The Strange (and Rare) Videogame Pics Page

NEC TURBOGRAFX EUROPEAN VERSION (?)

Some weeks ago I received this pic from a Spanish reader, Javier Varo Martos. He told me this is a pic of the European version of the Nec Turbografx system.

I always tought (and still I am pretty sure...) that Nec never made a European version of its immortal PC Engine system, anyway this pic is giving me some doubts on the subject...
It seems that the system was really distributed in parts of the globe: the owner of the system, Javier told me it was distributed in Spain some years ago and George F. Palamara told me he saw a PAL Turbo Grafx (with a number of games) in a Duty Free Shop in Japan nearly five years ago.

Another pic of the box.

Actually it seems that a European videogame shop has some Euro-TGs to sell. I'll let you know more ASAP!

Anyway I suppose that the European version of the system was only a limited production test. Probably NEC decided not to enter the European market after they had already produced some thousands systems.Another possibility is that these systems were supposed to be sold in Europe by an Austrian company that bought rights directly from NEC USA. This news item was published on some well known videogame magazine (like C+VG) in 1990 but nothing followed. I'll try to dig more on the subject!

The pad.

The French situation.

What's this French situation? Well, the French market was something different from the rest of Europe. As it was pointed by Julien Berlioux NEC consoles were imported in quantities in France. They were all original Japanese systems modified to work on local TV sets (every system had its video-out connector modified to handle RGB 60Hz signal along with the original NTSC composite video-out).
Almost all PC Engine models were imported: the original white PC Engine, Coregrafx 1 and 2, Supergrafx, CD-Rom² System, Super CD-Rom² System, PC Engine Duo and PC Engine GT.
The importer was a company called Sodipeng (Société de distribution de la PC Engine) that distributed all the systems in several supermarkets too!
Games were all in Japanese but came with a French translation of the manual.
Thanks to this "strange" situation France is now the third country in the world (after Japan and USA where NEC system were officially imported) where you can go in a used videogame shop and easily find NEC games and systems!
Thanks to Julien Berlioux for all the interesting informations!

Is there someone outside there that could help me giving me more info on this system? Was it distributed in other European countries or only in Spain? If there is someone out there that knows something on the subject, please send me an e-mail here:
brizio@mac.com
I hope to have more info on this soon!