When Konami announced the Turbo Grafx/PC Engine Mini, many were excited. It was a chance to replay many of the best games from an underrated console, and Konami just kept announcing more and more games. But then some issues began popping up, with the mini console not being sold in certain countries like Canada, but we were still confident that the system would be worth getting. But now a new issue has arisen.
Both the TG 16 Mini and Sega’s Genesis/Mega Drive Mini are being handled by M2, who are regarded as porting masters. They have done some of the best ports for games including Gauntlet IV ( their first game) and GBA games on the Wii U. It should all be good, but the Genesis Mini has brought some cause for concern. Early reviewers such as Game Sack have pointed out that there is a problem with audio lag, and when it comes to controllers, build design. Strider has an audio delay of 1/2 a second and some games have up to 11 frames of audio fx lag.
While the TG 16/PC Engine has an advantage, namely that the sound is handled by the CPU itself, that is not a guarantee these issues will not be there. It is possible that these issues are being cause, not by the specs of the console, but rather the hardware used for porting and emulation. If that is the case, then these audio issues will repeat themselves in the TG16/PC Engine Mini.
There are other causes for concern as well. M2 also handled the anniversary collections Konami put out recently and while they were mostly good, there were some issues there as well. Audio lag and crackling, emulation issues and more occurred. They were not common in the collection, and varied in severity from system to system that people were playing on, but they were there. One reason for this was the roms given to M2 by Konami for porting the games to the collections.
M2 is very busy these days, what with doing multiple retro compilations, 2 mini consoles, the Sega Ages re releases on Switch and possibly more projects. It is very possible that the company is simply seeing their resources spread too thin. Having them on board used to be a sign that the ports would be top quality, but maybe they are taking on too many projects. I hope I am wrong about the Turbo Grafx/PC Engine Mini, but their work with the Genesis Mini gives me reason for worry.
Author’s Note: I want to thank Chris Tang for his help with some of the technical aspects I discussed here.