The Adventures Of Johnny Turbo, Or: Please, PLEASE Buy a Tur

[Bobinator]

So, some of you may know about this. Some of you may not. Even if you do, you can 'thank' me for reminding you that this exists.

In the early 90's, the Turbo Graphx had fallen far behind the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. It didn't help that they had little to no presence in the UK, being kept to mail order. Now, the marketing folks at NEC had about two real options to help spread the word about the Turbo Graphx.

A. Make kiosks around gaming stores across the country, letting players try the console's high quality arcade ports and their flagship CD SHMUP, Lords of Thunder.

B. Make a series of comics blaming Sega for everything, while calling them a bunch of inhuman monsters who are out to steal all your money. While you're at it, take the opportunity to make fun of your fat coworker.

You can imagine which option they went with, I'm sure.

So the first two comics involve this fat, bearded guy in a backwards baseball cap beating people up while yelling at people about multitaps and Sherlock Holmes. The third comic... well. Let's just say that it involves the most enthusiasm about Bomberman that any human in this multiverse has ever had.



Here's a little something to whet your appetite. Sadly, there's no place where the raw scans are kept, but if you don't mind the commentary, you can find all of them here. Oh, and keep in mind as you read these that "Johnny Turbo" is actually a real, living person. A person who probably didn't have many friends at the office, I'd imagine.

[DreamcastRIP]

While I was broadly aware of the existence of said Johnny Turbo character as a lame marketing tool of TTI's to help market the TurboGrafx-16 in the USA I'd never seen any such documention prior to now. Thanks for posting, Bobinator. 

I see from the Wikipedia entry...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Turbo

... that said marketing failure even took to using the name 'FEKA' as a thinly veiled reference to sully SEGA, lol!

[TrekMD]

Never heard of this until now.  Given that Atari had done comics in the past, I wonder if they took inspiration from that in an attempt to help their sales.

[Rogue Trooper]

So, some of you may know about this. Some of you may not. Even if you do, you can 'thank' me for reminding you that this exists.

In the early 90's, the Turbo Graphx had fallen far behind the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. It didn't help that they had little to no presence in the UK, being kept to mail order. Now, the marketing folks at NEC had about two real options to help spread the word about the Turbo Graphx.

A. Make kiosks around gaming stores across the country, letting players try the console's high quality arcade ports and their flagship CD SHMUP, Lords of Thunder.

B. Make a series of comics blaming Sega for everything, while calling them a bunch of inhuman monsters who are out to steal all your money. While you're at it, take the opportunity to make fun of your fat coworker.

You can imagine which option they went with, I'm sure.

So the first two comics involve this fat, bearded guy in a backwards baseball cap beating people up while yelling at people about multitaps and Sherlock Holmes. The third comic... well. Let's just say that it involves the most enthusiasm about Bomberman that any human in this multiverse has ever had.



Here's a little something to whet your appetite. Sadly, there's no place where the raw scans are kept, but if you don't mind the commentary, you can find all of them here. Oh, and keep in mind as you read these that "Johnny Turbo" is actually a real, living person. A person who probably didn't have many friends at the office, I'd imagine.

:-)


You can tell that's fiction in a graphical form, talk of Sega having a 'Master Plan' for Sega CD/MCD indeed, tsk....

[Rogue Trooper]

Actually there were some bizzare (black+white) comic strip adverts doing the rounds for the 1989 P.C.W show in magazines here in UK at the time.

Captain Light Vs The Dark Destroyer.

Dark Destroyer destroying games shops, so Captain Light basically does a flying kick and kicks Dark destroyer right in the balls!.

Anyone else remember these...or just me?.

Very odd way to promote a trade show....

[onthinice]

Comics rule!
Videogaming featuring Video Victor.

[DreamcastRIP]

According to Wikipedia there were three issues of EGM where the Johnny Turbo cartoon strip featured. Here are the links to scans of those three issues:

http://www.retromags.com/magazines/category/usa/electronic-gaming-monthly/electronic-gaming-monthly-issue-42#.UhBkSj8bu4p

http://www.retromags.com/magazines/category/usa/electronic-gaming-monthly/electronic-gaming-monthly-issue-43#.UhBkuj8bu4o

http://www.retromags.com/magazines/category/usa/electronic-gaming-monthly/electronic-gaming-monthly-issue-44#.UhBk2z8bu4o

If posting those links in any way infringes site rules then I apologise in advance and a moderator is of course welcome to delete this post.

[Gorf]

You can tell that's fiction in a graphical form, talk of Sega having a 'Master Plan' for Sega CD/MCD indeed, tsk....

Right up there with 'Blast Processing".