the console with than games like Keith Courage in Alpha Zones.

[Mikebloke]

While cross releases do help if you already own the system to keep up with it, it likely wouldn't have been a reason to buy the console, unless price point.

 

I would agree with electricmastro that focusing on its actual well known IPs would have been more helpful, but then, say actually marketing the release of the console and selling the games in it might have helped in itself.

While the UK did have a TG-16 import scene, technically the console itself was the only product officially released in the country, and I think even that was mail order. Wasn't exactly a high street Argos product.

[Reaperman]

Let's flip the question around.  Look at all the *fantastic* games that didn't 'save' the Wii-u and still sell full-price on switch. Games weren't their problem. TG-16 and Wii-u were both excellent systems, but marketing fails that held them back.

 

Which is a shame, since as mentioned, really the big 'hindsight marketing flop' about it was just waiting too long. 

 

Though completely countering my own point about one more game not saving the system, and having used wii-u as an example--Super Mario Maker could have probably saved TG-16 on its own  . 

Edited April 29, 2022 by Reaperman

[CatPix]

The PC-Engine had plenty of excellent games in Japan, and in fact crushed the Megadrive on that market.

Not a single game would have saved the TG-16 from a weak and botched advertizing campaign, much like how Sega never managed to sell the Master System in the US or Japan but it ended in a 50% market share with Nintendo in Europe.

Edited April 30, 2022 by CatPix

[+Black_Tiger]

The proposed CD version was impossible. CD2 was the format in North Americca at the time and it would have been tough to oull off the Game Gear MK port using that.

 

The Sega-CD has up to three times the space to load a match into than the Super CD format.

 

A Mortal Kombat port back then would have required something like a 12 - 16 meg HuCard and would cost much more than a MD or SNES cart of that size.

 

This is likely why the deal didn't go anywhere. Whoever it was that offered the deal to NES Interactactive didn't understand how CD games worked and assumed that the CD format meant a cart size of 4400 megs.

 

If ever there was a single game that had a shot at making the TG-16 a mass hit it would have been the World Warrior exclusivity.

[+jgkspsx]

No. Nintendo’s anti-competitive (and illegal!!!) policies would have doomed it from the get go even if the marketing and many game covers had not been disasters, even if they had brought more amazing fighting games from Japan like the world-beating Fatal Fury Special, even if it had included two controller ports (and avoided the stigma of being the friendless only-child console), and even if it had launched earlier (though the delay was probably at least partly caused by Nintendo’s iron grip on the US market).

[Tanooki]

Well those policies may have harmed them, but really not that much, look how Sega did just fine with their 16bit era stuff that started in 1989.  NEC had no excuse other than gross incompetence.  They should have curb stomped Sega pretty well.  Those policies given how the US market was thanks to those dolts at Atari and the me-toos with subpar (largely) garbage ran it into the ground and ruined trust.  Those overbearing policies helped sucker the retail people back into buying and pushing the stuff at all, and the tight controls largely filtered out more crap than not, even if we did lose some Japanese gems we found out 10-15 years later, but it helped.

 

In the end it was NECs fault and no one else unfortunately.