Worst Gaming Consoles
Home videogame consoles have been around for well over 30 years now, and in an industry that moves this fast, that means a lot of wreckage left smoldering by the side of the road. A lot. Those of us who follow the console-gaming industry tend to view the last three decades as a race between companies like Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft, but in fact they've just been the last ones left standing - for every one of their successes, there's about five or six other consoles and companies that were almost immediately abandoned and forgotten.
Some of those were just unlucky, but most of them flat-out suck. Whether they were cynical attempts to cash in on a perceived trend, misguided turd-missiles designed by companies that knew nothing about games or just plain bad, they were all quickly rejected by gamers and failed in short order. Over the next few pages, we'll take a look at the most thorough failures - the ones whose crappy hardware, games and management doomed them from the start - while counting down to what is genuinely the most awful and unappealing game console of all time. Brace for horror.
Year: 1995
Culprit: Nintendo
US launch price: $179.99
What it would cost today (based on inflation): $249.29
Sucks because: The Virtual Boy may be the easy target that everyone picks on, but it's forexcellent reasons: Its promise of "virtual reality" amounted to little more than 3D-ified Game Boy graphics, which were presented in eye-straining black-and-red. Its failure at market meant that only a handful of titles were even made for it. Prolonged use usually meant everything would look reddish for several minutes after you put it aside, and there was really only one comfortable way to play it: lying on your back, with the bipod resting on your chest and the goggles squishing your nose.
Factor in the relatively high price tag, competition from the then-new PlayStation and Saturn (along with anticipation for Nintendo's own N64) and the fact that most of its titles were really just 2D games with 3D visual effects, and it's no wonder the thing flopped. It's also frequently blamed for indirectly causing the death of one of the game industry's greatest inventors, Gunpei Yokoi, who died in a car accident a few years after his red-and-black monster's failure at market compelled him to leave Nintendo.
Above: AAAAAIIGH IT BURNS
Yes, the Virtual Boy had a few great games. But so do all terrible consoles, as you'll see in a moment.
Best game: Virtual Boy Wario Land
Year: 1994
Culprit: Sega
US launch price: $159.99
What it would cost today: $227.87
Sucks because: In theory, the 32X was a hardware upgrade that would propel the underpowered Genesis past its competition and give its owners a relatively cheap way to enter the 32-bit era. In practice, however, it was a stopgap system that would be thrown under the bus when the Sega Saturn came out six months later, and everyone seemed to know it except for die-hard Sega fans and the company itself.
An attachment to the Genesis that plugged into the console's cartridge slot, the 32X offered significant improvements over the aging Genesis, updating the console's crummy graphics and sound and delivering a few awesome games in the process. Unfortunately, not a lot of games actually took advantage of that, and the bulk of 32X games ended up looking like Genesis or Sega CD games with slightly nicer color palettes. On top of that, the 32X didn't work on all Genesis models, and even had incompatibility problems with certain TVs.
Above: In case you were wondering, this is where some of Sonic's asinine menagerie of sidekicks got their start. BOOOOOOOOO!
Ultimately, the 32X was the product of boneheaded short-sightedness: its existence put Sega into competition with itself once the Saturn rolled out, and developers - not wanting to waste time on a technological dead-end - abandoned the 32X in droves. Gamers quickly followed suit, turning what was once a promising idea into an embarrassing footnote in console history, as well as an object lesson in why console makers shouldn't split their user base with pricey add-ons.
Best game: Knuckles Chaotix
Year: 1993
Culprit: Panasonic
US launch price: $699.99
What it would cost today: $1,022.52
Sucks because: Like the Philips CD-I before it, the 3DO was a prohibitively priced, CD-based "interactive multimedia" player that couldn't really decide if it was a game machine or an exciting new way to watch awful interactive movies. Unlike the CD-I, however, it actually had a few decent games behind it, including excellent versions of Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Samurai Shodown, as well as legendary PC game Star Control II.
Above: Seriously, this game rocks. You should totally go play it right now
Decent titles or not, though, the 3DO was a sluggish, overpriced lump of hubris with a software library overflowing with games that were either built around full-motion video, or that weren't much more impressive than what was already available on cheaper, less powerful consoles.
Nevertheless, the 3DO mysteriously clung to life as a "high-end media system" until the mid-'90s, when the advent of more powerful 32-bit systems finally convinced its makers to lower its ridiculous price a little. But it was too little, and too late, and the 3DO quickly joined the growing trash heap of multimedia abortions steamrolled by Sony, Sega and Nintendo.
Best game: Star Control II,
Year: 1993
Culprit: Atari
US launch price: $249.99
What it would cost today: $365.18
Sucks because: Look, if you're going to roll out with a console you insist is 64-bit when your competition is rocking a measly 16, then you'd damn well better deliver an experience that blows everything else out of the water. And although the Jaguar was certainly capable of more visual oomph than the Genesis or Super Nintendo, the majority of its games looked and performed like clunkier versions of Genesis titles.
For every game that actually took advantage of what the system could do, like Tempest 2000 or Cybermorph, there were ten stiff, bland, cheap-looking Kasumi Ninjas or Flip Out!s. Even Alien vs. Predator - widely regarded as the system's best game and possessing an impressive amount of depth by the standards of its time - was ugly and slow when compared to older games like Doom.
Above: Yes, this is pretty much how it felt to join Atari's "64-bit" "revolution"
And then there was the controller, a thick lump of ergonomic horror with what amounted to a 12-button telephone keypad at its center. Sometimes that keypad could be useful, as certain games came with plastic overlays for it that made things like switching weapons easy, but most of the time it was an unnecessary hindrance that made the controller unwieldy and confusing.
Overall, it was obvious to anyone who actually played the thing that it wasn't 64-bit; hell, it was barely even half that powerful, as the 32-bit Saturn and PlayStation demonstrated when they stomped onto the scene and curb-jawed the struggling Jaguar two years later.
Best game: Alien vs. Predator
Year: 2003
Culprit: Nokia
US launch price: $299
What it would cost today: $343.01
Sucks because: Say what you will about the infamous Gizmondo, the other handheld that gamers love to hate, it wasn't quite as bad as it's made out to be. The hardware was OK-ish and the potential for decent gaming was there, but it was marketed and sold by criminal idiots who knew even less about the gaming market than they did about driving million-dollar cars at high speeds. The N-Gage, meanwhile, was a disastrous hunk of ass from the get-go.
In fairness, the N-Gage was ahead of its time, offering fully 3D games on a handheld a year before the release of the DS, and two years before the PSP. Unfortunately, the hardware wasn'tahead of its time, and every last one of those games was marred by choppy animation, low resolution and - oh yeah - a skinny, vertical cell-phone screen. And awkward face buttons that were actually part of a cell-phone number pad. Because the N-Gage was a cell phone, and marketing it as anything else was Nokia's biggest mistake.
Above: Wait, wait... why do we hate this thing again?
The idea of the N-Gage toppling the then-unstoppable Game Boy Advance was even more laughable in 2003 than it is now, but Nokia seemed confident that just securing a Tomb Raider game for the system would be enough to make it sell. In fact, Nokia doesn't appear to have researched its would-be customers at all, as evidenced by an early ad campaign that was roundly ridiculed for its lame stabs at "Xtreeeeem!!!!"-ness.
Above: Oh, right, that's why. Thank you, former GamesRadar editor Christian Nutt, for showing us the light. And also for starting a meme
Also, when asked why players had to remove the N-Gage's battery just to pop in a different game card, one Nokia exec replied that mobile phone users in Europe had been used to doing that to swap out SIM cards for years. And that was the key to the whole fiasco: Nokia knew how to sell mobile phones. It didn't know shit about game consoles, games or gamers, and their crapulescent side-talking handheld failed spectacularly as a result. A revamped version, the N-Gage QD, was released in 2004, and although it fixed most of the system's problems, it completely overlooked the one about it and all of its games being awful.
It's worth mentioning that the N-Gage hasn't quite gone away - it's being prepped for another relaunch soon. Except now, instead of a crappy game phone, it's a service that's essentially Xbox Live for other, better phones. Even if the third time's the charm, though, it won't be easy to shake the stigma of the first two.
Best game: Pocket Kingdom
Year: 1991
Culprit: Philips
US launch price: $699.99 - $1,400 (sources differ on the exact price, but it's not like we could have afforded it either way)
What it would cost today: $1,084.83- $2,169.69
Sucks because: One of the earliest consoles to incorporate a CD-ROM drive, the Philips CD-I was born battling an identity crisis. It wasn't sure if it wanted to be a game console or a revolutionary "interactive multimedia" device, and in the end it came up short on both fronts and pleased absolutely nobody.
Right out of the gate, the CD-I made an immediate impression on gamers: that it was slow, clunky and - unless you were a huge fan of photorealistic golf or children's edutainment - didn't have any half-decent games. Even if you could somehow bring yourself to accept the machine's absurd price, the clunky controls and predilection toward dull interactive movies and multimedia encyclopedias over actual games made it sickeningly unappealing to serious gamers; it was as though Philips had made the machine to appeal to our boring dads, instead of us. They seemed to be the only ones getting excited over this bullshit, after all.
Above: This isn't just a bad picture - it's how FMV looked on the CD-I
Really, though, it was more a symptom of a big company entering a market it didn't really understand, thinking the strength and novelty of its hardware was all that really mattered. It wasn't the first, and it wouldn't be the last - or even the last to make the CD-I. In all, at least 10 other companies (including Sony) licensed and manufactured their own CD-I models.
The CD-I was also the vanguard of that awkward early multimedia phase that persisted for a few years after CD-ROM drives became common, when full-motion video and other "multimedia presentations" dominated the medium. But the thing the console is hated for, more than anything else, is what it did with the Nintendo properties it gained access to through an abortive agreement between Philips and Nintendo:
Special thanks to Brian Lajoie of Quebec Gamers for the video.
Best game: Burn: Cycle, the only good game ever to be built entirely around full-motion video and crappy CG backdrops.
Year: 2000
Culprit: VM Labs
US launch price: $400
What it would cost today: $490.31
Sucks because: The Nuon first entered the public consciousness in late 1997, when rumors began to circulate about a secret console known only as "Project X." Little was known about it at the time, except that it would be more powerful than the PlayStation and N64, it was being designed by two of the brains behind the Atari Jaguar and it was supposed to be out in 1998. Over the years that followed, the console was kept under tight wraps and repeatedly delayed, but occasional, impressive tech demonstrations kept the system from being completely disregarded as vaporware.
Above: We have to admit, this doesn't look like a game we'd expect to play on a DVD player. Or on anything else, for that matter
Finally, Project X was revealed in 1998 to be not a console, but a chip intended for DVD players that would enhance video playback and enable the machines to play games. Not like the crappy, choppy DVD-player games that available today, but actual 3D action titles that looked to be on par with, if not better than, the PSone's offerings. Renamed Nuon (which some say stood for "Nobody Understands Our New technology"), the system was pushed back yet again, finally making its debut in 2000 in a $400 DVD player from Samsung.
Unfortunately for the Nuon, all those delays put it into direct competition with the DVD-playing PlayStation 2. The Nuon's shoddy library and nonexistent brand recognition meant a swift kick in the balls from Sony, and the Nuon died, doubled over and choking on its own failure.
Best game: Tempest 3000
Year: 1995
Culprit: Tiger Electronics
US launch price: $30
What it would cost today: $41.55
Sucks because: The Tiger R-Zone wasn't just one of the worst consoles of all time - it was three of them. The R-Zone Head Gear is the one that people tend to remember, with its sad mockery of the Virtual Boy's red-and-black virtual-reality gimmick, but there was also a non-VR handheld - the R-Zone Extreme Pocket Gear - and a big-screen, "color" version, the R-Zone Super Screen. All of them worked the same way, however: by shining a light through a transparent LCD cartridge and projecting the action in eye-searing red (or black) on a plastic "screen."
Think the Virtual Boy was bad? Next to the Tiger R-Zone and its stiff red LCD "graphics," it was a high-definition gift from God. The R-Zone was essentially just a gimmicky version of the same awful, clicky-beepy LCD games that Tiger had been dumping on the market since the '80s, only projected onto a single eyepiece for kids whose parents were too poor to afford a whole set of goggles.
Above: NEW AMAZING GRAPHICS OH BOY
Although many people don't even consider the R-Zone a real console, the fact remains that it was a system for which game software was produced. It doesn't matter if said games were awful, or all essentially the same, or if the system was really more of a cheap, fraudulent toy than anything else - it qualifies. There are some who would say that Tiger's other infamous flop - the handheld Game.com - is more deserving of punishment, and while we agree it was horrible, it at least featured actual games with more than five frames of animation apiece.
Best game: NiGHTS, although that's sort of like saying that skin cancer is the best kind of cancer you can get.
Year: 1977
Culprit: RCA
US launch price: $149.95
What it would cost today: $522.30
Sucks because: These days, people remember mainly two things about videogames from the 1970s: Atari and Pong. In fact, the '70s were littered with weird, forgotten consoles, because everyone and their mother was rushing to get in on the new video fad. Few of those efforts were quite as misguided and terrible as the RCA Studio II, though. You think the Jaguar's bulky controllers are crappy? Check out this action:
That's right - the "controllers" are keypads built into the console itself. As in "non-removable." As in "holy shit, how do I work this thing?" Maybe they aren't so bad if you think of them in the same light as a modern keyboard, but considering that the Studio II's main rival - the Fairchild Channel F - featured corded joysticks, that's already one big strike against the hardware. The Fairchild also featured color graphics, while the Studio II's black-and-white visuals were already obsolete by the time it was released. And with the release of the Atari 2600 less than a year away, not even five built-in games (which featured such time-honored classics as Addition and Patterns!) could save the Studio II from being crushed under the treads of the Atari juggernaut.
Above: Popular Studio II game Speedway, also known as GHAAAAAAAGH
Best game: Gunfighter/Moonship Battle
Some of those were just unlucky, but most of them flat-out suck. Whether they were cynical attempts to cash in on a perceived trend, misguided turd-missiles designed by companies that knew nothing about games or just plain bad, they were all quickly rejected by gamers and failed in short order. Over the next few pages, we'll take a look at the most thorough failures - the ones whose crappy hardware, games and management doomed them from the start - while counting down to what is genuinely the most awful and unappealing game console of all time. Brace for horror.
Year: 1995Year: 1994Year: 1993Year: 1993 Year: 2003 Year: 1991 Year: 2000 Year: 1995 Year: 1977
Year: 1987
Culprit: Worlds of Wonder
US launch price: $99
What it would cost today: $183.95
Sucks because: This top spot was originally going to go to a used Genesis that one of our editors bought online, only to find out it didn't work right because it was filled to bursting with long-dead cockroaches - but we decided to give it to the Action Max instead. That's how shitty the Action Max is: given the choice, we'd rather play a Genesis full of terrifying bug husks.
The brainchild of Worlds of Wonder - the same people who gave the '80s Teddy Ruxpin and Lazer Tag - the Action Max was basically just a light gun, a box that hooked up to your TV and a handful of VHS tapes masquerading as games. The idea was simple: shoot at a movie, and if you hit the moving, strobe-like "targets" coded into the tape, you'd get points. And, yeah, that's about it.
A whopping five tapes were produced for the system (some say six, but the sixth one's usually listed as "unconfirmed"), and all of them ran about 20 to 30 minutes, featured sub-porn production values and never, ever offered anything new or different on subsequent viewings. For an idea of the incredible awesomeness that awaited Action Max owners, check out these trailers that somehow survived into the digital age:
Above: Spooks! Mechanical Crabs! Lasers! All of them terrible!
Shortly after producing the system, Worlds of Wonder went out of business. Some say the Action Max had little to do with that. We say it was divine retribution.
Best game: Sonic Fury, but only because it came packaged with the system and was therefore the only game you'd never have to go out and attempt to actually buy.
Did we leave out your least favorite console? Want to add some fuel to the fire?
Feel Free to Leave a Comment Below
Year: 1987
Culprit: Worlds of Wonder
US launch price: $99
What it would cost today: $183.95
Sucks because: This top spot was originally going to go to a used Genesis that one of our editors bought online, only to find out it didn't work right because it was filled to bursting with long-dead cockroaches - but we decided to give it to the Action Max instead. That's how shitty the Action Max is: given the choice, we'd rather play a Genesis full of terrifying bug husks.
The brainchild of Worlds of Wonder - the same people who gave the '80s Teddy Ruxpin and Lazer Tag - the Action Max was basically just a light gun, a box that hooked up to your TV and a handful of VHS tapes masquerading as games. The idea was simple: shoot at a movie, and if you hit the moving, strobe-like "targets" coded into the tape, you'd get points. And, yeah, that's about it.
A whopping five tapes were produced for the system (some say six, but the sixth one's usually listed as "unconfirmed"), and all of them ran about 20 to 30 minutes, featured sub-porn production values and never, ever offered anything new or different on subsequent viewings. For an idea of the incredible awesomeness that awaited Action Max owners, check out these trailers that somehow survived into the digital age:
Above: Spooks! Mechanical Crabs! Lasers! All of them terrible!
Shortly after producing the system, Worlds of Wonder went out of business. Some say the Action Max had little to do with that. We say it was divine retribution.
Best game: Sonic Fury, but only because it came packaged with the system and was therefore the only game you'd never have to go out and attempt to actually buy.
Did we leave out your least favorite console? Want to add some fuel to the fire?
Feel Free to Leave a Comment Below
