Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

The 10 Lamest Game Consoles Ever 178

Posted by Zonk from the oh-jaguar dept.
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.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

The 10 Lamest Game Consoles Ever More

The 10 Lamest Game Consoles Ever

Comments Filter:

  • Numero Uno (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    #1: PlayStation 3

    sup /v/

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jdray ( 645332 )
      I had a Telstar Arcade [pong-story.com] when I was a kid. It would have maybe been marginally cool if I had been able to get more than the original cartridge that came with it. :-(
      • I can one up you. My dad came home with a circuit board, two paddle controllers,
        and an RF converter thingy from the famous bay area surplus house Mike Quinn's Electronics [imsai.net].
        It had 40 different games, all variations of pong. It RULED my 7 year old world, because it was color
        and the one at the Pizza place was black and white. It was probably a scrapped product that Mike bought in some liquidation.
        My dad was always making cases for his projects, but for some reason this pong circuit board remained caseless
        for it

  • Paraphrase, for the link a'feared (Score:5, Informative)

    by johnfink ( 810028 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @03:54PM (#16842546)
    10: Virtual Boy 9: Gizmondo 8: Saturn 7: Action Max 6: CDi 5: N-Gage 4: Lynx 3: 32X 2: 3DO Interactive Multiplayer 1: Jaguar

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by d3bruts1d ( 639027 )
      What? No phantom? It doesn't get much lamer than a system that never materializes.
      • If that' the case, then the Atari Panther, Sega Neptune, 3D0 M2, and Indrema's console all deserve to be there.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by SoapDish ( 971052 )
      Lynx?

      How do you play games on a text based web program?
    • How did the Commodore CD32 NOT make this list??? Also suspiciously missing is the Atari XEGS.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Amiga_CD32 [wikipedia.org]
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_XEGS#Tramiel_Er a:_XE_series_and_XEGS [wikipedia.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by antime ( 739998 )
        Commodore's CDTV and C64GS are maybe even more deserving of a place than the CD32.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by hattig ( 47930 )
        The CD32 was ahead of its time, built by a company that couldn't sell beer to alcoholics, and it looked cheap and tacky. One of its odd add-ons was the MPEG acceleration unit for VCDs.

        Despite this it did have some good games and the hardware was pretty good - although not ideal for a games console. It was certainly more powerful than the Megadrive or SNES though - 14MHz 68020, 2MB RAM, etc. Graphics-wise it was powerful, but not totally game oriented (for mid-90s style games).

        I'd nominate the Amstrad GX4000

    • Pippin (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kadin2048 ( 468275 ) <.ten.yxox. .ta. .nidak.todhsals.> on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:40PM (#16843380) Homepage Journal
      What about the Apple Pippin? Not only was it $600 and had practically no software, it was underpowered and tried to compete directly with the N64 and PSX, after they were both established in the market.

      On the upside though, it had SCSI.

  • Jaguar (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gt_mattex ( 1016103 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @03:54PM (#16842558)

    I don't know if I would call the Jaguar lame. It was certainly unsuccessful however I remember going over my friends house to play it and it was pretty awesome as far as I remember.

    On the other hand the NGage was a certifiable steaming pile of failure both financially and from a user's perspective.

    • The Jaguar _was_ lame. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ayanami Rei ( 621112 ) * <rayanami AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:49PM (#16843570) Journal
      The Jaguar was in the same position as the Sega Saturn. At the time, 3d acceleration hadn't yet made it into VLSI designs so they tried to just make a "really good" version of what the competetion was doing before. I'm not really sure why they thought coupling a 16-bit CPU to 1M+ of memory and 64-bit coprocessors was a good idea for an architecture that needs to be relevant in 5 years. It wasn't easy to program for, in any case, and that would be its' downfall. The release titles were HORRIBLE, and that doesn't encourage other companies to try to jump on the bandwagon and push the state of the art on that architecture.

      The Saturn, at least, started with a decent CPU and tacked on some support chips from their arcade designs... and there were some nice arcarde ports on that system because of it. (What they should have done is just figured out a way to take "Model-1" or "Model-2" and put it into mass production).

      Atari was too concerned with catching up with the Jonses and totally discounted the impact of the PSX.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cgenman ( 325138 )
        (What they should have done is just figured out a way to take "Model-1" or "Model-2" and put it into mass production).

        Model 2 system specs [system16.com].

        8MB of RAM was a lot back then, and might have been prohibitively expensive. The Saturn shipped with only 2MB. RAM was a big limiting factor on lots of home systems simply because how much it cost was quite disproportionate to the cost of a home console. This became especially true as most arcade games are/were shipped on cartridges where fast access allowed for lower

  • In Saturn's defense (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dr. Eggman ( 932300 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @03:54PM (#16842564)
    In defense of the Sega Saturn, it did quite well in Japan. It was so lame in the US because Sega's President didn't send over alot of the games that made it popular in Japan because he didn't think they were the kind of games Americans liked. While it may not have been Worldwide successful, I certainly don't think its one of the top 10 lamest console ever; just one of the lamest of the truly widely known consoles.

    • Re:In Saturn's defense (Score:4, Insightful)

      by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:04PM (#16842754)
      While it may not have been Worldwide successful, I certainly don't think its one of the top 10 lamest console ever; just one of the lamest of the truly widely known consoles.

      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.
      • Indeed, it seems that the list is mostly well-known flops, with the exception of Action Max. I remember seeing this piece of trash in the back of some electronics store in '88 or '89 (it might've been a Radio Shack, but I was no older than 4, so who knows), but never hearing another word about it until today.

        I also question that the Jaguar is on there but not Turbo Grafx 16 [wikipedia.org] or Neo Geo [wikipedia.org].
        • While this seems to be a very America-centric discussion, I did just want to point out that in Japan, the PC-Engine (aka TurboGrafx-16) was wildly successfuly. Released in 1987 and competing against the Famicom (aka NES), the PC-Engine kicked butt. Alas, the US release came almost *2 years* after the Japanese release, giving Sega a chance to prepare the MegaDrive/Genesis. The MegaDrive kind of flopped in Japan, and many analysts at the time expected the TG16 to clean up the American market with the help
        • And now - The Lame List. Brought to you be America's heavy metal community. My apologies to Almost Live but this list is the real lame thing.

          They left out plenty. This list is poorly researched and includes add-ons like the Sega 32X but not the Sega CD, the TurboGrafx CD or the Nintendo 64DD. Why not those? They were just as "lame".

          It contains a reference to the licensed 3DO technology in the form of a Panasonic FZ-10 (The FZ-1 was the $700 version). It does not talk about the Nuon [wikipedia.org] DVD chipset. At le
          • Just ask Mattel with their 2006 HyperScan game console.

            I saw this monstrosity set up at a walmart, Fully playable with the scan card laying about and though, I got a few minutes, apparently you need an hour to start playing, I left after 20 minutes without ever actually playing anything. (XMEN Fighting game, Graphics were late Genesis quality, Gameplay who knows)

            You'd think it was loading off a cd rom drive from a 486 era machine instead of a 1 second scan.

            http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do? [walmart.com]

        • you have the wikipedia link up so I'm sure you read the entry, but the NEO was hardly a flop. It was designed primarily as arcade hardware, and only got a "home" console release due to consumer demand.

          For arcade owners, the NEO platform was a dream. Getting a new arcade game (and thus, the cabinet) used to run arcade operators 3 to 4 thousand dollars! After the release of the Neo Geo, new games could be had simply by switching out the cart within the cabinet ($100-$200 per cart) and most cabinets could ac

    • I don't think it even belongs on this list (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SpooForBrains ( 771537 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:35PM (#16843296)
      I have a friend who still has his Saturn set up purely because of some of the games that have just never been equalled on other consoles. Radiant Silvergun and Street Fighter Zero 3 spring to mind.

      Admittedly, if you used it to play Tomb Raider or some of the other, more "popular" games, the user experience was less than satisfactory, but in the 2D arena, the Saturn stood alone.

      Oh, and Saturn Bomber Man is the best iteration of that series, IMHO.

      • Re:I don't think it even belongs on this list (Score:4, Insightful)

        by triffid_98 ( 899609 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:59PM (#16843788)
        I still have mine for the very same reason. Saturn may have crashed and burned outside of Japan, but for 2D gaming it's nearly on par with the Neo-Geo. Personally I'd say the Lynx doesn't deserve to be on this list either. Yes it failed, but when you release products and fail to you know, advertise them, that can happen. In their place I nominate the Sega CD (FMV games at their worst) and the Atari 5200 (for controllers that somehow managed to suck even more than the gold standard, the Intellivision).

        I have a friend who still has his Saturn set up purely because of some of the games that have just never been equalled on other consoles. Radiant Silvergun and Street Fighter Zero 3 spring to mind.

        • Re:I don't think it even belongs on this list (Score:5, Funny)

          by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @06:50PM (#16845512)
          Personally I'd say the Lynx doesn't deserve to be on this list either. Yes it failed, but when you release products and fail to you know, advertise them, that can happen.

          There was Lynx advertising! What, you don't remember it?

          A prototypical Late '80s Cool Kid (you know, sunglasses, denim jacket, neon Ocean Pacific shorts etc.) gets a hall pass from his teacher and goes to the boy's room. Once there, he passes a link cable under the wall to the adjacent stall, and the boys play an exciting round of Epyx's California Games. The realism is so amazing that by the time they're done playing, they are literally soaked with ocean water!!!

          It was a brilliant marketing campaign that combined all the things that kids love: school, teachers, toilets, and getting drenched with water near a school toilet! I can't imagine how Nintendo was able to steal away the portable market with such unknown game IP as "Super Mario" and "Tetris".
      • Oh, and Saturn Bomber Man is the best iteration of that series, IMHO.

        Really? Because I thought the SNES version (the multiplayer part, anyway) was pretty tight, but I never played the Saturn version.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by macshome ( 818789 )
          With enough multi-taps, and a big enough screen to not go blind, you could play 10-player Bomberman on the Saturn.
          • 10 players? That is indeed much cooler. However, I only had 3 friends back in the SNES days who were any good/interested in videogames, so it's not like we had a lot of people sitting around waiting for a turn ;)

      • Re:I don't think it even belongs on this list (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gfxguy ( 98788 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @06:17PM (#16845054)
        You know, that may all be true, but the Saturn wasn't a 3D slouch, either.

        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.

  • It's funny... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the dark hero ( 971268 ) <adriatic_hero.hotmail@com> on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @03:56PM (#16842602) Homepage
    Funny how the 3DO not only compares to the PS3 in price range, but also in the same ugly design.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rob1980 ( 941751 )
      If you think that's bad, the original was worse: a box with a sliding CD tray front and center.

      Check it out [wikimedia.org]
      • That's the version that I have, actually. It may not be much to look at, but I don't consider design of the console itself to really be a selling point. I don't want to know what my parents spent on that thing when they got it for me all those years ago, but I will say this... It still entertains me to this day. Sure, it was a market failure. But the hardware itself has survived several moves over thousands of miles during the past decade or more, and the games are still entertaining. (I don't have a l
        • I too have fond memories of the 3do. A friend of mine got one shortly after it came out, and we spent way too much time playing.

          As for the games, do you happen to have an email address where I could contact you?

    • MOD PARENT "MICROSOFT FANBOY" (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you think the PS3 is ugly, the Xbox 360 looks like a PC with it's sides bashed in.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jalefkowit ( 101585 )

      It's even worse than you think :-) The 3DO cost $700 in 1993 dollars. When you adjust for inflation [westegg.com], you find out that in today's money it'd cost nearly $1,000!

      That makes a PS3 look practically affordable ;-)

  • What, no PopStation or other knock-offs? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Channard ( 693317 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @03:58PM (#16842640) Journal
    While they may not be new consoles, rather crappy LCD copies of existing ones, the likes of the PopStation surely deserve some praise for their sheer audacity. Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out this link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvXleDSkB-g [youtube.com] . I suppose it should be considered some sort of tribute that consoles get ripped off like this. But it's kind of sad to think that someone who's asked for a PSP might end up with a PopStation in their presents.

    As for for the N-Gage, yes it is a lame console but the article doesn't mention the bizarre situation with the QD N-Gage. Yes, it removed sidetalking, but Nokia took it upon themselves to remove the MP3 function and also take stereo sound off the console. It didn't make any logical sense at all to do that, improving one feature but removing another couple.

  • i had the 32x, but never got it to work. i tried it with one game, doom. it didnt display anything but the HUD. i quickly returned it after that.

    anyone ever get that thing to work?
    • Mine worked fine. Funny that you mention Doom, though. I remember how angry I was when I got the PC version and realized that I was cheated on the 32X version. First of all, the graphics were dumbed down for the 32X version. Second, it didn't have the last level. It just... stopped. Right before you fight the second main boss, the thing with the rocket launcher. You go through the exit on the second to last level, they run some credits, and then fart you out to a blinking c:> prompt, at which poin
      • Lol. The 32x version of Doom most certainly DID have a last level. It would "fart you out to the C:> prompt" if you used any cheat codes. SO, if you didn't get to see the last level, you have only yourself to blame. ;)
        • Are you serious? I didn't know I even HAD cheat codes for it back then. The only ones I remember were the typable ones on the PC, I'm drawing a complete blank on sega controller ones.

          Damn, if I still had it I'd go back and play it just for closure.
    • I had one of these; you had to plug the 32X into the Genesis slot and then connect the output of Genesis into the 32X, and plug the 32X into the TV.

      Pretty worthless console, although Shadow Squadron and Metal Head weren't half bad. It was great for one thing: Virtua Fighter. It was sold as a bundle with the console, and I remember picking mine up for $30 at Toys R Us. Saved me at least that much in quarters. ^_^

      Although, my friend was kind of pissed when I got my 32X; he had originally paid $160 for his,

  • CB (Score:2)

    by Tellarin ( 444097 )
    Has anyone else heard about the Cougar Boy? A Gameboy clone/wannabe. I only know one person who has it.

  • 3D0 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kisrael ( 134664 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:05PM (#16842780) Homepage
    It's kind of a dumb, overly snarky list, picking on some systems just because they never found their market.

    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.

  • Electonic Quiz Book from 1970's (Score:3, Interesting)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:06PM (#16842800)
    I had an electronic quiz book in the late 1970's where you read the question, pick an answer from the multiple choice, punch the corresponding button, and the device would tell you the correct answer with all the bells and whistles. You could replace the book with other books. I thought this was the coolest thing ever when I was a kid. Until I noticed that every book had the exact same answer for each question number (i.e., 1-A, 2-B, 3-C, 4-D, etc.). Then it wasn't so cool after you figure out the pattern. That was the problem with a lot of game "consoles" back then since each game relied on a predefined pattern.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ucklak ( 755284 )
      That would be the Coleco Quiz Wiz [handheldmuseum.com]

      You had to enter the question number then hit the appropriate answer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gozar ( 39392 )

      I had an electronic quiz book in the late 1970's where you read the question, pick an answer from the multiple choice, punch the corresponding button, and the device would tell you the correct answer with all the bells and whistles. You could replace the book with other books. I thought this was the coolest thing ever when I was a kid. Until I noticed that every book had the exact same answer for each question number (i.e., 1-A, 2-B, 3-C, 4-D, etc.). Then it wasn't so cool after you figure out the pattern.

  • Not enough space (Score:2, Informative)

    by mgabrys_sf ( 951552 )
    They left out stunners like the TurboGraphix Handheld (another battery chomper and mondo expensive portable), the Sega Master System (utterly clobbered by Nintendo, and run into the ground by Tonka), and - although I liked mine initially - the Atari 7800, a nice system if anyone knew how to program the damn thing (which no one did) after Warner sold Atari up the river. Most cynical warehouse clearance con-job by the Trammels EVER.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by NotQuiteInsane ( 981960 )
      Oh yes, the Atari 7800. The start of Atari's foray into "unbreakable" licence protection. Rumour has it, Atari top brass got sick of the badly-written unlicensed 2600 games spoiling the 2600's reputation, so they demanded that the engineers find some way to stop it. Engineering managed to implement a full 960-bit Rabin digital signature system on a 6502 CPU, then rigged it so that the graphics chipset would lock into '2600-compatible' mode if the signature check failed.

      It was eventually broken though - whe

  • Short note about the virtual boy... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Virtual_Boy# Product_failure [wikipedia.org]

    Nintendo did not "goof" by letting Yokoi "ship it". Nintendo forced Yokoi to rush it out when he was not even fully behind it himself, and then didn't back it up at tradeshows, leaving him out to dry. He ended up resigning shortly afterward, despite his amazing history there.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi [wikipedia.org]

    An amazing man left with all the blame for a silly, marketing/product-placement-driven idea.
  • We owned a CDi... Hard to believe my parents got suckered into that one. I wasn't even asking for it or anything. We bought three lame games with it (a crappy mini-golf game with Eugene Levy's voice taunting you, tetris, and some carnival-style game) You could buy an add-on module to watch movies on the discs, but we never got that. I remember thinking "Movies on a disc, like a CD? Never...!"

    After that, it's funny to think that in 2000, my mom returned a DVD player that my Dad got her for her birth
    • I remember playing with a first-generation Philips CDi unit at school; I have no idea why they purchased them, except that they must have had some idea about using it for educational purposes. (Or maybe someone just had budget money to burn.)

      Anyway, I used them once to play "Seventh Guest" (also a PC/Mac game) and thought it was pretty slick. At the time (this must have been 1992 or 93) I hadn't seen a game that incorporated that much full-motion video at that point, and found it fairly impressive. Alternat
  • I know my Jag got a ton of play time back in late high school and early college days for me. (roughly: 1995-1998) Rayman, Alien vs Predator, Tempest 2000, Raiden, and Cannon Fodder were all favorites that saw lots of use. Baldies (CD) was cute and fun when it didn't crash on you. Yeah, there were a bunch of stinkers ("Highlander" comes to mind rapidly. Myst as well because the UI on a low-res TV was so awful.)

    Besides, it is worth owning one for the VLM alone. When 5 years have passed I expect to pick up a
  • This thing was craptacular. I never trusted Sega after this POS -

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Mega-CD [wikipedia.org]
    • What I always found amusing is that when I worked for Toys R Us back when the Sega CD was out, I had to explain to a LOT of customers that they needed a Sega Genesis in order for the Sega CD to work. They just could not wrap their heads around the idea that it was purely an add-on and not a console in its own right. :-)

      Just my $.02...
      • What I always found amusing is that when I worked for Toys R Us back when the Sega CD was out, I had to explain to a LOT of customers that they needed a Sega Genesis in order for the Sega CD to work. They just could not wrap their heads around the idea that it was purely an add-on and not a console in its own right. :-)

        Your name wouldn't happen to be Jonathan Brandstetter [wikipedia.org], would it?
    • I've still got mine, along with a decent number of good games. I've had a lot of consoles, some of which were disappointing, but never regretted the purchase of the Sega CD. Aside from being my first CD player, it had AH-3 Thunderstrike, Robo Aleste, Lunar 1 and 2 along with several other good Working Designs translations, Snatcher, and Dark Wizard, all of which were standouts - especially for the time. SoulStar was good for a shooter on rails, Final Fight was a solid port, Sonic CD was expansive with an in

  • Wither Apple's Pippin? (Score:3, Informative)

    by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:32PM (#16843224) Journal
    The Pippin [wikipedia.org] was supposed to play games and do Multimedia like the CDi, I'm surprised it didn't make the list.
  • It's funny that almost all on the list (plus other lamers off the top of my head) were in the 90's. I was huge into gaming in the 90's and I remember these systems. They all looked promising at release, however there was always some huge problem that loomed keeping them from ever having a chance. A biggie was price (Jaguar, CDI, 3D0). Another was games (32x, Saturn). I think if you are lacking in either of those categories your system is never going to have a chance.

    Neo-Geo had badass arcade style games

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SpooForBrains ( 771537 )
      I remember finding it hysterical that the Neo Geo cost over £300 and the games themselves were in the £100 region ... and yet, people still play the damn things NOW. It's probably the most iconic game system. Not sure that counts as a failure.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Ucklak ( 755284 )
        The thing that made the Neo Geo unique was the fact that the games were identical to the arcade version.

        At that time frame, that was pretty awesome. If you had your memory stick with your stats on it from home, you could play your same character in the arcade.

        IMO, most of the Neo Geo games sucked as they were all the same formulaic game.
        Either fighting or a scrolling shoot em up.
        Replace fighter and opponent graphics and you had a different named game but same gameplay.

        Having arcade quality at home at that
  • Oh, come on. Sure, the systems mentioned here all fell short in some way or another, but calling these the 10 lamest game consoles, ever completely destroys the credability of the author Scott Steinberg as well as that of the submitter. This list doesn't even come close to some of the real turkeys, like the RCA console that was released in the 70's, an overpriced and extremely crude resolution cartridge based console that offered B&W graphics at the same time the Fairchild F8 and the Atari 2600 were o

  • Take the 32X and Saturn off (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 ) <`vasqzr' `at' `netscape.net'> on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @05:02PM (#16843834)
    Replace them with:

    Maganavox Odyssey^2

    Horrible. Horrible. The controllers were hardwired to the console circuit board in the first model. The games all stunk and used the same generic character sprites. Almost all the games were written by one guy.

    Atari 7800

    Backwards compatible with the Atari 2600 but it came out around the same time as the NES which outclassed it.

    Atari 5200

    Horrible joysticks. This thing had potential but Atari didn't know what the hell was going on.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drewmca ( 611245 )
      Stick the Sega master system on there. I think it was far worse than at least one of the ataris. Lame controllers, lamer games. Though space harrier was cool.

      I think I date myself when I say I remember playing the odyssey.
    • Funny you should mention those 5200 joysticks.

      I remember my dad replaced the side-buttons on both our joysticks (the orange, rubber buttons) with keyboard keys because the buttons wouldn't make contact anymore and were all smached in. The analog sticks worked OK, from what I remember. They also had a full, telephone-style keypad on them, which I think I used exactly 0 times while playing the system.

      There was some awesome 3D space game, Star Raiders (I think), where you got to fly around to different star
  • Lamest? I'd have to say the virtual boy and Saturn were pretty cool.

    There was many failings with it but in theory they were one of the coolest ideas. A virtual Reality helmet? A Cd based system. Of course no one would ever want a optial disc for a System like the saturn would they?

    What's the opposite of "lame" in this article? Cool? Are we going to say the PSX or PS2 is cool then? Is the Xbox cool or just fat? It's true the 360 oozes coolness, and the wii looks hot, but I really don't think those ar
  • I'm surprised the psp didn't make the list.

    UMD? why?
    what games does it have?

    I use it mostly to watch tv shows and listen to music....

    I don't think Sony had that market in mind.
  • And it's no wonder.

    Ladies and gentlemen, the Amstrad GX4000 [consolepassion.co.uk].
  • I know someone who was a developer on a Gizmondo software project that never made it to light. Shortly before the whole thing collapsed, he had trouble getting a consulting invoice paid, so he went to their London HQ and basically camped out for the day in reception refusing to leave until Stefan Erikson's girlfriend, the finance director, paid his invoice. It very nearly got legal, until evidently ther got pissed off and wrote a cheque to get him out of the foyer.

    You should have seen his face 2 weeks later
  • ..had they ported Burnout for it.

    Considering how an Enzo got do its own little "Crash Party" but didn't get the Crashbreaker. :)
  • the Sega Game Gear. Yeah it had video in, color, played a ton of the 8bit sega games and sucked batteries dry in 2 hours. It also sold very poorly and was the only direct rival to the lynx.
    • I can't speak for anyone else, but in my book 8.65 million [wikipedia.org] in sales doesn't equal "sold very poorly."

      I recall the Game Gear being a very cool system. I owned the original GameBoy and the original, VHS-cassette-sized Atari Lynx, and I remember wishing I had a Game Gear. At that time, the ability to play Sonic the Hedgehog on a handheld was unbelievably cool.

  • The Sega Saturn Appreciation Station (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Old School Saturn Fa ( 575758 ) <aecarlsson100@nOSPaM.yahoo.com> on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @06:39PM (#16845348)
    The Sega Saturn does not belong on this list. The author, Mr. Scott Steinberg equates negative sales performance in select markets with poor hardware design and poor software. The Saturn was trounced in the US by the PSX as far as sales. If sales in the United States during this period is the determinant of "lameness" according to Mr. Steinberg then he must view Deer Hunter as the single "coolest" game ever made.

    I still play Guardian Heroes and Radiant Silvergun. Those games were great. SFA2: Zero was probably the best 2D Street Fighter ever. Assault Suits Leynos 2 is absolutely the best 2D side scrolling mech game ever made by the hands of man.

    From the article:

    "Worse, the system promoted 2-D graphics when 3-D was the first PlayStation's biggest feature, leaving its days ironically numbered."

    I think that , looking back, a well executed 1997 2D game can still be played without making your eyes hurt, unlike most 1997 3D offerings. Poorly played Mr. Steinberg, and poorly written. The top ten list has replaced worthwhile game journalism and this is what we get, sales figures described as measures of lameness.

    • I was really, really close to getting a Saturn at the local Montgomery Ward (and Panzer Dragoon), but I decided to hold off and see what the PSX was going to do.

      Looking back, the games I liked playing more were on the Saturn (scrolling shooters, and 2D fighting games)... and as a result my PSX got limited play until a few decent RPGs came out... by that time the Saturn was toast. :)

      The list forgot the Atari "XE gamesystem" with its grotesque buttons (pastel? Really?) and uneventful lineup (anyone with an At

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by heli0 ( 659560 )
      "Assault Suits Leynos 2 is absolutely the best 2D side scrolling mech game ever made by the hands of man."

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxpLi7k0FVQ [youtube.com]

  • What? No Telstar? (Score:3, Informative)

    by east coast ( 590680 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @07:10PM (#16845774)
    The console [wikipedia.org] with three games that all were oddly like pong?
     
    I know, it's a first gen console and we could list pretty much the first ten consoles out there as not having a lot of value but there was a cheapness to the first Telstar that I can not even explain.

  • MIcrosoft VIS: Lamest console ever in all respects (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hirschma ( 187820 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @08:27PM (#16846668)
    The Memorex VIS [vidgame.net] takes the lame cake. It was really a Microsoft product, but they couldn't put their name on it for fear of pissing off the OEMs.

    It was a 286 PC crammed into a console. It ran "Modular Windows" - a version of Win3.x - which meant that almost any then-current software could be ported to it. This was Microsoft's first atttempt at entering the videogame/console market.

    RadioShack sold them, Memorex gave it branding. MS provided the OS, and invited big publishers to release. They sure did - direct ports. None of the software was adapted for television, meaning that text was unreadable, and colors just looked wrong or shimmered off the screen. Single pixel dithering and single pixel lines abounded, but made most TVs "tear". The processor was terribly slow, as was the optical drive. The sound capabilities were horrid (think 1992 soundcard, then cheapened). The entire experience was totally inferior to older 8-bit consoles and the still-then-popular Commodore 64 - yet it cost an astounding $400.

    In short, the entire thing was totally unusable. It had NO redeeming features at all.

    They tried selling it for a while, but no one bit. I recall that total sales figures may have been hundreds, perhaps a few thousand. It was a huge, huge failure, perhaps the biggest one that MS experienced up until that time.

    No one remembers, especially the lamo "journalist" that wrote that lame article.

  • I'm sorry, but half of these don't come near the suckitude of the Emerson Arcadia 2001. [wikipedia.org] Not only was it technologically two years behind (a long time in that era), but whoever programmed the games must have been certifiably tone-deaf, because the sound is awful. Typical modern-system myopia.

    Another one that should be on the list is the RCA Studio II. [wikipedia.org] Now admittedly it was only the second programmable console ever made (the Channel F was the first), but it had no color, no wired controllers (just two key

  • That writeup was certainly a blast from the past for me. Many of those consoles I either owned and paid full price for (3DO, Saturn), played at a friends house when I was a kid (CDi, 32X) or avoided like the bubonic plague because I knew it was going to bomb (Virtual Boy, Jaguar). Video games were born and grew up the same time I did and it's fun to look back and see how they evolved as I did.

    Also: I thought the Sega Saturn shouldn't have been on that list. It was an epic system with some amazing arcade por
  • CD32 was a total failure from Commodore to produce a console based on the Amiga. Commodore execs were so silly as to believe that the primitive-for-the-time Amiga graphics chips (no 3d acceleration, no sprite scaling and rotation, few hardware sprites) could make it to a console...
    • Thats nonsense. The CD32 outsold and outpowered every CD based console of the time, even the CD drives being included with PC's. It had the ability to attach mouse and keyboard, expand with various drives including a hard drive and even had A1200 backwards compatibility for a huge library of games. This was before Sony and Microsoft even thought about doing similar things.

      Commodore were collapsing before the CD32 hit the market. (One of the biggest reasons it failed in America was because they couldn't brin

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jandrese ( 485 )
        I think the reason Atari was in such trouble was because their management was batshit crazy at that point.
      • But CD32 was released at the time when the only CD console was the PC Engine! PCs did not have CD ROM drives back then; backwards compatibility with A1200 and A600 was not an advantage, because Amiga games required a keyboard and mouse.

        Perhaps you should get your facts straight before dismissing comments as 'nonsense'.
        • 'But CD32 was released at the time when the only CD console was the PC Engine!'
          and the mega CD, the CDi and PC CD-ROM drives were rapidly on the rise.

          ' backwards compatibility with A1200 and A600 was not an advantage, because Amiga games required a keyboard and mouse.'
          both of which you can plug in to a CD32.

          and you claim I should check my facts...

          Im not trying to be nasty here but you are wrong, and it was nonsense.
  • Wasn't there a Japanese console, sometime in the late 1980s/early 1990s, which used 2.5" floppies (i.e., the hard plastic ones without shutters, also used with word-processing typewriters and synthesisers) as its media? I recall seeing some 2.5" floppies with colourful labels in Japanese at a flea market in Australia many years ago.

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close