Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are always the three that named by gamers when it comes to home video game consoles. While in the past, the situation of tripartite confrontation wasn’t formed from the start.
There have been many other manufacturers and even some famous game or tech companies, but they all ended up disappearing in the long stream of history.
Recently, Japanese gamers have held a heated discussion online among the consoles they regretted buying most. After the fierce debate among these enthusiasts, the following five consoles became winners of the most terribly cast aside.
No.5, 3DO
3DO is the first 32-bit console in history released by Panasonic and The 3DO Company in 1993, and is the pioneer of next-gen home consoles. Although it was on sale ahead of Sega Saturn and PlayStation with a great performance and timing, its high price did not bring more fun to gamers.
Shortly after, the lack of third party software led to its rapid defeat by Sega Saturn and PlayStation, which became the eternal pain in the hearts of early adopters.
No.4, PC-FX
Released on December 23, 1994, PC-FX is the work of NEC, another Japanese electronics behemoth. It was more of a behemoth coveting the huge market of game consoles than NEC's flagship in the next-gen console war.
However, for the bizarre shape design and fatal weakness of almost no 3D function, it was not welcomed as expected. Plus its indelible impression of “you only do PC well” in gamers’ mind, it ended in fiasco soon.
No.3, Playdia
Now it’s time for Bandai. Playdia is their work in 1994. Perhaps related to Bandai’s own specialty, Playdia was more like a toy, and they also named it “CD-ROM player”.
During that time when the game market was fiercely competitive, despite the cheap price, the result of looking more like a plastic toy for children while in the name of “next-gen” was that only 120,000 sets were sold, and gamers who bought them could not experience the fun of the next-gen game at that time at all.
No.2, Pippin atmark
Few gamers know it by name, but it is a classic game console at that time launched by Apple, which also adhering to Apple’s will that the design should be more elegant than “Sony Dafa”. Built-in hard disk function were in line with those mainstream PCs of that year. For this reason, the price was twice as high as Sega Saturn and PlayStation.
That did make Japanese businesses such as Sony, Sega and Nintendo laugh behind their backs. As a result, it became a total failure that people loved to see and a typical negative example for Microsoft to enter the Japanese game industry in the future.
No. 1, Atari Lynx
Released by Atari in 1989, Atari Lynx is the world’s first portable video game console with a color LCD display. 1989 was also the year when GameBoy was launched, and Atari Lynx did a completely better job in performance than it.
However, it soon failed to compete with GameBoy because of its high price, bulky body and lack of support from software manufacturers.
In fact, there are also many other consoles that can be rated as their producers’ gray history, even Nintendo’s VB, Bandai’s WanderSwan and so on. But compared to the five above, no other one deserves the name of rip-off in gamers’ hearts.
