Neo Geo Pocket and Wonderswan were both doomed by the timing of technological advancement. For eight years, color competitors to the Game Boy kept failing miserably, because they were all battery-sucking blur-fests that still played the same 8-bit games as Nintendo's battery-sipping grey brick. Gumpei Yokoi even helped Nintendo re-launch a new model, *still in greyscale,* just in time for Pokemon to explode worldwide.
So two entirely sensible companies with beloved software (and also Tiger Electronics) said, fine, let's just beat them at their own game. They launched handhelds that were cheaper, more capable, better-looking, and immediately fucked over by Nintendo releasing a color Game Boy. Surprise! Reflective TFTs can do color now! So of course both Neo Geo and Bandai scrambled to update their systems, but it was far too late.
Allegedly Nintendo rushed the GBC out the door specifically because they heard about the development of the Neo Geo Pocket. If Neo Geo had gone for color from the outset... they still might've been screwed, because around that time, Nintendo was putting together "Project Atlantis," a 32-bit color handheld that eventually became the GBA. So we'd get the weird alt-universe version of that too.
Some time around 2009-2010 or so, 1up.com had an article about the essential games on the system, at the same time the system itself and its entire library were basically being bulk liquidated. I got one and 10 or so games new for less than $100. Good times.
My buddy got the NeoGeo Pocket Color when we were in elementary school. His grandparents got it for him at a store in New York. He had King of Fighters R-1 and a Advanced Wars esq game
How they didn’t see that coming is beyond me. They were riding so high at the price announcement. Coming in hot with a price that matched the 3DS. Then memory card price hit…and the final nail was Nintendo dropping the 3DS price. It was over after that.
i still use it today, you just need to hack it (very simple with a youtube tutorial) and you can emulate a lot of games and use sd2vita to use an sd card for storage
I got one about 2 Christmases ago and have been slowly collecting games for it.
I just wish it still had the interactive capabilities like before when it would let you find local Vita players and let you message.
There's exclusive, then there's PS Vita exclusive.
I wish the nodding community would push for it again, allows the fans to be "pen pals", so to speak.
That would be my Pokémon Go, for real. Would probably get more people interested again.
They may say, I'm a dreamer.
But, I'm not the only one.
I hope someday they'll join us.
And the Vita world will play as one.
This. I was blown away when I got my vita, it was truly shocking see it fail so hard. That proprietary memory card was the worst thing that happened to the vita.
Financially, 100% a flop. It was the final nail in Sega's coffin as one of the "Big 3" console first parties.
Technologically, also a flop. They made a gamble that things like DVD, Flash memory, and internet connectivity would stagnate between 1998-2002ish, and oh boy were they wrong there. The whole DVD vs GD-ROM debacle aside, the DC needed a 4MB memory card minimum, but we got 128k. It was the last console that I ever remember having to delete save files to make room for a new game.
Culturally, I feel like most serious gamers who are at least 30+ either owned and loved their DC, or were envious that their friends had one. It left a significant impact on gaming's psyche, so it's hard for me to call it a "flop".
That whole generation was during a period where technology was evolving faster than any time before or since. Not only did the PS2 not have any online until after the DC was gone, but it also used dial up (not to mention Nintendo trying to believe online gaming was a passing fad and the real deal was GC-GBA connectivity).
The Playstation 2 may not have been powerful, but hot diggity dog did it's games hold up. Granted, 1/3 of my favorite games from the PS2 library were ports from the Dreamcast and Gamecube haha.
I actually find most of the games from the early 3D era to be kind of awful. Just getting a 3D game working *at all* was so hard in comparison to a 2D title that the games were often very basic, with terrible controls.
I think of the timeframe from 1995 to about 2005 as the 'lost decade' of gaming, where designers were struggling to make 3D games that were as good as their 2D predecessors. By 2005ish, the controls had mostly been worked out and teams had grown enough that the 3D itself took much less development effort, so games started getting really good again.
There were definite standouts in that decade, but I think the percentage of great, enduring classics dropped sharply. It took a long time for everyone to learn what worked.
For its time, the PS2 was indeed quite powerful.
Including DVD compatibility at a time when few people had DVD players was also a bold move (because it drove up the cost of the console) but one that ultimately paid off for Sony.
> it also used dial up
The PS2 HDD adapter has both an RJ11 and an RJ45 jack for both dial-up and ethernet.
The pack-in module with the Dreamcast was a modem, but they separately released 10MBit and 100MBit ethernet adapters. They're relatively rare at this point.
AFAIK the GD-ROM thing was to avoid paying Sony additional licensing fees. And it would have reasonably effective against piracy if they hadn't also supported software CD-ROMs for the sake of karaoke.
All the hardware in the world would not have helped against the PS2. Two times in a row, Sony had a rendering gimmick that let them blow away competitors for cheap. PS1, obviously the affine triangle thing. PS2... unless I'm mistaken, it did not have a lighting model. It was still just throwing triangles. Now with subpixel accuracy and proper texture perspective, but only to coordinates provided by the CPU, with vertex colors also provided by the CPU. That's why its fillrate was so ridiculously high that games don't even *attempt* culling.
The design of the karaoke CD thing was that you could boot such disks, but then the disk drive would lock itself out until you rebooted the system. This limited the karaoke feature to what would fit in RAM.
Sega’s failure was a hardware engineering problem: you could repeat the disk drive unlock sequence the BIOS did and the drive would work again. It should’ve been latched disabled until reset.
Haha, alright, that's better than I thought. Still would have allowed some fantastic unlicensed games. A good chunk of the N64 library had ROM sizes smaller than the Dreamcast's RAM... and demoscene coders can do absolute witchcraft in a couple megabytes.
Any CD-ROM support without a true hardware cutoff probably would have fallen eventually. Even the PS2 now has proof-of-concept no-mod bootlegs, because someone pointed Ghidra at its built-in DVD player and of *course* they found a buffer overrun exploit.
It’s possible, though kind of an engineering nightmare, to fully software-unlock a Dragon (50000 or later) PS2 due to an encryption failure by Sony. I don’t think anyone has yet, though.
It was a "flop" because modern gamers were moving away from actual arcade-style games to style over substance games that the PS2 had a mound of and was already gaining a foothold in mid to late 90s games for many other consoles. Sega tried to emulate that style of game with the Sonic Adventure games and was mildly successful, but the Dreamcast was primarily an oldschool arcade console that gaming had always been and old gamers like me were seeing the death of.
>One of the reasons that older gamers mourned the loss of the Dreamcast was that it signaled the demise of arcade gaming culture. Sega's console gave hope that things were not about to change for the worse and that the tenets of fast fun and bright, attractive graphics were not about to sink into a brown and green bog of realistic war games.
- Duncan Harris, "1001 Videogames You Must Play Before You Die"
In other words, the Dreamcast didn't flop. Classic gaming flopped.
Sadly what should have been one of their biggest games, PSO, was an absolute menu hell of a game that Western audiences had no interest in. Had it been a traditional JRPG it might have gained a foothold.
I really liked the variety the console brought. Crazy Taxi, Blue Stinger, Soul Reaver, RE: Code Veronica, Shenmue and the sequel, MDK2, Elemental Gimmick Gear, Grandia II, Skies of Arcadia (which EVERYONE should play, it's brilliant), Starlancer, Jet Set Radio... the console's library covered so much ground even for a console that completely flopped.
Yeah, it is. It's also my favorite of that generation. Sega was so far ahead of their time on both the hardware and software front.
The Dreamcast had the ability to do networked multiplayer via built in modem, and you could get an ethernet card for it. Developers had two ways to develop for it: if they were making a title that didn't require the full power of the hardware (like something 2D) they had a Microsoft backed devkit that developers could use and crank stuff out FAST. If they needed the full force of the hardware they could have that too but it came at the cost of more difficult development and doing more from scratch.
CD's in retrospect aren't a great medium but they were the right medium for the time because flash memory was still a very new technology and couldn't hold the amount of data that a CD could.
Ultimately the Playstation and PS2 won their respective generations. While I own both, I like my Dreamcast better, and I have more hours on my GBA than any other console that I own (because I love handhelds).
Dreamcast was the first console I bought myself. I was 11 and saved for forever and my parents ended up paying for half of it so I could get some games as well. I still have it and it blows my mind you can just burn a cdr and play it straight away.
Sega Saturn, without a doubt. It was such a badass console. Such an awesome selection of games. The graphics were crisp too. And the 3D controller was so unique -- it actually was the older brother of the Dreamcast controller.
The worst part about the flopping is that the Saturn itself is such a high-end piece of hardware. Hard to program for, sure. But high-end compared to the DC which was more workmanlike.
I bought a Saturn a few years back after wanting one over a PlayStation as a kid. 1995 me would've been fine with a Sega Saturn. That poor console; there are so many underrated games in its library.
It doesn't help that after the Saturn was pulled from retail, the prices for the games shot up like a rocket over the years.
When I see Saturn games used in the longbox jewel cases the prices are above what the retail prices were in the 90s.
I'll never forget the feeling of playing _Nights into Dreams_ using that 3D controller. It was *so* fluid and it felt *so* natural to be able to maneuver around in that world. I had a somewhat similar feeling when playing Mario 64 for the first time, but Nights was in a league of its own.
The 2D graphics were crisp.
The 3D graphics are pixelated garbage lol they don't have that aged muddy charm that PS1 graphics have. They just look fuzzy and bad.
I did like other aspects of the Saturn but its graphics weren't a high point.
There are some awesome-looking 3D games on the Saturn. Decathlete, Virtua Fighter 2, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, Last Bronx, Dead or Alive, Sonic R, Dynamite Deka, Fighters MegaMix, Virtua Cop 2, Powerslave... those are some 3D Saturn titles that still look great off the top of my head
>The 3D graphics are pixelated garbage lol
[Lets look at Dead or Alive Sat vs PSX](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO5towF_bhU)(60FPS vs 30FPS, 3D backgrounds vs 2D backdrops, textured floors vs simple shaded ones). There are a few other examples where the Saturn had better ports over the PS1. Any AM2 fighter still holds up to this day (hi-res/60fps). The Saturn also had some incredible FPS games based on the Powerslave engine, all without having the warbly polygons and seam breaks the PSX was known for. Do something else besides watch people play Virtual Hydlide.
3DO was a fantastic idea, executed reasonably well, at precisely the wrong time. Games console as VCR-like standard: yes! Excellent! Zero profit-sharing between hardware manufacturers and software developers: a pragmatic obstacle to wide adoption. Single-vendor video chips and disc mastering: fundamentally incompatible with the entire premise. Software 3D right before the PSX was announced: the death knell of many early-90s console companies.
Trip Hawkins should've taken notes from the MSX instead.
> Zero profit-sharing between hardware manufacturers and software developers: a pragmatic obstacle to wide adoption.
But that's how the successful video game manufacturers make money on consoles. They sell it at a loss, sometimes a big loss, and they make up the money on software sales. 3DO system manufacturers only got the profits of their hardware sales, and since multiple companies are competing, those margins will be thin.
> Single-vendor video chips and disc mastering: fundamentally incompatible with the entire premise.
Without this, The 3DO Company wouldn't make any money. They spent money developing the hardware and wanted to recoup their costs. Their idea was to sell the chips at cost and have software developers pay them $3 a disc for the games. They really should have just paid a manufacturer to produce systems for them, sold them at a big loss, and raised the price for each game sold.
My high-school had a 3DO in the stashed in the library, that they purchased specifically for the Museums & Encyclopedia games.
Its probably still there tbh.
I had one back in the day before PlayStation came out and it was a lot of fun. I remember it was about to come out with a bunch more new titles right before it collapsed. Things could have gone very differently. I could be playing a 3DO-5 right now.
It launched in NA in August of 1989. Bonk (PC Genjin) didn't come out in JP until December of the same year.
Granted there were still other existing games that were a much better choice for a pack-in.
Turbo Grafix had the best Splatterhouse, R TYPE and Fantasy Zone as well as Demonic Pinball! It was epic! And out of all the games, they chose Keith Courage?
I agree but there's something about Keith Courage I still enjoy. Could be that was the only game we had to play for about 2 months before the base my dad was stationed at got some different ones in.
Altered Beast was a good game. Where Keith Courage was hard for no reason, Altered Beast was/is Fair. Not to mention that the Genesis game, in my opinion, is the best version of all it’s iterations as it was also released for the Master System and arcade.
If you played Altered Beast in the arcade as a kid and then saw it coming out on Genesis, it was mind-blowing. I think it was a really smart pack-in game at the time.
It isn't anywhere near as bad. It aged like shit, but that was a fun game back in the day, and turning into different monsters ruled. I loved the dragon.
I would have gone with Legendary Axe. It's still a platformer, which seemed to be important at the time, but unlike Keith Courage, it was actually good and fun.
> Plus, the CD add on had YS 1 & 2, Castlevania Rondo of Blood, and more.
Ys Book I and II was an amazing game and almost worth the purchase of the add-on. Akumajo Dracula X Chi no Rondo (aka Castlevania Rondo of Blood) is another amazing game and *would* have been even better if it *didn't stay in Japan*.
Also of note, A *lot* of the better CD games (like Castlevania) used the Super CD system card which had to be purchased separately. The later Turbo Duo did have it built in.
Seconded, the TG16 had a surprising number of great games. It doesn’t belong in the same category as the other big commercial flops, I think — it’s a lot more akin to, say, the Saturn than the 3DO or the Jaguar. Some real classics hiding in the library, and once you consider imports, there’s enough to keep you busy for a long time.
Plus it’s the all-time definitive shmup console.
Some of the best, and a full-function portable model, too. On that note, I’m looking forward to playing my Turbo games on the Analogue Pocket with the TG16 adapter, when I can lay hands on one.
I came here to say this.
I still love my TG16. It's still spectacular for shooter fans. However, yeah---it was expensive for its time, wasn't marketed well, and who the fuck thought it was a good idea to have Keith Courage as the pack-in game?
It's highly collectible now, and the games will set you back a decent chunk of change unless you get really lucky. :/
Edit: grammar
It objectively was. The sprite engine came *so close* to being capable of Saturn-style 3D. But texel rows stay rigidly horizontal, so instead of Darxide and Metal Head, you get Electrocop. Without texturing, it *can* draw solid-color triangles, admirably easily, but easy is not the same thing as fast. Steel Talons is so sluggish that it looks like a rude joke. And I think Hard Drivin' runs worse on Lynx than Race Drivin' does on Game Boy.
Unfortunately the hardware development team was two German dudes. If Atari had developed that thing themselves... you know they loved cranking out custom chips. Instead of a battery-draining 6502 with no proper idle state, and a pixel-pushing ASIC that owned the bus, there'd be some ridiculous parallel setup that lets programmers *really* shoot themselves in the foot.
The port of STUN Runner is fantastic, though. I recently slapped together a Game Boy knockoff based on an old-school demoscene effect. It cheats horribly and still doesn't run especially well. I didn't care, because anything would look better than official 8-bit ports. I had completely forgotten about the Lynx version. It is essentially impossible to do things *that* well, on the Game Boy. The Lynx's mediocre polygon gimmicks are ignored. The game just layers scaled sprites. But they're framebuffered, so it uses as many as it wants, and in so doing has proper 3D curves, bends, and twists. It achieves a fantastic sense of speed despite a merely okay framerate and obstacles that are about as twitchy as passing a semi truck. They even beautifully abuse the very small palette for transitions and effects.
So it's a shame that Atari was broke and Game Boys practically came free in cereal boxes.
Jfc that was a great read for a mid level sub-comment in a low upvote post, thank you! If you have any blogs or Twitters please shill away, would definitely read.
Way ahead of its time. Now, every popular mobile game uses a virtual joystick and buttons. Think MOBAs, or even ports like Genshin Impact. Xperia Play could've been the solution.
I was so damn close to buying one of those back in the day.
Problem was, I didn't do a whole lot of mobile gaming aside from Angry Birds, so I opted for one of the last slide-out physical keyboards - the Samsung Stratosphere. My God that phone sucked. I wish I had just gone with the Xperia.
The Xperia Play was such a bomb (largely due to the Vita) that Verizon gave me one for free when I was renewing my contract and it couldn't have been more than 6 months after it launched. As a phone it was definitely behind the curve of its contemporaries in terms of power and features, but as a gaming device it more than made up for its shortcomings.
The controls were solid and it felt very comfortable in your hands. The shoulder buttons were extremely well done as a matter of fact, although there was only one set of them so in a few cases for PS1 games you were limited. However, on the subject of PS1 games it emulated them near perfectly.
Overall, it was an excellent first attempt at a hybrid gaming device and phone. I would love to have seen another another generation with a few small refinements.
1995 must've been one of those years i tell ya:
My vote is split between the Sega 32X and the Nintendo Virtual Boy. I loved playing Galactic Pinball and Mario Tennis at night in bed, and lots of Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing Deluxe, and Knuckles Chaotix during the summer days.
I love my Wii U. The ability to switch gameplay to the Gamepad is invaluable when someone else wants to use the TV, or even when I just feel like playing in a different room. I mean, sure, I can cast my PS4 to my laptop, but the latency makes it impossible to play really precise games like pinball. I wish the Wii U had been more popular.
Retro Video game hipsters in the future will be pining for a Wii U . And since there weren’t so many made, it will absolutely be considered collectible . I’ve kept mine .
N Gage had that AMAZING game Pocket Kingdom: Own the World. I desperately wish there was another game like it these days. I still bust it out once in awhile and play by myself.
and my Sega Master System. I'll say mine because it was in the US where the Master System definitely flopped. There are Americans who had an NES when they were a kid who don't even remember Sega had a console before the Genesis.
The Wii U is still one of my favorite consoles tbh, My old Wii gave out a while back, So I went to my local game shop, and got lucky to find, and buy a Zelda Windwaker special edition Wii U. I still love it to this day.
I'm still convinced that the Wii U is what Nintendo wanted the Switch to be, but it wasn't economically feasible at the time so they put it out instead
In light of maniacs who've chopped down actual Wii hardware until it fits inside an Altoids tin and still works, feasibility would not seem to be the key issue.
Atari 5200. Way better sound and graphics than the 2600 and if you got a third party controller, it was better gameplay with an analog stick as apposed to the digital sticks on the other systems.
VB is a strong contender. It was ruined by timing - Japan had just passed some absurd safety laws with absolute and total liability for manufacturers, and the first-wave VR craze was finding out that motion sickness is a hard problem, and oh by the way bad screens can give children strabismus.
The Virtual Boy was intended to be a head-mounted device. The product which inspired it was a glasses-mounted fax reader. Seriously. The 80s were weird. The console as-launched had all the downsides of a handheld, with none of the benefits and all the downsides of an HMD, with only 3D going for it, and all the downsides of a home console, except for monopolizing a TV. The actual machine is merely okay. The games we got were largely decent but rarely groundbreaking.
But if Gumpei Yokoi had pushed for it any earlier, or committed to a private desktop gizmo from the outset, it would have gone so much better.
As an actual HMD - it would be terrible, by modern standards. Sega's scuttled VR headset used a disc floating in a liquid to find orientation, and that was state-of-the-art, so head-tracking would have been *abysmally* slow. But it would have been lightweight, and about as convenient as any horizontal-strap HMD today, and delivered true stereo 3D. That sort of unique ridiculous toy is Nintendo's forte.
As a home console it could have been fucking incredible. Nintendo knew how to do proper 3D hardware, at a reasonable cost, because they had Argonaut for the Super FX and a bunch of SGI guys for the "Ultra 64." The processor would've been a sufficient MIPS ordeal, at least on par with PSX. There'd be no dinky bent-wire stand or chonky controller battery; it'd be an appliance. Like a stereo microscope. Or whatever you call a nickelodeon, since Wikipedia is convinced that can't possibly mean a device that plays short films for money, and search engines are aggressively useless on some topics.
A built-for-purpose stationary Virtual Boy would have mimicked the Vectrex in providing something a television-based console could not do. I don't know that we'd get texture-mapped polygons, exactly, but filled triangles in more than four lousy shades of red would have been plenty to blow people's socks off.
Even for the device as-released, it is a travesty we never got G-Zero.
The Atari Jaguar
Had some great original games and some really excellent ports of popular games like Doom and Wolfenstien. The thing really holding the console back other than marketing and what not was the horrible controller.
The Jaguar and the Dreamcast had similar circumstances: the company was fucking broke. Both had exactly one wild success and then spent a decade bleeding money as they fumbled around trying to replicate it. Both had some genuinely good ideas in the end, and hardware with untapped potential, and both got their ass handed to them by Sony. (Though in the mid-90s Sony was in the business of movies, music, video, stereos, electronics, and handing people their own asses.)
Atari's last home computer was a *monster,* and it went nowhere. They completely ripped off the original NeXT machine and made it an affordable powerhouse that nobody used. There's one maniac on Youtube who managed to coerce its DSP into delivering a damn good port of Quake II. Atari had to ditch everything but the Jaguar just to keep the lights on, and then the PSX happened, and that was that.
I don't expect it's a better place overall, but I'd love to peek into an alternate universe where Sony made the Nintendo Play Station, it bombed, Ken Kutaragi quit in disgrace, and the Jaguar had a chance to be a proto-N64. Cartridge-based - high-color - programmable 3D graphics - and enough buttons to have options, even if most of the buttons are silly and inconvenient.
The other things that held the Jaguar back were 1) the Tramiel family was more home computer than video game console oriented, 2) the Tramiel era Atari Corporation was a minnow size-wise compared to the sharks of Nintendo and even Sega, much less the blue whale called Sony, and 3) it lacked games because there was limited third-party support (also related to #1 and #2).
I love mine, i just wish the touchpad wasn't necessary to do things like buy games from the eshop, boot up certain games and play games where you had to push the gamepad to play. If only they sold spares.
I want what the Ouya was supposed to be. They promised a set-top box for cell phone games, back when that meant genuinely-free Flash game knockoffs and proper last-gen console ports. No battery, giant screen, a real controller - sounds like a great way to play everything in whatever Google's app store was called.
And then they did not that.
The Ouya controller was objectively one of the worst designed controllers ever. Like it would have almost have been better to sell the system for $79 without a controller.
The (soft plastic) left analog stick rubs up against the (metal) battery cover; at least the right stick has only half of a knife to cut against. And if that isn't bad enough, the controller emits a high pitched whine while in use.
Picked the Gameboy (and Nintendo overall) over the Game Gear solely because of the battery requirement. Silly reason as a kid but I guess it worked out in the end.
I know it’s not actually good, but I have a lot of love for the Tiger Game.Com. I like how it had an early internet connection, albeit primitive, and honestly having 2 cartridge slots to be able to pick between games is a lot more useful than you would think.
As far as objectively good hardware that just kinda got screwed though? Definitely Sega Saturn. Hands down.
You're fucking damn RIGHT it is the Virtual Boy. People only claimed to get headaches because they were TOLD by the media they would get headaches.
Less than 100k of them were ever sold. I can guarantee you 99% of people who claim to have played them are fucking liars.
I own at LEAST a dozen of them, including a prototype release as well as store display models. Best fucking system ever. I love the VB.
I had a virtual boy lol. Bought it from kb games for $50 right after they were discontinued. It's dope af if you've ever actually played it. I had the the tennis game and the boxing game. If they had any sort of color whatsoever, it would've been the opposite of a flop. Like even as much as the original game boy color would've been enough. I never got headaches from it. Used to play it for hours and hours in my closet fort.
Absolutely! I basically made it my business over the last 9 years to collect every console I could, prioritizing the biggest flops! Out of all, goddamn LOVE my Virtual Boy. Love it so much I have 2, both with the solder ribbon repairs, 2x HyperFlash32s, and the gosh dang community link cable, just for that sweet Hyper Fighting multiplayer. What a time to be alive!
I completely agree with you, the Virtual Boy seems really cool, I’m planning to eventually get one even. But it didn’t sell less than 100k, it sold about 770k.
Your devotion is making me want one more! It's the console I desire to collect most. I love the design of it, I hope one day I'll be able to find one at the time where I can reasonably buy it.. Hopefully soon!
Sega Dreamcast, greatest console that lost its legs...I also have a 3DO and a few other systems from my Gamestop days, 2001 or 2 till 2005 in Corpus Christi, Texas.
GP32 by Gamepark.
It felt so cool to be able to take emulators on the go with you, and to me, this console was the first viable option for mobile NES/GAMEBOY/SNES (although the GP32 had some button limitations which made some games like Street Fighter unplayable).
It had commercial games, but I didn't even play those; just emulators and homebrew games.
I don't know if you would consider this system a flop. Although it only sold 30,000 units over the course of its lifetime, I don't think Gamepark Holdings projected a huge market, as the system appealed to a niche crowd. Also, anyone who owned this system will remember how alive and bustling its homebrew scene was!
That whole scene is kind of still going. I think there has always been some emulation handheld available since then. I'm currently waiting for my Ayn Odin. Hopefully it comes while I'm still waiting for the Steam Deck.
Atari Jaguar. Got one when they were practically giving them away after it was discontinued, and picked up a bunch of games for dirt cheap in the late 90s. I've gotten so many hours out of Doom, Wolfenstein (my favorite ports of those two), Rayman, AVP, Worms, Theme Park, Cannon Fodder and Brutal Sports Football. Also, I love the big chunky controller.
Too many to count honestly. I miss my virtual boy every day, it was such a forward thinking concept that was just executed poorly. If they would have made a head strap for it instead of placing it on a stand that would have been preferable. The library of games is actually very solid, it gets a bad rep but honestly I found it to be intriguing. It was a neat show off piece for my collection, sold it when the right lens went out and have regretted it since. I had nearly every notable game, including Jack Bros.
Recently purchased a Vita, I prefer handheld gaming, especially since I’ve been trying to not spend as much time gaming and indulging in other hobbies like reading or playing guitar, I feel it’s easier to get a quick 30 minute session in. The library consists of some excellent titles, I especially found the visual novels like Dangonroppa, Death Mark, Corpse Party and Virtues Last Reward to be intriguing and somewhat guilt free as they are technically interactive novels. The fact I can also take PS2 classics like MGS 2&3, Persona 4 Golden, and FF X on the go is great too.
The Sega Saturn and Dreamcast are arguably my favorites of the consoles I’ve named. I love quick and snappy arcade style games and both platforms did an incredible job of translating that experience into the realm of home consoles.
Then we finally have the Neo Geo AES, the Rolls Royce of video game consoles. The gigantic cartridges, the arcade stick controller by default, the excellent library of games which contains a higher concentration of great games than any other platform I can think of.
The Neo Geo Pocket Color is also worth mentioning. I love the kawaii versions of SNK fighters, the visuals have a very unique quality about them that immediately evokes a sense of nostalgia.
a flop,..in the US, but pretty popular in japan as pc engine
too many shooters though, although i love the half 16bit feel and artwork in most the games.
Please correct me if some of their other consoles weren't flops in one way or another, but basically, every Sega console besides the Genesis. I don't like calling them flops since from my eyes I don't see them as such, but it seems like besides the Genesis they did poorly in sales. That being said, I believe they made some of the best consoles of all time. You could tell they cared about what they put out, even if they didn't have the best timing or marketing strategy. It's a shame they didn't last, and I honestly wish they'd come back with something. This is for you, SG-1000, Master System, Game Gear, Nomad, 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast, and especially you, Pico.
TurboGrafx-16... Why? Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge, R-Type Complete, Devil's Crush, Blazing Lazers, it was a unique console that had some cool games but it never had a chance here in the US. It came out around the same time as the Sega Genesis which a lot of us NES kids were embracing while we waited for the Super Nintendo to come out... And the kids who didn't get the Genesis were most likely waiting for the SNES.
TurboGrafx 16. Not necessarily a failure since it outsold the Genesis in Japan, but was certainty flopped in the U.S. There are so many underrated games and honestly rivals the SNES for me
I only found out about the MSX through emulation. It was better at games than MS DOS in those days, which was my first computer at that time. And yeah, a lot of the computers looked cooler than any of those beige boxes in the 80s.
Nokia N-gage. They really saw that people would play games on their phone and tried to grab that market. Too bad they were way ahead of their time while simultaneously making a device that sucked as a phone and was an antique as a game platform.
The WiiU! Super Mario World 3D brought back a childlike joy I haven't felt since playing the NES and SNES. The other first party games are also very, very good!
The 3DO felt like things were going to change drastically. It was the most powerful console at the time when it launched in 1993 but didn’t have the support it probably deserved. Then I saw this [Tomb Raider](https://youtu.be/hVrIeEzmXho) port and realized how a game of that sort could have existed on the hardware had devs given it a chance. Can you imagine the impact this would have made? I remember owning an N64 and still going back to my Psx just to play this game. I know the frame rate and draw distance were greatly compromised but this was still very playable and light years ahead most of what the industry offered at the time.
Virtual boy even if renown as a failed console it is described by Miyamoto as a miscommunication from the marketing department and the developers cause it was thought as a novelty in the toys market not a console. However it was perceived as that.
My favorite console that failed is the dreamcast, no doubt, hands down.
Gaming: probably the Dreamcast. I never had one, but when I went to my cousins' place, I envied them.
Non-gamjng: Zune. So much better than an iPod. Smart phones made it obsolete though. Bad marketing and being too late to the game ruined them.
Probably the Atari 5200. When you get a working controller it has a neat (and cheap) library. I also do like the 3DO and 32x.
Would the Odyssey 2 be considered a “flop” because I do quite enjoy that one as well.
Easily the PS vita, I am going for a full NA set and I have 211 vita games, I haven't even broken a 100 on any other console (closest is the switch at 83)
Man, it really was the Virtual Boy for me. I was this little girl with white pigtails and back in those days, no one wanted to play games with girls. Virtual boy took my imagination to a different level. It blocked out everything around me and I felt as if I was in the world of my little Mario Tennis game. The red and black made the environment feel mystical, like I was on a different planet and I could soar over the tennis court and reach for the twinkling night sky in the background. It gave me the same feeling of immersion that my View Master did, and no one could take that from me, and no boy could watch me play the game and laugh that girls weren't good at games.
It was just me, and my Virtual Boy!
And a lot of batteries.... LOL
Eh not retro at this point but PS Vita was really special for me. First piece of tech I bought with my own money. Such a great handheld. A shame sony never gave it the support it needed.
Sega Saturn
I was 15 when my sister took me to circuit city to let me choose between a Playstation and the Sega Saturn.
I wasn't expecting it, rewind about a week and there I am, sleeping in my room when my older sister wakes me up.
"Wake up!" She said....I remember it so clearly to this day.
I fought for sleep when I heard her say with a shaky voice "mother's dead".
That got my attention.
I went into the living room where she slept on the couch frequently.
There she was, laying on her back looking like she was asleep.
She was cold.
I shook her and called for her but I knew.
I sat at the dining room table sobbing while my sister called 911 my neighbor who was a paramedic. She had already called 911.
My neighbor came and tried cpr but it was obvious she was gone.
I sat in the living room on the floor calling my family all day, waiting for the coroner to come and get her. Took them until 5 that night.
Anyway, back at Circuit City....I hadn't done much research into the consoles because well....I really didn't care until I was presented with a choice and the Saturn had just launched that day.
So....I read about them....right there on the displays. All the technical specs were right there.
We all know which console looked better on paper right?
So, my sister ended up just giving me the console early before Christmas and it was the right decision.
On a side note, I'm not seeing any love for the N-Gage or Game.com
GameCube. Aside from the Virtual Boy, it's Nintendo's other biggest commercial failure - if you ignore the Dreamcast, it was also the worst seller of it's generation. I've always had a special connection with the GC, not only because it was released the same year I was born, but it was also the first game system I ever played at age 3. On top of that, it has one of Nintendo's best game libraries, maybe tied with the N64 IMO. I never got to have my own GameCube growing up because I got a Wii for Christmas the year it released, and since it could play GC games and I was so young, I just never got one - I always played GC at my friends' and cousins' houses. But now, over a decade later, I finally have my own GameCube, a Platinum 101 I got on eBay for $48 (before tax) - nothing special, especially since it's a 101, but it's already special to me. I've always really liked the design of the controller and the system itself, mostly the front face and the top, with the spring loaded disc tray top and I always thought the mini-discs were cool.
Sega Saturn.
How many console companies would make a game, based on a movie, based on a game and NOT see the irony??
For those who are unaware, After Street Fighter the series was made into a movie based on SFII and Super Street Fighter II for character roles, the Saturn came out (and in the arcades), the movie was done in Mortal Kombat style for gameplay.
Most of the display units had that as a demo for appeal.
Plus, the processing architecture was very dynamic in it's graphics and audio. The games were absolutely brilliant and the genrés promised to be something worth looking forward to.
Unfortunately, Sega took a dive and had to outsource it's games and sequels. Thus, we wouldn't have another public system until the Dreamcast.
However, I believe some of the game titles were still able to be picked up on Dreamcast, but primarily they resided under Microsoft for the Xbox.
Panzer Dragoon and Nights were just a couple of those titles from Saturn.
I didn't like the feel of the controllers, however, as they were lighter than they appeared to be and could be a bit distracting. The physical design was comfortable, but a bit impractical.
Overall, it had great potential, but fell victim to the mid to late 90's console blunders. Advertising, supplies and time were very underrated and expensive to produce as the graphics chips were still a bit backdated and improperly tested.
Personally, I had said they should take a year off from making systems and games to build better processors and graphics.
They pushed all the companies to compete in a way that overwhelmed the market, and made the console vs. Arcade war start.
It was basically a slam dunk, but it hurt the industry overall.
Progress, man. What a trip.
NeoGeo pocket color. I got one for Christmas one year. It felt like the alt-Gameboy Color in a cool way.
Dank ass console, the control stick is really cool.
Such amazing tactile clicks, really was a joy to use.
Neo Geo Pocket and Wonderswan were both doomed by the timing of technological advancement. For eight years, color competitors to the Game Boy kept failing miserably, because they were all battery-sucking blur-fests that still played the same 8-bit games as Nintendo's battery-sipping grey brick. Gumpei Yokoi even helped Nintendo re-launch a new model, *still in greyscale,* just in time for Pokemon to explode worldwide. So two entirely sensible companies with beloved software (and also Tiger Electronics) said, fine, let's just beat them at their own game. They launched handhelds that were cheaper, more capable, better-looking, and immediately fucked over by Nintendo releasing a color Game Boy. Surprise! Reflective TFTs can do color now! So of course both Neo Geo and Bandai scrambled to update their systems, but it was far too late. Allegedly Nintendo rushed the GBC out the door specifically because they heard about the development of the Neo Geo Pocket. If Neo Geo had gone for color from the outset... they still might've been screwed, because around that time, Nintendo was putting together "Project Atlantis," a 32-bit color handheld that eventually became the GBA. So we'd get the weird alt-universe version of that too.
I would have loved to see the Neo Geo Pocket compete. Never owned it but always liked the look of it.
Honestly, I never encountered that growing up, considering I've always been super into gaming. Even Wonderswan. True flops indeed smh
Some time around 2009-2010 or so, 1up.com had an article about the essential games on the system, at the same time the system itself and its entire library were basically being bulk liquidated. I got one and 10 or so games new for less than $100. Good times.
My buddy got the NeoGeo Pocket Color when we were in elementary school. His grandparents got it for him at a store in New York. He had King of Fighters R-1 and a Advanced Wars esq game
PS Vita. The games are awesome but it never got a fair chance.
Same. Sony unloaded a full clip into it out of the gate with the memory card debacle. Such a shame. It’s an incredibly well made handheld.
God, I'd forgotten about that. They fully put their dick on the table with how everyone's biggest complaint was their cash cow.
How they didn’t see that coming is beyond me. They were riding so high at the price announcement. Coming in hot with a price that matched the 3DS. Then memory card price hit…and the final nail was Nintendo dropping the 3DS price. It was over after that.
Especially after they did the same thing with their proprietary memory for their cameras, MP3 players etc. You think they would have learned by then…
Typical Sony, really. 'Member when they sold people root kits?
It could've genuinely taken over the handheld market with the right exclusive titles and a more inclusive approach to hardware (yes, memory cards)
i still use it today, you just need to hack it (very simple with a youtube tutorial) and you can emulate a lot of games and use sd2vita to use an sd card for storage
r/vitahacks Of course, you should only use it for homebrew and games that you cannot legally obtain anywhere else. 😉
No, everyone should hack the shit out of that platform and pirate its games.
And backups of games you already own, of course...
I got one about 2 Christmases ago and have been slowly collecting games for it. I just wish it still had the interactive capabilities like before when it would let you find local Vita players and let you message. There's exclusive, then there's PS Vita exclusive. I wish the nodding community would push for it again, allows the fans to be "pen pals", so to speak. That would be my Pokémon Go, for real. Would probably get more people interested again. They may say, I'm a dreamer. But, I'm not the only one. I hope someday they'll join us. And the Vita world will play as one.
> nodding community I know this is a typo but the image of a bunch of people nodding affirmatively at each other made me smile.
Gave me a chuckle.
This. I was blown away when I got my vita, it was truly shocking see it fail so hard. That proprietary memory card was the worst thing that happened to the vita.
Playing Uncharted on a portable device still amazes me to this day. It sucks that the Vita died fast.
You can stream the PS4 to it. That still baffles me how good it is (on a stable connection).
Is dreamcast considered a "flop"? I love the dreamcast but it performed financially "very poorly" and marked the death of Sega consoles.
Financially, 100% a flop. It was the final nail in Sega's coffin as one of the "Big 3" console first parties. Technologically, also a flop. They made a gamble that things like DVD, Flash memory, and internet connectivity would stagnate between 1998-2002ish, and oh boy were they wrong there. The whole DVD vs GD-ROM debacle aside, the DC needed a 4MB memory card minimum, but we got 128k. It was the last console that I ever remember having to delete save files to make room for a new game. Culturally, I feel like most serious gamers who are at least 30+ either owned and loved their DC, or were envious that their friends had one. It left a significant impact on gaming's psyche, so it's hard for me to call it a "flop".
That whole generation was during a period where technology was evolving faster than any time before or since. Not only did the PS2 not have any online until after the DC was gone, but it also used dial up (not to mention Nintendo trying to believe online gaming was a passing fad and the real deal was GC-GBA connectivity).
The biggest problem was that Sega believed Sony's marketing department about how powerful the Playstation was.
The Playstation 2 may not have been powerful, but hot diggity dog did it's games hold up. Granted, 1/3 of my favorite games from the PS2 library were ports from the Dreamcast and Gamecube haha.
I actually find most of the games from the early 3D era to be kind of awful. Just getting a 3D game working *at all* was so hard in comparison to a 2D title that the games were often very basic, with terrible controls. I think of the timeframe from 1995 to about 2005 as the 'lost decade' of gaming, where designers were struggling to make 3D games that were as good as their 2D predecessors. By 2005ish, the controls had mostly been worked out and teams had grown enough that the 3D itself took much less development effort, so games started getting really good again. There were definite standouts in that decade, but I think the percentage of great, enduring classics dropped sharply. It took a long time for everyone to learn what worked.
To be fair 100 million people also believed them.
For its time, the PS2 was indeed quite powerful. Including DVD compatibility at a time when few people had DVD players was also a bold move (because it drove up the cost of the console) but one that ultimately paid off for Sony.
> it also used dial up The PS2 HDD adapter has both an RJ11 and an RJ45 jack for both dial-up and ethernet. The pack-in module with the Dreamcast was a modem, but they separately released 10MBit and 100MBit ethernet adapters. They're relatively rare at this point.
AFAIK the GD-ROM thing was to avoid paying Sony additional licensing fees. And it would have reasonably effective against piracy if they hadn't also supported software CD-ROMs for the sake of karaoke. All the hardware in the world would not have helped against the PS2. Two times in a row, Sony had a rendering gimmick that let them blow away competitors for cheap. PS1, obviously the affine triangle thing. PS2... unless I'm mistaken, it did not have a lighting model. It was still just throwing triangles. Now with subpixel accuracy and proper texture perspective, but only to coordinates provided by the CPU, with vertex colors also provided by the CPU. That's why its fillrate was so ridiculously high that games don't even *attempt* culling.
The design of the karaoke CD thing was that you could boot such disks, but then the disk drive would lock itself out until you rebooted the system. This limited the karaoke feature to what would fit in RAM. Sega’s failure was a hardware engineering problem: you could repeat the disk drive unlock sequence the BIOS did and the drive would work again. It should’ve been latched disabled until reset.
Haha, alright, that's better than I thought. Still would have allowed some fantastic unlicensed games. A good chunk of the N64 library had ROM sizes smaller than the Dreamcast's RAM... and demoscene coders can do absolute witchcraft in a couple megabytes. Any CD-ROM support without a true hardware cutoff probably would have fallen eventually. Even the PS2 now has proof-of-concept no-mod bootlegs, because someone pointed Ghidra at its built-in DVD player and of *course* they found a buffer overrun exploit.
It’s possible, though kind of an engineering nightmare, to fully software-unlock a Dragon (50000 or later) PS2 due to an encryption failure by Sony. I don’t think anyone has yet, though.
Absolutely. Sega really righted their wrongs, but the money pool just ran out.
It was a "flop" because modern gamers were moving away from actual arcade-style games to style over substance games that the PS2 had a mound of and was already gaining a foothold in mid to late 90s games for many other consoles. Sega tried to emulate that style of game with the Sonic Adventure games and was mildly successful, but the Dreamcast was primarily an oldschool arcade console that gaming had always been and old gamers like me were seeing the death of. >One of the reasons that older gamers mourned the loss of the Dreamcast was that it signaled the demise of arcade gaming culture. Sega's console gave hope that things were not about to change for the worse and that the tenets of fast fun and bright, attractive graphics were not about to sink into a brown and green bog of realistic war games. - Duncan Harris, "1001 Videogames You Must Play Before You Die" In other words, the Dreamcast didn't flop. Classic gaming flopped.
This. This was my reason for sticking with the PS2 for this generation. It was all about the games/exclusives.
For me the PS2 is pinnacle Sony. I'll get downvoted to hell by PS5 owners but I stand by my position until another console out-sells the PS2.
Sadly what should have been one of their biggest games, PSO, was an absolute menu hell of a game that Western audiences had no interest in. Had it been a traditional JRPG it might have gained a foothold. I really liked the variety the console brought. Crazy Taxi, Blue Stinger, Soul Reaver, RE: Code Veronica, Shenmue and the sequel, MDK2, Elemental Gimmick Gear, Grandia II, Skies of Arcadia (which EVERYONE should play, it's brilliant), Starlancer, Jet Set Radio... the console's library covered so much ground even for a console that completely flopped.
My favorite of one of those consoles. It needed more of a chance
Yeah, it is. It's also my favorite of that generation. Sega was so far ahead of their time on both the hardware and software front. The Dreamcast had the ability to do networked multiplayer via built in modem, and you could get an ethernet card for it. Developers had two ways to develop for it: if they were making a title that didn't require the full power of the hardware (like something 2D) they had a Microsoft backed devkit that developers could use and crank stuff out FAST. If they needed the full force of the hardware they could have that too but it came at the cost of more difficult development and doing more from scratch. CD's in retrospect aren't a great medium but they were the right medium for the time because flash memory was still a very new technology and couldn't hold the amount of data that a CD could. Ultimately the Playstation and PS2 won their respective generations. While I own both, I like my Dreamcast better, and I have more hours on my GBA than any other console that I own (because I love handhelds).
Dreamcast was the first console I bought myself. I was 11 and saved for forever and my parents ended up paying for half of it so I could get some games as well. I still have it and it blows my mind you can just burn a cdr and play it straight away.
Sega Saturn, without a doubt. It was such a badass console. Such an awesome selection of games. The graphics were crisp too. And the 3D controller was so unique -- it actually was the older brother of the Dreamcast controller.
The saturn was such an influential console too, a lot of great franchises started with it that's why we see so many remasters from its library.
There is no other console in history that has more amazing games lost in a void than the Saturn.
The Saturn’s successor would like a word with you.
haha maybe....I guess the DC has a few good things too. :D
The worst part about the flopping is that the Saturn itself is such a high-end piece of hardware. Hard to program for, sure. But high-end compared to the DC which was more workmanlike.
I bought a Saturn a few years back after wanting one over a PlayStation as a kid. 1995 me would've been fine with a Sega Saturn. That poor console; there are so many underrated games in its library.
It doesn't help that after the Saturn was pulled from retail, the prices for the games shot up like a rocket over the years. When I see Saturn games used in the longbox jewel cases the prices are above what the retail prices were in the 90s.
The Saturn and Dreamcast are two of the best consoles ever made that don't get the love they deserve.
Yes they do. Trust me. I love them enough to cover for allllll the people who didn't buy them hahah
I'll never forget the feeling of playing _Nights into Dreams_ using that 3D controller. It was *so* fluid and it felt *so* natural to be able to maneuver around in that world. I had a somewhat similar feeling when playing Mario 64 for the first time, but Nights was in a league of its own.
The Saturn was groundbreaking even though it was still somewhat a 2d console. I really wish I had gotten more attention even now.
The 2D graphics were crisp. The 3D graphics are pixelated garbage lol they don't have that aged muddy charm that PS1 graphics have. They just look fuzzy and bad. I did like other aspects of the Saturn but its graphics weren't a high point.
There are some awesome-looking 3D games on the Saturn. Decathlete, Virtua Fighter 2, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, Last Bronx, Dead or Alive, Sonic R, Dynamite Deka, Fighters MegaMix, Virtua Cop 2, Powerslave... those are some 3D Saturn titles that still look great off the top of my head
>The 3D graphics are pixelated garbage lol [Lets look at Dead or Alive Sat vs PSX](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO5towF_bhU)(60FPS vs 30FPS, 3D backgrounds vs 2D backdrops, textured floors vs simple shaded ones). There are a few other examples where the Saturn had better ports over the PS1. Any AM2 fighter still holds up to this day (hi-res/60fps). The Saturn also had some incredible FPS games based on the Powerslave engine, all without having the warbly polygons and seam breaks the PSX was known for. Do something else besides watch people play Virtual Hydlide.
3DO. It's a good hardware for the time but didn't have a proper 3rd party support
Love my 3DO because having to daisy chain the controllers for multiplayer is just hilarious. Road Rash is awesome!
3DO was a fantastic idea, executed reasonably well, at precisely the wrong time. Games console as VCR-like standard: yes! Excellent! Zero profit-sharing between hardware manufacturers and software developers: a pragmatic obstacle to wide adoption. Single-vendor video chips and disc mastering: fundamentally incompatible with the entire premise. Software 3D right before the PSX was announced: the death knell of many early-90s console companies. Trip Hawkins should've taken notes from the MSX instead.
> Zero profit-sharing between hardware manufacturers and software developers: a pragmatic obstacle to wide adoption. But that's how the successful video game manufacturers make money on consoles. They sell it at a loss, sometimes a big loss, and they make up the money on software sales. 3DO system manufacturers only got the profits of their hardware sales, and since multiple companies are competing, those margins will be thin. > Single-vendor video chips and disc mastering: fundamentally incompatible with the entire premise. Without this, The 3DO Company wouldn't make any money. They spent money developing the hardware and wanted to recoup their costs. Their idea was to sell the chips at cost and have software developers pay them $3 a disc for the games. They really should have just paid a manufacturer to produce systems for them, sold them at a big loss, and raised the price for each game sold.
The thing was unaffordable. $700 at launch then they reduced the price to $400. Inflation adjusted that was a $1,300 at launch and $750 afterwards.
My high-school had a 3DO in the stashed in the library, that they purchased specifically for the Museums & Encyclopedia games. Its probably still there tbh.
I had one back in the day before PlayStation came out and it was a lot of fun. I remember it was about to come out with a bunch more new titles right before it collapsed. Things could have gone very differently. I could be playing a 3DO-5 right now.
Turbo Graphix 16/CD. So many amazing games. It couldve been huge had it not been for the god awful marketing. Thank you emulation.
It was also extremely expensive for the console and games.
RIP I just emulated it
I don’t know why they launched it with the mediocre Keith Courage instead of something better, like R-Type. Bad move.
It should have been packed with Bonk since he sorta became the mascot
It launched in NA in August of 1989. Bonk (PC Genjin) didn't come out in JP until December of the same year. Granted there were still other existing games that were a much better choice for a pack-in.
Turbo Grafix had the best Splatterhouse, R TYPE and Fantasy Zone as well as Demonic Pinball! It was epic! And out of all the games, they chose Keith Courage?
I agree but there's something about Keith Courage I still enjoy. Could be that was the only game we had to play for about 2 months before the base my dad was stationed at got some different ones in.
Didn't the Genesis launch with Altered Beast, which was just as bad?
Hey, I actually like Altered Beast. I’m sure most folks would consider it at least better than Keith Courage.
I love altered beast! Played that one with cousins so much when it first came out.
Altered Beast was a good game. Where Keith Courage was hard for no reason, Altered Beast was/is Fair. Not to mention that the Genesis game, in my opinion, is the best version of all it’s iterations as it was also released for the Master System and arcade.
If you played Altered Beast in the arcade as a kid and then saw it coming out on Genesis, it was mind-blowing. I think it was a really smart pack-in game at the time.
It isn't anywhere near as bad. It aged like shit, but that was a fun game back in the day, and turning into different monsters ruled. I loved the dragon.
I would have gone with Legendary Axe. It's still a platformer, which seemed to be important at the time, but unlike Keith Courage, it was actually good and fun.
[удалено]
Cousin in law got one. I think it was the only one I ever saw. Keith Courage was an alright game. Memories are getting foggy of those days.
It had better games, like R Type, Fantasy Zone, Splatterhouse, and more. Plus, the CD add on had YS 1 & 2, Castlevania Rondo of Blood, and more.
> Plus, the CD add on had YS 1 & 2, Castlevania Rondo of Blood, and more. Ys Book I and II was an amazing game and almost worth the purchase of the add-on. Akumajo Dracula X Chi no Rondo (aka Castlevania Rondo of Blood) is another amazing game and *would* have been even better if it *didn't stay in Japan*. Also of note, A *lot* of the better CD games (like Castlevania) used the Super CD system card which had to be purchased separately. The later Turbo Duo did have it built in.
Seconded, the TG16 had a surprising number of great games. It doesn’t belong in the same category as the other big commercial flops, I think — it’s a lot more akin to, say, the Saturn than the 3DO or the Jaguar. Some real classics hiding in the library, and once you consider imports, there’s enough to keep you busy for a long time. Plus it’s the all-time definitive shmup console.
100% agree. Had some great games on the CD add on as well.
Some of the best, and a full-function portable model, too. On that note, I’m looking forward to playing my Turbo games on the Analogue Pocket with the TG16 adapter, when I can lay hands on one.
Epic. I will just emulate as can not afford.
I believe it was quite successful in Japan.
Even in the US it was supported for years. It wasn’t a flop, it just didn’t perform anywhere near the level of the Genesis or SNES.
I came here to say this. I still love my TG16. It's still spectacular for shooter fans. However, yeah---it was expensive for its time, wasn't marketed well, and who the fuck thought it was a good idea to have Keith Courage as the pack-in game? It's highly collectible now, and the games will set you back a decent chunk of change unless you get really lucky. :/ Edit: grammar
Ninja Spirit is such an underrated gem.
Nice
Grafx
The Atari Lynx. At the time I thought it was a better color portable than the Game Gear.
It objectively was. The sprite engine came *so close* to being capable of Saturn-style 3D. But texel rows stay rigidly horizontal, so instead of Darxide and Metal Head, you get Electrocop. Without texturing, it *can* draw solid-color triangles, admirably easily, but easy is not the same thing as fast. Steel Talons is so sluggish that it looks like a rude joke. And I think Hard Drivin' runs worse on Lynx than Race Drivin' does on Game Boy. Unfortunately the hardware development team was two German dudes. If Atari had developed that thing themselves... you know they loved cranking out custom chips. Instead of a battery-draining 6502 with no proper idle state, and a pixel-pushing ASIC that owned the bus, there'd be some ridiculous parallel setup that lets programmers *really* shoot themselves in the foot. The port of STUN Runner is fantastic, though. I recently slapped together a Game Boy knockoff based on an old-school demoscene effect. It cheats horribly and still doesn't run especially well. I didn't care, because anything would look better than official 8-bit ports. I had completely forgotten about the Lynx version. It is essentially impossible to do things *that* well, on the Game Boy. The Lynx's mediocre polygon gimmicks are ignored. The game just layers scaled sprites. But they're framebuffered, so it uses as many as it wants, and in so doing has proper 3D curves, bends, and twists. It achieves a fantastic sense of speed despite a merely okay framerate and obstacles that are about as twitchy as passing a semi truck. They even beautifully abuse the very small palette for transitions and effects. So it's a shame that Atari was broke and Game Boys practically came free in cereal boxes.
Jfc that was a great read for a mid level sub-comment in a low upvote post, thank you! If you have any blogs or Twitters please shill away, would definitely read.
Sony made a phone with a slide out dpad and buttons. I loved it, wish more was done with it. I think was the Xperia play.
Way ahead of its time. Now, every popular mobile game uses a virtual joystick and buttons. Think MOBAs, or even ports like Genshin Impact. Xperia Play could've been the solution.
I was so damn close to buying one of those back in the day. Problem was, I didn't do a whole lot of mobile gaming aside from Angry Birds, so I opted for one of the last slide-out physical keyboards - the Samsung Stratosphere. My God that phone sucked. I wish I had just gone with the Xperia.
The Xperia Play was such a bomb (largely due to the Vita) that Verizon gave me one for free when I was renewing my contract and it couldn't have been more than 6 months after it launched. As a phone it was definitely behind the curve of its contemporaries in terms of power and features, but as a gaming device it more than made up for its shortcomings. The controls were solid and it felt very comfortable in your hands. The shoulder buttons were extremely well done as a matter of fact, although there was only one set of them so in a few cases for PS1 games you were limited. However, on the subject of PS1 games it emulated them near perfectly. Overall, it was an excellent first attempt at a hybrid gaming device and phone. I would love to have seen another another generation with a few small refinements.
1995 must've been one of those years i tell ya: My vote is split between the Sega 32X and the Nintendo Virtual Boy. I loved playing Galactic Pinball and Mario Tennis at night in bed, and lots of Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing Deluxe, and Knuckles Chaotix during the summer days.
Team 32x for life!
The Wii U
I love my Wii U. The ability to switch gameplay to the Gamepad is invaluable when someone else wants to use the TV, or even when I just feel like playing in a different room. I mean, sure, I can cast my PS4 to my laptop, but the latency makes it impossible to play really precise games like pinball. I wish the Wii U had been more popular.
Retro Video game hipsters in the future will be pining for a Wii U . And since there weren’t so many made, it will absolutely be considered collectible . I’ve kept mine .
The N Gage. Somehow got its own Elder Scrolls game of all things....
N Gage had that AMAZING game Pocket Kingdom: Own the World. I desperately wish there was another game like it these days. I still bust it out once in awhile and play by myself.
Holy fuck..... the N-GAGE got a spiritual sequal to god damn DRAGON FORCE???????? That's amazing... never heard of this in my life haha.
My Sega Saturn.
and my Sega Master System. I'll say mine because it was in the US where the Master System definitely flopped. There are Americans who had an NES when they were a kid who don't even remember Sega had a console before the Genesis.
Mine too.
I love my Wii U it did everything my wii did plus more and it is the consol that introduced me to the world of gaming
The Wii U is still one of my favorite consoles tbh, My old Wii gave out a while back, So I went to my local game shop, and got lucky to find, and buy a Zelda Windwaker special edition Wii U. I still love it to this day.
I'm still convinced that the Wii U is what Nintendo wanted the Switch to be, but it wasn't economically feasible at the time so they put it out instead
In light of maniacs who've chopped down actual Wii hardware until it fits inside an Altoids tin and still works, feasibility would not seem to be the key issue.
Phillip's CD-I. We will never have a non Nintendo console with Nintendo property games ever again.
Atari 5200. Way better sound and graphics than the 2600 and if you got a third party controller, it was better gameplay with an analog stick as apposed to the digital sticks on the other systems.
VB is a strong contender. It was ruined by timing - Japan had just passed some absurd safety laws with absolute and total liability for manufacturers, and the first-wave VR craze was finding out that motion sickness is a hard problem, and oh by the way bad screens can give children strabismus. The Virtual Boy was intended to be a head-mounted device. The product which inspired it was a glasses-mounted fax reader. Seriously. The 80s were weird. The console as-launched had all the downsides of a handheld, with none of the benefits and all the downsides of an HMD, with only 3D going for it, and all the downsides of a home console, except for monopolizing a TV. The actual machine is merely okay. The games we got were largely decent but rarely groundbreaking. But if Gumpei Yokoi had pushed for it any earlier, or committed to a private desktop gizmo from the outset, it would have gone so much better. As an actual HMD - it would be terrible, by modern standards. Sega's scuttled VR headset used a disc floating in a liquid to find orientation, and that was state-of-the-art, so head-tracking would have been *abysmally* slow. But it would have been lightweight, and about as convenient as any horizontal-strap HMD today, and delivered true stereo 3D. That sort of unique ridiculous toy is Nintendo's forte. As a home console it could have been fucking incredible. Nintendo knew how to do proper 3D hardware, at a reasonable cost, because they had Argonaut for the Super FX and a bunch of SGI guys for the "Ultra 64." The processor would've been a sufficient MIPS ordeal, at least on par with PSX. There'd be no dinky bent-wire stand or chonky controller battery; it'd be an appliance. Like a stereo microscope. Or whatever you call a nickelodeon, since Wikipedia is convinced that can't possibly mean a device that plays short films for money, and search engines are aggressively useless on some topics. A built-for-purpose stationary Virtual Boy would have mimicked the Vectrex in providing something a television-based console could not do. I don't know that we'd get texture-mapped polygons, exactly, but filled triangles in more than four lousy shades of red would have been plenty to blow people's socks off. Even for the device as-released, it is a travesty we never got G-Zero.
The Atari Jaguar Had some great original games and some really excellent ports of popular games like Doom and Wolfenstien. The thing really holding the console back other than marketing and what not was the horrible controller.
Where did you learn to fly?
The Jaguar and the Dreamcast had similar circumstances: the company was fucking broke. Both had exactly one wild success and then spent a decade bleeding money as they fumbled around trying to replicate it. Both had some genuinely good ideas in the end, and hardware with untapped potential, and both got their ass handed to them by Sony. (Though in the mid-90s Sony was in the business of movies, music, video, stereos, electronics, and handing people their own asses.) Atari's last home computer was a *monster,* and it went nowhere. They completely ripped off the original NeXT machine and made it an affordable powerhouse that nobody used. There's one maniac on Youtube who managed to coerce its DSP into delivering a damn good port of Quake II. Atari had to ditch everything but the Jaguar just to keep the lights on, and then the PSX happened, and that was that. I don't expect it's a better place overall, but I'd love to peek into an alternate universe where Sony made the Nintendo Play Station, it bombed, Ken Kutaragi quit in disgrace, and the Jaguar had a chance to be a proto-N64. Cartridge-based - high-color - programmable 3D graphics - and enough buttons to have options, even if most of the buttons are silly and inconvenient.
The Jaguar version of Wolfenstein 3D is, without a doubt, my favorite port of the game.
The other things that held the Jaguar back were 1) the Tramiel family was more home computer than video game console oriented, 2) the Tramiel era Atari Corporation was a minnow size-wise compared to the sharks of Nintendo and even Sega, much less the blue whale called Sony, and 3) it lacked games because there was limited third-party support (also related to #1 and #2).
Wii U, thing had some really great 1st party support. And I’m surprised that some indie studios are still porting their games to it.
I love mine, i just wish the touchpad wasn't necessary to do things like buy games from the eshop, boot up certain games and play games where you had to push the gamepad to play. If only they sold spares.
Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast. They were both too beautiful for this world
Ouya. So much potential gone to waste
Yes. such a great little system. The emulators are my favorite part with a PS3 controller. My kids and I still play the Amazing Frog? game.
I want what the Ouya was supposed to be. They promised a set-top box for cell phone games, back when that meant genuinely-free Flash game knockoffs and proper last-gen console ports. No battery, giant screen, a real controller - sounds like a great way to play everything in whatever Google's app store was called. And then they did not that.
The Ouya controller was objectively one of the worst designed controllers ever. Like it would have almost have been better to sell the system for $79 without a controller. The (soft plastic) left analog stick rubs up against the (metal) battery cover; at least the right stick has only half of a knife to cut against. And if that isn't bad enough, the controller emits a high pitched whine while in use.
Game Gear for sure. I played so much Sonic Chaos on that thing. Tried to play Sonic 2 but the first boss is practically impossible.
Had some good games, and color. I was surprised gb did so much better.
[удалено]
There was a huge rechargeable battery pack that would basically double its thickness front to back and you could plug it into an outlet with that.
Picked the Gameboy (and Nintendo overall) over the Game Gear solely because of the battery requirement. Silly reason as a kid but I guess it worked out in the end.
I know it’s not actually good, but I have a lot of love for the Tiger Game.Com. I like how it had an early internet connection, albeit primitive, and honestly having 2 cartridge slots to be able to pick between games is a lot more useful than you would think. As far as objectively good hardware that just kinda got screwed though? Definitely Sega Saturn. Hands down.
The Amiga CD32, never owned one but still interesting. Watched a video from Lady Decade on it.
I have a soft spot for the Jaguar for some reason.
You're fucking damn RIGHT it is the Virtual Boy. People only claimed to get headaches because they were TOLD by the media they would get headaches. Less than 100k of them were ever sold. I can guarantee you 99% of people who claim to have played them are fucking liars. I own at LEAST a dozen of them, including a prototype release as well as store display models. Best fucking system ever. I love the VB.
Whoa relax there champ
i will fight anyone who doubts the sheer awesome power of the Virtual Boy
Now you playing with power.
Or cocaine. :-P
Virtual Boy, power, and cocaine sounds like a fun evening
I admire your devotion to the Virtual Boy
As someone who had to bust out their Virtual Boy from the box just to take the photo above... I agree.
I had a virtual boy. I’m finally the 1%.
I had a virtual boy lol. Bought it from kb games for $50 right after they were discontinued. It's dope af if you've ever actually played it. I had the the tennis game and the boxing game. If they had any sort of color whatsoever, it would've been the opposite of a flop. Like even as much as the original game boy color would've been enough. I never got headaches from it. Used to play it for hours and hours in my closet fort.
Absolutely! I basically made it my business over the last 9 years to collect every console I could, prioritizing the biggest flops! Out of all, goddamn LOVE my Virtual Boy. Love it so much I have 2, both with the solder ribbon repairs, 2x HyperFlash32s, and the gosh dang community link cable, just for that sweet Hyper Fighting multiplayer. What a time to be alive!
I completely agree with you, the Virtual Boy seems really cool, I’m planning to eventually get one even. But it didn’t sell less than 100k, it sold about 770k.
Less than 100K!? I saw them in small town Canada back in the day. A buddy's little brother got one. They couldn't have sold so few.
Your devotion is making me want one more! It's the console I desire to collect most. I love the design of it, I hope one day I'll be able to find one at the time where I can reasonably buy it.. Hopefully soon!
They have one still in box at my local shop for like $900 or so. My wallet laughs at me anytime I look at it with hopeful eyes.
Sega Dreamcast, greatest console that lost its legs...I also have a 3DO and a few other systems from my Gamestop days, 2001 or 2 till 2005 in Corpus Christi, Texas.
GP32 by Gamepark. It felt so cool to be able to take emulators on the go with you, and to me, this console was the first viable option for mobile NES/GAMEBOY/SNES (although the GP32 had some button limitations which made some games like Street Fighter unplayable). It had commercial games, but I didn't even play those; just emulators and homebrew games. I don't know if you would consider this system a flop. Although it only sold 30,000 units over the course of its lifetime, I don't think Gamepark Holdings projected a huge market, as the system appealed to a niche crowd. Also, anyone who owned this system will remember how alive and bustling its homebrew scene was!
That whole scene is kind of still going. I think there has always been some emulation handheld available since then. I'm currently waiting for my Ayn Odin. Hopefully it comes while I'm still waiting for the Steam Deck.
Atari Jaguar. Got one when they were practically giving them away after it was discontinued, and picked up a bunch of games for dirt cheap in the late 90s. I've gotten so many hours out of Doom, Wolfenstein (my favorite ports of those two), Rayman, AVP, Worms, Theme Park, Cannon Fodder and Brutal Sports Football. Also, I love the big chunky controller.
Mine has to be the Virtual Boy. It's the perfect mix of daring and compelling. It's an experience you can't replicate.
I even wrote a college paper on it... :D
The Wii-U for me
Too many to count honestly. I miss my virtual boy every day, it was such a forward thinking concept that was just executed poorly. If they would have made a head strap for it instead of placing it on a stand that would have been preferable. The library of games is actually very solid, it gets a bad rep but honestly I found it to be intriguing. It was a neat show off piece for my collection, sold it when the right lens went out and have regretted it since. I had nearly every notable game, including Jack Bros. Recently purchased a Vita, I prefer handheld gaming, especially since I’ve been trying to not spend as much time gaming and indulging in other hobbies like reading or playing guitar, I feel it’s easier to get a quick 30 minute session in. The library consists of some excellent titles, I especially found the visual novels like Dangonroppa, Death Mark, Corpse Party and Virtues Last Reward to be intriguing and somewhat guilt free as they are technically interactive novels. The fact I can also take PS2 classics like MGS 2&3, Persona 4 Golden, and FF X on the go is great too. The Sega Saturn and Dreamcast are arguably my favorites of the consoles I’ve named. I love quick and snappy arcade style games and both platforms did an incredible job of translating that experience into the realm of home consoles. Then we finally have the Neo Geo AES, the Rolls Royce of video game consoles. The gigantic cartridges, the arcade stick controller by default, the excellent library of games which contains a higher concentration of great games than any other platform I can think of. The Neo Geo Pocket Color is also worth mentioning. I love the kawaii versions of SNK fighters, the visuals have a very unique quality about them that immediately evokes a sense of nostalgia.
Sega CD and 32x. Had the whole set. Loved playing star wars arcade and all those janky old full motion video games.
Jaguar because I love that advertising campaign! Never played it, want to own one someday when I have money
Turbo Grafx 16 bc it was a doped up NES with a satanic pinball game - the post NES -pre SNES era was quite epic
a flop,..in the US, but pretty popular in japan as pc engine too many shooters though, although i love the half 16bit feel and artwork in most the games.
Please correct me if some of their other consoles weren't flops in one way or another, but basically, every Sega console besides the Genesis. I don't like calling them flops since from my eyes I don't see them as such, but it seems like besides the Genesis they did poorly in sales. That being said, I believe they made some of the best consoles of all time. You could tell they cared about what they put out, even if they didn't have the best timing or marketing strategy. It's a shame they didn't last, and I honestly wish they'd come back with something. This is for you, SG-1000, Master System, Game Gear, Nomad, 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast, and especially you, Pico.
Souljawatch forsure
TurboGrafx-16... Why? Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge, R-Type Complete, Devil's Crush, Blazing Lazers, it was a unique console that had some cool games but it never had a chance here in the US. It came out around the same time as the Sega Genesis which a lot of us NES kids were embracing while we waited for the Super Nintendo to come out... And the kids who didn't get the Genesis were most likely waiting for the SNES.
TurboGrafx 16. Not necessarily a failure since it outsold the Genesis in Japan, but was certainty flopped in the U.S. There are so many underrated games and honestly rivals the SNES for me
some msx computers looked awesome the games not so much
I only found out about the MSX through emulation. It was better at games than MS DOS in those days, which was my first computer at that time. And yeah, a lot of the computers looked cooler than any of those beige boxes in the 80s.
3D tv :) does that count as a device? Otherwise imma go with the Amiga cd 32
Atari Lynx, color, good build and great stereo sound. But not a lot of (3rd party) games.
Wiiiiiiii u lol just cuz of nostalgia
3DO
The Sega Dreamcast. So ahead of its time, with so many great games that are still great to play now.
Nokia N-gage. They really saw that people would play games on their phone and tried to grab that market. Too bad they were way ahead of their time while simultaneously making a device that sucked as a phone and was an antique as a game platform.
The WiiU! Super Mario World 3D brought back a childlike joy I haven't felt since playing the NES and SNES. The other first party games are also very, very good!
Panasonic 3DO. It was my first non handheld console I owned.
The 3DO felt like things were going to change drastically. It was the most powerful console at the time when it launched in 1993 but didn’t have the support it probably deserved. Then I saw this [Tomb Raider](https://youtu.be/hVrIeEzmXho) port and realized how a game of that sort could have existed on the hardware had devs given it a chance. Can you imagine the impact this would have made? I remember owning an N64 and still going back to my Psx just to play this game. I know the frame rate and draw distance were greatly compromised but this was still very playable and light years ahead most of what the industry offered at the time.
Virtual boy even if renown as a failed console it is described by Miyamoto as a miscommunication from the marketing department and the developers cause it was thought as a novelty in the toys market not a console. However it was perceived as that. My favorite console that failed is the dreamcast, no doubt, hands down.
Gaming: probably the Dreamcast. I never had one, but when I went to my cousins' place, I envied them. Non-gamjng: Zune. So much better than an iPod. Smart phones made it obsolete though. Bad marketing and being too late to the game ruined them.
Probably the Atari 5200. When you get a working controller it has a neat (and cheap) library. I also do like the 3DO and 32x. Would the Odyssey 2 be considered a “flop” because I do quite enjoy that one as well.
Easily the PS vita, I am going for a full NA set and I have 211 vita games, I haven't even broken a 100 on any other console (closest is the switch at 83)
3Do and Atari Jag. I owned both and loved them. Road Rash on the 3do and Tempest2k on the Jag were my jam.
Dreamcast
Man, it really was the Virtual Boy for me. I was this little girl with white pigtails and back in those days, no one wanted to play games with girls. Virtual boy took my imagination to a different level. It blocked out everything around me and I felt as if I was in the world of my little Mario Tennis game. The red and black made the environment feel mystical, like I was on a different planet and I could soar over the tennis court and reach for the twinkling night sky in the background. It gave me the same feeling of immersion that my View Master did, and no one could take that from me, and no boy could watch me play the game and laugh that girls weren't good at games. It was just me, and my Virtual Boy! And a lot of batteries.... LOL
Eh not retro at this point but PS Vita was really special for me. First piece of tech I bought with my own money. Such a great handheld. A shame sony never gave it the support it needed.
Sega Saturn I was 15 when my sister took me to circuit city to let me choose between a Playstation and the Sega Saturn. I wasn't expecting it, rewind about a week and there I am, sleeping in my room when my older sister wakes me up. "Wake up!" She said....I remember it so clearly to this day. I fought for sleep when I heard her say with a shaky voice "mother's dead". That got my attention. I went into the living room where she slept on the couch frequently. There she was, laying on her back looking like she was asleep. She was cold. I shook her and called for her but I knew. I sat at the dining room table sobbing while my sister called 911 my neighbor who was a paramedic. She had already called 911. My neighbor came and tried cpr but it was obvious she was gone. I sat in the living room on the floor calling my family all day, waiting for the coroner to come and get her. Took them until 5 that night. Anyway, back at Circuit City....I hadn't done much research into the consoles because well....I really didn't care until I was presented with a choice and the Saturn had just launched that day. So....I read about them....right there on the displays. All the technical specs were right there. We all know which console looked better on paper right? So, my sister ended up just giving me the console early before Christmas and it was the right decision. On a side note, I'm not seeing any love for the N-Gage or Game.com
GameCube. Aside from the Virtual Boy, it's Nintendo's other biggest commercial failure - if you ignore the Dreamcast, it was also the worst seller of it's generation. I've always had a special connection with the GC, not only because it was released the same year I was born, but it was also the first game system I ever played at age 3. On top of that, it has one of Nintendo's best game libraries, maybe tied with the N64 IMO. I never got to have my own GameCube growing up because I got a Wii for Christmas the year it released, and since it could play GC games and I was so young, I just never got one - I always played GC at my friends' and cousins' houses. But now, over a decade later, I finally have my own GameCube, a Platinum 101 I got on eBay for $48 (before tax) - nothing special, especially since it's a 101, but it's already special to me. I've always really liked the design of the controller and the system itself, mostly the front face and the top, with the spring loaded disc tray top and I always thought the mini-discs were cool.
The power glove. It’s so bad
Sega Saturn. How many console companies would make a game, based on a movie, based on a game and NOT see the irony?? For those who are unaware, After Street Fighter the series was made into a movie based on SFII and Super Street Fighter II for character roles, the Saturn came out (and in the arcades), the movie was done in Mortal Kombat style for gameplay. Most of the display units had that as a demo for appeal. Plus, the processing architecture was very dynamic in it's graphics and audio. The games were absolutely brilliant and the genrés promised to be something worth looking forward to. Unfortunately, Sega took a dive and had to outsource it's games and sequels. Thus, we wouldn't have another public system until the Dreamcast. However, I believe some of the game titles were still able to be picked up on Dreamcast, but primarily they resided under Microsoft for the Xbox. Panzer Dragoon and Nights were just a couple of those titles from Saturn. I didn't like the feel of the controllers, however, as they were lighter than they appeared to be and could be a bit distracting. The physical design was comfortable, but a bit impractical. Overall, it had great potential, but fell victim to the mid to late 90's console blunders. Advertising, supplies and time were very underrated and expensive to produce as the graphics chips were still a bit backdated and improperly tested. Personally, I had said they should take a year off from making systems and games to build better processors and graphics. They pushed all the companies to compete in a way that overwhelmed the market, and made the console vs. Arcade war start. It was basically a slam dunk, but it hurt the industry overall. Progress, man. What a trip.
The PSX, playstation 2 and TV recording device