Obscure Consoles & Consoles That Never Were

Doge

Post any information or updates to do with Obscure Consoles or Gaming Devices here!



When searching for a pic of Jeff Minter on google, I came across this curious image of him:





And with that I was introduced to a British Console I never heard about,

The Konix Multisystem:

http://www.zhell.co.uk/konix.html




That page is a very nice read with screenshots of some of the games that were in development for the console.


One of the games was a port of the Last Ninja 2, and the following page has a video of the developers showing an early version of the game!

http://www.konixmultisystem.co.uk/index.php?id=games&content=lastninja2





Jeff Minter was doing a Mutant Camels 89 for the platform also:




Both those games actually were released on almost every platform out there!


And finally here's a nice picture showing off the specs for the Konix Multisystem:





Now for anyone of those like me who haven't heard of it, it's time to get busy reading!

Myrddin

o1s1n

I was just about to come in here and post pictures of the Neptune

I have another one, the colour Vectrex. This lad got his hands on one of the prototypes and fixed it

http://home.earthlink.net/~jmorg/vectrex/VecColorLives.htm

Doge

o1s1n wrote: »

I was just about to come in here and post pictures of the Neptune

I have another one, the colour Vectrex. This lad got his hands on one of the prototypes and fixed it

http://home.earthlink.net/~jmorg/vectrex/VecColorLives.htm

:eek:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03C4tnCFEMQ

Oh Guru's of the Arcade & Retro forum!
Fill me this thread with your infinite wisdom!

CiDeRmAn

Sorry lads, but for consoles that were never to be but could have changed the way that gaming in the 90's onwards happened, you only have to consider this...

Gentlemen, I give you the Nintendo Playstation!





Imagine the shape of videogaming for the following 20 years had this been realised instead of how it all went down?

Pyongyang

I remember I saw that SNES CD drawing in Super Play all those years ago. All the talk of working with Philips, then Sony. Ah what might have been eh?

Here's a couple for you:

Bandai Playdia
Casio Loopy
Apple Pippin

I recall all those, oddly enough I nearly bought a Playdia on import back at its launch. Wish I had, they are worth a few bob now.

Doge

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Imagine the shape of videogaming for the following 20 years had this been realised instead of how it all went down?

As long as they got the timing and marketing right definitely.

If they got those wrong though, it could have easily been a flop!

CiDeRmAn

Just imagine the horror of a Philips cd based console! And imagine the handful of folk who take leave of their senses and bought one! Losers!

Apple Pippin, a legacy of a time when not everything with an Apple logo was marketing gold, good enough for them, the sanctimonious lousers!

Doge

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Just imagine the horror of a Philips cd based console! And imagine the handful of folk who take leave of their senses and bought one! Losers!

Apple Pippin, a legacy of a time when not everything with an Apple logo was marketing gold, good enough for them, the sanctimonious lousers!

Wow!

Xbox 360 much?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin

o1s1n

Well here's an interesting bit of info -

Katz Media Productions produced 5,000 units in Ireland for Europe, labeled it the KMP 2000; it is the rarest of the Pippin models.

Edit - is it just me or do these look kind of similar?

Myrddin

o1s1n wrote: »

Edit - is it just me or do these look kind of similar?

Not just you

waveform wrote: »

Xbox 360 much?

ghostchant

o1s1n wrote: »

Well here's an interesting bit of info -

Katz Media Productions produced 5,000 units in Ireland for Europe, labeled it the KMP 2000; it is the rarest of the Pippin models.

Edit - is it just me or do these look kind of similar?

Or the DC controller for that matter...ignore the centre of it and the curves are quite similar
EDIT: actually with the white pippin console the whole thing is very Dreamcast-like. (Or should I say the DC is very Pippin-like)

o1s1n

I always thought the 360 borrowed a bit from the DC visually (the 360 controller feels like a natural evolution from the DC one) so it makes sense that you'd be seeing comparisons with the DC and Pippin.

Actually wasn't DC media almost going to be made compatible with the XBOX many moons ago when Sega were on the way out?

So what, the DC copied from the Pippin and then the 360 copied from both?

johnny_ultimate

Controller designers ****ing love their primary colours.

ghostchant

I do like how the SNES, Pippin, xbox and DC all have the same colours for the face buttons and coincidentally are all in a different order.

DinoRex

What about the Game.Com?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game.com

It had a funky version of Resident Evil 2 on it:

o1s1n

I've never really noticed how extensive this is. It's ridiculous!







And almost -

DinoRex

o1s1n

DinoRex wrote: »

What about the Game.Com?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game.com

It had a funky version of Resident Evil 2 on it:

Hah! Don't remind me of that yolk. I got one for Christmas when it came out. Had been reading in a toy magazine that it included a modem - I was sold! Had these visions of myself browsing all kinds of websites. Wave of the future.

To say the reality didn't live up to my expectations is beyond a massive understatement.

DinoRex

Looks like it would have been amazing if it had come out in say... 1992.

But '97?

o1s1n

There's so much ghosting on that monochrome screen that you'd be lucky to see any of the game at all.

The only one I could really see and play properly was Lights Out. But that's only because it's more or less a completely static image with either black or white.

There were two cool things about it - how small the game carts were and the touch screen. The stylus which came with that is still nicer than anything Nintendo are putting out today.

Steve X2

Game.com wouldn't be in any way rare or obscure I don't think. You can readily buy them new and sealed on ebay.
I know this because, well, you know, we all make mistakes

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johnboysligo

a5y

I'm surprised this didn't come up sooner. Apologies for the size of the gif, reducing the res didn't work too well considering how thin the lines are.

More here and here and on Wikipedia if anyone is interested. Atari-Age also has a dedicated Prototypes board on its forum.

(Think this may serve nicely as a custom case. Anyone else think its a little odd that a US company was using third angle perspective on a drawing?)

Doge

After all the posts about controller similarities, this video is worth a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D59-bodcBlc

CiDeRmAn

Well, hands are mostly the same, aside from some small differences in scale, it's only natural that the directed evolution of the controller would mean similar solutions are arrived at, as new innovations are instituted, rumble, analogue stick, analogue sticks, going from shoulder button to trigger to what ever crap the PS3 has going on.

Convergent Evolution, that's what we godless heathens call it!

Doge

Obscure SNES games anyone?

Lovely thread on assembler here with loads of piccies.

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?11119-Steve-s-Obscure-Super-Famicom-Games-Thre

This site also has a clickable A-Z list of games that each links to a review of the game jampacked with piccies!


http://www.rvgfanatic.com/6501/index.html

El Inho

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GSRPG8/?tag=047-20

got linked this site today, and while i know its not exactly whatcha talking about...

this is cool!!!

Atavan-Halen

There's also the gizmondo:



I also think the Mega Jet is an oddball, and I really want one.

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy

check the GCCX segment The Ace of My Hardware Won’t Appear throughout season 5, linked to Sega Mark III bit

RoverZT

waveform wrote: »

Wow!

Xbox 360 much?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin

How powerful was that system.

Had a 66mhz cpu.

Was it more powerful than ps1, n64 etc?

God Apple have came a long way.

If they released a console today, it would blow away the competition.They were small time back then compared to now.

Pyongyang

Quite the contrary, they were huge in the earlly 80's, then it kinda all went a bit wrong... Then this thing called the iPod was launched...

I am not sure if I would brand the SuperGrafx as obscure. A miserable flop yes, but not obscure. Maybe the PC Engine Shuttle is obscure though? Or the PC-FX?

I think Capcom made a home console too but I forget its name.

Oh and I guess you could add the FM Towns Marty and Car Marty to this list.

Mr. Loverman

atavan-halen wrote: »

There's also the gizmondo:

On the off chance some of you don't know this story...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Eriksson

Pyongyang

@Mr.Loverman:

SHABBA!

Sorry couldn't help myself.

El Inho

Mr. Loverman wrote: »

On the off chance some of you don't know this story...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Eriksson

i was reading that after glancing at the link convinced it was....

Sparks43

Pyongyang wrote: »

I think Capcom made a home console too but I forget its name.

Yep they did indeed

http://kingofgng.com/eng/2009/02/20/cps-changer-the-first-and-last-capcom-console/

And they are fairly hard to track down so there is no chance of Steve getting 2:D

Doge

Sera wrote: »

check the GCCX segment The Ace of My Hardware Won’t Appear throughout season 5, linked to Sega Mark III bit

Thanks for the link!

I see you're getting your #t onnnnn.

Imagine talking about that feature in real life and the looks you'd get:
"oh yeah this new hash tea stuff is great!"

Steve X2

Sparks43 wrote: »

Yep they did indeed

http://kingofgng.com/eng/2009/02/20/cps-changer-the-first-and-last-capcom-console/

And they are fairly hard to track down so there is no chance of Steve getting 2:D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro0yZyVR0Qk

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