Handheld Entertainment System NEC's entry into the handheld market, the Turbo Express was a pocket-sized version of the TurboGrafx-16 home game system, released in 1990 to compete head to head with the Nintendo GameBoy and Atari Lynx. The Turbo Express was undeniably remarkable for its time, and yet remains to this day one of the most powerful handheld systems ever crafted. The Turbo Express was not an independent system developed to play a new line of portable but underpowered software as had been done by the competition. Instead NEC opted to rest the Turbo Express' laurels on its already existing line of TurboGrafx-16 software and technology. Proving to be an innovative concept, the Turbo Express was engineered to take advantage of the slim design of the TurboGrafx-16 HuCard to the greatest extent, cloning the TurboGrafx-16 into a portable version of its self, crafting a portable console unit that could, on its own, play any TurboGrafx-16 HuCard game on the market. Almost all of the amenities of the TurboGrafx-16 were carried over to the Express with the exception of CD-Rom expandability. The Express could also be turned into a portable television with the addition of the TurboVision TV Tuner accessory. |
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