The brazilian console Zeebo. (Actually from California?)
*Slaps top* This baby can run Resident Evil 4
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Your favorite " I didn't even know this existed" console
- Thread starter Lightjolly
- Start date
The brazilian console Zeebo. (Actually from California?)
*Slaps top* This baby can run Resident Evil 4
Dreamcast. I largely grew up with the 6th gen, by the end of it having a GCN, Xbox, and PS2 thinking I had everything. I didn't find out about the DC until like 2014. Felt crazy that I had somehow missed one of them, especially since I had played a lot of Sonic then on GCN.
I think you won your own thread OP. That zeebo thing is just wild and RE4 looks so janky on it. Definitely an obscure product of it's time.
There was a portable snk console I think (?) referenced in hi score girl that I didn't know existed
There's tons of beautiful clone consoles that play another manufacturer's software, but if we're just talking devices that have unique software: the Watara Supervision is pretty neat.
The Coleco Telstar Arcade
Triangle shaped cartridges yo
Someone should repurpose this absurd design for a GTA game.
Triangle shaped cartridges yo
Someone should repurpose this absurd design for a GTA game.
The Coleco Telstar Arcade
Triangle shaped cartridges yo
Someone should repurpose this absurd design for a GTA game.
that's like something from a weird fever dream about my childhood. thought i've seen it all but guess not
The Coleco Telstar Arcade
Triangle shaped cartridges yo
Someone should repurpose this absurd design for a GTA game.
This thing is incredible!
The series ends before SNK released the Neo Geo Pocket. I think that you confused it with the portable pc engine
I didn't even know the NEO GEO home console existed until I listened to GiantBomb regularly. Even then, I realized it was something only privileged rich enthusiasts would own. The idea of arcade-perfect ports was something I only associated with my Saturn and Dreamcast, but the insanity that Jeff Gerstmann explained as using the exact same software as the Arcades themselves for the "home" system is still unfathomable to me.
I didn't even know it existed because I just didn't know anyone rich enough that could have one. And that's growing up in an upper-middle-class suburban area with arcades that had NEO GEO cabinets there!
I didn't even know it existed because I just didn't know anyone rich enough that could have one. And that's growing up in an upper-middle-class suburban area with arcades that had NEO GEO cabinets there!
Probably the WonderSwan (color, in particular) or Sega SG-1000.
WonderSwan has excellent games.
SG-1000 does not, but it somehow has some serious charm.
WonderSwan has excellent games.
SG-1000 does not, but it somehow has some serious charm.
I'm really surprised there are any multi-console owners who grew up in that era who only found out about the Dreamcast 16 years after it came out. That was about as high profile a bomb as it gets. I remember at the time the idea that Sega was gonna transition to only software development was really hard to imagine. Sonic on a Nintendo system? The end of Sega as a console manufacturer was a massive event. How did you escape comparisons to the Dreamcast when the Vita and the Wii U flopped? They were everywhere.
Probably the WonderSwan Color.
One day as a kid I walked into my local videogames store and the guy showed me this.
It blew my mind that there were still consoles / handhelds that I didn't even know about.
I was gonna say. The fact that it has a portable Guilty Gear (where I took my avatar from) is the cherry on the cake.
My uncle bought me a Shonen Jump when he went to japan and one of the ads was about the wonderswan and iirc a One Piece card game.
It was so crazy with so many buttons compared to the dpad, a and b (and start and select) from the color I had back then.
The vertical or horizontal orientation for games still feels wonderfully unique.
It was a dream for puzzle games (which happen to be mostly playable in English) and games like BeatMania used it well, too.
Then you have the diagonal screen orientation of Kerorican Rhyme Rider - a screen orientation that I don't believe has been done ever since.
Cool little handheld.
I still remember reading about the Phillips CD-i and its affiliated Nintendo games in a gaming magazine in the early 2000s and could not believe it wasn't an April Fool's Day joke.
My dad's friend had a Turbografx 16 while I was growing growing up, and games like Bonks Adventure and JJ and Jeff and those game cards felt like a fever dream for years until I figured out what it actually was.
It was largely because of the Wii U that I found out about it because the comparisons were everywhere but I think I was late on even that because I only followed PS news back then.
These days it's much more well known, but back in the Gamecube era discovering that this existed blew my mind and I still to this day wish I had one
This Gamecube variant called the Panasonic Q
This Gamecube variant called the Panasonic Q
When I visited my family in India, my cousin was playing Nintendo games on a system called a "Little Master". I had no idea console knock offs existed until then lol.
EDIT: The flipside to this, is that I always get a "I don't know what that is" reaction, when I tell people I first gamed on a VIC-20 using tape casettes lol.
EDIT: The flipside to this, is that I always get a "I don't know what that is" reaction, when I tell people I first gamed on a VIC-20 using tape casettes lol.
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My parents managed to keep the existence of a Super Nintendo secret from me until a while after it launched. We were living in a tiny ass Mississippi town before we moved to Illinois, and to my knowledge the NES was the only thing out there and I was nuts over it. We moved outside of Chicago (Highland Park) in 1991, and shortly after made the trek to Gurnee Mills which had recently opened and was mind-blowing at the time for 11-year-old me. We were walking around and I saw a display unit with the bright Super Nintendo logo over it and I asked my parents wtf a Super Nintendo was and they pretended like they had no idea either, but I could tell they were just shutting it down so I wouldn't be begging for one. This was all around September of '91, so it had barely launched at that time but I assume there was a pretty big marketing push prior to launch that I just completely missed out on.
Even in a topic about "unknown consoles" people don't know about my favorite handheld ever, the GP32:
The GP32 was vastly, vaaaaastly ahead of its time. The very first instance of digital distribution I ever had was with this thing -- I bought both GPlayer (the movie player) and Pinball Dreams through their online store and downloaded them to the memory card. It was also my very first MP3 player, releasing roughly the same time as the ipod (with the added bonus that it worked with windows computers, unlike the first gen ipod at release).
I remember watching movies on my GP32 in between classes in college.
You could also connect it to the dreamcast.
The GP32 was vastly, vaaaaastly ahead of its time. The very first instance of digital distribution I ever had was with this thing -- I bought both GPlayer (the movie player) and Pinball Dreams through their online store and downloaded them to the memory card. It was also my very first MP3 player, releasing roughly the same time as the ipod (with the added bonus that it worked with windows computers, unlike the first gen ipod at release).
I remember watching movies on my GP32 in between classes in college.
You could also connect it to the dreamcast.
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The VictorMaxx Virtual Reality Stuntmaster.
Now it's not a console but I remember seeing it in video game magazines in the early 90's, when VR was about to take over video games, technology, and the world - any day now. It was going to somehow take all your SNES and Genesis games and turn them into full VR games, with head tracking and 3D. Years later I read about how it actually "worked", what the screen was like, and how they expected it to be used, and the lunatic creator. It was ... a ride.
https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-...r-headset-was-apparently-created-by-a-lunatic. There's also a bunch of videos on YouTube.
Now it's not a console but I remember seeing it in video game magazines in the early 90's, when VR was about to take over video games, technology, and the world - any day now. It was going to somehow take all your SNES and Genesis games and turn them into full VR games, with head tracking and 3D. Years later I read about how it actually "worked", what the screen was like, and how they expected it to be used, and the lunatic creator. It was ... a ride.
https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-...r-headset-was-apparently-created-by-a-lunatic. There's also a bunch of videos on YouTube.
The Coleco Telstar Arcade
Triangle shaped cartridges yo
Someone should repurpose this absurd design for a GTA game.
holy shit , the fuck I'm looking at.
I thought this thread would be about stuff like the Casio Loopy or the Bandai Playdia
Instead it's, like, "Sega made consoles?!?" and I just feel old.
Instead it's, like, "Sega made consoles?!?" and I just feel old.
Yeah, there were some wild hybrid entertainment console things out there.It's not nearly as obscure as most posts, but the PSX existing kinda blew my mind at some point.
Not talking about PS1 here, it's a digital video recorder with a built in PS2. The design was also pretty fucking awesome.
It only ever came out in Japan btw.
Another was the Pioneer LaserActive. It could play laser disc, cd, karaoke discs, and you could get modules for Genisis/Megadrive and TurboGrafix-16/PC-Engine games (including cd-roms). And it was all region free.
LaserActive - Wikipedia
lol
imma have to look into some of these things. ESP the watara supervision
I have that one! The same company released a Genesis compilation mini console and a Tetris console too.
When I found this thing at my flea market, I was genuinely surprised, had no idea they made these.
And with my favorite 16-bit game on there, too.
The Genesis compilation one includes Sonic, Kid Chameleon, Ghost'n Goblins, Eco The Dolphin and one about... birds, maybe? I remember playing a lot of G'nG and Tetris on these as a kid.
The Tapwave Zodiac. This thing was super cool. The Zodiac was a Palm-based, gaming-focused PDA that used SD cards as its storage medium. It also functioned as an MP3 player, an e-Reader, a media viewer, and an electronic organizer complete with calendar, memo pad, and date book. And, surprisingly, it did all of these things pretty darn well. There's a video at that link.
The brazilian console Zeebo. (Actually from California?)
*Slaps top* This baby can run Resident Evil 4
Zeebo sounds like a made up games console in The Simpsons haha.
Acorn Archimedes is a neat computer for games.
www.resetera.com
Acorn Archimedes Appreciation Thread
If you didn’t grow up in the UK then chances are you haven’t seen one of these computers in real life. It was overshadowed by other systems like the Commodore Amiga and IBM PC, and didn’t have a huge number of good exclusive games, but it has enough cool stuff to intrigue me. Various models...
www.resetera.com
The thing that always blow my mind about the LaserActive the most was that the thing had ~31 exclusive megadrive/genesis pc-engine/turbografix laserdisc games. The existence of Sega MegaLD games is even crazier than the ~six SegaCD+32X games.Yeah, there were some wild hybrid entertainment console things out there.
Another was the Pioneer LaserActive. It could play laser disc, cd, karaoke discs, and you could get modules for Genisis/Megadrive and TurboGrafix-16/PC-Engine games (including cd-roms). And it was all region free.
LaserActive - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
The efforts people are going through trying to dump those laserdisk games are impressive.
The Phantom
arstechnica.com
Ars reader: So a guy walks into my shop with an Infinium Phantom console...
Photos of what may well be a one-of-a-kind vaporware prototype.
arstechnica.com
The Commodore CDTV.
Basically an Amiga 500 in console form. You could connect a 3.5" floppy drive and use it as a regular Amiga 500 if you also bought the trackball attachment which had 2 regular Amiga/Mega Drive controller ports. But other than an Amiga 500 with a memory expansion with it's 1024KB of memory, they only shipped this with 1000KB of memory. Causing many games that required the memory expansion to crash constantly (I'm looking at you The Secret of Monkey Island).
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The Tapwave Zodiac. This thing was super cool. The Zodiac was a Palm-based, gaming-focused PDA that used SD cards as its storage medium. It also functioned as an MP3 player, an e-Reader, a media viewer, and an electronic organizer complete with calendar, memo pad, and date book. And, surprisingly, it did all of these things pretty darn well. There's a video at that link.
I had one of these as well, it shared the same homebrew scene as the GP32. This was the "upgrade" for those in the GP32 scene, although it never had quite as many users as the GP32 (lol, isn't that crazy?)
Those scenes are the genesis of the modern chinese cheap android console scene today. I only have 1 game for my zodiac: Doom 2. Shortly after I got it, they released the freeware Doom engine for the GP32, making it a redundant purchase lol.
The Commodore CDTV.
Basically an Amiga 500 in console form. You could connect a 3.5° floppy drive and use it as a regular Amiga 500 if you also bought the trackball attachment which had 2 regular Amiga/Mega Drive controller ports. But other than an Amiga 500 with a memory expansion with it's 1024KB of memory, they only shipped this with 1000KB of memory. Causing many games that required the memory expansion to crash constantly (I'm looking at you The Secret of Monkey Island).
I nearly bought one of these back in november at a computer liquidation sale. I had talked to the owner at the place about picking it up, he wanted $100 for it. When I showed up, someone else had walked away with it an hour before I arrived. Wound up getting an Amiga 1000 instead.
If we're talking Amiga stuff, how about the SX-1 upgrade for the CD32:
I cannot believe how much CD32 stuff has shot up in price since the AVGN did that episode. Used to be you couldn't give this shit away. Now I see completed auctions on ebay for CD32s by themselves for like $600.
I have spent waaaaaay too much time on the internet so sadly I know about most consoles these days.
But man, the first time I heard anyone say FM Towns Marty I just fucking lost it. How can that be the actual name of a console?!?!
But man, the first time I heard anyone say FM Towns Marty I just fucking lost it. How can that be the actual name of a console?!?!
Yeah. I fucking love they called it that.I have spent waaaaaay too much time on the internet so sadly I know about most consoles these days.
But man, the first time I heard anyone say FM Towns Marty I just fucking lost it. How can that be the actual name of a console?!?!