Top 10 Worst Gaming Consoles
March 17, 2009 by RudolfRyan
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5. Vectrex Year – 1982
Launch Price – $199
The idea is great on paper, a home console system that is built into it’s own miniature TV with portability (that is if you want to carry around 15 pounds), that’s just plain cool. However, Vectrex was a late bloomer, released when other consoles had their own name well established such as Atari 2600 and the less popular ColecoVision and Intellivision system which soon dominated the game market.
The graphics offered a better display compared to other consoles of its generation, it displayed vector type lines instead of the regular dot matrix. Not lines composed of dots, but actual honest-to-goodness lines, as in ”no matter how closely you look at the screen, there won’t be a dot in “sight” lines.
Unlike the Virtual Boy which is only limited to displaying red dots, the Vectrex could only produce white lines, however, they managed to get around the flaw, with perhaps the most low-tech solution ever devised. Each game came packaged with a colored plastic overlay sheet that could be fitted over the Vectrex screen, for the sake of tinting the game to the desired color.
4. 3DO – Panasonic
Year – 1991
Launch Price – $699
I have never seen one of these in my life; maybe the unreasonable price of $700 was just too much for regular gamers. The CD-based “interactive multimedia” player couldn’t really decide if it was a game machine or an exciting new way to watch awful interactive movies. Although it had excellent versions of Street Fighter II turbo and Samurai Showdown, 3DO was still sluggish.
The dawn of other 32bit gaming consoles forced the developers of 3DO to lower its prices; however, it was too little, too late. Lack of consoles and subsequent game sales resulted into bankruptcy and force 3DO to changed its business to develop and publish games for other consoles in the market.
3. Jaguar – Atari
Year – 1993
Launch Price – $249.99
Toilet Seat?
Atari released the Jaguar to compete with Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. One of their strategies was to advertise a 64-bit campaign, but the claim mislead gamers- the main CPU was only 16-bit with a 32 bits graphic processor. The controller was huge; it has 12 buttons to confuse majority of the average gamers.
Atari tried to mix things up by releasing the Jaguar CD-attachment which basically made no improvements at all. The graphics surely did a little bit better compared to its competitors but because the system hardly sold any units, very few developers actually made good quality games for it.
2. Virtual Boy – Nintendo
Year – 1995
Launch Price = $180
This so called “Virtual Reality” machine is Nintendos worst creation. Sounded really well on papers, but on reality, not so much. Nintendo tried to make it portable, but when it was released, it was heavy enough for gamers to just quit playing after getting stiff necks. Who would even bother wearing this in public anyway?
For $180, you get a machine limited to black and red dot matrix(3d oh yes), but don’t worry, Nintendo clearly labeled the box and the Virtual Boy itself with prominent warnings that it could cause eyestrain and vision problems. That’s a great way to get people to buy a product. Games would even pause a few times an hour to force people to take eyestrain-prevention breaks.
With only 14 games ever made, Nintendo abandoned the console just months after it was released making the Virtual Boy the console with the shortest life span I have ever heard of.
1. Action Max – Worlds of Wonder
Year – 1987
Launch Price –Unknown
This is the worst of them all. The Console is basically just a light Gun. The system required its owner to also have a VHS player, as the console did not have a way to play tapes itself.The graphics are pre-rendered, pre-corded animation displayed via VCR playback.The sound comes from an internal speaker and only capable of giving a beeping sound.
The games were played exactly the same way every time (shoot the target),things just cant get any worst than this. Only 5 games were released, and Sonic Fury being included in the package is the best game you can find on this console. Basically, you don’t want to buy another game after having the idea what the system is only capable of. This is the worst it can get.
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