Hi all,
>"The Turbo Grafx was never officially released in Europe. It was
>however, given distribution as a "gray market" item through the
>Guillemot brothers (now owners of Ubisoft). The sold around 50,000
>units and it made them a lot of money. They basically took the PC
>Engine and put PAL conversion units onto them and enabled them to play
>US games.
It's important to differentiate between the PC Engine units and TurboGrafx
units in Europe.
The Guillemot brothers imported PC Engines and games. Since they seemed to
be based in France, their machines, if modified at all, would have been
modified for either SCART or SECAM. (SECAM and PAL are different standards,
and SCART is more of a 'universal' connector). However, there were also a
bunch of units sold in the UK which were PAL-modified - but I don't think
that was done by the Guillemot brothers; it was either done by individual
importers, or if they were in this "European supply chain", at least after
they were sold into the UK to smaller firms.
This PAL TurboGrafx is a different thing though. I don't know whether the
same people were involved - it seemed to appear years later, and in Spain
rather than the expected UK channel.
Although the source at Hudson may be knowledgeable about this situation, I
doubt he has all the answers - or at least, I doubt that it can be
summarized so succinctly.
- Dave