Review: Analogue Duo
Before they offered to send me a unit for review, I had the Analogue Duo preordered. It would have been the first of the company’s consoles that I ponied up for. That’s because, beyond just being a very nice boutique console, it solves a few problems for me.
The Turbografx-16 is a nightmare to collect for. Sketchy capacitors mean that a lot of them just die on the shelf, and the typical price of a Turbografx game is ridiculous. Pricecharting has the average price of a game for the console at over $100. Forget the best games the console has to offer; if you want anything aside from sports titles, you’re paying out the nose. And that’s not even taking into account Turbografx-CD games.
Because of this, the Analogue Duo is a pretty strange console to produce. Someone who is curious about collecting for the console is probably going to get discouraged quickly. This is almost a “who is this even for?” situation, but there’s an answer to that we’ll get to. It’s extremely niche. The niche-est console Analogue has taken on.
“It isn’t really financially viable in terms of development investment,” Analogue CEO and founder Chris Taber told me. Analogue didn’t make the Duo to bring in a pile of money, they did it because they love the platform, and you can easily tell.
I have a modest stack of Turbografx-16 games already in my collection, but that isn’t the reason I wanted an Analogue Duo. I want to start collecting for the PC-Engine, which is the Japanese equivalent to the TG16. While the Turbografx was a tremendous flop here in North America, the PC-Engine was a huge success. NEC was able to compete with Nintendo, initially outselling the Famicom before holding a firm second place in the market next to the Super Famicom.
As such, a
Read more on destructoid.com
