A portion of a VC-Reviews.com article:

In 1989 the PC Engine was still selling quite well in Japan, but Sega’s 16-bit Mega Drive system was beginning to pick up steam and Nintendo’s Super Famicom console was looming just around the corner. Sensing this, NEC decided that they needed a true 16-bit console if they were to have any hope of continuing their success in the Japanese console wars.

The successor to the PC Engine was originally planned to be an entirely new system with true 16-bit architecture, but somewhere along the lines NEC decided to instead go for a ‘quick fix’ and thus the SuperGrafx console was born.

The NEC SuperGrafx - Fantasticly beautiful design.

That is one fantastic hardware design. It’s a shame that it only saw five commercial games for it. I’ll have to pick one of these up sometime (or rather, enjoy other people’s photos of it since it’s expensive lol).