Who here owned a 3DO, Jaguar, Virtual boy or some other failed, obscure and niche console?

[Deleted member 19066]

Do the Game Boy Micro & PSP Go count since technically the systems were still a major success and only the revisions flopped?

I own a Saturn & Wii U and the latter is probably the only 100% flop I own since Saturn was big in Japan. Used to have a Dreamcast.

I hate the Wii U hardware but there's a lot of great games and mine is hacked on both Wii U & vWii so it's basically my Nintendo machine (NES, SNES, GB, GBA, N64, GC, Wii, Wii U + Genesis, NeoGeo, TurboGrafx, etc) and the Gamepad is pretty good for offscreen VC while waiting for VC on Switch.

So with Wii U + my GBM, DS, 3DS & Switch I can play everything Nintendo made EXCEPT....

I always wanted a Virtual Boy, even when it turned out to be a flop. I still kinda do but I want it like this:

But those kiosks are super rare and expensive as fuck.

I am still mad that Nintendo never released VC Virtual Boy on the 3DS. Like, what a massive missed opportunity! A way to easily & comfortably experience those games and preserve history!

VB had a few cool games that would be better than a lot of the shitty VC games on 3DS.

Red Alarm, Wario Land, Teleroboxer, Galactic Pinball, Mario Tennis, Jack Bros....

3DS Owners can at least go on youtube on the 3DS web browser and experience what it would look like. There's several videos in 3D of the games and they look awesome. The 3D pop-out is amazing.



I don't understand how these work. Cassettes as a data medium just seems really weird to me. I'm 33 and I've never seen a console or computer that used cassettes for data.

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They're a little before our time (I'm 29.) They're like floppies, but you have to wait several minutes for the computer to read the data, and there's a small chance it would fail, making you redo the entire process. VHS is a new one for me, though.

 

[freikugeln]

l really wanted a Philips CD-i as a child for some reason. Fortunately the clerk at the store was a good man and did his best to dissuade my parents.

 

[Alebrije]

Had 3DO, not considere it a failure , WiiU is a failure but not 3DO. Had nice tech by the time it was released, was an era of changes on the gaming community and no one certainly knew what was the right way for the industry. 3DO attempted a different business model but this hurt the hardware price. Had great ports and also bad ones like Doom, its library was big and personality enjoyed Killing Time, The Horde, Wing Commander , Street Fighter, Myst.

 

[lazyguy deluxe]

I own two CD-i which I had from when I was a child. They both barely function and I own the four notorious games on the system and like two actually good games on there.

 

[halfjoey]

I owned a Panasonic 3DO after a price drop. I was surprised my parents bought it for me. At first I loved it, then I didn't and felt bad my parents spend so much on it, but then I ended up finding a few games and played them a lot with friends. I had another friend who owned another version of the 3DO, maybe the Goldstar one.

Off-Road Interceptor
Way of the Warrior
Road Rash
Return Fire
Wing Commander
Twisted: The Game Show (great game with friends at sleepovers)
Incredible Machine
FIFA Soccer - Great with the special codes to make gameplay more exciting

I had it sitting in a closet until sometime in 2014 I sold it on ebay for $300 with about 4 games.
I considered the 3DO a failure even as a kid but i wouldn't admit it to my parents. The Playstation was just around the corner and once that came out the 3DO was collecting dust. In 1993 the idea of playing movies off a normal size CD was wonderful to me and I really liked the sound and video portions of the 3DO.

 

[Valerie Cherish]

Got a 3DO for Christmas one year (after the big price cut) and played a lot of Twisted as a family. Loved playing Alone in the Dark, Road Rash, Primal Rage, and Need for Speed mostly, but remember having a small binder of games.

 

[OneBadMutha]

Sega CD and Sega 32x. I also bought some dumb shit on the NES. Uforce I think it was.

Ironically the Kinect add on I got for the 360 feels like it should be on that list but won't count based on the fact it sold so well. Fit for use was barely better than the NES Uforce.

 

[Sumio Mondo]

I had a Philips CDi and i actually really liked it back when I was a kid and knew no better. Those live action FMV games (mainly lightgun games) were so bad they were good quality due to the acting. The Zelda games I actually enjoyed back then too, the controls were terrible though. Hotel Mario was fun to me back then too. My tastes have obviously changed since then though. There was some fun obscure Adventure games though that are still rather good like Cluedo 1 and 2, Burn: Cycle, Kingdom and Lost Eden. Still own the games, all of the CDi consoles seem to die though and are expensive collector items nowadays.

There was some really cool platformers on it though like The Apprentice and Lucky Luke (side scrolling shooter).

 

[The Angry Internet]

My parents bought us an Atari 7800 instead of an NES because it was backwards compatible with our 2600 library. Obviously the right move would've been to buy an NES and just keep the damn 2600.

It's not entirely in the spirit of the thread, since the system was already dead at this point, but I bought a Virtual Boy from Blockbuster when they cleared out their rental units. It was a fun novelty for a bit and I remember the Wario game was great, but the attraction didn't last and I finally sold it (along with my Game Gear, which got a lot more use) and put the money towards a... Sega Nomad. Which I still have, somewhere.

I also bought an Amiga CD32 a couple of years ago from a Taobao seller who somehow had a couple dozen units they were selling for around $30 each. It was just the bare system (no controller, no power supply) in a very beat-up original box. I have an adapter that lets me use a DualShock 2 instead of an original controller, but I still haven't gotten a replacement power supply. I would actually like to get a 3DO someday.

 

[Galdius]

I own a Virtual Boy and the US CIB fullset for it. It's a nice console to display.

 

[HotHamBoy]

I had a Philips CDi and i actually really liked it back when I was a kid and knew no better. Those live action FMV games (mainly lightgun games) were so bad they were good quality due to the acting. The Zelda games I actually enjoyed back then too, the controls were terrible though. Hotel Mario was fun to me back then too. My tastes have obviously changed since then though. There was some fun obscure Adventure games though that are still rather good like Cluedo 1 and 2, Burn: Cycle, Kingdom and Lost Eden. Still own the games, all of the CDi consoles seem to die though and are expensive collector items nowadays.

There was some really cool platformers on it though like The Apprentice and Lucky Luke (side scrolling shooter).

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At the annual Louisville Arcade Expo (next one March 2nd!) they set up several rooms with just about every video game console/computer ever made, chronologicaly, with placards and games to play. It's awesome.

I was able to play so many vintage systems I'd otherwise never seen before, including Japan-only stuff and one-of-a-kind things like this:

They also have a bunch of consoles on the main floor in those old store demo kiosks and it's just a total blast of nostalgia. Like these:

Anyway, I played that fucking Zelda CD-i game and it was insufferable to control. Like, who designed that bullshit controller!?

Anyway, the point is that the best way to experience all the old retro consoles, including the flops (there's far more flops that successes thanks to the 80s) is to go to a convention like that.

There's a lot of systems where you're just scratching your head wondering how anyone thought this was a good idea, or acceptable in playtesting.

Probably my favorite failed console (or was it marginally successful?) is the Vectrex. There's nothing else like it and it's really weird. Here's some kid playing one at last year's expo:

It's really cool that a kid that young can go around and discover, touch and play all these old pieces of gaming history.

BTW, I lied about Virtual Boy being the flop I want to own the most. I forgot about this beauty:

I've wanted one since I learned about it as a teen.

Later, in my 20s, I was married and ar my then-wife's parents' house helping them get rid of stuff in their basement. Her step-dad had a ton of pristine video game stuff including a Saturn, Sega CD & a shitload of games for both in undamaged cases. He also had a Turbografx Express w/ TV tuner and I almost shit my pants when I found it.

Alas, it was all to go on Ebay and I didn't have the money at the time to buy it off of him. We sold it and now they go for 3x what we got. It still hurts my heart that I didn't find a way to get it for myself.

I don't remember if he had the Hu cards, tho...

 

[Distantmantra]

I got a 32X for Christmas when they came out and bought a Neo Geo Pocket Color around the time the system was discontinued. Lots of great games for cheap.

 

[breakfuss]

I wanted an N-Gage so freaking bad at the time. Not sure what I was thinking but glad my parents shut that down.

And, yes, I know Vita doesn't technically fit your definition but I quite literally have only ever seen one other person with it in the wild. I think it was in the library? Idk. But yea, when ever anyone saw mine they'd be like "ooooooooh what is that?!" Haha.

 

[HotHamBoy]

I got a 32X for Christmas when they came out and bought a Neo Geo Pocket Color around the time the system was discontinued. Lots of great games for cheap.

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I want a NGPC pretty bad but I don't really want to play a system without a backlight so it seems like a waste. I know I've seen backlight mods, though.

I wanted an N-Gage so freaking bad at the time. Not sure what I was thinking but glad my parents shut that down.

And, yes, I know Vita doesn't technically fit your definition but I quite literally have only ever seen one other person with it in the wild. I think it was in the library? Idk. But yea, when ever anyone saw mine they'd be like "ooooooooh what is that?!" Haha.

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Same for me (plus the one in Baby Driver cuz it's Sony Pictures, lol).

To be fair, Vita is big and feels like something you don't want to drop. At least the DS line has the folding clamshell to protect the screen and it feels like it could take a drop.

I only ever play my Vita in houses. Only time I've played in public was at a coffee shop.

For me, handheld appeal isn't so much that I can take it anywhere in the world but that I can take it anywhere in my home. I like that I can lie in bed in the dark and have an intimate handheld session. When I'm out & about I'm focused on other things. It is great for long trips, though.

I remember playing Kirby's Dreamland in my bed at night as a little kid with the huge Gameboy mangifying lense & light. This was before I had a TV in my room so the SNES was in the living room. That experience is engrained into my being.

 

[Sumio Mondo]

Weird thing about the CDi is that there was multiple controllers released for it. The OG controller was horrible though. So was the trackball one. The one called simply "Gamepad" though is decent and the best one for the system. Still doesn't make the controls for Zelda: Wand of Gamelon and Link: Faces of Evil any better though. The live action/top down camera one where you play as Zelda (yes, there's a third Zelda game) was simply eh. A curiousity but the bad animated cutscenes of the two other Zelda games were charming and funny in that bad 90s way.

And yes, we have a games convention over here as well where you get access to all of the old games consoles and it's fun to discover all these weird, obscure consoles. Never come across an Apple Pippin yet though, now there's one I'm kinda fascinated by, heh.

 

[The Angry Internet]

The CD-i wasn't really meant to be a games console, which is evident from the way the hardware lacks even basic gaming-friendly features like hardware sprites found in much older and cheaper systems. It was originally marketed as a multimedia/"edutainment" machine and the games released during the launch window were mostly boardgame conversions (no joke, there was a CD-i version of Connect Four). I think the only game during that period that really taxed the original controller was Dark Castle, which was just a terrible port all around. Later on they started to take games a little more seriously (maybe connected to the demise of the SNES CD?) and that's when they finally put out a controller that was at least somewhat suited for the purpose.

 

[Faithless]

My Atari XE is saying you "Hello" ^^
By the way, it was my first game console ever, before the NES and even before my Atari 2600 owned later (note that Atari XE hardware was superior and more recent).
None of my friends knew this console back in time.
I was *alone* :(

 

[SoundCheck]

My friend bought a Zeebo instead of a PS2 some years ago. The worst decision of his life. That thing is a monstrosity in a form of console, with it's terrible ports of NFS and RE 4. The only good game released for it was Quake.

 

[Deleted member 23091]

The Ouya is the most obscure console I ever owned, I had it for like 2 months and got rid of it. The controller was so bad, I had to use a dualshock 3.

 

[dreamstation]

My brothers and I had a Vectrex which we thought was great until we decided it would be a good idea to hook an electric motor out of a remote control car up to the mains plug and switch it on. Black streak up the wall and it no longer worked after that. Lucky we didn't get fried.

 

[Outrun]

I owned a Saturn and Dreamcast....

 

[BigWeather]

I bet folding money that none of you youngins had an Action Max. VHS game console.

EDIT:

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Hoooooly crap. I had one of these, I guess I was about 15 or so? Released in 1987 and I was born in 1971 so that tracks. I remember playing the pack-in game, Sonic Fury. It was... underwhelming. I remember playing it a few times before realizing it was just Duck Hunt with a pretty make-over and never getting back to the system. Man, now I feel like a total shit -- I wonder if my parents were excited about it or maybe I was and I just dropped it that quickly? Ugh. Well, it didn't do great, that's for sure -- five total games according to Wikipedia.

 

[Cantona222]

I bought a SEGA CD with Slam City. I and my brother were amazing by the "realistic" graphics. However, the gameplay was confusing and a disappointment.

Road Avenger was the saving grace for our purchase. We really enjoyed this game that was kind of an exclusive to the SEGA CD.

 

[Soapbox Killer]

Hoooooly crap. I had one of these, I guess I was about 15 or so? Released in 1987 and I was born in 1971 so that tracks. I remember playing the pack-in game, Sonic Fury. It was... underwhelming. I remember playing it a few times before realizing it was just Duck Hunt with a pretty make-over and never getting back to the system. Man, now I feel like a total shit -- I wonder if my parents were excited about it or maybe I was and I just dropped it that quickly? Ugh. Well, it didn't do great, that's for sure -- five total games according to Wikipedia.

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I never knew anyone else that had this. My mom was an old pinball wizard back in the day so she bought the most obscure video game stuff when I was a kid.

I also had and ColecoVision that played Atari 2600 games. And an Adam computer with Buck Roger Video game on Cassette tape.

 

[Radarscope1]

Really digging the 3DO love in this thread. It was a great system at the time.

 

[Lakeside]

I still have my Jag (with CD toilet adapter), my Turbo stuff, my Atari 7800, hmm.. my Vectrex.. I have a Virtual Boy and a 32X but I never had any hope for them.

I shouldn't have even mentioned the Turbo stuff in this context though, that's nearly as silly as Dreamcast and Saturn being thrown about here. I never had the Atari XE, but I was big into the 8 bit computer line as well as the 5200. ColecoVision was amazing too, but I don't consider that obscure.

Oh and a Starpath Supercharger. Anyone else have one of those?

I keep editing this. I just remembered that the Neo Geo Pocket came in several variants, including black and white. I have all of those around here somewhere.

 

[I am Christina Aguilera]

Like basically everyone else in this thread who had a Virtual Boy, I got one from Blockbuster when they were blowing them out the door used for $20 after having rented them out for a few months. I got the console (without the tripod, so I'd have to find a corner to sit in and prop the headset against the controller), Mario's Tennis, Mario Clash, and Galactic Pinball. No 3DS Virtual Console or colorized ports or anything of Mario Clash and Wario Land really seems like a missed opportunity. Mario's Tennis really had nothing too notable to suggest it over previous or ensuing Nintendo tennis games, but Mario Clash was a bona fide very fun game, and Galactic Pinball had a killer soundtrack by the same guy who did the Super Metroid soundtrack, and wouldn't you know it, the game had a little Metroid shmup minigame in it.

I wound up selling mine on eBay in the early 2000s and I *totally* regret it. The whole kind of spinny mirror thing with the display was a little wonky (you bump the unit and maybe the middle of the picture bounces for a second. Weird!), but playing one is still a pretty unique experience. I held my friend's controller a couple of years back though, and it wasn't nearly as comfortable as I remembered. It kind of points at things that would later be good about the GameCube controller, but they kind of weren't there yet.

To double down into Virtual Boy commercial oblivion, I also STILL own Tiger's VB knockoff, the R-Zone. It wasn't stereoscopic, it was basically just cartridges that functioned like Tiger's handheld LCD games, just projected in red in front of one eye. It was not goodand I would much prefer that I'd have sold this one instead!

I also had and enjoyed a Sega CD from when it and its games basically went on clearance, but I guess this thread is undecided on if that one counts?

 

[Ogni-XR21]

I mainly got the mainstream flops like the 32X, Mega CD, N-Gage, Neo Geo Pocket Color and a Virtual Boy. The biggest and most expensive flop I ever got was the CDTV by Commodore. It was essentially an Amiga 500 with a CD-Rom drive. And I bought it knowing that it can be used as an Amiga when you attached an external floppy drive and a keyboard. The only problem was that it regularly crashed on games that needed a memory extension because intead of having 1048KB of ram like an Amiga 500 with a memory extension, it only had 1000KB of ram. I actually finished several Lucas Arts adventures on this thing but had to save all the time because the next crash was always imminent.

 

[ShadowGP]

Had an Amiga CD32. Bought it day one just to play Microcosm...

 

[BigWeather]

I never knew anyone else that had this. My mom was an old pinball wizard back in the day so she bought the most obscure video game stuff when I was a kid.

I also had and ColecoVision that played Atari 2600 games. And an Adam computer with Buck Roger Video game on Cassette tape.

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I'm so happy you posted it. I had completely forgotten about it until you posted, and I love childhood memories being triggered like that. What really set off my memory was that silly red light that came with it. Just a gimmick through and through in an age of Amiga / NES for playing games. I do feel guilty that I must've just gone "ehhhhhh" on it. Hope it wasn't a gift or really expensive, if it was then I was a right little shit to my parents concerning that (as teenagers can be). =/

My dad was into electronics and AV stuff, so we ended up with some oddball stuff. Had a Betamax, of course, and an Odyssey 2. I finally got us on track by insisting on a C64 for my first computer (though he had PCs and this really heavy Compaq "laptop"), then followed that up with an Amiga 1000 before finally giving up and going PC when Ultima VI and VII basically forced me to.

 

[TheMan]

really want to get a 3do at some point, but I would bet that at this point the machines (cd drives, most likely) are starting to break down big time.

am i wrong?

 

[s_mirage]

I had a 3DO back in the day. Despite its short life it is my favourite console out of anything I've owned. So many fond memories of it.

really want to get a 3do at some point, but I would bet that at this point the machines (cd drives, most likely) are starting to break down big time.

am i wrong?

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Hmm. My PAL 3DO, which is the one I owned as a kid, still works fine. I did buy a Japanese system later which I had to replace the laser in. It's an easy fix as long as you can get the correct model of laser (there's two variants of the model of laser used in the FZ-1 and FZ-10, and only one works without modification). A bigger potential issue is that there's a gear in the 3DO's laser mechanism that can crack over time, and getting a replacement for that wasn't so easy last time I checked.

 

[SeeingeyeDug]

I owned a SEGA Nomad back in the early 90's. Was close to the Switch concept. Portable machine that played console-level games and could also plug into TV. Had second controller port as well.

Huge cartridges and a 2 hour battery life for 6 AA's were its major issues.

 

[Deleted member 18407]

really want to get a 3do at some point, but I would bet that at this point the machines (cd drives, most likely) are starting to break down big time.

am i wrong?

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I've got two Panasonic FZ-1 models that still work fine. Hell, I accidentally dropped one down some stairs years ago and it's still kicking. Those machines are beasts. Avoid the Goldstar model of 3DO though. There's a defect with its construction that can cause the disc drive to stop working properly because of a cable coming loose, plus it has incompatibility with a couple of games (PO'ed and Casper are two off the top of my head).

 

[Ossom]

Are you sure you're not confusing that for a Wonderswan? Gunpey never released on NGP.

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Yes, it was a wonderswan. Thanks for the correction.

I had a neogeo pocket too, so that's why I'm getting confused.

 

[Firebrand]

I traded in my launch day Gameboy for a Lynx.

Interesting machine, tech-wise. Could do some fancy rotozoom stuff. Very basic games, I've seen nothing remotely in scope like SML2, Link's Awakening or Gargoyle's Quest. My favorite ones were Rampage, Awesome Golf and Roadblasters.

 

[Deleted member 13155]

I owned a Jaguar and it was so bad that I had to persuade the store to give me a refund. It wasn't broken, it was just a piece of trash. Luckily they took it back.

I had Bubsy, Cybermorph and another shit game for it. Bubsy made DKC look next gen and Cybermorph was like a Star Fox troll project. And that controller was hilariously bad. Its as if they initially planned to make phone calls with it.

 

[TwoCoins]

Owned both the Jaguar 64 and Neo Geo Arcade Sytem. Fav jaguar games was Brutal Sport Football, Doom, alien vs predator. Also owned Kasumi Ninja which was trash.

For Neo Geo owned King of Fighters 94, Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

I've never seen a Amiga irl. Technically a computer but did those take off outside of Euro?

Click to shrink...

There are game console (and media console) versions of the Amiga

The CDTV in particular was way, way, waaaaay ahead of its time.

 

[Samba]

I had a CD32 - got it super cheap during Amiga's demise. Was disappointed with it immediately as it looked worse through my monitor than my Amiga 500. Only found out a decade later about composite and RGB. Used as a CD player for a few years.

 

[Shibata100]

Does neo Geo pocket count?

I had an N-Gage also which was a absolute joke.

 

[Necron]

I know a real life person that bought an Ouya

Click to shrink...

Yup, I know one of those people as well.

 

[Linkura]

Virtual Boy only because I was a goddamn Nintendo fangirl (and 8 years old).

 

[Combichristoffersen]

Still have my Master System. It was pretty popular here in Europe and in South America, but a failure in North America and Japan. So I guess it's somewhere in the middle? I have fond memories of 8-bit Sonic and Sega's Disney games, and I will till my dying day consider the 8-bit version of Castle of Illusion vastly superior to the 16-bit version.

 

[ConanEdogawa]

I had and still have a Neo Geo AES and about 2 dozen games. Bought it in the late 90s and kept it ever since. Had the disposable income from a job in high school and became a bit obsessed with SNK. There was something special about it.

 

[Jumpman23]

I've owned all (3) you mentioned and many others as well. A few other notable mentions I've owned:

- Atari Lynx
- Atari Jaguar CD player
- Neo-Geo
- Neo-Geo CD (single speed)
- Sega CDX
- Sega 32x
- Tiger Gamescom
- Vectrex
- Turbo Express
- Sega Nomad

 

[Freshmaker]

I have a Virtual Boy ($13 at Target on clearance), and I've owned a Neo Geo, a Jaguar, a TG-16 with the CD Rom, a Neo Geo Pocket Color, an Atari Lynx, and a 32x. I never really felt any were a waste.

 

[GDGF]

I had a Sega Master System.

In the US.

In 1988.

 

[SharpX68K]

Of all the obscure consoles, the one I really wanted badly but never owned was the Fujitsu FM Towns Marty --
It was the first 32-bit console ever released, about 7 months before the Amiga CD32 released in Europe, and based on the FM Towns computer, much like the CD32 was based on the Amiga 1200.

Upto 1024 hardware sprites on screen simultaneously! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_Towns_Marty

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I wanted this console mainly so I could play the vertical shmup Truxton II / Tatsujin 2, an arcade title that wasn't ported to any other platform.

EDGE reviewed it:

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[Diarrhea Day-Lewis]

I owned a Wii U and Vita in their prime. Currently own a DC and Saturn, decades later.

I try to find the good things in all consoles if I can