First TG-16 CD games for Wii detailed

Gate of Thunder and Super Air Zonk set to be first disc-based games to arrive on Virtual Console when they are released next month.

Turbo CD games are coming to the Wii, and Hudson today updated its Virtual Console release list with the first (formerly) disc-based titles set to arrive on Nintendo's downloadable game service.

The classic side-scrolling shooter Gate of Thunder originally came out in 1992 and was packed in with the TurboDuo system, which was itself a combo of the TurboGrafx-16 and its Turbo CD add-on. It proved popular enough to spawn a sequel--Lords of Thunder--the following year, and was developed by Red Entertainment (developers of the Gungrave series and the new Mr. Domino game for the Wii).

Hudson is also prepping another Red-developed title for an October release: Super Air Zonk. As the name suggests, the game is a follow-up to Air Zonk, which is already available on the Virtual Console. Red took advantage of the spacious-for-the-time CD format for the game's soundtrack, which led to the game's "Rockabilly Paradise" subtitle.

Those two games will also be joined by the non-CD TurboGrafx-16 release Samurai Ghost. The side-scrolling action game pits players against an onslaught of tigers, skeletons, and disembodied flying heads.

The Turbo CD games will be available for 800 Wii points ($8), and Samurai Ghost will sell for 600 Wii points ($6).

121 Comments

  • shadowwolfff

    Posted Oct 2, 2007 11:55 am PT

    osxgp
    yeah that sucks b/c goldeneye was awsome. so was perfect dark. i would play both of them over again for sure if they appeared on the virtual console

  • BigWorld41

    Posted Oct 2, 2007 10:07 am PT

    Long Live TurboGrafx!

  • willripyouanew1

    Posted Oct 1, 2007 2:14 pm PT

    MEH!!!

  • Get_Shorty

    Posted Oct 1, 2007 10:05 am PT

    Samurai Showdown!

  • Chadius

    Posted Oct 1, 2007 8:59 am PT

    *Begs for Castlevania Rondo of Blood*

  • cspiffo

    Posted Oct 1, 2007 7:33 am PT

    With compresion as good as it is these days these games will shrink in size dramatically. Sega CD games with full CD audio soundtracks can be compressed ot a mear 70-80 megs and still are playable on emulators. They will most likely cut out the CGI cut scenes, the same way they did with Symphony of the night for the 360.

  • runstalker

    Posted Oct 1, 2007 1:06 am PT

    The graphics data on these sprite-based games is tiny. Take a big 2D game like Sonic CD -- the actual game data is all of 12 megs. It's the video cinematics and redbook audio that consumes all the space. But not nearly as much as you might think; the game's original video and music can be re-encoded using a console's proprietary compression.

  • osxgp

    Posted Oct 1, 2007 12:47 am PT

    I would still love to see Goldeneye from the N64 on the VC. However, since Nintendo nor Rare still own the rights to the 007 franchise, it most likely won't happen

  • Karjah

    Posted Oct 1, 2007 12:06 am PT

    ...look at the size of most roms on pc.

    breathe This game won't be half as large as you think. It's going to be ok.

  • Daveotron

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 9:17 pm PT

    Woah woah woah... slow down a second. A new Mr. Domino game?

  • chad_m

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 8:24 pm PT

    Sweet

  • The_Owner

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 7:41 pm PT

    Finally! This is one of the main games I've been waiting for to be put on the VC. Now if they would just get Lords of Thunder and Vasteel...

  • Acid_Kitsune

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 7:27 pm PT

    Willy105

    It will be fun downloading a 700 MB game under a dial-up connection and into a 512 MB hard drive.

    ----------------------------------------------

    lol
    Seriously though, I've been thinking about that too, but these games used most of the 700 MB with uncompressed music and video files, and since N hasn't announced a HD for the Wii yet I'm guessing they'll just compress those and be done with it.

  • zcds

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 6:54 pm PT

    cool gates of thunder, now how bout the books of x&y 1&2? any chance of that?

  • Agreb91

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 6:09 pm PT

    I have no clue what either of those games are.

  • madskilz

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 4:25 pm PT

    Serious - If I remember correctly, the TurboDuo was priced at $399 when it came out here. That, terrible marketing, and having Nintendo and Sega's systems already entrenched in the US resulted in it not selling well at all. (Even though it came with 5 sweet games including Bomberman hidden on the Gate of Thunder CD and a bunch of $5 or $10 game coupons). I remember picking one up on clearance at (then) Software Etc. not too long after it came out. Having to buy most Super CD games from a catalog didn't help either.. It was every bit as sweet and capable as the other two systems though, it sadly just wasn't meant to be in the US.

    I agree with SonicGod that GoT and LoT have the best rock music ever - I'm trying to find one to this day that tops them (including the Guilty Gear series). It's funny - I still have my system too, and for a 15 year old CD based system it still fires right up. Interesting considering I'm on my 3rd PS1, 2nd PS2, 2nd Xbox and 3rd PSP just from normal usage. Now *that's* quality.

  • Cypher_187

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 3:29 pm PT

    @gnbfd

    SSB is coming before SSBB I'm assuming.

  • gnbfd

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 3:05 pm PT

    SCREW ALL THIS! Where the hell is Yoshi's Island, SSB and Sonic CD?

  • Sonicgod

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 1:27 pm PT

    Lords of thunder and gate of thunder video Tg16 cd version with the music recorded badly.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otz8kIUqN38

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLP6FZWq-w

    lords of thunder is the better game and music. air zonk with music just as good.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HBNQpBakj4

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Obb0CowLg0

    . Where is my gate of thunder 2 lords of thunder 2, and air zonk 3 on xbox live arcade if Red Entertainment is still making games? I got gungrave and I thought they died after.

  • Sonicgod

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 12:46 pm PT

    Gate of thunder and lords of thunder, have the most amazing Heavy metal 80's butt rock to ever be put on some video game discs. $8 is worth it for the music, It's like they shrank and put "80's metal butt rock gods" with big hair and huge flowing muscles on the CD's surface..

    . You also get one of the best shooters ever with the music... .

    .Cd Super air zonk is not as good as Hucard air zonk in game or music, but the music is still better than new games you should have both anyway. But I don't care I have the real turbo duo and CD's of these games and all the CD sound will be compressed to fit in the Wii's tiny 512mb memory and it will sound bad compressed...Pass.

    The turbo duo and turbografx-16 line by NEC and hudson soft sold as good as the SNES and better then the SEga genesis in japan where it mattered in 1989 they bought more games than anywhere in the world.

    In japan there was tons of models of turbografx-16 some Supior to the SNES and Sega genesis and they all had CD-rom Supiority since the Sega cd and SNES cd failed.

    This version of TG-16 Lords of thunder runs on was a 8 bit cpu and dual 16bit GPU machine running thus marketing called it "16 bit" and with all memory expansions it had more memory than SNES or genesis.

    . Turbografx-16 CD-rom was huge in japan and there are games for it that could not be done on SNES or sega genesis carts. If you are lucky wii people might get Castlevainia rondo of blood on turbo CD the 2nd best castlevaina of all time and game that started castlevania Symphony of the night from japan, with compressed sound on Wii eww.. or "KAZE KIRI NINJA ACTION" it's ninja gaiden killer from japan. (and it had it's own ninja gaiden too.)

    At least the value of my Tg-16 cd disc went up since 1992, you will have to pay $200 or more to get these japanese games if they don't come to wii. I doubt the wii versions would drop the price for real tg-16 cd's even if they do come out.

    There is even a version of double dragon 2 on TG-16 super CD that had anime videos and CD sound the NES did not.

  • Serious

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 11:59 am PT

    If I recall the turbografx-16 wasn't actually a 16 bit system but 8 bit. and the games weren't all that exciting. All I can remember about the system is that a friend of mine had it and he was so disappointed in the games that were coming out while I had great Super Nintendo games and our other friend had great Genesis games. Did this system even sell well?

  • dragonsama

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 11:37 am PT

    Here's hopeing we will see Valis 1-4 and Y's 1-4 fo the VC very soon. those were the best games on the T-16 CD

  • DoubleAxe

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 10:30 am PT

    Nice... but Im more excited about SNK's NeoGeo system comming to the virtual console

  • Synapse720

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 10:23 am PT

    Sweet. I haven't been able to play my duo games since my system was stolen 10 years ago.

  • Silvernix

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 10:15 am PT

    Well, I guess we're gonna have to buy more SD cards. At least they only cost $20 or less for 2 gigs.

  • sieg6529

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 9:27 am PT

    nice, but where are the neogeo games?

  • Willy105

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 9:04 am PT

    It will be fun downloading a 700 MB game under a dial-up connection and into a 512 MB hard drive.

  • UrFaceIzDum

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 8:01 am PT

    Damn I was hoping for Ys, but I'll take Gate and Lords of Thunder for now

  • DeaDlyCorpsE

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 7:16 am PT

    i think they should release more turbo graphix games and neo geo games and atari jaguar and panasonic 3do and defenitly sega cd / 32x games basically any system that was out in the past that had a great game or two but that not everyone got to play and enjoy cause pretty much the only game i ever played for lets say jaguar was alien vs predator but nothing else so it would be nice and they would defenitly make some of the money they wished they had gotten back then now

  • armouredpriest

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 3:53 am PT

    Well, its one step closer to Sega CD games with this, but still not quite the same. The CD-ROM for the TG-16 was just that...a CD Drive, and I want to say 64 KBytes (if memory serves) of RAM to augment the system RAM for Buffering purposes...the Turbo Duo up-ed that RAM to 256 KBytes. There wasn't any extra hardware...unlike the Sega CD which had an Extra Processor, sound chip, and extra hardware based special effects (like SNES mode 7, but more) on top of the CD drive and the 768 KBytes of extra RAM

    Not saying it can't be done on the Wii...just saying its not as easy as emulating TG-16 CD games.

    Still looking forward to some of the TG-16 CD games I was never able to track down: Beyond Shadowgate is the main one, but I'm also kinda hoping for Syd Mead's Terraforming (a Shmup), Shapeshifter, and Shadow of the Beast.

    Also It'd be nice if Nintendo made it so I could directly insert my TG-16, Sega CD, and Saturn CDs directly into the Wii and play those games through the system emulators on the Wii. It'd be nice to be able to put all my old systems into storage.

  • AdolChristin

    Posted Sep 30, 2007 1:11 am PT

    XanderZane...it's Ys not Y's. I hate when people call it that. I love that series...

  • DreFullCircle

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 11:06 pm PT

    how about the original nights for sega saturn in time for the release of it's wii sequel?

  • LordelX

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 10:52 pm PT

    Awesome! Street Fighter 1 can come to a home console now!

  • madskilz

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 9:18 pm PT

    Holy cow, I guess I'll be buying a Wii tomorrow, then. Now just give me Lords of Thunder, Macross 2036, Cotton, Ys, Beyond Shadowgate, and Cosmic Fantasy 2 and I can die a happy man.

  • Zoryuken

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 7:48 pm PT

    Bring on Ys & Prince of Persia.

  • King9999

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 7:38 pm PT

    Zero Wing for Turbo CD isn't far behind...

  • Phazon_goomba

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 7:10 pm PT

    It makes you wonder how much support the VC will get.

  • personmann

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 6:43 pm PT

    Now if we're getting turbo cd games, does this mean were getting 32x, sega cd, and 64DD titles? (OOT's Master quest would be fun)

  • christhepenguin

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 6:21 pm PT

    Was this the September surprise? Those games are too expensive too just buy because you never played them. The games have to be of legendary proportions for me to buy them.

  • XanderZane

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 6:05 pm PT

    Y's, Keith Courage, Platter House and Legendary Ax would be nice. Gimme, gimme, gimme!!!

  • StarFoxA

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 5:55 pm PT

    @Latinbro1: Yeah, Nintendo really screwed themselves there. Only 512MB? I have a floppy disk with more memory than that.

  • karnovrpg

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 5:37 pm PT

    Give us the hundreds of good Japanese games that NEC screwed us over.

  • Andrew_D28

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 5:31 pm PT

    "more crap wares Draucla X only good Tg-16 game"
    WRONG. Seriously, Lords of Thunder and Gate of Thunder are two of the best games in shoot em up history. They've got amazing soundtracks as well. Plus Ys I and II are most likely going to hit the VC.

  • PseudoFinrod

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 5:25 pm PT

    How about Ys Brooks I & II? Now there's a game I'd purchase...

  • nekrotaunter

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 2:09 pm PT

    Gates of Thunder was a good title, but a little short to want to drop $8 on it.

  • m0zart Site moderator

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 2:08 pm PT

    alex20077 wrote:
    m0zart, you can put them on your SD card but the thing is you can't play them strait from the SD card (which would be a nice firmware update in the future)

    Yes I know, but what does that have to do with the complaint I was responding to, which stated that you couldn't back up the games at all -- and instead just had to redownload them?

  • clawboy

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 1:36 pm PT

    I love it when the old school games are brought back to life.

  • ad1x2

    Posted Sep 29, 2007 1:34 pm PT

    Either Nintendo needs to release an external hard drive (most likely for extra profit) or they need to release a firmware update that allows compatability with conventional external hard drives (less likely but we can always dream since we aren't limited to Nintendo-brand SD cards). Although it isn't completely necessary for the current VC selection due to the small size of the majority of the games, it would be necessary if later on we get support for other CD-based systems like the Neo-Geo CD, Saturn, or Dreamcast .

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