Strange and forgotten consoles

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Revision as of 08:32, 14 February 2015 by 74.75.97.247 (talk) (Consoles)
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Beneath the clean and successful exterior of gaming giants like the Super Nintendo and Playstation lies the Gap of Vidya: a realm populated by unwanted and forgotten consoles of old, immortal in their plasticity. Here we may receive knowledge of their eternal fate. Not everything on this page can be emulated. If it's a video game console from the third generation and beyond, it's on this page for your viewing pleasure.

Consoles

Name MESS support ROMs Description
Action Max None VHS tape console released in 1987 by Worlds of Wonder. It relied on a light gun and score counter for all of its 5 games, which could not really be lost. There's an add-on for the laserdisc emulator Daphne called SIGNE. We're in murky waters here, so run this at your own risk.

Cinemassacre Demonstration

Amiga CD32 Preliminary
Amstrad GX4000 Good A consolized PC.
Apple Bandai Pippin Preliminary Apple's attempt at being relevant to games. It failed.

Vintage review Currently, there is only preliminary MESS support, but some of its games may be playable on other Apple emus.

Atari XEGS Preliminary A repackaging of existing hardware, marketed as a game console. Notable for having possibly the worst physical design ever. It has preliminary support in MESS, as does the 65XE computer it's based on. Overview
Casio Loopy Preliminary Yes (No-intro) A Japan-only game console designed for girls, focused on printing stickers. A Magical Shop add-on allowed for the printing of any screenshot, not just Loopy games. Drunken Printing Demonstration
Casio PV-1000 Good Yes (No-intro) A 1983 console pulled from shelves very quickly. Like many others, its titanic failure makes it a rarity nowadays.
Commodore 64 Games System Good Hacked up console version of the regular C64, released only in Europe. Failed hilariously due to its outdated tech (1984 hardware in 1990!), the fact that the normal C64 was already a sufficient game console, and a bad case of the nogaems.
Commodore CDTV Preliminary
Dendy Decent The NES, but for slavs. Only Kinaman can properly explain this one (turn on CC). Has decent support in MESS, and its status as an NES clone means its "exclusives" can be played on NES emulators that support broken pirate carts.
FM Towns Marty Preliminary An early fifth-generation console released by Fujitsu in 1993. It failed due to its astronomical price. Another version called the Car Marty was also released, designed to be a GPS for automobiles. Preliminary MESS support for both.
Mattel Hyperscan None Something you would expect to see under a bargain bin at Wal-mart, the Mattel Hyperscan was a card/disc based system released in 2006 to appeal to some poor child's aunt at Christmas. CGR Review No known emulators.
Memorex VIS None A beautiful monster sold only at RadioShack in the early 90s. No known emulators, but its software may be playable on Windows 3.x emus, as the console's OS was an altered version of that.
Nintendo iQue Player None An official Nintendo game console released in China in an attempt to stop piracy in the region. Unsurprisingly, it didn't work. It's basically an N64 clone with no original titles. No known emulators.
Nuon None A hybrid DVD player/game console with enhanced movie-viewing tools. Only a few games were made for the system, as the cheaper PS2 slaughtered it. There was an emulator in production called Nuance, but its author died and he didn't release the source code.
Nintendo Famicom Box None A hybrid NES/Famicom arcade box distributed to hotels in Japan. The hotel would set the amount of time you could play on one token, and choose the games available. You can see it in action in season 18 of Game Center CX. There was also the Super Famicom Box, for playing SNES. No known emulators, but the Super Famicom Box may work in MAME, as its BIOS is available.
Playdia None A disc based system released in Japan by Bandai in 1994. Notably, it had a wireless controller and all of its titles were interactive movies like Dragon's Lair. No known emulators.
RDI Halcyon None A terrifying machine based on HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, featuring voice-recognition and AI learning. Its failure bankrupted RDI. There are no known emulators for the Halcyon, as mankind has yet to fully comprehend its awesome power.

Demonstration

Sega Pico Good Yes (No-intro) Child's edutainment console released in 1993. Was actually fairly successful. Has good support in MESS.
Super A'Can Preliminary Yes (No-intro) An extremely rare Taiwan-only console released in 1995.
View-Master Interactive Vision None 1988 edutainment VHS console that used two audio tracks on each tape, the player choosing one of two options on screen, to create interactivity. Also had short mini-game segments with ColecoVision like graphics. Unlike the other VHS systems the games were actually decent. No known emulators.
Zemmix Series None Korean system that was simply an MSX/MSX 2, depending on the model, in console form. Mostly just existed as a why to play MSX games, though there were a few games made specifically for it they were playable on the MSX as well. Any MSX emulator should work for it.

Handhelds

Name MESS support ROMs Description
Epoch Game Pocket Computer Good Yes Only 5 games exist for this handheld. All can be found here.
Gamate None No Another attempt to capture part of the Game Boy market, the Gamate was released in the early 90s by Bit Corporation. The magnitude of its failure makes it and its software obscenely rare today, with prices over 500 dollars for the handheld alone on ebay. It's so obscure, the developers of MESS don't even list it as having preliminary support, and no known ROM dumps exist.
Gizmondo Preliminary Yes (No-intro) A disaster of a handheld, the Gizmondo was released in 2005 with a furious marketing campaign. It was ahead of its time in that it (was supposed to have) included built-in advertisements to make the console cheaper.
GP32 Preliminary Yes (No-intro) Korean handheld. It was the first handheld to use SD cards and had pretty good specs for the time, so everybody ended up just jailbreaking it and using it as an emulator/homebrew platform. The developers later went on to develop the more successful GP2X line, which was designed from the ground up for emulators.
Hartung Game Master Decent Yes (No-intro) A German Game Boy knock off. Also distributed in the UK. Demonstration
MegaDuck/CougarBoy Good Yes Chinese knockoff Game Boy that was branded with various bizarre names, despite each version being exactly the same. Used cartridges. Roms are out there, surprisingly.
Nokia N-Gage None Yes Nokia's attempt at making a cell phone/handheld system hybrid, before mobile gaming really took off. Although it was the most powerful handheld in its time, it failed due to a high price, a terrible button layout, numerous design flaws, and its underdeveloped cell phone component. Had a redesign called the QD, but it was only slightly better. Most of its games were ports, either from the GBA or from the PS1 and Saturn. While it didn't have any standout titles, it still had a few odd original entries from big franchises such as Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey and SSX: Out of Bounds. There's one emulator called N-GageCool, but it's dead payware that only runs Java games.
Tapwave Zodiac Some
Tiger Game.com Preliminary Yes (No-intro) An infamous piece of shit, with quite possibly the worst screen on any handheld ever. Somehow still had a port of Resident Evil 2. CGR review
Watara Supervision Good Yes (No-intro) An attempt at making a real competitor for the Game Boy.