A new challenger appears in collaboration with NEC Home Electronics and Hudson Soft.
The PC Engine released in Japan on October 30, 1987 and launched with Bikkuriman World and Shanghai. The console managed to outperform Nintendo's Famicom and Sega's Mega Drive in the region. By 1989, the PC Engine had sold 1.5 million units and obtained 50% of home console sales in Japan. The success of the console led to NEC distributing it in North America but under different branding and a "new" but bigger design.
The TurboGrafx-16 released in North America on August 29, 1989 and this time around it came with the pack-in game Keith Courage in Alpha Zones. Unfortunately, it couldn't replicate this same success in other regions, with the console in North America being well behind the Sega Genesis and SNES in sales. As a result, NEC decided not to release the system in Europe, where it had been planned to be released as simply the TurboGrafx.