The SuperGrafx is the closest thing the video
game industry has ever produced to an assassin.
The console was designed and marketed by
NEC with the sole purpose of eliminating
Nintendo's Super Famicom as competition for
NEC's own PC Engine.
The 8-bit Famicom had ruled the video game
market in Japan until the release of the
mighty PC Engine. NEC's PCE sported much
better hardware and more advanced games than
the Famicom could ever dream of. This discrepancy
led to NEC grabbing a large share of what
was once Nintendo's market. Not to be so
easily driven away, Nintendo released the
16-bit Super Famicom. With hardware scaling
and rotation, tons of colors, and powerful
group of third-party supporters, Nintendo
was poised to take back what they felt was
their market share.
Enter: The Supergrafx. Feeling the pressure
from Nintendo's Super Famicom and Sega's
Mega Drive, NEC readied there own next generation
console. Sporting a souped up graphics chip
with the ability to match all of the SFC's
hardware tricks, the SuperGrafx was launched.
As it turned out, the PC Engine held its
own against the new competetion, making the
SuperGrafx obsolete long before its time.
After the eventual demise of the PC Engine
at the hands of the Super Famicom and Mega
Drive, the SuperGrafx was all but forgotten.
During its short life, the SuperGrafx received
some fantastic software, just not very much
of it. In total, only five native SuperGrafx
games were released, along with the dual
mode Darius Plus. At least two others were
in development, Strider and Galaxy Force
II, but were never released.
What makes the SuperGrafx so unique and sought
after is that with the right add-ons, it
is the only console capable of playing every
PC Engine game. It can play PCE HuCards,
PCE CDs, PCE Super CDs, PCE Arcade CDs, and
the native SuperGrafx HuCards. That adds
up to a very impressive library of near 700
titles.
This page is dedicated to the glory that
was and the glory that nearly was in the
history of the SuperGrafx. Enjoy SuperGrafx
Extreme.
