[General Topics] Menneisyys:
NEC’s TurboGrafx-16 (also known as the PC Engine) is a well-known and, at least in Japan, hugely successful fourth generation (8/16-bit combo) gaming console.

It was released (October 30, 1987) about a year before Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) (October 29, 1988) and three years before Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) (November 21, 1990), the, technically, directly comparable, other fourth generation consoles. This means it was probably the first real competitor to NES having decidedly better hardware capabilities (for example, MUCH better and stereo sound), even if you take the custom chips (“mappers”) of the latter into account. This also means emulating a TurboGrafx-16 game may result in a much better experience than a NES game - TurboGrafx-16 games have generally MUCH better sound and somewhat better graphics than NES ones.

It also had several quality titles; most importantly, the three-part Bonk series: Bonk’s Adventure, Bonk's Revenge (which was only ported to the GameBoy, unlike the first part; the latter had an Amiga and a NES port too. Note that the Amiga port is a free, official download, along with Katakis and R-Type) and, finally, Bonk's Big Adventure. These games are of pretty much the same quality as the Sonic series on the Genesis and the Mario series on the Nintendo consoles. Also see The Bonk Compendium for more info on these three titles. I've also taken a shot of a related article from the 07/1992 issue of German games magazine Power Play:

There are some other, remarkable games on the platform. For example, because of the hardware superiority to the other consoles (but not the Commodore Amiga!) of the time, its Turrican port was excellent and is well worth playing even now (if you don’t have the Genesis version or can’t play it). Also see THIS and THIS for a complete list of TurboGrafx-16 games.

Fortunately, there are some usable emulators for Windows Mobile capable of emulating TurboGrafx-16. Read on to find out what they are and how they compare.

Why should you bother?

While the currently available emulators are in no way up to par with, say, the emulators of NeoGeo, Genesis, SNES or NES (see my earlier roundups of ALL these platforms), you may still have a good time playing these old TurboGrafx-16 titles. Again, don't forget that, technically, these games are pretty good, particularly if you also listen to game music / digitized sounds. NES games had (unless they used some custom sound chips, "mappers", as is explained in my previous, NES-related roundup), in general, very simple in-game music; TurboGrafx-16 games, generally, are much better in this respect. That is, if you, for example, have a game in NES and TurboGrafx-16 formats only, you may want to prefer the latter because of the better music / sounds / graphics.

Current Windows Mobile devices run the currently available emulators without problems; this even applies to devices equipped with the "slow", 195 MHz TI OMAP CPU if you overclock them to 260-273 MHz (unless you use SmartGear, which makes it possible to avoid overclocking).

Why a full roundup?

As with my previous emulation-related articles (see the reader feedback (also at AximSite and at PocketGamer.org, the leading Windows Mobile gaming site, where the SNES roundup has also made its way to the frontpage) I’ve received to my, say, SNES emulation article), it was because of many reasons that made me publish this roundup:

There are absolutely no comparative, let alone up-to-date roundups on emulating this platform.

There are a LOT of apps to choose from (see Michu's related, excellent link / archive repository HERE), which really makes a newbie cry, given that there has been almost no comparative information on these titles on the Internet.

Users’ reports you can run into in different Windows Mobile forums are really unreliable. So are the advertisements of some software developers ;-) (never EVER believe any advertisement without reading an unbiased expert’s report / evaluation!)

Finally, the generic games (which I and Allen Gall have cleaned up last year - after that, we haven't received any criticism) and, particularly, the Emulators category received so much negative criticism (see for example THIS and THIS) before my starting to completely update & rework the annual Best Software Awards at Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine that I found it absolutely necessary, now that I’ve been appointed the Awards Nomination Manager, to, finally, show the whole world the right person (someone that REALLY knows what he’s doing and REALLY knows everything about the available software titles for Windows Mobile) was chosen for this task ;).

Getting ROM's

As usual, I am not allowed to give you direct links. If you, however, know what Google is, you already know what you should do ;-) Of course, you must own the original cartridge of all games you download.

After you've downloaded your ROM files, transfer them to your mobile, after unZIPping, if the particular emulator doesn't support archived images. (See the File handling: ZIP row in the Comparison Chart).

Please also see the remarks on Mad Programmer's File Dialog Changer for more information on where the ROM files should be placed on a storage card or the internal memory.