Younger gamers have a somewhat narrow view of consoles. In their mind, it’s mostly always been the big three – Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo. They may have dabbled with Sega at some point, but that’s about it.
The big three may be well established now, but not too long ago the console market was a hotly contested warzone of companies vying for dominance in the industry.
This can be likened to the format wars, a fierce competition for place in the same market, the ultimate prize being the position of media standard.
You remember recording Disney movies on VHS tapes, but only because JVC managed to beat Sony’s own analog videotape, the Betamax.
More recently, Blu-ray battled against HD-DVD for control of the high-definition DVD market, with Blu-ray winning the war due to gathering more exclusive deals from heavyweight movie studios. After Warner Brothers jumped ship, the war was over.
While consoles don’t have the same mutual exclusivity as the media formats, there still isn’t place in the market for too many of them. Can you imagine cross-platform development having to span eight different consoles?
There is only so much room at the inn, and over the years a lot of platforms have found themselves sleeping in the barn. Some of them, however, didn’t even make it to reception, and those are the ones discussed below.
Age aside, living in South Africa means that a lot of these consoles flopped in America, and no one ever bothered to bring them across the Atlantic. For those of you that have had the displeasure of actually playing on these – I’m sorry for your loss.
Nintendo Virtual Boy
You’ve no doubt heard of this one before, as it is frequently touted as the worst video game console ever produced – and by Nintendo no less. Nonetheless, I couldn’t maintain my gaming journalist integrity without including this, so here it is, in all its awful red and black glory.
The console marketed “virtual reality”, which was in fact an awful attempt at 3D rendering of 2D graphics – graphics belonging to the Gameboy games which it mostly carried.
It was also big, bulky and impossible to play as intended without some serious neck strain. It was loads of fun if you enjoy strained eyes, headaches and cancer. Okay, I made up the cancer part, but give it 10 more years and I bet the people who had the misfortune of owning one are going to find blood in their urine.
Yup, it’s every bit as uncomfortable as it looks.
Apple Pippin
Yup, that’s right; Apple actually tried their hand at consoles once upon a time. This was back in 1995, obviously before Apple made a landslide profit off every product they put a lowercase “I” in front of.
The console sold a pitiful 42,000 units, and it was no wonder – an embarrassingly small library of games and Apple’s lack of experience made for a terrible final product.
It didn’t help that the system was overpriced at $699, with hardware specs far inferior to its lower-priced competitors. However, that hasn’t stopped them from selling millions of notebooks, so maybe it’s just the no games thing.
If only they called it the iPippin, maybe things could have been different.
Nokia N-gage
Before you scroll down to the comments to inform me that this isn’t a console, it’s a cellphone – well you’ve just made my point for me. It’s not a console, but Nokia tried damn hard to market it as one.
Couple this with the fact that it was entering a market already dominated by the Gameboy Advance, and it’s obvious (to everyone except Nokia) that it was doomed to fail.
Of course this is a company that began making paper and shoes and eventually established a near cellphone monopoly for a number of years, so it’s unsurprising their egos got a bit carried away.
This steaming pile of plastic actually boasted 3D games – unfortunately, all of them were unequivocally terrible due to its shoddy hardware and low resolution.
By far the most damning evidence in Nokia’s trial for criminal ass-hattery is the fact that you had to take out the battery every time you wanted to put in a new game card. Nokia responded to this by saying that people do that with SIM cards, and the whole world facepalmed.
If you look really closely at those hands, they look like they’re trying to escape.
Mattel Hyperscan
This hulking red beast was released in 2006, and you’re probably surprised that you haven’t heard of such a recent console. Well, I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t be.
The Hyperscan had an interesting premise: every CD game came with paper trading cards that had been embedded with an RFID chip which could be scanned to load new characters and abilities into the game, which sounds pretty good on paper (see what I did thar).
Essentially, Mattel would be able to keep adding content to the game and selling it, extending a single game’s profit longevity substantially, like an archaic predecessor to DLC.
That would be great – if the damn thing actually worked. The machine itself felt about as sturdy Forrest Gump windsurfing; and the RFID reader? Well, that didn’t really work. I mean it did, if your idea of fun was trying to scan your card from 117 different angles hoping to get a hit, like those persistent cashiers at the Pick ‘n Pay who would rather die before punching in the barcode manually.
This was a bundled mini-game the customers weren’t too fond of.
Oh and if you thought new Duke’s loading times were long, continents have shifted faster than the Hyperscan has loaded a new level.
Looks awesome, right? Yeah… it’s not.
RDI Halcyon
Now this is one console only the most die-hard of nerds would’ve heard of – mostly because it was such a failure, it barely got off the ground.
It was only released in limited qualities, at the laughable price of $2,000 dollars. Keep in mind this was two big ones in 1985 – today that is over five thousand dollars.
If you thought the PS3 was expensive at launch, imagine paying R37,000 for a console, and you might get a hint as to why this wasn’t exactly a roaring success.
The supposed attraction of this was to allow buyers to play branching laser disc video games – it even incorporated speech recognition and synthesis. The aim was to support more interactive games, such as Dragon’s Lair.
The problem was the false assumption that people actually wanted to play interactive games such as Dragon’s Lair.
While the system could be commended for the sheer balls of carrying a price tag more suited to a small hatchback, there is a fine line between stupidity and bravery, and Dragon’s Lair isn’t on the side you want to be on.
There are few things in life better than 7400 boxes of Smarties, and this isn’t one of them.
Honorable Mention: Philips CD-i
It felt disingenuous to leave the Philips CD-i off this list.
Despite incorporating the lowercase “I”, usually a key to instant success, the system was bulky, horrific and horrendously overpriced.
Add to this disastrous recipe the fact that it had some of the worst designed and most inept, uncomfortable controllers the gaming world had ever set eyes on, and it being responsible for making not one, but three terrible Zelda games (I bet you thought such a thing didn’t exist), the CD-i bombed spectacularly.
Sony helped co-develop the CD technology, and afterwards went on to make their own CD console, which I hear turned out a lot better.
Pictured above: not a PlayStation.
What’s the worst gaming device you have ever laid hands on?Let us know in the comments section below and on the MyGaming forum.
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