Best early to mid 90's failure

[rscaramelo]

I've recently (last year and a half) gotten back into console gaming after playing my Genesis and NES to death back in college. I have fond memories of TecmoBowl tournaments at Northeasten U! There were a whole slew of consoles that crashed and burned in the early to mid 90's. Which were the best? I don't consider the Dreamcast to be part of what I'm asking about because it did have some brief success before it's implosion. The DC is somewhat of an early contemporary of the XBox, GC and PS2.

Roger

[Jibbajaba]

I'll say TurboGrafx 16.

[goatdan]

In terms of power, and not what was actually done with it, I would definitely say the Atari Jaguar. The most 2D power of any machine ever, and enough 3D power that it could have got by. Had Atari actually done anything with the machine, it could have been huge...

[Aswald]

To be honest, that era was a real downer. The whole thing was a lost opportunity.

Looking through some early to later mid-1990s video game magazines, which (for some reason) I still have, several things became obvious: it was a pretty obnoxious era.

The ads were typically dark, ugly, and filled with "`tude." For example:

A really bad Atari Jaguar ad with bad games, and a character with feces for hair.

Letters written in snow with urine.

Another Atari ad, for Tempest 2000- that only had a full picture (in the usual greys and blacks) of someone drowning in a tank almost filled with water. No images of the game were shown.

An ad for a sort of RPG game that looked like an LSD user's nightmare.

An ad for a game called "Bad Mojo." Of course, it had a cockroach standing on a human eye, piercing it. Not to mention the picture (from the game) of a dead, bloody rat in a trap.

Lotsa smut.

And so on.


But an interesting thing I noticed, from the games and interviews, was that at that time nobody really seemed sure as to what to DO with the new hardware. They were simply giving people more of what the 16-bit era had given, which was only enhanced versions of what the 8-bit era had given us. It was Mario 64 that finally broke the mold.

But the Atari Jaguar could have been a great console, easily able to beat what was around at that time, and maybe able to match the later consoles (e.g. Saturn). But most of those games were really bad.

[Cmosfm]

Sega Master System was a system of the 8bit GODS that never got the attention it deserved. Play the games, use the 3D glasses, after wards you will be wanting to make 8bit love to it.

[Raccoon Lad]

Sega Master System was a system of the 8bit GODS that never got the attention it deserved. Play the games, use the 3D glasses, after wards you will be wanting to make 8bit love to it.

I hear that!

Of course, the SMS doesn't really fall into the early-mid 90's category, it's a bit earlier.

But yeah, 1993-1996 saw a lot of failed consoles. "Hey look, it uses CD's!", but unfortunately didn't do much else.

The 1995-1996 glut of new hardware and drought of good games made me quit playing for a while. Of course, I then started going for ColecoVision era stuff.

[ManekiNeko]

The Turbografx-16. It bombed bigtime but in hindsight it had a pretty robust selection of games. Slap on a Turbografx CD player and an arcade card and you gain access to a metric ton of Japanese exclusives.

JR

[YoshiM]

Hmm, interesting. Never put much though into the BEST of the failed machines.

I gotta say 3DO was the best of the failed machines. It was way ahead of its time but tripped up on price point and consumer confusion. The controllers were comfortable, the original had a headphone jack and you could chain them for multiplayer games (no multi-tap required). The graphics were pretty snazzy for its time with the hardware driven 3D sprite engine (Wing Commander 3 looked especially good). It could play music CDs and had a selection of screen savers and it could play certain video CDs. And let's not forget the most important thing about a game system: it's game library, 3DO had a decent selection that really took the concept of "multimedia" and ran with it.

[vincewy]

Best failures? I'd say 3DO and TurboGrafx, each system has good size of library, especially TG which NEC really tried but failed to bring in some of the Jp games.

In terms of worst failures - Jag, Amiga CD32, VIS (Radioshack), LaserActive, and 32X.

[Nez]

The CDi utter failer almost nothing good about it.

CDi= F-

[Porkchop]

All of those black box, set top boxes were failues:

CDI
Commodore cdtv
Memorex VIS
Laseractive (very high priced Geny or TG-16)

I would say the Memorex VIS was the the biggest failure because there are so few around.

[Darkness X]

I would say Sega Saturn if it counts...

That system is amazing!

-Great looking 2D graphics
-Best CD player in a console ever! IMO
-One of my favorite controllers(the Japanese or M2 versions)
-Nice Sega arcade ports(VF:Remix,VF2,Virtua Cop, Virtua Cop 2, ect)
-Netlink play
-Multiplayer options(10 player Saturn Bomberman anyone?)
-Plenty of interesting imports to be had for cheap on Ebay
-Great selection of games(import wise)

My only complaints? 1.That it didn't last longer, and 2.Some games are WAAAY over priced nowdays...

[-hellvin-]

Atari Jaguar. Had it's power been harnessed it could have been one of the best systems we had ever seen. Lol. Yeah, guess not, but I'm sure it could have gone better than it did, there are some enjoyable games on it. I just wish I had music for DOOM for the love of god.

[dethink]

32x? not really a console, but the Sega VR was a pretty huge vaporware debacle.

jaguar had some great games, but after the initial hype died down, nada. the bugger is i sold all my genesis stuff to buy one, and now i'm just getting back to rebuilding that collection in japanese MD form.

AvP on there is probably my favorite FPS of all time, Tempest 2000 ruled, as did iron soldier.

[Pantechnicon]

One more vote for the Jaguar here. This was the first system that I seriously started collecting for and I just love the thing. This love is all the more tragic given Atari's complete mismanagement of the thing.

Aswald mentioned bad advertising, and it reminds me how I was just having a conversation along these lines with my son; explaining the mottos of different game systems. We got to the Jaguar and I recalled the whole "Do The Math" campaign. Do the math ? I bought this thing to play games, not do homework! No wonder kids in the early 90's bought the SNES instead. After all, then they got to play with super power...

With the Jag Atari was hand delivered a machine that could have very well turned the tide for them and they blew it. c:\tramiel_rant.exe

[dethink]

the whole thing that that period embodies was the rise of the "me too" market as more companies (many outside the video game industry) rushed CD based systems to market, once they realized there was money to be made in the game industry.

i mean, you had the genesis, super NES, plenty of people still playing NES, TG16, 3DO, neo geo, jaguar, CDi, saturn, PSX, game boy, game gear, etc. all on the market almost all at once. x_x

all the CD based systems were trying to be set top boxes, when A) the tech wasn't really all that in a lot of cases, and B) standards for CD-based movies/etc. didn't really exist in the US. video CD's and such have been sucessful overseas, but never here. until DVD was adopted as the standard for 5" disc-shaped movies, nothing worked until the PS2.

too many products rushed to market trying to be too many things to too few people - games weren't adopted as 'adult fare' widely yet, but the pricetag on many of these consoles was well out of reach of any kid.