If you're like me and grew up as a kid in the 80's and 90's you would have seen your fair share of retro game consoles. Even the younger generation who enjoy the nostalgia of older gaming combined with new tech. But unfortunately there were many, many gaming consoles, accessories, peripherals and games that were basically.. shit! I have selected a few of the worst for this list and some I had personal experience with.
1 - Back in 1996 I already had my PlayStation 1, playing titles such as Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Abe's Oddesy and more. But Apple being Apple thought they could swoop in and try to dominate this market with the PipPin. Co created with Bandai, who makes plastic toys for kids and no clue about the gaming world, PipPin was supposed to be a multi media console for your TV. Just like modern game consoles. You could play games and surf the web. However, game makers didn't know or didn't care about this 'revolutionary' piece of tech, so the options for games was very limited.
Unfortunately it lacked in power, graphics were below par compared to Sony's PS1, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 who were all dominating the market at the time, and would apple have it any other way by selling it for £600? now compared to the £250 of the ps1 and the mountain of games available. This was just another example of the greed of Apple. Is it any wonder then it was in the top 25 of the worst tech in the world... ever...?
There were 100,000 unites made by Bandai but less than half sold, so Bandai stop production, told Apple to go fuck themselves by suing for lost sales and got back to making power ranger super mechanoid thing that fell apart 2 minutes out of the box.
2 – At some point in the late 80's and 90's you were comparing your console to your friends. 32 bit, 64 bit, 128 bit. It seemed we got it in our heads that the more bits we had, the better the games. Well Atari Jaguar '64 bit' stomped on the the TV with an add campaign informing us of this fact in 1993. depicting gamers as morons with the intellectual ability of a flee bitten Dog, licking your own ass.
The games and the graphics... were that of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Remember Ghosts n Goblins? My old man had it on his MS Dos PC back in 1986, leap forward 7 years. And it was like the graphic power hadn't improved.
And the Joypad...... oh don't get me started. It was big and clunky, very heavy, holding it for any length of time and your shoulder would hurt like hell. Not to mention the silly amount of buttons. Even compared to modern pads.
The Jaguar is what ended Atari's reign. Soon after its release Atari filed for bankruptcy and soon ended up selling all its assets to pay off huge debts.
3 – I loved my Play Station 1. I think I spent far to much time playing it, to the point I would time myself playing Resident evil titles. Another game I enjoyed was Collin McRae and Grand Turismo. I thought the graphics and car handling was awesome. But Namco decided to improve the controller and designed the JogCon.
I had 2 controllers for my ps1 a joy pad and racing wheel. But Namco thought they could charge more than both of them combined for an all in one. The controller would break easily. Was not all that sensitive compared to the pad or wheel, and had no force feedback or rumble. It was hopeless and sold less than 50'000 units world wide before production was stopped.
Why did I ask my old man for one for Jebus day? I used it for all of 3 hours, and after a year or so of neglect. It no longer worked. But my racing wheel was awesome.
4 – PC gamers usually, like me, have a keyboard and mouse setup and a joypad or 2... some games I enjoy using my keyboard and mouse like crysis, COD and such. Other games I like the joypad for hitman, alien isolation and resident evil 7. but what if you had a keyboardmousejoypadstickgamechewtoy? Confused? Well this joypad / keyboard & mouse is exactly that. It has more buttons than a shuttle cockpit. No I'm serious. Every keyboard button is incorporated onto this thing. Most players use 4 maybe 6 fingers on there pad... this requires all ten with buttons everywhere.
To add insult to injury, remember roller ball mouse from Microsoft? And even the first gen of mouse before laser optics? Yeah. They threw that on it too. You should look at there description of this...
http://www.alphagrips.com/
I wrote papers in Uni that were half that long. Even the lord of the rings book trilogy isn't that long to read.
5 – Virtual reality headsets have only recently come into their own. You can buy a really expensive one like the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. Or one for £10 and slip your smartphone in. But back in 1995, Nintendo was trying to create and distribute a readily available and cheap VR headset that doesn't look like it came straight out of the Lawnmower man films.
Yeah, sure it was ahead of its time and it did start off well, but with a black screen and red laser colour, and it was only red. It started to give consumers chronic eye strain and headaches. Soon after its release, Nintendo was receiving law suit after law suit. Consumers suing for eye damage, headaches, neck strain....
Virtual boy was a commercial failure. Mainly due to the high price and monochrome display which made gamers blind and 'unable to enjoy future gaming releases'.... it also had bad games, unimpressive 3d. Wasn't that portable. You couldn't wear it on your head. Flimsy stand. Sloppy controller. The list goes on, and we wouldn't see readily available VR headsets for another 20 years.
If you're interested. I still have my ps1 and JogCon and my jaguar. More for nostalgia. I very much doubt that they work any more. But these are truly the worst of the bunch. But still a lot more to sieve through.
Don't forget to upvote, resteem and follow for more useless tech.
Thanks for reading.
@TechMojo
Images....
https://512pixels.net/2012/11/pippin/
https://www.wikiwand.com/ro/Atari_Jaguar
http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/382-Namco-JogCon
http://www.ohgizmo.com/2006/03/15/alphagrip-ag-5-mouse-and-keyboard-in-one/
http://www.vrdb.com/hardware/virtual-boy
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