The 10 Lamest Game Consoles Ever 178
GameDaily has an amusing piece looking at the 10 lamest consoles to hit the market. Older flops like the Jaguar and Action Max join the new graveyard-bound contenders likes the N-Gage and the Gizmondo. From the article: "Ignore, for a minute, manufacturer Tiger Telematics' financial woes, the former executive's much-publicized, million-dollar Ferrari crash and the Swedish Mafia ties. What really irked us about the GPS- and Windows CE-sporting handheld (capable of playing games, movies and music, plus wireless multiplayer) was its sixth-rate software library and similarly styled functionality. Some hated on 2005's biggest portable flop for its abominable games, like Colors or Momma, Can I Mow the Lawn? We just dug the fact that even after dropping $229 on one, you'd still get hit with online ads three times a day." And they're going to re-launch it. Again! Have to love their enthusiasm.
It's funny... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In Saturn's defense (Score:4, Insightful)
I would actually say that's true about the entirety of this Top Ten list. I was expecting to see some truly obscure and truly lame hardware on here, like Tiger Game.Com or Atari XEGS, but it was not to be.
3D0 (Score:3, Insightful)
3D0...they left out they did BattleTanx, which, sadly, was the last decent split screen tank games, all the way back on the N64 and PS1 days.
Pippin (Score:4, Insightful)
On the upside though, it had SCSI.
Re:I don't think it even belongs on this list (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Almost all from the 90's (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wither Apple's Pippin? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't think it even belongs on this list (Score:4, Insightful)
These days I make fun of people buying the first to spend copious amounts of money on new consoles, but back then I wasn't married with kids, so $400 for the console, which inlcuded Virtua Fighter, was a no brainer.
I probably wasted that much in quarters in the arcade playing before it hit the console. And while it wasn't as pretty on the Saturn, it was very playable and VF Remix and VF2 were gorgeous! If Sega didn't give it up and start releasing VF games for other consoles, I'd never have sold the Saturn.
Now, 32X... THAT I can agree with.
As usual, for most of these consoles, it comes down to the games. Most game companies went where they thought the most money would be. For some it was simply a matter of crappy technology. My recollection was that the Saturn was hard to develop for at first, but Sega released some libraries that simplified the process - too little, too late. Once your console starts getting shunned, that's about the end of it.
Sega also stupidly rushed to get next generation consoles out before the competition. With how fast technology was developing and prices dropping, that was a fatal mistake... you'd figure you'd get the people that can't wait, but that's just not enough.
I guess it's easy to be an armchair CEO, especially when you have hindsight to look at.
Re:Numero Uno (Score:2, Insightful)