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Top Ten Handhelds That Didn't Make It?
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "Over at GameSpy, they're running a feature looking at the top ten handhelds that never made it. Included on the list are such 'favorites' as the Atari Lynx and the more recent Nokia N-Gage, as well as commentary by the GameSpy editors on why these portables failed to set the gaming world on fire."
These guys will write anything to convince their readers they know what they're talking about.
;)
The list both the Gamegear and Wonderswan, both of which are/were solid systems. The gamegear sold quite a number of units when it was released, and gave some decent competition to the Gameboy. The wonderswan is still going stron in Japan.
What exactly qualifies as "making it" for these guys? By their measurements the only systems that ever "made it" were the GBA and gameboy. The latter being 10+ years old, which is a phenomenon in itself, and the former just happening to be the only handheld currently available in the US. (That Ngage thing is not real).
I rather doubt that. Considering that the market is (arguably) supporting three home consoles, whose prices are all more than the GBA, I would say that the market is there for another great handheld. The problem is just that no company has released a great handheld to compete with Nintendo's GameBoy. I think it takes a number of factors for a handheld to be great. Long battery life, comfort, compactness, and great games are probably the most important. The problem with many of these other handhelds is that they have focused on flashy graphics and sound to the detriment of some of the more important factors. That's what I think, anyway.
You probably shouldn't click this.
The two markets are related but also different so I don't believe you can jump to such a conclusion based on your evidence.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Am I really THAT old to have not found it that funny... I mean it was a huge pissing contest between which you had, a sega or a nintendo and which was better.... how is it shocking that Sega used to be a competitor??? Because they dont exist as a system maker???? Using that logic is like saying its hysterical that Atari owned the marked untill 81!!!!
Im 23 and I remeber getting a 2600, Nintendo and Super NES for christmas... I even remeber when the Playstation came out, do young people REALLY not know the history of video games???? :-\
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I actually had one of these when I was a kid and it r0Xored! It was the first hand-held with a dot-matrix display that used cartridges and therefore wasn't limited to one game, so I don't have any idea why it's on this list other than journalistic myopia.
Also, the article is factually incorrect in one place. The snap-on cartridge/faceplates didn't have a whole set of controls in the cartridge - that would be stupid and expensive. Instead, the device had a touchpad matrix of FLAT calculator-style button "areas" (like a Sinclair ZX81 or an Atari 400 keyboard) above the paddle on the base unit. The cartridge faceplate, supplying a decorated film that fit over this area, just functioned as an overlay, masking off the buttons you didn't need and labeling the ones you did. I'm not sure why GameSpy editors don't know this because they *SHOULD* have actually inspected physical units before reporting these facts and it's a technique that's been used elsewhere.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I can tell you something about some of those sega handhelds that made it on there....
Firstly, I never even knew the Nomad existed until well after its death. I didnt exactally live under a rock either. I know I would have saved my pennies for this, vs something like a gameboy.
Then we have the Game Gear. This one was more out in the open, but the true treasure of it was NEVER known by many people... that you could buy a $10 adapter and play your old Sega Master System games! Had my friends and I known this much earlier in its life, we ALL would have owned one.
Sega made good stuff. They just didnt know how to sell it.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Along similar lines, it seemed particularly odd that the Virtual Boy wasn't included on the list.
DecafJedi
my weblog: apropos of something
I'd have to disagree.
I live in Brooklyn and ride the subway to work every day. I'm 30, know a lot of other 25-30 year olds who all have gameboys. On any given day I'll see 5-10 GBA SP's on the subway, and usually only one of those will be in the hands of a kid.
At home I have a gamecube, decked-out pc, and what I find myself playing the most are my gameboy games. Wario Ware, Advance Wars 1 & 2, Golden Sun, Mario & Luigi... these are all just great games. Sure I can load stuff up on the tv, but I can play my gameboy in the subway, I can take it with me on lunch breaks, I can play it in any room in the house, take it on planes, trains, etc.
Gameboys are not just for kids. That's similar to how people erroneously state that all gamecubes are owned by kids. Plenty of adults play and enjoy gameboys. They have incredible, quality games on them. I can name more wonderful gameboy games I've played in the last year than I can for my console and for my pc. There's some serious creativity going on with that platform.
Granted I didn't have this same love of my gba before the SP. I had a number of games that were fun, but I had to play those in good lighting, or buy a separate light kit. Plus the unit was so large. My SP fits in my coat pockets, heck, even in my jean pockets if the pants are baggy enough. Great games and portability, it's a good thing. Can't wait to see how the PSP does.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin
It's so easy to bash something, and while the DS does sound a little goofy, it's challenging the norm - a punk rock approach to gaming. Even if it loses, who cares? It tried at least! The only way we're going to get ahead is by breaking the rules - and I welcome that. This is coming from a guy who's played one too many Spikey-Haired RPG's(TM), seen too many fake video game breasts, and played as too many stealthy ninjas. Not that there's anything wrong with it. But on a complete off-rant, is anyone else agree the stealth genre needs a severe kick in the ass?
Nintendo probably cornered the market with 3 things. Battery life, price, and later, backwards compatability. How can you compete with a system that launches with a library of 1000 games? Helped out Sony a little with the PS2 at launch too.
Oh, and we can't forget a legion of brainwashed Nintendo Power subscribers, back in the day.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
First of all, the Game.com has no business being on this list. Not only didn't it "make it"... it never had any chance whatsoever. I bought one of these things off of eBay with about 8 games a while back for a total of about $30... and let me tell ya, it's just barely worth that. The "PDA functions" are a joke (you can enter some telephone numbers, use calculator, and view (but not annotate) a calendar), and most of the games are unplayable. Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Fighter's Megamix animate so poorly and move so choppily that you can't even really play them... Sonic Jam and Indy 500 move far too fast, which causes the screen to blur horribly (WAY worse than the Gameboy ever did), which in turn makes them impossible to play properly. The only games worth a damn on this system are the built-in Solitaire game, Wheel of Fortune, and Tiger Casino. Oh, and Resident Evil 2 is surprisingly decent on this system... it's not good, but I expected it to be a LOT worse. The only redeeming factor for the Game.com is that it was still MUCH better than Tiger's other system, the R-Zone... boy, was that ever a horrible failure.
The Microvision also failed for a very good reason: It was horribly underpowered. I know it was released in the 70's, but the thing uses a 100kHz 4-bit CPU (I'm not kidding here), 32 nibbles of ram (Since the CPU is less than 8-bit, it's meaningless to refer to things in bytes), and the screen resolution is 16x16 (again, I'm not kidding). I seriously don't see how you can actually do anything meaningful with a system like that. I commend Milton Bradley for their innovation, but the technology just wasn't there.
I also question the wisdom of including handhelds that were never released in North America. Even if we're talking about worldwide sales, the fact that the Wonderswan and GP32 were never released here pretty much guarantees that they won't be successful regardless of how good they are.
Having said that, I think the Lynx and Nomad are very underrated... the Lynx had a lot of nifty features, like the ability to turn off it's backlight to save batteries when you pause, the ability to flip the screen so you could play left handed, and some games could play sideways to get a better aspect ratio. It really could have used more big name games though... all it really had were Atari's arcade ports, which weren't as popular as they were in the Asteroids heyday. Atari's marketing certainly didn't help either.
As for the Nomad, the system was overpriced and undermarketed... aside from the fact that it tears through batteries (If you got three hours from 6 AA's, then you did good), it's a very impressive system from a technical standpoint. A friend of mine has one, and he plays it all the time. You really need an AC adaptor for this one though.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
Even though people are complaining about the virtua boy, I wish that I could've had one to try for myself. At the time I was too young to buy one myself and my parents weren't going to buy me another gadget for a while.
Lots of people hate it, that's for sure, but did anyone ever try modding one to do something else, maybe play a game they made themselves, or add another colour or two to the display? ambitious, yes, impossible, dunno.
Also, are there any handhelds that allow you to develop your own games for and play them on the handheld? I've heard of the lik-sang(sp?) ram carts that could allow you to do this, but it's frowned upon as far as I know.
Wouldn't it be nice if the Nintendo DS came with or allowed you to buy flash carts that had pc interfaces to allow you to develop your own games, let the public try their hand at taking advantage of two screens!