Dismal Console Failures 369
Anonymous Howard writes "Shacknews' jason bergman has written an article that looks at some of the biggest failures in console gaming. It's a great read, and spotlights stuff like the Halcyon, a $2500 (!) laserdisc system with only two games and Nintendo's Virtual Boy, a stereoptic system that had red-on-black simulated 3D graphics."
Well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
It didn't help that the inclusion of a 16-bit 68000 meant as a simple general purpose chip to do little things encouraged companies to port their 16-bit games to the system using mainly that chip without attempts to even improve the game. (Flashback, anyone?)
The existence of the 3DO at the same time, with it's $700 price-tag, compared to the $250 Jaguar, helped make the Jag look like the more viable of the two - which I believe it was.
I wonder what kind of games we might have seen if the system had survived long enough for programmers to push it to the limit - probably some impressive stuff. After all, T2K came out really darn quick, and it is still visually impressive in many ways. (Maybe that's just the extreme trippiness of the game...)
Re:Well (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)
Uh... I would say "dismal." Before being called dismal, it has to be dismal. Do you need a dictionary?
Aliens Vs. Preditor (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the only endings I've liked as much are Half-Life, and Out Of This World. There's probably at least a few more I liked as much that I've forgotten... but I Iguess if I've forgotten they were not quite as good!
Jaguar (Score:2)
The Atari Jaguar, that brings back memories. Such a good console system... 2 processors one for graphics AFAIK and the other for everything else. Just a pity that there weren't any major game releases/support for it.
Virtual Boy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Virtual Boy (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Virtual Boy (Score:2)
The sad thing is the games were fun. I just couldnt play them.
Re:Virtual Boy (Score:2, Informative)
I am fully ambidextrous (dominant left-hand, but I can write perfectly legibly with my right as well -- it was great drawing graphs with both hands at the same time on the board at university, but that's OT ^_^) and I can state that, while nice to be, doesn't help one bit with Virtual Boy.
I do own a VB and about 6 games and it's really too bad that this project wasn't fully thought out. You had to take breaks every 20 minutes (forced by most games by a screen that comes out to tell you to go away for 10 minutes) and it seems that most people got serious headaches from any type of play, so they didn't even make it to the twenty minute mark.
I never experienced any ill effects (yet?) even though I played the truly brilliant and enjoyable Wario game for far too many hours on end; but then there were games like Red Alert (a plane shooter) where you could not tell if those lines approaching the screen were going to be a cave or a wall... parts like that were not so fun.
I packed it away a few years ago and, even though I would love to play Wario again, I don't have the courage to play it again lest I ruin my eyesight. I will hang onto my system though, perhaps it'll be an antique one day*
*please refrain from posting that it is an antique now. The type of antique I mean is one that is actually worth some decent cash = )
Re:Virtual Boy (Score:5, Insightful)
It probably would have been a good idea for them to use yellow instead of red for the color. Even green might have been a better choice. Red was just hard for people to focus on. I'm not sure why their research landed them there.
There's a reason that monochrome monitors were never red.
Cheap LEDs (Score:3)
Re:Virtual Boy (Score:2)
Re:Virtual Boy (Score:4, Funny)
Motion tracking... Next thing you are going to tell me they did something productive with that 175 dollars!
i own one too (Score:3, Interesting)
All in all, I dont think it was THAT bad. I kinda liked the little bugger. Sure the red on black was odd, but the effect was neat and it worked. The sound was pretty good too, since your ears were right by the speakers and it used true stereo sound with a fairly high sampling rate for the time.
I did... (Score:2)
Anything with a label on it telling you it will give you a headache in 20 minutes has to be a failure. Plus the 3 games developed for it sucked ass.
Re:I did... (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. I own two of these things and they are actually quite nice. There were a decent number of games. Here is a few of them:
Re:Virtual Boy (Score:4, Informative)
I played the Virtual boy for long enough that it no longer effects me, but it took a *long* time for that to happen. My roommate played the thing for an hour and was unable to do anything requiring depth perception for the rest of the day.
Part of the problem was that the system wasn't designed to display 3D polygons at its core... It's a slightly beefier Sprite-based Game Boy at heart. Warioland was one of the best games available, yet in many places that which was deeper in the background wouldn't parallax at all (despite the left-eye, right-eye separation), or the deeper image would parallax horizontally but not vertically. The botched effects could be quite, quite nauseating.
On the bright side, they had (and still have) an excellent 4D tetris, and perhaps the best boxing videogames to date (Teleroboxer). But with the assorted physical ills associated with playing, and the fact that depth never really effected gameplay, the system probably shouldn't have made it out of the prototype phase. Gumpei Yokoi, I salute your creativity and your energy, but the time is not right just yet.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a championship Teleroboxer to defend.
-C
Anyone remember Matsushita's M2 console? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Jaguar! (Score:2, Insightful)
That was a bitching console, but too difficult to code for.
That said, it had Tempest 2000, for which the Jaguar version was simply breathtaking in places.
Aliens vs. Predator was excellent too.
What ? No Odessy ?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps I'm just showing my age, but perhaps a paragraph or two on the the Magnavox [pong-story.com] Odyssey [ralphbaer.com] and it's betaMax-like [guardian.co.uk] demise may be just the history we need so later failures learn the lesson before trying and dying on the lonely shelves of stores and warehouses.
Virtual Boy (Score:5, Insightful)
Some decent software and polygons instead of wireframes would have been nice too.
Re:Virtual Boy (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Virtual Boy (Score:5, Funny)
I hear the next version of the Virtual Boy required you to hold your breath while fully submerged in hot pudding. Doesn't sound too much more painful of a gaming experience than what you are describing.
:P
My own Dismal Console Failure (Score:4, Funny)
My childhood... RUINED!
-Mark
A couple of omissions... (Score:5, Informative)
The Commodore CDTV and Philips CDI were CD-ROM-based interactive players that popped up in the early 90s - both failed pretty badly, although the CDTV morphed into the CD32 which was mildly successful... before Commodore bit the dust.
I also seem to remember a C64-based console, and one by Amstrad called the GX4000, which was rubbish. Even the first wave of Neo-Geo boxes died a horrible death rather quickly, but I think that was down to price...
Re:A couple of omissions... (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed you do, and it was called the C64GS. You can read about it (and a whole host of other old consoles and computers) here [old-computers.com].
There was essentially no point in buying a C64GS since it did nothing that an ordinary C64 couldn't do, and the GS didn't have a datasette port either, which cut out the vast amount of cassette-based games already available.
Re:A couple of omissions... (Score:2)
You still find Neo Geo units in the arcade, and new games were released till 2001 at least. Thus, though the home unit failed, the platform did well over all.
Wow... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Informative)
Also, the SuperGrafx was never released domestically. It had six games (seven if you count the hybrid). The console sold for around $400 and the games were about 9800 yen ($110 at the time).
The PC-FX was essentially an NEC PC converted into a gaming console.
Lest weforget... (Score:5, Insightful)
They neglected to mention Apple/Bandai's much lauded Pippin, the Atari Jaguar, and the mighty Indrema...
Perhaps they can return to this topic in six months and include the mysterious "Phantom."
Re:Lest weforget... (Score:2)
The Jaguar wasn't a spectacular failure at all - it didn't have the ridiculous price of the Halcyon or 3DO, and wasn't a screwy concept like the 32X or Virtual Boy. It was just a flop due to poor managment, lack of dev tools, mostly bad in-house games, and bad third party support.
The console itself wasn't a bad idea, thus it didn't qualify for the list.
Re:Lest weforget... (Score:2, Interesting)
The specs for the pippen are available at this site [updatestage.com]
ah yes those heady days where apple was so distracted by any little
Stupid business model (Score:5, Interesting)
So anyone trying to sell a really innovative platform is going to end up charging way more than the market will bear.
BTW $2K is not too much in principle for a games system. I know plenty of people with MUCH more expensive systems. Mine cost $5K, only they are called PCs, not consoles. Mind you these days it would take a lot of dedication to go above $2K for a desktop machine. It took some doing to spend $5K two years ago. I paid $400 for the upgrade to my Son's machine a few months ago and he basically got a new machine with almost the same spec as mine.
When is Lara Croft comming out, thats what I want to know.
Re:Stupid business model (Score:4, Funny)
$5k!! I hope your processor has gold connectors on it or something!
Damn.
Re:Stupid business model (Score:2, Funny)
Nah, but it has a wing on the back and one of those mufflers that goes 'Bzzzzzwwweeeeeeeee'.
Re:Stupid business model (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Stupid business model (Score:5, Insightful)
So anyone trying to sell a really innovative platform is going to end up charging way more than the market will bear.
I don't follow you here. Gillette gives away razor handles which cost them very little and yolk consumers to the tune of nearly $1 per blade (for dual-bladed designs), a full 100% markup above blades without handles.
Sony, Nintendo, et.al make hardware that they sell for little or no profit, but that they make back $5 licencing fee per game released. That brings a $45 dollar game to $50 dollars, or a markup of %10. Successful consoles are also self-subsidizing, as over their lifespan they transition from being loss-leaders to profitable items in and of themselves.
I don't see why you would say that anyone selling an innovative platform will do so at above what the market can bear, with the implication that they wouldn't be tricking the consumer into buying overpriced games? The PC market continues to exist, and despite a glut of options PC market prices aren't significantly lower than Console prices. They actually have a significantly higher TCO, if you factor the difference in price between the two platforms across the number of games for the platform you have purchased (On average, 10 for a console). 2,000 is too much for a console box. After the cost of the television, audio system, et.al, it isn't bad, but even computers are multi-purpose items. If you buy 20 games for a $2,000 system at $50 each, you have still spent $150 dollars per game. Those are NeoGeo prices, the amazing system that didn't have a shot in heck because they had solid-state cartridges comparable in size to CD's... in 92. You cannot sell a $2,000 gaming console, period. It wouldn't matter anyway, as the technology of that console would be within $400 reach in just 2 years after it was released. $2,000 is just too far up the curve to be worth it.
Consoles do not have a stupid business model. They have a very intelligent and market-driven model. Pippin, 3D0, Indrema, Computers, and Cell-Phone makers have all tried different models, with varying degrees of success, but none as successful as this, the "razor blade" model.
And so that you know, the glut of games for the 2600 which caused the horrible average quality and the great gaming crash of 83 was caused becase anyone who wanted to exploit gaming an the innocence of consumers could make a game for that system. From then on, Systems carried authentication chips which publishers had to not just buy access to, but had to submit their code for an extensive approval process. While there may be some pretty bad games released today, without this approval process it would be a wasteland of bad games.
-C
How about Fairchild Channel F in the late 70's? (Score:2)
I'm surprised this didn't do better against the atari.. the controllers were way better (8 way if I recall). It was probably because they couldn't come up with decent games for it.
Where was the virual boy released ? (Score:2)
The whole 3DO thing was interesting, seems like for a long time the ultimate aim of lots of tech companies was to create a video game standard similar to VHS and DVD.
Maybe the XBox will start a trend towards all consoles becoming more x86 based, particularly since the PC has such a huge catalogue of easily portable classics.
3do (Score:2, Interesting)
Return Fire was an awesome - awesome - awesome game as well. One of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a game to date, and the strategy between 2 players in this game was amazing.
There was also that game-show-ish "Twisted", I believe it was. The presentation in that was excellent.
The 3DO was INNOVATIVE, not one of the biggest failures. Geeeze..
The Heroes of Might and Magic Series (3DO) is a damn good PC game now.. They are a great software house as well.
Long live Trip!
Re:3do (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe that's why it is one of the biggest failures? I mean, it had huge industry backing, the specs were impressive, the games looked GOOD, the media was all over it. It seemed that 3DO was about to take over entire console-business. And then... nothing happened. It just went away. It never got popular. With all those games, with all that money, with all that media-attention... Nothing.
To me, that makes 3DO one huge failure.
Re:3do (Score:2)
You missed the point. (Score:2)
Re:3do (Score:2)
I can't believe they compared the 3DO to the 32X or the Virtual Boy. Niether the 32X nor the VB had a decent library or an interested customer base. The 3DO did have a following and had a respectable library of games. Further, the 3DO had a different style when it came to playing games that really ushered in the new generation of consoles like the Saturn or the Playstation.
I'm not convinced that the author of this article really researched what happened with the 3DO.
Re:3do (Score:4, Insightful)
3DO is a *HORRIBLE* software house. These are the people responsible for the Army Men franchise, remember. Also all those lousy Might and Magic spinoffs (Warriors, Legends). Plus they drove the main Might and Magic series into mediocrity after reviving it with 6/7.
How they manage to maintain the excellent Heroes of Might and Magic series is beyond me, though I do notice that they shove out a lot of expansions for it.
Actually, the "Army Men: Air Attack" sub-series isn't bad either. 3DO still isn't a good developer, though.
The most interesting thing... (Score:5, Informative)
The Atari 5200 needs to be mentioned.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably one of the biggest f-ups in the history of the electronic entertainment industry.
Re:The Atari 5200 needs to be mentioned.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that those potential rights would have come in 1985, not 1983 (when the 5200 was released).
In fact, the 5200 was not a failure in really any way. It was selling better than the Colecovision when the plug was pulled. It had some great games (mostly ports of Atari franchises from the arcade and 2600, enhanced for the 5200). It was a victim of the same crash of 1984 as everybody else.
The 7800 is the system you're thinking of, though it was clearly even a better system than the 5200. It was just mis-timed and badly marketed. But it had just as reasonable a chance of success as any console - who would have predicted at that time that Nintendo would be this unstoppable juggernaut in the late 1980's? The smart money would all have bet on Atari to win in the end. They just didn't. Predicting these things is often a lot easier with hindsight.
VirtualBoy (Score:3, Funny)
I bought a VirtualBoy along with several games a few years ago just to keep around. I'm a sort of fan of early 3D efforts and still have lots of old 3D comics and magazines with the red/blue glasses, and some of the early hologram efforts, ViewMasters, etc.)
I have to say, that these days, my 8-year-old and his friends can't get enough of Mario Tennis, Virtual Baseball and other 3D games on the VirtualBoy, even though they all have the latest GameBoy Advance, GameCube, Playstation 2, X-Box, etc.
There's still enjoyment to be had in the VirtualBoy. Plenty of units and games are up for grabs on eBay, too.
Sega Channel (Score:2, Interesting)
I ditched more classes in high school then you could imagine, just so I could go to my buddy's place and game all day. Essentially, you downloaded ROMS off your cable TV feed. Sega was _really_ ahead of its time on this idea, to bad it didn't stick.
Re:Sega Channel (Score:2, Interesting)
You attached a big sucker to the corner of the screen, and it 'downloaded' the program. It was waay too cool at the time.
Sega Master System a failure?? (Score:4, Interesting)
$2500? (Score:2)
Re:$2500? (Score:4, Insightful)
The "hardest-core" gamers, yes. But even reading the first-run numbers expected for the GeForce FX, *only* the most serious of gamers will spring for that. And for most people, even that will serve as an upgrade, rather than the entire $2500 system all at once.
I think the problem doesn't involve *no one* wanting to buy it, but *not enough* people. Perhaps the situation differed a bit 20 years ago, but today, any console with "only" a million units in the field after a year will fail miserably. Why? Not because the company can't pull *some* profit from the hard-core gamers who will pay almost anything for the best gear available. Rather, because very few 3rd party developers will sign on with them (for example, the Sega 32X the article mentioned - a decent product, with a reasonably large number of units sold, but Sega ended up having almost every title that ran on it as one of their own efforts).
Re:$2500? (Score:2)
Hell yeah they are different. ITs called inflation. $2500 20 years ago was a lot of money. Thats when the average salary was like $24,000 a year. Most cars were less than $10,000. That could actually cover a years rent for a studio apartment, rent stabalized, in manhattan.
$2500 ain't shit now, but was several month's pay for most peope 20 years ago.
$400 is a weeks pay for a kid working at a retail store.
Best consoles?? (Score:2)
This the the sequence of consoles that I thought were quality...
Nintendo (tons and tons of games, many greats)
Super Nintendo (Still tons of games, some of the best are in here)
(skip N64 to...)
Playstation (The start of true 3d games. Many sucked, but it was new stuff)
PS2/Gameqube/eXbox (Who knows. I do computer games and such these days)
Cost Seemed To Be the Reoccuring Theme (Score:2)
And its still true today. You can get the hotest hardware, the niftiest features, and the coolest designers all to collaborate on something but if it is priced out the interest of the common consumer its going to be a boat anchor or a bookend.
Hopefully this will be a lesson for future console makers.
Infinium is doomed... (Score:2)
They are going to be VERY hard pressed to make a console in the $200-300 price range that has a decent amount of power. Furthermore, even if they manage to pull off that magical feat, people have to actually buy them which comes down to marketing. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo already have a natural momentum in marketing because of both their history and their war chests.
I'd love to see a console come onto the market that uses some of the ideas these guys are throwing out, but unless a big corporation backs it, it isn't going to happen.
Virtual Boy - Pong of 3D Systems (Score:4, Informative)
That was really what it needed: to be head mounted. And it wasn't difficult to do. Seperating the system from the display was impossible due to what I assume was the timing (when I extended the wires the mirrors couldn't sync up). Fortunatly there was enough unneccessary crap that could be removed to lessen the weight enough to make it wearable.
I have many of the games and two systems (one is HMD now). I don't think console makers will take the plunge again though until little LCDs can display the quality of a full size LCD at a reasonable price.
With dirt cheap little LCD monitors comming out I don't think it's too far off. It's really the next logical step. I think Nintendo just took it too soon.
They should just have a dual video out for their next console and offer 3D glasses as an option. That would be nice. Trying to embed it all together is just a bad idea.
Ben
I never noticed the controller similarity (Score:2)
Notes In Video Game History (Score:5, Insightful)
There you have it.
Re:Notes In Video Game History (Score:3, Informative)
Sometimes I wish you could edit your comments before they got moderated or replyed to, so you could fix this kinda thing. Oh well.
Re:Notes In Video Game History (Score:4, Interesting)
Well I have both sitting right in front of me and the Xbox's is bigger and significantly heavier. If anything that tells you how big the Xbox's original controller is - the fact that a controller with a keypad on it could actually be smaller than the XB controller is pretty amazing (though pretty much all the keypad controllers I can think of - Intellivision, Colecovision, 5200, Jaguar to name a few - are smaller than the XB controller). It also tells you how we don't always remember things as they really were. Hindsight is not always 20/20 (though it's usually closer to that than foresight is).
CDI - To tell you the truth, I remember hearing of this, and seeing games in magazines. But I never saw a single one for sale, that I can remember. That's a great recipe for success. I also remember hearing it was expensive.
The CD-i was not specifically intended as a game system. I don't actually recall if the CD-i came before or after the 3DO, but it's possible Philips was trying to learn the lessons of 3DO. CD-i was marketed as a full entertainment set-top box capable of playing CD's, movies and of course games. The gaming capability of the system was not very good, though - not up to the standards of the systems it was "competing" with (though again, they were trying to go for the more casual gaming/home entertainment market). The CD-i is probably the main reason why gamers these days cringe whenever anyone uses the word "set-top box" or starts talking about doing things like adding movie playing or other functionality to game consoles.
Saturn - Two games I wanted to play. I wanted to play Nights (still waiting for a rerelease of that) and Panzer Dragoon (that game looked so amazing at the time.) Plus, the Saturn had all those cool "Theater of the Eye" commercials. Very cool. But of course, it was expensive as hell, the analog controller (when it finally came out for Nights) was weird (and fixed (somewhat) in the Dreamcast). Part of it's problem what that it was supposed to be terrible to develop for because of it's dual CPU nature.
Yes, the Saturn has a complicated architecture, but then so does the PS2 and it doesn't seem to have mattered in its case. Developers will develop for a system no matter how hard it is if they believe it's viable. In fact, the Saturn was viable for a while, and was actually quite successful in Japan (like the TG-16) - which is why it doesn't belong on this list. Sega and other developers continued supporting the Saturn in Japan until after the Dreamcast's release.
There are so many misconceptions about the Saturn it's hard to even count. One of the biggest is that it was designed as a 2D system, with 3D added at the last minute in response to Sony's PSX announcement. This is refuted in section 15.2 of the Saturn hardware FAQ (which you can find at GameFAQs [gamefaqs.com] - sorry, they don't allow direct linking). The Saturn was always a 3D system, designed as a sort of home version of the Model 2 arcade board, but had its texture capabilities enhanced in response to Sony's PSX.
The Saturn does remain one of the best 2D systems ever, though (perhaps only the Neo Geo - with its processing power and unlimited, cartridge-based RAM beats it) and in fact had more VRAM and greater raw 3D polygon-pushing power than the PSX (>500,000 vs. ~360,000, by the published specs in the respective manuals). But as MS is trying to do this generation to Sony, Sony basically bought the market out from under Sega last generation. Only Sega ended up thinking it really worthwhile to learn how to program their own system, and games like Virtua Fighter 2 still look better than most anything ever released on the PSX. The Saturn really did have some great games - though most of them were first-party Sega titles.
Lynx - I never played one (it was supposed to be quite good) but I had a friend who thought it was amazing. I don't remember anything about it. I don't know why it failed.
Several reasons - though it was a great system for its time. Big, backlit screen, excellent sound, great graphics for the day. But it was too big, ate batteries like nobody's business (the original version would get you 2 hours on 4 AA's if you were lucky), and was poorly marketed by Atari - who couldn't really do anything right by that point. It also didn't have a killer app like the competing GameBoy did (Tetris). In fact, there aren't that many good games for the Lynx in general, though the few that there are really make you wish the system would have stuck around for a while. Plus, for adult hands, the Lynx II (the version most people have) is really comfortable - even if it is still pretty big.
They forgot three. (Score:5, Informative)
Two, the Vectrex game system. Brilliant platform, gave people that true arcade vector graphics feel, decent sound (considering this came out about the same time as the Colecovision), and an all in one package the size of a first gen Macintosh. Killed by low game variety and demand (it was a $150-200 game system, which, despite the fact the whole system came in one package, came in on the coattails of the 1970s recessions, when most parents were able to justify paying $20-$40 for a kids toy, but forget anything more).
Third: ISIX. The videogame platform that never came. This was an incredible console that required nothing more than a common VCR to deliver laserdisk'esque videogaming to the masses, using a frameshuffling method to allow multiple video game footage scenes to be displayed. I tried the system over a decade ago, from the wirewrapped prototypes. If Worlds of Wonder didn't tank, we would have seen this on the market, and it would have blown all other interactive media machines of the late 1980s out of the water.
Most of the games lived on, however, in rereleases such as Night Trap, Sewer Shark, and a few "Do your own music video" games that came later. Detach yourself from what you learned and paid for CD based games, and imagine how it would have been to get a game system that would rival them, just by hooking up the VCR you already had. That was it. Not that the games themselves were spectacular in CD media dependant world, but for the technology involved, it was leaps ahead.
I don't think they forgot the Adam (Score:3, Informative)
The Adam was an *extension* of the Colecovision that turned it into a peronal computer. I've known a number of Adam owners and not one ever considered it a games machine at all.
Now as a *personal computer*, boy was it a huge failure. Ate up all the Cabbage Patch Doll profits, and then some. They made them right down the road from me a piece and when the company went under they were giving them away like promotional pens.
Even for free they weren't really worth it, as far as I'm concerned, but believe it or not there are *still* people using these things. I know one of them. But they all seem to use it as dedicated WP machine more than anything else. The built in daisy wheel printer seems to be the main attraction.
Ironically it was the low quality of this printer that was one of the key factors in the Adam's failure.
Oh yeah, that and the built in *300* baud modem when 2400 was the norm.
The Adam was built to a price point using whatever *discontinued* stuff they could scrounge up from other manufacturers (the daisy wheel was a Smith-Corona) to slap it together. The public realized that and stayed away from it in the proverbial droves.
KFG
Yeah but (Score:2, Insightful)
Without these "dismal failures" there wouldn't be a Playstation 2 or Gamecube.
It's called trial and error, folks, and yes, it's important. Fact: The foundation for every success is a string of failures.
Neo Geo (Score:2, Interesting)
Neo Geo Pocket Color (Score:2)
The NGPC. To date, the finest handheld console to have existed. Died in the wreckage of SNK. I still take mine out when I want to feel the goodness of real SNK fighting action on a handheld.
***minute of silence***
not too difficult (Score:2)
This is an industry where momentum and future are king. You'll never buy a box with only 5 games unless it comes from Sony or Nintendo and has promise for more.
When I worked at TV settop box company, you'd be surprised at how they casually thought that they could just step in to the game business. Seriously, they thought they'd just put doom on it and the next thing you know the world would come running. Meanwhile the hardware has about a 10th the performance of a PS2 and offers just as much in the way of platform support. Never mind that doom was years old at the time. The idea got wacked, but not before some poor bastard spent 5 months working on getting doom running on it.
Most of those things have that same vibe. Some company with some money thought that they could just step in and own. Doesn't work that way.
The virtual boy wasn't THAT bad.. (Score:2)
Anybody remember the Bally Astrocade? (Score:3, Interesting)
They turned out to be very sensitive to being fried by ESD (static electricity). He went on to buy several more units at surplus sales over the years to protect our investment in game cartridges.
One cool thing you could get for it was a BASIC cartridge. You used the cheap bouncy 15-button calculator keypad on the base unit to peck out programs for the 1K or so RAM. The cartridge itself had a 1/8-inch phono jack embedded in it so you could save programs on casette. It was a heavy cartridge; I'm guessing it had more logic in it than the base unit. I wrote my first lines of code on that thing.
3DO (Score:4, Informative)
Aside from my nostalgia for this list (I had a 32X and Sega CD, and still have my Virtual Boy), I have to take sincere issue with the writer mentioning Captain Quazar as one of the decent games for the 3DO.
Captain Quazar? That game was crap! And I should know, I worked on it! The company that developed it, Cyclone Studios (bought by 3DO near the end of the game's production cycle) split their initial development efforts between that game and the best game made for the 3DO, Battlesport. Now THAT was a good game. Intuitive controls, fast action, quick rounds; everything I want in a round-robin multiplayer blast fest.
But no, Captain Quazar was just an ambitious mistake. I was a high-school student who played football with the company president, and they brought me in for some simple playtesting and initial level design. Captain Quazar's biggest problem was the fact that you could only get ammo by breaking open crates, but there wasn't enough RAM for them to include a melee weapon animation, so the only way to break crates was with the gun. If you ran out of your very limited ammo, you were screwed.
I heard it had a lot of bugs on release. I guess you can blame me for that, I was always playing Battlesport (or Tekken on the new import Playstation we had), and I never bothered to test Captain Quazar enough.
3DO's unexpected relation to Linux gaming (Score:2)
Factual Correction (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, no. Not by a longshot. Nolan Bushnell is the shepherd behind Pong. Trip Hawkins is the founder of Electronic Arts.
Schwab
Lynx? Interactive TV? (Score:2)
Also, my roommate's talking about Neo Geo, which I recall in name only. Any thoughts on that? I'm FASCINATED.
Oh, and, okay, so. I remember seeing CD-based "interactive TV"? units, in the earlyish nineties. I remember playing them at the electronics stores. You could like paint with them using the remote control. Weird as hell. Supposed to be the next big thing, even bigger than that "Internet" thing that was coming along.
Anyway, just nostalgic ranting. Please feel free to reply with any hints.
Re:Lynx? Interactive TV? (Score:3, Interesting)
I would guess you're talking about the Neo Geo AES, the home version of their arcade hardware. These things still fetch a pretty penny on eBay [ebay.com], and with good reason. First of all, they sold for $700 initially just like the 3DO. Secondly, despite what a lot of people think the system is still being supported by developers and in fact has had one of the longest lifespans of any console (the last game I know of - Rage of the Dragons - was released in Sept. 2002. The system these days generally gets about 2-4 new games per year). SNK never intended this system to be mass-market - it was always a niche console. It was priced to be profitable right from the start, as were the games, which sold for $300 and up initially and still do. The idea was to generate buzz for the company's arcade business by getting systems into the hands of high-class buyers who would then spread word of mouth about the games and drive people to the arcades where average people could afford to play them - the exact opposite of what most other arcade publishers do today.
The reason for the high game prices? The games were literally the exact same games as you'd find in the arcade. Only the pin-outs of the carts were different (in fact, you can buy adapters now so that you can use the cheaper arcade carts in your home AES system). Lots and lots of RAM, and this back in the day when RAM was not cheap. As RAM came down in price, the games didn't because SNK just kept adding more memory to the games.
A CD-based system was released several years after the AES in order to try to make it more mass-market. But it still wasn't really supposed to compete with the likes of the PlayStation or Saturn - more to just satisfy less cash-rich Neo Geo fans and open up new lines of revenue. The system was still expensive, though the games dropped to around $50. Load times were a major problem, though, and real Neo Geo afficionados avoided the system because of the lack of arcade perfection. Some games were actually enhanced with new redbook audio, but again, it was arcade-perfection that Neo Geo fans wanted. The system was a failure even by SNK's modest standards. (A second version of the system was released to try to fix some of its problems, but it didn't really help.)
There is still a large and thriving Neo Geo community [neo-geo.com] - as you'd expect from a fully alive and thriving console. Neo Geo systems are no longer produced and SNK themselves went bankrupt about a year ago - but not because of the AES system (their arcade business - the core part of the company - fell apart). The system itself, though, is still supported with new titles periodically and is considered by many probably the best 2D system ever. That is, of course, if you're a fan of Neo Geo games - there's always a debate among the "classic gaming" community as to whether SNK ever actually put out any good games or not (most of them were fighting games that didn't differ all that much, though I personally find more variety in the company's titles than most, and enjoy a lot of the smaller, lesser-known games that the company released).
As a Neo Geo owner I have to say that it's still one serious system. Everything about it just feels quality - at least if you have one of the original packages with the old-style large controllers. It's a large system but doesn't look it - with its clean, elegant, bat-wedge design. The cartridges are absolutely monstrous and most of them come in high-quality clamshell cases. Holding one in your hand is like holding a brick. Truly a unique system and one that I definitely recommend owning - no way it belongs on this list of failures.
shareholders! (Score:2)
Re: shareholders! (Score:3, Insightful)
Shareholders are what brought at least one company I used to work for to bankruptcy. Once there were shares, they started to smell "big money", which started with telling all the employees on the very next full-company meeting that they can always be replaced, that the shareholders are now the uppermost important persons to please, customers came next, and then us.
Well, replacing year-long employees that know how the company was actually making money by Wallstreet junkies never seemed to be a good idea to me.
About one year later, there was nothing anymore to worry about.
You see, we're talking about a company that made real money before this IPO and shareholder shit. Sorry for being a bit angry, but shareholders are in no way more important than the people that work for a company, brought it up and have no choice but to see upper management start playing Bullshit Bingo.
I personally don't have any understanding about people buying shares of some company and not knowing (or not wanting to know but prefer to listen to quackers) about the risks. Shares are a game. Games are not where you should put your money if you REALLY need it. This only attracks all the sharks and destroys even more people's lifes that you never even heard about.
I liked the Virtual Boy (Score:2)
The 64-Bit Atari Jaguar (Score:2, Interesting)
The VAST majority of consoles... (Score:2)
Closed box, proprietary, non-upgradable computing devices should be anathema, especially on Slashdot of all places...
just my $.02
Re:The VAST majority of consoles... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly, what is an upgrade for a box? You need a new processor, so you need a new motherboard. The new motherboard takes a new power supply and a faster type of RAM. Your removable media drive has been surpassed by far larger / faster / more funtional types, and so that should be replaced. And with the larger media drive you need a new Hard disk of sufficient size. All you've kept is the networking card, and the little aluminum box which is recyclable anyway.
Upgradable computing solutions all wind up in the trash, just one piece at a time rather than all at once. Personally, I'd rather see them put to some use rather than thrown out, but console boards are optimized to play videogames: NESs would make crappy routers.
And they are not the worst example of planned obsolescence. That distinction goes to alternatively the Car or the Toaster. The technology exists right now to create a $20 toaster that will outlive the owner, simply by using a thick enough band on the heating elements. Many toasters from the 70's are still around for this very reason. Modern toasters are intentionally down-tuned to last for 2 years, to keep the production cycle up. Cars are designed to last 5 years, despite the fact that 5 year old cars do exactly the same thing that modern cars do. You throw out your 4,000 pound car every 5 years, much like you throw out your 3 lb console, yet you are replacing the car with a functionally identical product. Consoles are obsolete because they have been replaced by functionally significantly improved versions, and console owners are hesitant to replace an existing system without that significant bonus.
The two things are very different. The obsolescence of consoles isn't intentional.
Just my $1/50.
Hard to code for? (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile, many people talk about how the PlayStation2 is hard to code for, yet it continues to be a commercial success.
What's the difference here?
Personally, I think any developer who complains "Its hard to code for" is not a real programmer. Since when have you heard about someone giving up breaking an encryption or copy protection system because "Its too hard".
Re:Hard to code for? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Its hard to code for" is a perfectly valid reason to not do a project, both from a programmer perspective and from a business perspective. Any developer worth his salt knows when to walk away. Your programming talent shouldn't be wasted trying to figure out the obscurities of timing processor instructions to use the DSP as a co-processor in a non-threaded environment. For more information on wasted genius, look up the Game Developer's in-depth technical issue on fitting Resident Evil onto a N64 cartridge.
Confessions of a 3DO Veteran (Score:5, Informative)
Well, gee, what to say, except that hindsight is always 20/20. Armchair analysts of today haven't had the benefit of experiencing Trip's Reality Distortion Field(tm), where the idea of a $700.00 console actually seems fairly reasonable.
I have my own ideas as to why the 3DO platform failed. One is that the development system was hosted on NuBus-based Macintosh systems (this was in the 68K era, before Apple jumped entirely over to PowerPC). Despite screams of developers everywhere, no effort was made to port to the PC until very late. Further, once Apple announced they were abandoning NuBus in favor of PCI, no effort was made to convert the development hardware, forcing developers to find increasingly scarce (and slow) older Macs. And, despite the protestations of enthusiasts everywhere, the Mac was just agonizingly slow. (3DO developers should count themselves fortunate, however. Had the original system developers had their way, development would have been hosted on the Amiga. Commodore declared bankruptcy about six months before the 3DO was launched.)
The other big problem was that the development software and tools were, for the most part, utter $(EXPLETIVE) $(EXPLETIVE) $(EXPLETIVE) garbage. 3DODebug was little better than a program loader and dumb command terminal. Being in the system software group, I was fortunate in that I got to use a Philips logic analyzer to debug the thornier problems, rather than suffer with the never-did-work-right symbolic debugger. 3DOAnimator was a very crufty hack on top of EA's Studio32, and it would regularly crash, destroying all work. There were a couple of Photoshop plugins, but their use and enhancement was discouraged, as they were considered "stopgap" measures until 3DOAnimator came up to snuff (it never did). And the Norcroft C compiler sucked rocks. It generated bad code and kicked out stupid and incorrect warnings that couldn't be turned off. That so many titles were developed in this apalling environment is a tribute to the dedication and talent of all the developers we had.
At the end of it all, though, I don't really know why 3DO failed. We had more than enough money, and a charismatic leader who could convince people of the most astonishing things -- a formula for sure-fire success in anybody's book. Except ours.
Get me drunk sometime and I'll tell you all about Jurassic Park Interactive...
Schwab
Anyone remember the Apple Pippin? (Score:4, Informative)
Information on this system is surprisingly hard to come by for a machine released in the mid-1990s, but here's an ancient page listing the specshttp://karx.narod.ru/tmegames/pippin.html [narod.ru].
And another link from a retrogaming site: http://assembler.roarvgm.com/Apple_Bandai_pippin/
The reason "Console X" wasn't included (Score:5, Insightful)
The two laserdisc consoles were simply retarded. The Virtual Boy is famous since it was percieved Nintendo could do no wrong post-NES/SNES, so it stands as a fascinating example (I still have one to this day). The 32X stands out since it was dumb to come out with a 32-bit add-on, then ditch it promptly when your "real" 32-bit console came out. The 3D0 stands out since they went for the different business model and happened to be around when FMV games were the talk of the town.
But the Dreamcast didn't make it to this list, neither did the Saturn, since they weren't dismal failures. The Nintendo 64 didn't make it since it wasn't a failure at all - it just never did as good as the PSX and it's not as popular with adults (who *ahem* should be the readers of this site). The Jaguar was done in by management bungling, not because it was a "bad" console.
The main reason "Console X" didn't make it is because the story behind it wasn't interesting. A console that flopped because it just wasn't the best is boring. A console that flopped because of bad management is boring. A console that flopped because no one wanted to pay $2K for one game or because the designer hadn't been wrong yet, or because they tried to replicate VHS, that's interesting.
Nobody has mentioned the Pippin! (Score:3, Interesting)
It had a PowerPC 603 processor, I do believe, and ran a scaled down Mac OS. I never actually saw one.
Virtual Boy Rules! (Score:3, Funny)
The system really had immense power, the CPU is faster and more powerful than that on a GBA. (The VB actually has a divide instruction and floating point opcodes!)
I think this author is exaggerating the effects of Virtual Boy and just running on speculations. I NEVER have known anyone in real life to get sick or loose their vision from playing one of these things. I always have friends give my system a try, it is actually quite fun to play, especially Wario Land and the Japanese niche game Space Squash.
The biggest shame is that the finest games - Bound High, Dragon Hopper, Zero Racers (F-Zero), et. al were never released.
Re:No one mentioned... (Score:2)
Re:Sorry to troll, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sorry to troll, but.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sorry to troll, but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bear in mind that the Saturn was incredibly popular in Japan where 2D games (mainly fighting games like Street fighter 2) continued to be extremely popular long after the 3D revolution took over the west. The edge article also talks about it's apeal to the retrogaming community now.
These kinds of posts crack me up. (Score:5, Insightful)
I plunked down for the Saturn shortly after launch, and was very happy with it. NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon, Virtua Fighter 2, Sega Rally, perfect translations of the Street Fighter games, I could go on and on. What's that? You didnt like/play those games? Maybe thats why you liked the PS better. Consoles then, and now, are about the games....duh.
Re:SEGA MEGA-CD (Score:5, Interesting)
It could have been a force to reckon with in the US if Sega had stayed away from the crappy FMV games, and Sony hadn't sabotoged it with the crappy "Make My Video" (or something like that) series. Sony used the Sega CD as an "experimental" platform. Sony was developing the Playstation at the same time they were releasing HORRIBLE titles for the Sega CD. They learned that "FMV games" were not the way to go as far as software was concerned, and did so at Sega's expense.
Re:Colecovision (Score:2)
Re:Colecovision (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Colecovision (Score:3, Interesting)
My friends all had 2600s, but somehow they always showed up at MY house after school, once Christmas of 1982 passed.
Coleco killed themselves with the ADAM. I have one (bought in the mid 90's on eBay just as a curiosity), and I think its main flaw was that it tried so hard to be a Serious Computer and a video game system at once, that it was impossible to do either thing really well. Coleco should have stuck with the Expansion Module 3 that was originally planned, which stored games on some sort of then-new 'wafer' that had enough space to allow games to have intermission scenes, and the ability to write to the media for the purpose of storing high scores.
Looking back, it's hard to blame Coleco for switching their focus-- computers like the C64 were just coming into vogue at the time, and I suppose everyone thought that the one-trick-pony consoles would lose out to the more versatile computers.
~Philly
Re:How about Intellivision? (Score:2)