Favorite "failed" consoles?

[lazygecko]

I think the Sega CD could really have been a success if they committed harder to it with a firm long term strategy. Essentially doubling down on the CD addon later in its life I think would have been a better strategy than further diluting things with the 32X. When you look back at the 16-bit market, in retrospect it feels clearer than ever just how much of a bottleneck the production costs of cartridges were. Publishing cartridge games was a pretty huge risk especially for third parties if you went beyond the 8-16mbit ROM standard. The switch to CD-ROM was really a paradigm shift for cutting costs for consumers, raising profit margins and just general growth of the market.

 

The only issue with the Sega CD was the high buy-in price for the addon itself, which could become less of a problem over time if they had stuck to their guns and pushed the cost further down over time, and more importantly also coupling that with continued heavy software support to entice both consumers and third parties to invest in the platform. Sega of America just seemed to write the whole thing off after their initial push failed with focusing on FMV games. I can understand why they did it at the time, since it was the one novelty that made it really stand out visually for the layman consumer, and otherwise wouldn't at face value consider the benefits it brings to other types of games and lower game prices.

 

A good choice for a "killer app" for the addon could have been a port of Street Fighter 2 that's way closer to the arcade than anything else on the market. There were already some ports of SNK fighters on the Sega CD that look very, very close to the Neo Geo originals.

[Herr Dethnout]

41 minutes ago, lazygecko said:

A good choice for a "killer app" for the addon could have been a port of Street Fighter 2 that's way closer to the arcade than anything else on the market. There were already some ports of SNK fighters on the Sega CD that look very, very close to the Neo Geo originals.

Funny, because Sega CD has the Best and closest port of Final Fight.

 

But I agree that a CD SF2 would ve an absolute banger.

[MrFroz]

The Dreamcast. Ironically even though it was supposed to be the next generation of gaming after the 32-bit era, I like it because of the ports of certain PSX games it had, like Soul Reaver, which had updated models for Kain and Raziel as well as upgraded framerate in comparison to the PSX version. Or Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles, which had some glaring issues on the PSX that were fixed for the DC.

[Rudolph]

I read that the Sega CD also got a enhanced remake of the two Game Gear Shining Force remakes! :o

 

Oh, and speaking of killer apps, could the add-on have been able to run Doom, since it had CD support?

Edited July 3, 2023 by Rudolph

[Halfblind]

I really want to play the original Shadowgun. It is only available via IPad, the GameStick (which includes the Amazon Fire Stick) and the Ouya. I also think the Dreamcast was extremely underrated.

 

 

Edited July 6, 2023 by Halfblind

[Panzermann11]

The 3DO. It was a console made by the same company who brought us Army Men. There are seperate models made by different manufacturers, Panasonic, Sanyo, and GoldStar (now LG), but a fourth one that was almost unheard of was the 3DO Blaster by Creative, the creators of Sound Blaster and EAX, which was a driver for the PC to play 3DO games on it. In other words, it's basically 3DO on the PC before emulators like 4DO. Each model has a different boot screen, but my favorite has to be the "Welcome to the R.E.A.L. World" boot screen for the Panasonic FZ-1.

 

Of course, you also probably can't mention 3DO in a Doom forums website without bringing up the 3DO version of Doom, a port of Doom notorious for performance issues and its developement deadline, but also popular for its unique remixed version of the Doom soundtrack.

Edited July 13, 2023 by Panzermann11

[Gibbitudinous]

1 hour ago, Panzermann11 said:

The 3DO. It was a console made by the same company who brought us Army Men. There are seperate models made by different manufacturers, Panasonic, Sanyo, and GoldStar (now LG), but a fourth one that was almost unheard of was the 3DO Blaster by Creative, the creators of Sound Blaster and EAX, which was a driver for the PC to play 3DO games on it. In other words, it's basically 3DO on the PC before emulators like 4DO. Each model has a different boot screen, but my favorite has to be the "Welcome to the R.E.A.L. World" boot screen for the Panasonic FZ-1.

 

Of course, you also probably can't mention 3DO in a Doom forums website without bringing up the 3DO version of Doom, a port of Doom notorious for performance issues and its developement deadline, but also popular for its unique remixed version of the Doom soundtrack.

 

hats off to burger becky for making that port work literally at all with how incompetent the dinguses who hired her were

[Koko Ricky]

12 hours ago, Gibbitudinous said:

 

hats off to burger becky for making that port work literally at all with how incompetent the dinguses who hired her were

It was 3D0 that hired her and they weren't the dinguses.  The real culprit is Randy Scott, who purchased a 3D0 Doom license from id and forced 3D0 to let him helm development. They had no choice since he beat everyone else to the license. 

[Rudolph]

13 hours ago, Gibbitudinous said:

burger becky

At first, I thought this was an insult like the one used against Jennifer Hepler, but apparently that is how Rebecca Heineman refers to herself? :o

Edited July 7, 2023 by Rudolph

[Gibbitudinous]

1 hour ago, Koko Ricky said:

It was 3D0 that hired her and they weren't the dinguses.  The real culprit is Randy Scott, who purchased a 3D0 Doom license from id and forced 3D0 to let him helm development. They had no choice since he beat everyone else to the license. 

 

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxMBoIP_9kdLUszHbPCUCyBNANxGCVkcid

[Mystic 256]

PSP / Vita

[Panzermann11]

Remember how I talked about the 3DO? Well, there's something I forgot to mention, and it's that thanks to the console startup screens I watched as a child, I have a lot of interest for obscure, failed consoles.

 

• Mattel HyperScan - Released in 2006, the console's notiable feature is the RFID sensor which was used to scan trading cards on games made for the console. There were going to be more cards released for its games, but due to the console being discontinued, they were unreleased, making plenty of content inaccessible. Was mainly criticized for outdated graphics, poorly-responsive scanner, and long loading times.
• Funtech Super A'Can - Taiwanese console released in 1995. Only twelve games were released, and was considered to be overpriced (NT$2,900, roughly $90 USD). Apparently there was supposed to be a CD addon, much like Sega CD, but was latter canned.
• Casio Loopy - Japanese-exclusive console released in 1995. It was targeted for the female demographic.
• Bandai Playdia - Japanese console released in 1994. It was targeted for younger audiences, and its library were mostly quiz and edutainment titles, with plenty of licensed IPs such as Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon and Ultraman.
• Bandai WonderSwan - Japanese-exclusive console released in 1999 and designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the brain child of Nintendo's handheld consoles in the 20th century.
• Phillips CD-i - Released in 1990, it was notable for its licensed Nintendo games which became one of the main sources of YouTube Poop in the 2000's.
• Tandy Memorex Visual Information System - Released in 1992, it ran on a special version of Windows 3.1 called Modular Windows. Its initial price was $699 and most of the catalogue consisted of education games with their price tag ranging from $30 to $80. The console sold only 11,110 units, and was often dubbed as "Virtually Impossible to Sell" by Radio Shack sellers.
• RDI Halcyon - Unreleased console named after HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Oddesey, it was made for LaserDisc games. The console was going to cost $2500, 6 games were planned for the system, but only 2 (Thayer's Quest and NFL Football) were released. It was going to have voice recognition and text-to-speech technology aswell.
• Pioneer LaserActive - Released in 1993, much like the Halcyon, it was a device that allowed playing LaserDisc games for the system. The LaserActive had add-ons called PAC units which ranged from playing karaoke to games on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, CD and PC Engine (TurboGrafx). The price for the main console was $970, the Sega and PCE unit costed $600 each and the karaoke unit costed $350. In total, that's roughly an insane $2500 for a whole set!
• NEC PC-FX - Japanese console released in 1994. Its games mostly, if not entirely consisted of anime-themed games and... what were they called again, ero-games?
• Worlds of Wonder Action Max - Released in 1987, it played light gun games using VHS tapes made specifically for the console. Each time you hit something, you score a point and that's it. There's no way to win or lose in any way.
• Commodore Dynamic Total Vision (CDTV) - Multimedia console released in 1991. It's basically an Amiga computer with a CD/DVD player.
• Nintendo 64DD - Japanese-exclusive add-on for the Nintendo 64 released in 1999. It used 64mb magnetic floppies which are said to be more larger and cheaper to produce than standard N64 cartridges, and it had features such as real-time clock, and Internet connectivity. A North American release was planned and lot of games were planned to be released on the 64DD, including games like Unreal, Diablo, and Street Fighter 3. It ultimately never saw release in America with the main cause of the console's failure being the delays. Only 10 games were made for 64DD, with the planned games either released as cartridge form, on other consoles, or straight-up cancelled. In fact, some of Nintendo's games, such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask and Animal Crossing were originally 64DD games.

 

You know the old saying "One man's trash is another man's treasure"? While they might've flopped and doomed to obscurity because of their problems, I'd like to see inividual emulators for them one day, if one didn't exist already. There might be plenty of decent games hidden on them, and we might even discover things we haven't discovered before.

Edited June 4, 2024 by Panzermann11
Added 2 additional consoles.

[Individualised]

The Game.com was actually a pretty cool handheld, doomed by the fact that it was owned by a company that had nothing to do with mainstream video games and did not treat it as a normal video game console, with a normal third party licencing program. Tiger were primarily a toy company, and although they were known for making handheld electronic games they had no experience in the real video game industry. This is evident by their confused marketing campaign in the US (which tried to market the product to totally separate demographics), and their TV ads in the UK which essentially marketed it as a kid's toy (complete with the cheesy voiceover and bad CGI you get on those types of ads here in the UK), despite it hilariously showing Duke Nukem 3D.

 

Believe it or not music on the Game.com doesn't have to sound like someone playing it by dialling the notes on a phone keypad, but it did because all of the games were commissioned by Tiger and developed using the same shitty SDK.

 

The 3DO had a successor in development called the M2, but The 3DO Company went bust and sold it to Panasonic, who had no interest in competing in the mainstream video game market and pretty much let the system die. Despite common misconception the console did get a very limited release but most of the boards produced were used for arcades and non-video game applications.

 

The NES was pretty much a flop in the UK because they thought advertising it like a toy as they did in the US would work in all of Europe too, to the point where they would even re-use the same TV ads from the US with the American voiceover, which although not uncommon now was very strange back then in the UK. In fact, it was arguably more prominent than how they did it in the US - early European NES models were manufactured and distributed by Mattel, even with Mattel branding, Our video game market was completely different back then though - the video game crash never happened here, and home computers were much more popular for playing games than consoles, so this didn't work out for Nintendo as they were essentially limiting their target audience by only advertising it to kids. This is why Europe essentially got a PAL Super Famicom instead of the American SNES design, as they did not want to repeat the same mistake and made sure to advertise it as a "real" video game system, though in terms of the UK this only helped marginally as those who did play consoles were still playing the Master System well after 16-bit systems released.

 

The NES had better success using the same advertising in other parts of Europe though.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Individualised

[G19Doom]

It’s funny how Atari tried twice to replace the 2600 and failed both times.

[Rudolph]

5 minutes ago, G19Doom said:

It’s funny how Atari tried twice to replace the 2600 and failed both times.

Oh, really?

 

I admit I am really not all that familiar with the 2600. I have only learned of its existence because of the Video Game Krach of 1983 and the Angry Video Game Nerd, especially with his video on the Atari 5200. I do not believe I have ever touched one or any of its games.

 

I am going to assume that the successors both failed because they were too little too late?

[G19Doom]

@Rudolph, best way to describe it is to look at their release dates. The 2600 was around from 1977-1992, 5200 from only 1982-1984!
 

Now, the 7800 did have a bit more legs to stand with as it could play most 2600 games in addition to the 7800 games without the need for any sort of adapter (it was one of if not the first consoles to have true backwards compatibility), but it was initially released in limited quantities in a specific region of the US in 1984 but was shelved due to the game crash and didn’t see a wide release until 1986 and would be discontinued in 1992.

 

Well, the 7800 came too late as the NES had pretty much taken the console market by storm by then. Both consoles were intended to replace the 2600, and both times the 2600 still kept kickin’, even today it has a far larger homebrew community than the 5200 or 7800.

Edited August 20, 2023 by G19Doom

[taufan99]

GCE Vectrex, Entex Adventure Vision, Milton-Bradley Microvision and Epoch Pocket Computer. Having played them all via emulation, there's something about the primitive internal displays of these pre-Game Boy handheld consoles that fascinates me.

Edited August 23, 2023 by taufan99

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

The whole thought process behind the Wii U's marketing, especially the name, really makes me question what the fuck The Big N be smokin' back then. The Wii was already a terrible name ("yeah man do you have the Nintendo Why in stock") that made you sound like a toddler, and the follow-up was so confusing to the general public with such a ridiculous name. You'd hear parents asking about it in the store, sounding like a small alien toddler was cerebrally futtbucking their brains:

 

Customer: Uhh... so there's this... thing that came out after the Nintendo Whyyy... it's like... it's not called Whyyy Two it's called.... Why You...

 

Employee: Okay, you're talking about the *makes siren noise with mouth 🚨*

 

Customer: Yeah, that's it I think. Is it compatible with the first game?

 

Employee: Huh?

 

Customer: It's... it's like a screen for the first game machine?

 

Employee: *explains for fifteen minutes what a Weeyoo is to a nervously farting parent who is about to buy an Xbox instead*

 

I also fail to understand why you'd name your console something as unwieldy as "Xbox 1 One Series S X 1". No, really, I've been into video games for over 20 years, and I have no fucking idea what the newest Xbox is even called. First time there's been a new console (even if it's one that I never plan to buy) that I can't even be bothered to remember the name of. 

[Individualised]

10 minutes ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I also fail to understand why you'd name your console something as unwieldy as "Xbox 1 One Series S X 1". No, really, I've been into video games for over 20 years, and I have no fucking idea what the newest Xbox is even called. First time there's been a new console (even if it's one that I never plan to buy) that I can't even be bothered to remember the name of. 

The current generation Xbox console is called Xbox Series, which competes with the PS5 and upcoming NX2. This is the 9th generation of consoles; so Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch (the latter of which the 9th generation consoles also compete with) were the 8th generation. On top of that, there are two models; a lower end, less powerful "S" model (Xbox Series S), and the main model labelled "X" (Xbox Series X). Neither of which are to be confused with the Xbox One S, which is simply the later Xbox One design, and the Xbox One X, which *is* actually a more powerful piece of hardware than the Xbox One (so not just a redesign, like the Xbox One S), but isn't as powerful as the 9th generation consoles.

 

Once Apple started pulling this same shit around the time the iPhone 11 came out I just stopped following what they were doing. If gaming wasn't so important to me I would have probably done the same with this too. I guess they figured everyone always talks about "the new iPhone" or "the new Xbox" so they decided it wasn't worth coming up with model names that make sense.

Edited August 23, 2023 by Individualised

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Thank you for explaining that to me @Individualised. Unfortunately, even though you could not have explained it anymore clearly and straightforward than you did, there's still no way I can remember that. And your iPhone comparison is perfect - I don't know what the newest iPhone is, because I stopped caring after a certain point. With Xbox, I never really *cared* too much about any of them, but I was still fully aware of what was on the market. Now it's just "the newest Xbox" to me, like you said, because it's too much for me to bother to remember since I'm not a big Xbox follower. I'm more likely to pay attention to news about the PS5, because there's no confusion on my end as to what's being discussed.

[AmethystViper]

I don't think I really have experienced much in the way of consoles that are considered failures that I have, but out of what I currently own I have a soft spot for the Wii U. I always liked the "Off-TV" feature that lets you play games right from the Wii U gamepad (despite that you're still limited to the range of the console and the battery life on it is miserable), and its backwards compatibility with original Wii games gave me another option to enjoy my library of Wii, Wii Ware, and Virtual Console games that helped with the Wii U's lack of standout first-party titles (though I found it really dumb that games in Wii Mode can't be played with the Wii U Gamepad or its Wii U Pro Controller). There are retro games that were re-released on it that made use of the Wii U Virtual Console emulation by M2 that provided controller remapping features with a save state feature that made certain games even more convenient to play, not to mention it also made good use of the Wii U's "dual screen" capabilities to bring back DS games on it that lets you play games on both the TV for the top screen while the touchscreen on the gamepad can be  used for the bottom screen. I'm looking forward to soft-modding mine at some point so I can do more with my console and get much more mileage out of it.

[Craneo]

I don't know how "failed" this console was, but since it never went out of Japan as far as I know, I don't think it was a super big sucess, right? so, when I was a kid I found about the Wonderswan via emulation, and played a lot of it, specially the Digimon games, so I may be a bit biased, but I have fond memories with it...

[Redneckerz]

On 7/7/2023 at 12:35 AM, Halfblind said:

I really want to play the original Shadowgun. It is only available via IPad, the GameStick (which includes the Amazon Fire Stick) and the Ouya. I also think the Dreamcast was extremely underrated.

 

 

There is a rather unique Vita port for this. However, since it uses Unity, showing a link is copyright infringement. But it is out there.

7 hours ago, Craneo said:

I don't know how "failed" this console was, but since it never went out of Japan as far as I know, I don't think it was a super big sucess, right? so, when I was a kid I found about the Wonderswan via emulation, and played a lot of it, specially the Digimon games, so I may be a bit biased, but I have fond memories with it...

The Wonderswan is an x86 based handheld, so you know, there are things possible:

 

 

Windows port

[Rudolph]

10 hours ago, Craneo said:

I don't know how "failed" this console was, but since it never went out of Japan as far as I know, I don't think it was a super big sucess, right? so, when I was a kid I found about the Wonderswan via emulation, and played a lot of it, specially the Digimon games, so I may be a bit biased, but I have fond memories with it...

Never played it myself, but I have heard of it because it has an unofficial sequel to Rockman & Forte, also featuring Quint for some reason.

[PsychEyeball]

The OUYA is the best failed console and nothing comes close. Not because it was a good console, but because so much comedy came out of it, whether from the OUYA team or people who were trying to rally around it and make games for it, without having any experience from programming on Android or game design in general, so a lot of the "hyped" games around the consoles were essentially games you'd play for free on Newgrounds.

 

The public figure behind the console, Julie Urhman, would hold ridiculous claims, like calling their gamepads "the Stradivarius of controllers", was proud that most of the existing OUYA developer base had no game design experience, was referring to Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo as "The Big Three" like they were sinister entities lurking in the shadows eating puppies. She would also showoff projection charts drawn in MS Paint and her apparitions were often full of ridiculous moments.

 

And then you had OUYA games like Visorman, which was a shameless Goldeneye clone and whose mission statement couldn't possibly conflict with its own reason to exist. 

 

 

The hardware had its fair share of problems, the controllers were made of cheap plastic/aluminum and magnets to keep their casing together and as a bonus, they felt horrible to use. The buttons were super clunky and uncomfortable to use, they could get stuck in the controller's plating, the controller's dead zone was a total mess... no matter where you'd look, you'd find ridiculous findings about the console. 

 

And finally, OUYA had this produced as an ad. This was how they wanted to present their product.

 

 

[Rudolph]

24 minutes ago, PsychEyeball said:

The public figure behind the console, Julie Urhman, would hold ridiculous claims, like calling their gamepads "the Stradivarius of controllers", was proud that most of the existing OUYA developer base had no game design experience, was referring to Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo as "The Big Three" like they were sinister entities lurking in the shadows eating puppies. She would also showoff projection charts drawn in MS Paint and her apparitions were often full of ridiculous moments.

I do not care enough to look them up, but from that description alone, I am getting the feeling that this person later tried their hand at NFTs.

Edited August 23, 2023 by Rudolph

[bofu]

The PS Vita was honestly a pretty good handheld and was held back by not even a lackluster Western library, but a lackluster Western reception to the library, as well as the crappy memory card situation. Once you got around that (admittedly very crappy) situation, though, you ended up with a very good piece of hardware. It had good controls, a good screen, good sound, good battery life and charging, and graphical fidelity was pretty impressive. It could even run Musou games with far more fidelity than the PSP could.

 

I'm not ashamed to say that I put hundreds of hours into my Vita. I 100%ed the Uncharted game, Dynasty Warriors Next, the Japanese-exclusive Higurashi port, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, and a few other games that I can't remember at the moment but I definitely remember enjoying. That damn memory card killed the console, though.

[Rudolph]

Sony just announced a successor to the Playstation Portable called the Playstation Portal, but alas it is not actually a console so much as a remote play device that requires you to own a Playstation 5 (!). If that is Sony's answer to the Nintendo Switch, they can suck it...