Gaming Ads: NEC Technologies

NEC began all the way back in 1899 as Nippon Electric Limited in partnership with Western Electric Company. Based in Japan, it was a telecommunications company first that specialized in switchboards and telephones, though it has manufactured numerous other electronics over the years, including computers in the '50s and beyond. It has since opened branches around the world and become the largest computer maker in Japan. There is a lot more history to the company but I'm going to focus on its contributions to video games which for some reason is not mentioned at all on the company website's history page. In 1987 it licensed technology from Hudson Soft and created the PC Engine game console which would release in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16.

In Japan the PC Engine beat the Mega Drive (Genesis) to market where it released as a direct competitor to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was marketed as a 16-bit console despite having an 8-bit CPU, and being released at the same time as the Sega Genesis in the U.S., that was the main competition here. After only six months the price of the system dropped from $199.99 to $159 and in 1991 went all the way down to $99.99. Games were originally sold on what were called HuCards; they resemble Sega Master System's card game format though less than a year after release a CD add-on hit stores. It's also worth noting that in 1990 a handheld version of the TurboGrafx-16 called the TurboExpress was released exclusively in North America.

Being the console's primary game supporter, Hudson Soft teamed up with NEC to create Turbo Technologies in 1992 which replaced NEC Home Electronics USA as the North American marketing division for the TurboGrafx-16.

I updated this about a year after it originally appeared as I'm getting to Turbo Technologies now and I seem to have mixed up some things. There were also a couple Turbo Technologies ads mixed in with NEC. 

NEC Technologies albums: Facebook - Google Photos