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| - Okay, quiz time. To effectively market your video game console when it's struggling against two well-established competitors, what would be the best course of action to take? If you answered C, you may have been working for NEC in the early 90s as a marketer for their console the Turbo Grafx 16, because that's exactly what they did: they presented multi-page ads in gaming magazines centering around a "computer expert" named Jonathan Brandstetter, better known under his alias Johnny Turbo, in his quest to teach gamers the completely unbiased truth about the TG-16 compared to NEC's self-appointed rival Se--err, Feka.
- Previously, NEC used Bonk (who debuted in the game Bonk's Adventure) as the TG-16's original mascot. Later, continuing this theme, TTi would adopt Air Zonk (a cyborg-Bonk who starred in horizontal shooters Air Zonk and Super Air Zonk) as the mascot for TurboDuo. Air Zonk was featured on the TurboDuo console packaging, appeared in countless advertisements, all brochures and catalogs, trade show appearances (i.e. the Consumer Electronics Show), etc., until he was eventually phased out in favor of Johnny Turbo.
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| abstract
| - Previously, NEC used Bonk (who debuted in the game Bonk's Adventure) as the TG-16's original mascot. Later, continuing this theme, TTi would adopt Air Zonk (a cyborg-Bonk who starred in horizontal shooters Air Zonk and Super Air Zonk) as the mascot for TurboDuo. Air Zonk was featured on the TurboDuo console packaging, appeared in countless advertisements, all brochures and catalogs, trade show appearances (i.e. the Consumer Electronics Show), etc., until he was eventually phased out in favor of Johnny Turbo. Unlike Bonk or Zonk, Johnny Turbo never starred in any games. Instead, his only appearances were in three comic book-like advertisements published in gaming magazines of the day, such as Video Games & Computer Entertainment and Electronic Gaming Monthly. Johnny Turbo and his partner Tony were pitted against monsters or androids from a company called "FEKA" (a thinly veiled parody of Sega), which, in the comics, mislead children into wasting their money by claiming that its CD system could work by itself. In reality, Sega never made such a claim with their real-life console, which was always marketed as an add-on to the Genesis. Ironically, NEC itself had previously sold the TurboGrafx CD add-on, which, like the Sega CD, could not function alone. The advertising campaign failed; in 1992, when the comics appeared, the TurboDuo system, competing against the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System, was already a distant third in the market. Johnny Turbo is the alter-ego of Jonathan Brandstetter, who is based on a real life game developer, John C. Brandstetter. Tony, the sidekick of Johnny Turbo, is based on Tony Ancona.
- Okay, quiz time. To effectively market your video game console when it's struggling against two well-established competitors, what would be the best course of action to take? If you answered C, you may have been working for NEC in the early 90s as a marketer for their console the Turbo Grafx 16, because that's exactly what they did: they presented multi-page ads in gaming magazines centering around a "computer expert" named Jonathan Brandstetter, better known under his alias Johnny Turbo, in his quest to teach gamers the completely unbiased truth about the TG-16 compared to NEC's self-appointed rival Se--err, Feka. 1.
* Episode 43: The Master Plan! -- Johnny learns that Feka is marketing a CD system as "the first of its kind," and this simply will not stand. Johnny takes out the Feka goons who were selling the CD systems, and more in the shadows promise their revenge. 1.
* Episode 44: Let 'Em Dangle! -- See above, only this time, there's a great focus on the more recently released TurboDuo, which combined the TG-16 and its CD addon into one unit, a capability which the Genesis and Sega CD lacked at the time. Because everybody who wanted the Sega CD obviously didn't own a Genesis at the same time. 1.
* Episode 45: Sleepwalker -- Johnny's sidekick Tony gets A Day in the Limelight. And he has one hell of a dream. Today, Johnny stands mostly as a curious and forgotten footnote in the history of a company which was losing ground in the US to Sega and the Big N, but thanks to the internet and webmaster Sardius, you too can experience the entire saga of Mr. Turbo here. The first two "issues", as noted above, are fairly typical gaming attacks, with Feka presented as a faceless man assisted by identityless goons, but then the third one -- most likely an utter last-ditch attempt for NEC to just make some sort of impact on the average gamer's mind -- got... weird. Very, very weird. Seriously, read the whole thing. It's much more amusing than it should be.
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