Retro Thing: A Tribute to the NEC Turbo Express

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A Tribute to the NEC Turbo Express

By James Grahame

Turbo Express

Justin at Modojo recently published an extensive ode to the NEC Turbo Express handheld gaming unit. It was capable of displaying 482 simultaneous colors on a miniscule backlit LCD, and six AA batteries gave it serious heft to fight off would-be muggers and real-world super villians. It sold for $299 and games came on credit-card shaped TurboGrafx-16 HuCards.

"Ultimately, I went with the Game Gear and it was a solid decision. NEC didn't last much longer in the videogame market, and the Turbo Express became extinct, but I never forgot about it, so a couple of years ago I scored a mint unit off Ebay and I've been beaming ever since. However, the Turbo Express, while cool, isn't exactly great technology today, or even back in the day."