Slashdot Mirror
The 10 Lamest Game Consoles Ever
GameDaily has an amusing piece looking at the 10 lamest consoles to hit the market. Older flops like the Jaguar and Action Max join the new graveyard-bound contenders likes the N-Gage and the Gizmondo. From the article: "Ignore, for a minute, manufacturer Tiger Telematics' financial woes, the former executive's much-publicized, million-dollar Ferrari crash and the Swedish Mafia ties. What really irked us about the GPS- and Windows CE-sporting handheld (capable of playing games, movies and music, plus wireless multiplayer) was its sixth-rate software library and similarly styled functionality. Some hated on 2005's biggest portable flop for its abominable games, like Colors or Momma, Can I Mow the Lawn? We just dug the fact that even after dropping $229 on one, you'd still get hit with online ads three times a day." And they're going to re-launch it. Again! Have to love their enthusiasm.
#1: PlayStation 3
/v/
sup
10: Virtual Boy 9: Gizmondo 8: Saturn 7: Action Max 6: CDi 5: N-Gage 4: Lynx 3: 32X 2: 3DO Interactive Multiplayer 1: Jaguar
I don't know if I would call the Jaguar lame. It was certainly unsuccessful however I remember going over my friends house to play it and it was pretty awesome as far as I remember.
On the other hand the NGage was a certifiable steaming pile of failure both financially and from a user's perspective.
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
In defense of the Sega Saturn, it did quite well in Japan. It was so lame in the US because Sega's President didn't send over alot of the games that made it popular in Japan because he didn't think they were the kind of games Americans liked. While it may not have been Worldwide successful, I certainly don't think its one of the top 10 lamest console ever; just one of the lamest of the truly widely known consoles.
Demented But Determined.
Funny how the 3DO not only compares to the PS3 in price range, but also in the same ugly design.
You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows.
Hooray for bad Engrish on fortune cookies
As for for the N-Gage, yes it is a lame console but the article doesn't mention the bizarre situation with the QD N-Gage. Yes, it removed sidetalking, but Nokia took it upon themselves to remove the MP3 function and also take stereo sound off the console. It didn't make any logical sense at all to do that, improving one feature but removing another couple.
i had the 32x, but never got it to work. i tried it with one game, doom. it didnt display anything but the HUD. i quickly returned it after that.
anyone ever get that thing to work?
Has anyone else heard about the Cougar Boy? A Gameboy clone/wannabe. I only know one person who has it.
-- SouNerd.com
The Sega Saturn certainly does NOT belong on this list. Even ignoring the Japanese library and focusing on the games released in the US, it had an outstanding collection of games. Arcade perfect ports of 2D fighters as well which the Playstation surely didn't have. Guardian Heroes, Shining Force III, Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon I, II and Saga, Dragon Force....and those are just the beginning.
It's kind of a dumb, overly snarky list, picking on some systems just because they never found their market.
3D0...they left out they did BattleTanx, which, sadly, was the last decent split screen tank games, all the way back on the N64 and PS1 days.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
__
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I had an electronic quiz book in the late 1970's where you read the question, pick an answer from the multiple choice, punch the corresponding button, and the device would tell you the correct answer with all the bells and whistles. You could replace the book with other books. I thought this was the coolest thing ever when I was a kid. Until I noticed that every book had the exact same answer for each question number (i.e., 1-A, 2-B, 3-C, 4-D, etc.). Then it wasn't so cool after you figure out the pattern. That was the problem with a lot of game "consoles" back then since each game relied on a predefined pattern.
They left out stunners like the TurboGraphix Handheld (another battery chomper and mondo expensive portable), the Sega Master System (utterly clobbered by Nintendo, and run into the ground by Tonka), and - although I liked mine initially - the Atari 7800, a nice system if anyone knew how to program the damn thing (which no one did) after Warner sold Atari up the river. Most cynical warehouse clearance con-job by the Trammels EVER.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Virtual_Boy# Product_failure
Nintendo did not "goof" by letting Yokoi "ship it". Nintendo forced Yokoi to rush it out when he was not even fully behind it himself, and then didn't back it up at tradeshows, leaving him out to dry. He ended up resigning shortly afterward, despite his amazing history there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi
An amazing man left with all the blame for a silly, marketing/product-placement-driven idea.
No R-Zone??!?! This thing was the shit, head mounted viewscreen get you looking like a true virtual warrior, until you realize the games are bad ports of game and watch style games. The idea of having each cartridge act as the screen was a pretty cool idea though... http://www.vidgame.net/TIGER/HEADGEAR.htm
We owned a CDi... Hard to believe my parents got suckered into that one. I wasn't even asking for it or anything. We bought three lame games with it (a crappy mini-golf game with Eugene Levy's voice taunting you, tetris, and some carnival-style game) You could buy an add-on module to watch movies on the discs, but we never got that. I remember thinking "Movies on a disc, like a CD? Never...!"
After that, it's funny to think that in 2000, my mom returned a DVD player that my Dad got her for her birthday, because she didn't think she's use it. My parents never did get the hang of useful technology/useless technology.
I know my Jag got a ton of play time back in late high school and early college days for me. (roughly: 1995-1998) Rayman, Alien vs Predator, Tempest 2000, Raiden, and Cannon Fodder were all favorites that saw lots of use. Baldies (CD) was cute and fun when it didn't crash on you. Yeah, there were a bunch of stinkers ("Highlander" comes to mind rapidly. Myst as well because the UI on a low-res TV was so awful.)
Besides, it is worth owning one for the VLM alone. When 5 years have passed I expect to pick up a used Xbox360. No games, just the console and a controller and the VLM3.
I also (in general) really like the Jag controllers. Yes the number key pad is annoying, but they're large enough to be comfy for a long play session and are fairly durable. They will pull out at a slight tug, but I'd rather have the controller fall out than the console get pulled off whereever it was sitting, particularly some of the places I had it balanced in my dorm rooms.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
This thing was craptacular. I never trusted Sega after this POS -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Mega-CD
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
You're sure you're not confusing it with that game you play with your next door neighbor, Mrs. Stifler?
If you think the PS3 is ugly, the Xbox 360 looks like a PC with it's sides bashed in.
The Pippin was supposed to play games and do Multimedia like the CDi, I'm surprised it didn't make the list.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
It's funny that almost all on the list (plus other lamers off the top of my head) were in the 90's. I was huge into gaming in the 90's and I remember these systems. They all looked promising at release, however there was always some huge problem that loomed keeping them from ever having a chance. A biggie was price (Jaguar, CDI, 3D0). Another was games (32x, Saturn). I think if you are lacking in either of those categories your system is never going to have a chance.
Neo-Geo had badass arcade style games that I still play to this day. Out of all the insanely priced systems, I think that was one of the few that had good enough games it survived many years despite the price.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I have a friend who still has his Saturn set up purely because of some of the games that have just never been equalled on other consoles. Radiant Silvergun and Street Fighter Zero 3 spring to mind.
Admittedly, if you used it to play Tomb Raider or some of the other, more "popular" games, the user experience was less than satisfactory, but in the 2D arena, the Saturn stood alone.
Oh, and Saturn Bomber Man is the best iteration of that series, IMHO.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
I also recall a B&W LCD cartgidge based game that preceeded the Nitendo B&W handheld console that I would put on the list, if I could only recall it's name.
Actually, many of the games listed in the article were far from lame, but they were poorly marketed (nat at all as poorly as the RCA game however). While no two people in a reasonable sized pool would be likely to come up with a perfectly matching list, this list seems to be more a personal disapointment list and a list of the cases where the author couldn't properly judge the market than a list of the 10 worst systems ever.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I loved my 3DO. It was the first system that Need for Speed came out for. In fact, the only system that had a better version of the first need for speed was PC, as the 3D0 version was superior to the Playstation version that came out later. But before that, racing games on consoles sucked. This was the first game where you could stop an oncomming car and start pushing it around with your car. I also enjoyed that capture the flag game where you could use a jeep, helicopter, or tank... I can't remember what it was called but I played that a ton! The system had tons of great games that where far better than anything that was out at the time. It was expensive but had a good library of games and was not lame. Heck, the system also came with a video CD in the box with an episode of batman and 2 stupid dogs on it. It also would display a pretty cool 3D visualizer when you played a music CD in the system. What was lame was the M2 being canceled. Oh how I wish Panasonic was still in the console biz.
What about the Apple Pippin? Not only was it $600 and had practically no software, it was underpowered and tried to compete directly with the N64 and PSX, after they were both established in the market.
On the upside though, it had SCSI.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The Jaguar was in the same position as the Sega Saturn. At the time, 3d acceleration hadn't yet made it into VLSI designs so they tried to just make a "really good" version of what the competetion was doing before. I'm not really sure why they thought coupling a 16-bit CPU to 1M+ of memory and 64-bit coprocessors was a good idea for an architecture that needs to be relevant in 5 years. It wasn't easy to program for, in any case, and that would be its' downfall. The release titles were HORRIBLE, and that doesn't encourage other companies to try to jump on the bandwagon and push the state of the art on that architecture.
The Saturn, at least, started with a decent CPU and tacked on some support chips from their arcade designs... and there were some nice arcarde ports on that system because of it. (What they should have done is just figured out a way to take "Model-1" or "Model-2" and put it into mass production).
Atari was too concerned with catching up with the Jonses and totally discounted the impact of the PSX.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Don't forget the Microvision, not to be confused with Macrovision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microvision
Looking back, I can't believe I ever found this thing entertaining. But it was, till Jimmy Voirol broke into my house and stole. (Ya fuckhead, I knew you did it, your friends narc'd you off, but I was too much of a pussy then to do anything about it.) Lucky I moved to Nebraska or I'd have to look you up and thrash ya. I might have been a skinny 13 year old then, but times have changed.)
I remember playing with a first-generation Philips CDi unit at school; I have no idea why they purchased them, except that they must have had some idea about using it for educational purposes. (Or maybe someone just had budget money to burn.)
Anyway, I used them once to play "Seventh Guest" (also a PC/Mac game) and thought it was pretty slick. At the time (this must have been 1992 or 93) I hadn't seen a game that incorporated that much full-motion video at that point, and found it fairly impressive. Alternately, it might have just seemed that way because we had the CDi running into a huge BARCO CRT projector...
I was never sold on CDi as a format, or the standalone players, but I did buy the game when I finally got around to buying a CD-Rom drive and a computer capable of running it. I guess CDi should get credit for that.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Replace them with:
Maganavox Odyssey^2
Horrible. Horrible. The controllers were hardwired to the console circuit board in the first model. The games all stunk and used the same generic character sprites. Almost all the games were written by one guy.
Atari 7800
Backwards compatible with the Atari 2600 but it came out around the same time as the NES which outclassed it.
Atari 5200
Horrible joysticks. This thing had potential but Atari didn't know what the hell was going on.
Lamest? I'd have to say the virtual boy and Saturn were pretty cool.
There was many failings with it but in theory they were one of the coolest ideas. A virtual Reality helmet? A Cd based system. Of course no one would ever want a optial disc for a System like the saturn would they?
What's the opposite of "lame" in this article? Cool? Are we going to say the PSX or PS2 is cool then? Is the Xbox cool or just fat? It's true the 360 oozes coolness, and the wii looks hot, but I really don't think those are the top 10 "lamest" consoles, at least not with out the 5600, and the Sega CD missing on that list. How about the ancient consoles, there's some truely crap fests back then.
I'm surprised the psp didn't make the list.
UMD? why?
what games does it have?
I use it mostly to watch tv shows and listen to music....
I don't think Sony had that market in mind.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
And it's no wonder.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Amstrad GX4000.
I know someone who was a developer on a Gizmondo software project that never made it to light. Shortly before the whole thing collapsed, he had trouble getting a consulting invoice paid, so he went to their London HQ and basically camped out for the day in reception refusing to leave until Stefan Erikson's girlfriend, the finance director, paid his invoice. It very nearly got legal, until evidently ther got pissed off and wrote a cheque to get him out of the foyer.
You should have seen his face 2 weeks later when I showed him the lengthy article about the board of director's mafia connections...
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
No preemptive mention of the Phantom? What kind of crappy list is this?
..had they ported Burnout for it.
:)
Considering how an Enzo got do its own little "Crash Party" but didn't get the Crashbreaker.
the Sega Game Gear. Yeah it had video in, color, played a ton of the 8bit sega games and sucked batteries dry in 2 hours. It also sold very poorly and was the only direct rival to the lynx.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
I still play Guardian Heroes and Radiant Silvergun. Those games were great. SFA2: Zero was probably the best 2D Street Fighter ever. Assault Suits Leynos 2 is absolutely the best 2D side scrolling mech game ever made by the hands of man.
From the article:
I think that , looking back, a well executed 1997 2D game can still be played without making your eyes hurt, unlike most 1997 3D offerings. Poorly played Mr. Steinberg, and poorly written. The top ten list has replaced worthwhile game journalism and this is what we get, sales figures described as measures of lameness.
The tragedy of the human condition is that empathy is, by definition, impossible.
Poorly supported, but it was not bad. I and several of my friends actually owned them, and we would get together and hook them all up for 5 player Slime World, California Games and Warbirds.
It turns out my wife used to have a CD-i. I guess I hadn't realized anyone actually bought those.
I was never much into console gaming, so for the longest time I kept confusing the Playstation with the CD-i.... console that uses CDs instead of normal cartridges, made by some big electronics company that doesn't make games, whatever. As far as I was concerned, if it wasn't Nintendo or Sega, it didn't matter.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
The console with three games that all were oddly like pong?
I know, it's a first gen console and we could list pretty much the first ten consoles out there as not having a lot of value but there was a cheapness to the first Telstar that I can not even explain.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Wow! I totally forgot about that POS. I was unfortunate enough to own one. I might still have a couple of the VHS tapes laying around. I kept them after I threw away the console because they were funny as hell.
The Commodore 64GS has to be up there. It was a Commodore 64, except without a keyboard or the ability to play cassette or disk based games, which left you with the comparatively miniscule library of games that had been released on cartridge. Oh, and to really top it all off, the damn thing was released at roughly the same time as the 16-bit offerings from Nintendo and Sega when the technology was entirely obsolete and the C64 itself was coming to the end of its popularity. All in all, even by Commodore standards, it was a ridiculous idea.
The CDTV wasn't much better either.
The Memorex VIS takes the lame cake. It was really a Microsoft product, but they couldn't put their name on it for fear of pissing off the OEMs.
It was a 286 PC crammed into a console. It ran "Modular Windows" - a version of Win3.x - which meant that almost any then-current software could be ported to it. This was Microsoft's first atttempt at entering the videogame/console market.
RadioShack sold them, Memorex gave it branding. MS provided the OS, and invited big publishers to release. They sure did - direct ports. None of the software was adapted for television, meaning that text was unreadable, and colors just looked wrong or shimmered off the screen. Single pixel dithering and single pixel lines abounded, but made most TVs "tear". The processor was terribly slow, as was the optical drive. The sound capabilities were horrid (think 1992 soundcard, then cheapened). The entire experience was totally inferior to older 8-bit consoles and the still-then-popular Commodore 64 - yet it cost an astounding $400.
In short, the entire thing was totally unusable. It had NO redeeming features at all.
They tried selling it for a while, but no one bit. I recall that total sales figures may have been hundreds, perhaps a few thousand. It was a huge, huge failure, perhaps the biggest one that MS experienced up until that time.
No one remembers, especially the lamo "journalist" that wrote that lame article.
And now - The Lame List. Brought to you be America's heavy metal community. My apologies to Almost Live but this list is the real lame thing.
:) Chew on these for a bit, GameDaily.
They left out plenty. This list is poorly researched and includes add-ons like the Sega 32X but not the Sega CD, the TurboGrafx CD or the Nintendo 64DD. Why not those? They were just as "lame".
It contains a reference to the licensed 3DO technology in the form of a Panasonic FZ-10 (The FZ-1 was the $700 version). It does not talk about the Nuon DVD chipset. At least the 3DO systems had a few decent titles... all the Nuon had going for it was Tempest 3000.
Are they going for commercial flops? Some of these systems were arguably better than anything else on the market and certainly weren't that lame. The Lynx was in some ways better than home consoles at the time. They might as well have included the PSP.
I wouldn't have put the Saturn on the list for the same reason that I wouldn't put the TurboGrafx (PC Engine) on the list; both were very popular in Japan. The Neo Geo was very popular in the arcades as the MVS (Multi Video System). I would put the SuperGrafx on that list though; only six expensive titles were ever released. It did play PC Engine games though. It also paved the way for the PC-FX which could also be included on a lame list.
Speaking of that, how about things like the LaserActive. Check out those prices: $970 for the main unit and $600 for either a Genesis or TurboGrafx module that will let you play games. It makes the PlayStation 3 look like a bargain!
Props go to them for listing the Action Max. Unfortunately it doesn't look like people ever learn their lesson. Just ask Mattel with their 2006 HyperScan game console. You can thank me later for not including a link to their hideous flash based site.
You could even mention computer manufaturers wanting to get into the market. Atari, Apple, and Commodore (twice) have all turned computer systems into crappy consoles.
There are plenty more but I'm not making a list. I'm just pointing out the shortcomings of others.
I'm sorry, but half of these don't come near the suckitude of the Emerson Arcadia 2001. Not only was it technologically two years behind (a long time in that era), but whoever programmed the games must have been certifiably tone-deaf, because the sound is awful. Typical modern-system myopia.
Another one that should be on the list is the RCA Studio II. Now admittedly it was only the second programmable console ever made (the Channel F was the first), but it had no color, no wired controllers (just two keypads on the console itself), and only had 11 cartridges made for it. Its only audio support was a fixed-frequency beeper which could beep or chirp.
And the Saturn absolutely does not deserve to be on that list. It may have had a totally fucked up launch, one which may even be a portent of the PS3's future, but it was not a sucky system. It was designed to be a great 2D system, just when things were about to go 3D.
P.S. You insensitive clods!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Mattel Hyperscan!
http://www.hyperscangamer.com/
i saw even a jag fan beating this one,so it MUST suck XD
I actually liked the Lynx, moreso than the Game Gear. I once played Xenophobe on that thing while my family drove across Texas (6 hours). I had a car adaptor, of course. But anyway, it didn't have many games, and some of them were real stinkers, but the few good titles it did have I played a lot. I also liked how you could turn the screen backlight on and off, which sounds like a small feature but really helped out. Pausing the game for a while? Turn the volume down and turn the backlight off. It would stay paused for hours like that on batteries. It had serious potential, and it could have easily kicked the ass of Game Gear if Atari hadn't screwed up and not put out any decent software for it.
I will not argue in the Jaguar's defense, however. Total buzzkill of a system. The only game worth playing on it is Doom, and even that's not very good. Why Atari? Why?
sage
*All* game consoles are lame.
You Are Wasting Your Life.
There are a squillion more useful (and enjoyable) things you could be doing:
Contributing code to an open source project.
Studying.
Exercising. (this counts big-time later on)
Reading something mind expanding.
Building relationships with other humans.
Think up your own dammit.
The point is: no matter what you may enjoy doing, there's something more beneficial (to you or the ppl around you) and just as enjoyable to do.
But there are few things worse than sitting on your fat ass playing console games.
Just an example: You count Dance Dance Revolution as exercise?
Loser. Pick a sport that's fun to play. Play with a friend so you build friendship. If it's a martial art you pick up some basic self-defence skills too. It's multitasking. And *that's* how you win at LIFE.
That writeup was certainly a blast from the past for me. Many of those consoles I either owned and paid full price for (3DO, Saturn), played at a friends house when I was a kid (CDi, 32X) or avoided like the bubonic plague because I knew it was going to bomb (Virtual Boy, Jaguar). Video games were born and grew up the same time I did and it's fun to look back and see how they evolved as I did.
Also: I thought the Sega Saturn shouldn't have been on that list. It was an epic system with some amazing arcade ports (Virtua Fighter 2, anyone?) and sported a cool 2D and 3D graphics engine that game developers like Capcom really took advantage of. IMO, some of the best gaming since the SNES happened on the Sega Saturn.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
CD32 was a total failure from Commodore to produce a console based on the Amiga. Commodore execs were so silly as to believe that the primitive-for-the-time Amiga graphics chips (no 3d acceleration, no sprite scaling and rotation, few hardware sprites) could make it to a console...
I had completely forgotten about this! It was the strangest 'game' thing... I don't remember even how I ended up with one, but I definitely remember shooting the same ghosts over and over again (I think there were only three tapes made for it, and I only had two). The only thing that really impressed me about it was the little red light you stuck on the front of the TV. It had a sensor on the back that watched a spot on the TV, not sure why. In any case, the light would light up when you hit something, and 12 year old me thought that was just the best.
Dammit! This is another barely-relevant, unresearched and boring filler article from someone who's going purely on each system's fiscal success.
The N-Gage belongs at the top of this list. It was a horribly designed piece of hardware from a company with no business making video games.
I predicted the Jaguar being top of the list before I even finished reading the title. Why? Only because it didn't sell, and that's crap. Everyone liked Tempest 2000, the Doom port was passable and there were a few other gems like Aliens VS Predator. Unlike the CDi, it kept the 80/20 rule pretty well.
If they bothered to give more than a coffee breaks time for brainstorming, they would have put the Neo-Geo Pocket on the list; it had a six game library with half the power and display size of the original GameBoy.
Or how about the Neo itself? That system was still putting out $150 game cartridges with 1996 technology until the company's demise because it couldn't be improved upon.
As long as I'm tipping sacred cows, why didn't the Sega Nomad make this list? Sure, it played your favorite Genesis games but if you didn't carry your body weight in AA batteries, it wouldn't last long enough for a bus-ride across the street. (Exaggeration is fun, isn't it?)
Sub intelligent articles like this don't belong on Slash-dot because no thought goes into them. The Saturn wasn't a bad system: Just a flop. The 32x was a bolt-on, not an accessory. You might as well put the TG-16 CD-ROM on there when you remember fondly the many hours you spent waiting for individual rooms to load in Ys-3.
Besides, everyone knows the name of worst console ever. It has virtually no support from the manufacturer, virtually every game released for it is buggy or broken, the controllers and accessories are all third party crap and the system itself can price anywhere from $500 to $5000 while usually only matching their competition: The PC.
Second place, Macintosh. THANK YOU! GOOD NIGHT!
Funny you should mention those 5200 joysticks.
I remember my dad replaced the side-buttons on both our joysticks (the orange, rubber buttons) with keyboard keys because the buttons wouldn't make contact anymore and were all smached in. The analog sticks worked OK, from what I remember. They also had a full, telephone-style keypad on them, which I think I used exactly 0 times while playing the system.
There was some awesome 3D space game, Star Raiders (I think), where you got to fly around to different star systems in honest-to-god 3D, volumetric space. What a great game. What else did we have:
Jungle Hunt
Q*Bert
Keystone Kapers
Centipede
Galaxian
Dig Dug
Mario Brothers
Pole Position
Pretty cool system when you're 6 years old!
With the first link, the chain is forged.
you have the wikipedia link up so I'm sure you read the entry, but the NEO was hardly a flop. It was designed primarily as arcade hardware, and only got a "home" console release due to consumer demand.
For arcade owners, the NEO platform was a dream. Getting a new arcade game (and thus, the cabinet) used to run arcade operators 3 to 4 thousand dollars! After the release of the Neo Geo, new games could be had simply by switching out the cart within the cabinet ($100-$200 per cart) and most cabinets could accomodate multiple games!
For home owners, yes the system and games were expensive but they were arcade PERFECT 32-bit games in an era where most gamers were still playing NES games. It came with TWO full sized arcade joysticks with 5(?) buttons when most gamers were still playing with vastly inferior gamepads. Some of the deluxe cabinets even gave gamers the option to save their games at the arcade and take them home to continue later!
Those who weren't gaming then might not remember, but this was an age when arcade fighters (like SFII) were HUGE and the NEO was a fighters dream come true. The EXTREMELY long running and highly regarded King of Fighters series got it's start on the NEO, as well as the well known Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, and Samurai Showdown franchises. The system also had it's fair share of shooters, beat em ups, and puzzle games like Bust-A-Move and was admittedly short on games like say...RPGs, but again, the NEO was arcade hardware.
For a "flop" the NEO was extremely well supported. How long did the Dreamcast last? A year? How about the Xbox? 3 years then dropped? SNK continued to produce games for the NEO until 2004, 14 YEARS after the system launch. That kind of catering to your fanbase, no matter how small is definitely admirable. The NEO was never intended to be the kind of mass market system the NES and Genesis were. It's goal was to revolutionize the arcade scene (which it did well, for players and arcade owners) and give those gamers that really "got" the system and it's titles the option of bringing that experience home with them.
Wasn't there a Japanese console, sometime in the late 1980s/early 1990s, which used 2.5" floppies (i.e., the hard plastic ones without shutters, also used with word-processing typewriters and synthesisers) as its media? I recall seeing some 2.5" floppies with colourful labels in Japanese at a flea market in Australia many years ago.
"I will not argue in the Jaguar's defense, however. Total buzzkill of a system. The only game worth playing on it is Doom, and even that's not very good."
You left out Aliens vs. Predator (awesome atmosphere), Iron Soldier (a quasi-realistic mech combat game), and Tesmpest 2000 (still awesome after all these years). There were also some moderately decent arcade titles like NBA Jam Tournament Edition and Super Burnout to fill the gaps.
The two big things that killed the Jaguar were (a) it was designed to compete with the Super NES/Genesis just as textured polygon graphics were on the rise, and (b) cheap-ass incompetent mismanagement by the Tramiels. I swear, Jack Tramiel only kept the company running as a tax write-off for his sons more than anything else...
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net