This time around I’m going to focus on a console I didn’t own but had some impact on my life as a gamer: the TurboGrafx - 16 or PC Engine outside of North America.
The system was a bit of an odd duck, releasing in 1989, kind of between the third and fourth console generations. The system has an 8-bit CPU and a 16-bit GPU. And according to some web searching, it was big in Japan but fared poorly in North America. Which means it had a huge library of games that never made it overseas.

The controller for the TG-16 reminds me very much of the NES. It features a directional pad, start, select buttons in the middle and a 1 and 2 button on the right. The one big difference being that the system has built-in turbo switches for either button.
Another oddity is that the system comes with 1 controller port. And that was in an era when game systems came with 2 ports, and often in bundles, with two controllers.

One feature I really like about the system is the cartridges. The games came on these little plastic cards called HuCards. The artwork inhabits the lower half of the card, and when inserted into the console, is still visible, while the black upper part and connector pins would be hidden inside the system. Once I had seen a broken NES cartridge and marveled at how small the actual circuit board was compared to the housing, which really put the small cartridge size into perspective.
Later on they’d make a CD attachment, which was the style at the time, but I never tried any of those games.

Two of my friends from back then had a TurboGrafx - 16, and we’d play around with it from time to time.
One of my buddies had a very limited selection of games, with Keith Courage in Alpha Zones and Pac-Land.

Another friend had a significant library of games, but I didn’t try too many of them. I remember playing Fantasy Zone and Bonk’s Adventure. And I remember watching him beat Splatterhouse.

It seemed like a pretty cool system, but going from the NES to the SNES, I didn’t feel like I missed out.

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I’ve got anime on the brain. A friend of mine told me about a promo Crunchyroll is running, and so I’ve been watching a lot of his recommendations and binging Dragon Ball Super. So when it came time to write a blog post, this topic stood out to me.

Americanized Anime

The first stuff I saw was only anime-adjacent. I was pretty dazzled by Voltron as a little kid. I mean, mechanized lions that transform into a humanoid mech, who summons a massive sword out of pure energy. Hell yeah!
Voltron was considered an American cartoon so far as I can tell, but it was a mashup of several Toie animes.

And beyond that, there were shows like Transformers and GI Joe that had wonderful looking Japanese animation despite being shows created specifically for a U.S. audience.

My first real Anime

The first actual anime I saw was Dragon Warrior, AKA Dragon Quest. According to a web search, it launched into first-run syndication from 1990-1991. I managed to wake up early enough to catch this show at an absurdly early time slot. I wasn’t smart enough to try to track this show down as a kid; I just got up early enough several times to catch bits and pieces of this one. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube these days.

Speed Racer - MTV

Back in 93’ MTV started showing Speed Racer. I was probably on there to watch Bevis and Butthead and happened to catch the jaunty theme song. Go, Speed Racer, go! Before long, I was embroiled in the shenanigans of Chim-Chim and figuring out the identity of that mysterious Racer X.
One day my mom saw me watching that one and remarked something like, “Speed Racer? That was on when your older brother was a kid.”

Sci-Fi Channel

Around the same time, the Sci-Fi channel began dabbling in Anime and I was lucky enough to be right there for it. The big deal was Akira. They started off showing mostly movies and then later moved on to having a weekly block called Ani-Monday with more episodic shows.
Here is some of the good stuff I saw there:
Demon City Shinjuku
Ninja Scroll
Perfect Blue
Vampire Hunter D
Robot Carnival
Lensman
Gurren Lagann
Read or Die
Monster

Dragon Ball Z

‍Dragon Ball Z hit the US in 1996. Another of those first-run syndication deals. DBZ was a show I watched before I had to get ready for high school. I was completely unaware of the original series Dragon Ball until many years later when Cartoon Network began to show it. I loved this show immediately, but new episodes released at a snail’s pace. I remember the show just kind of starting over after running out of episodes more than once.
Later Cartoon Network would pick the show up and start over, and it went well until they ran into their own production problems.

Adult Swim

In 2001, Cartoon Network started a block of animation later at night called Adult Swim. One of the shows in the mix was another very well-known anime, Cowboy Bebop.
Adult Swim went on to have a whole host of anime over the years:
Outlaw Star
Fooly Cooley
Fullmetal Alchemist
Ghost in the Shell: SAC & 2nd GIG
Samurai Champloo
Shin Chan
Death Note

Netflix

My next source of anime was arguably the worst of the group. Back in the day, Netflix used to mail you discs, and I’d slip some anime into the mix. It was a nice system because while Netflix’s nascent streaming service didn’t have every movie under the sun, their rental service sure seemed to. I quickly found out that the anime seemed to be the most damaged or stolen of all, and so they had a lot of incomplete series that I couldn’t get all of.

And that leads us back to the modern age of streaming.

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Warning: Once you see this trope, you may not be able to unsee it.

Here’s a trope that bothers the hell out of me. You’re watching a movie and in comes a massive war machine. Whether it be a mech or a giant robot, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is... it’s going to roar like a dinosaur. If it doesn’t outright do that, it’ll growl or groan.

I have some sympathy; these vehicles aren’t real, so we have to imagine what they’d sound like. But it seems sound designers will sneak in some animal noises for emphasis. And this isn’t limited to just robots and mechs. You can often find any kind of giant structure or vehicle doing this as well.

Roaring and Screeching:

When it comes to Mecha I find this one to be the most egregious. From time to time, you’ll encounter a depiction of a mech that will roar or screech. You could argue that this is done on purpose for intimidation factor, but that doesn’t make it much better in my opinion. Sometimes you’ll see robots do this as well, though I didn’t come prepared with examples.

Metal Gear Solid:

In the Metal Gear Solid games, the titular war machines tend to screech like a monster. In the following clip, it has a screech that almost reminds me of Godzilla.

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Mechwarrior 2:

In this clip, a kodiak class mech pops out of the ice in a sneak attack. But then it proceeds to RAWR during the sneak attack.

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Growling and Groaning:

I have a little more patience with robots and mecha groans and growls. They still have a tendency to annoy me, but I give them more leeway because maybe they aren’t actually moans and groans. They could be some kind of sci-fi transmission, scanner, weapon, or maybe even an attempt at communication.

War Machine:

The war machine in this movie is a growler. It’s even more noticeable in the movie, but I went with the trailer since it’s a new movie and I didn’t want to be spoilery.

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Judge Dredd (1995)

The war bot in Judge Dredd is another one that has no excuse to be growling. It vocalizes as though it’s sore from sitting in one place for so long. Maybe somebody coded it to growl a lot to sound intimidating, but I think this is just a weird choice in sound design.

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And then there’s this:

RoboCop:

In RoboCop, there’s a scene where the ED-209 robot tries and fails to navigate some stairs and then has a temper tantrum that is... well, I don’t know what the hell it is, just look at it.

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What works for me:

Personally, what works for me is the sound of heavy machinery amplified to the size of the machine in question. Booming footfalls, pieces clinking and clanging as they work. Thrumming engines or weapons. Here are a couple of good examples.

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Titanfall 2:

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Pacific Rim:

Whoops nevermind, none of the Pacific Rim clips I could find on YouTube would allow me to embed them. Great example though.

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Metal Skin Panic:

So instead enjoy this music video filled with pleasing mecha sounds of Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01.

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