Obscure Game Consoles, and rip-off consoles discussion thread.

[Dark Pulse]

On 10/4/2021 at 11:40 PM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Capcom CPS Charger: Capcom's only console released in 1994 and discontinued in 1996 that was only released in Japan, with eleven games which were ports of Capcom's own arcade games.

They weren't really ports: It was straight-up CPS1 hardware. The CPS Changer was basically a glorified SuperGun, modified a bit so that it'd be tricky (but possible) to make work with non-Capcom boards.

[Murdoch]

On 10/6/2021 at 9:17 AM, leodoom85 said:

Remember those cheap consoles that have 9999 NES games inside the RAM of the console... where, in reality, it was like 30 games and the rest of them were basically Super Mario Bros with weird mutators?

 

Those were the days.

 

You can still find shite like that on places like aliexpress.

[leodoom85]

29 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

 

You can still find shite like that on places like aliexpress.

Actually, I can find them at some places with cheap stuff and it's more noticeable at christmas time.

[Murdoch]

14 minutes ago, leodoom85 said:

Actually, I can find them at some places with cheap stuff and it's more noticeable at christmas time.

 

It's entertaining to watch people review such systems on YouTube and see that all those resources have been wasted on systems so bad they somehow run three decade old console and arcade games like absolute ass.

[Yandere_Doomer]

Thanks to AVGN i have heard of a few of these. and i heard of the Dendy console from NFKRZ.

 

but.. did anyone hear about the Souljagame? the console that the rapper Souljaboy made?

it was a ripoff on so many levels, it was just a bunch of rebranded emulators. then he stopped selling them and he posted a tweet saying "I had to boss up, i didnt have a choice" and his website now redirects to Nintendo's 3Ds webpage. seriously, i dont know what he was thinking, for Fred Fucks sake!

[Murdoch]

23 minutes ago, Yandere_Doomer said:

but.. did anyone hear about the Souljagame? the console that the rapper Souljaboy made?

it was a ripoff on so many levels, it was just a bunch of rebranded emulators. then he stopped selling them and he posted a tweet saying "I had to boss up, i didnt have a choice" and his website now redirects to Nintendo's 3Ds webpage. seriously, i dont know what he was thinking, for Fred Fucks sake!

 

Yeah it was pretty much impossible to follow gaming news and not know about that.

[Yandere_Doomer]

Just now, Murdoch said:

 

Yeah it was pretty much impossible to follow gaming news and not know about that.

right.

im a little slow on current events that are not Politics, i still dont know what the hell this "Squid Game' is. are they talking about splatoon? i know of that game, it has squids in it..

[Murdoch]

16 minutes ago, Yandere_Doomer said:

right.

im a little slow on current events that are not Politics, i still dont know what the hell this "Squid Game' is. are they talking about splatoon? i know of that game, it has squids in it..

 

Lol assuming you're not just joking it's some Netflix series people are raving about. Caught bits of it while my lady watched it. Was less than impressed myself. Found it overwrought, pretentious, unoriginal and dull.

[Yandere_Doomer]

1 minute ago, Murdoch said:

 Found it overwrought, pretentious, unoriginal and dull.

like the majority of things nowadays.

 

call me a fogey all you want, but the shows i grew up on were shows kids in the 60s grew up on (im 16 btw)

when i was 6, before i went to school i always loved to watch Wacky racers, every morning.

and after school i watched Adam 12 and Dragnet. i tried watching cartoon network, and even then i was cringing at how lame it was.

i am one weird Zoomer.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Every modern console except for the Nintendi Switch is a rip-off. Anything that isn't capable of playing Animal Crossing is a waste of silicon. Life is empty and meaningless.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

OUYA, a kickstarter Android-based console that was below expectations when released in 2013, it was acquired by Razer and the hardware discontinued in 2015, and it's storefront was dissolved in 2019.

 

[Avoozl]

I have a RS-97, the default firmware is garbage but there's a community made firmware for it which makes it much better.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Mattel Hyperscan - a shoddy console from 2006 made by the same company that manufactured the Intellivision & the Power Glove. Sadly, the hardware was cheaply done that it was prone to failure. The concept was to use Intellicards to access certain content of the game, basically this was the precursor of both on-disc DLC, microtransactions & loot boxes in modern games. With only five games released, consisting of one original IP and four licensed games, it was discontinued in 2007.

 

Edited November 22, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[act]

Anyone remember the Ouya? I remember.

Personally, I wouldn't be opposed to buying it on the basis of being an Emulation machine alone.

[Bowsertime28]

surpisingly enough, in my country there aree a lot of those things, who claim to have "9999" games which is mostly just varations of existing games on this thing

and most of them are lame variations of tetris

like tetris but you press a certain button to change the piece (not hold it tho)

still, theese things are rather cheap and are a good way to waste time (also they can still be found nowadays in here... weird

[Wadmodder Shalton]

6 hours ago, Bowsertime28 said:

surpisingly enough, in my country there aree a lot of those things, who claim to have "9999" games which is mostly just varations of existing games on this thing

and most of them are lame variations of tetris

like tetris but you press a certain button to change the piece (not hold it tho)

still, theese things are rather cheap and are a good way to waste time (also they can still be found nowadays in here... weird

This makes the Pro 200 made by an unknown company called Protech look lower-budgeted in comparison.

 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Oh here's a funny one, what happens when you rip off the Wii but only rip off the controller rather than the console itself, and put an LCD screen on it. You get the WLL.

Why rip off the console itself when you can just rip off the controller but have LCD games instead. In case you didn't notice, it's another POPstation clone.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The two last dedicated VHS-based interactive systems were the Connor VideoSmarts and the Bandai Terebikko, the others were just interactive accessories in a similar vain to VCR Rabbit & VCR Plus. These were TV Teddy, Toby Terrier and the Microsoft ActiMates. There are also tons of VCR board games, but those would be classified as standalone game releases.

Oh, also got to mention the unreleased Hasbro Control-Vision, which was essentially a modified ColecoVision with VHS VCR hardware crammed inside. This cancelled console is notable for being the origin of the Full-Motion Video trend in gaming, as Night Trap & Sewer Shark by Digital Pictures were originally being developed on this console before Hasbro canned the system.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Wadmodder Shalton]

In fact, many of these are unheard of because they didn't sell enough units either, like the Apple Bandai Pippin, a Macintosh-based game consoles released in 1996 during the time the Mac Clone program was still around, and discontinued in 1997 after Steve Jobs returned to Apple and killed of the Mac Clone program.

Many of these consoles are even rotting away, meaning replacement parts are a bit tougher to find.

Another obscure console of the Seventh-generation of game consoles was the Game Wave Family Entertainment System made by ZAPiT Games, a company based out of Canada. This was a console that mostly had trivia & puzzle games.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Two other obscure consoles from famous game publishers are the Koei PasoGo, a handheld that only had games based on the Asian board game Go, and the Konami Picno, which was more of an interactive drawing tablet than anything else.

 

Also, the LJN Video Art, yes, that LJN that made infamously awful licensed games for NES & SNES, which was a console that was only used to draw art, very badly due to it's squeaking joystick. Honestly, I would say that the Konami Picno is better than the LJN Video Art.

 

Another console made by Casio was the Loopy, another cartridge system they released in Japan only in 1995, which had a unique thermal sticker printer built into the system, but with only 10 games released.

 

A unique console based on Fujitsu's FM Towns PC line released only in Japan called the FM Towns Marty, which was compatible with existing games created for the FM Towns line of computers. There was also a version called the FM Towns Car Marty, designed to be used in cars. Released in 1993 and discontinued in 1995 due to low sales, this is the only console based on a Japanese PC currently known.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

We all know about the Virtual Boy, the ill-fated Virtual Reality handheld that only lasted one year with only 770,000 units sold and being only released in Japan & North America, with the system never being released in PAL regions, like Europe and Australia. Originally this system was supposed to be headset with motion tracking but Japanese safety regulations forced Nintendo to put it on a stand, and it's budget seems to actually show.

Though the system did have decent games, all of them were red and black, most games were Japan exclusives and others were cancelled due to the system's failure. In other words, the Virtual Boy's game library was mediocre at best.

Another handheld console that Nintendo made that nobody here talks about is the Pokémon Mini. It's games were technically mini games based on the Pokémon series. However, what makes this system more obscure than the Virtual Boy is that public sales figures aren't available.

Edited December 6, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The Dina 2-in-1 (Chuang Zao Zhe 50), manufactured by Taiwanese electronics company Bit Corperation, and released in North America by Telegames under the name "Telegames Personal Arcade". This played both ColecoVision and Sega SG-1000 games, as both systems had near identical hardware specifications.

 

Many people commonly believed that the Master System was Sega's first console, but that isn't correct, that was the SG-1000, released in Japan, Taiwan & New Zealand, with the SC-3000, even being released in Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, France, Finland & Singapore.

 

And speaking of Sega, they had two Mega Drive/Genesis & IBM PC hybrids. The first being the Amstrad Mega PC released in 1993 in PAL European regions, and the Teradrive released in Japan by IBM in partnership with Sega.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The Divers 2000 model of the Sega Dreamcast console. This was actually produced by tech company Fuji in conjunction with Sega that housed a Dreamcast and a TV together.

Also there's the Treamcast, a portable modification of the Dreamcast's hardware with a built-in LCD screen.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Wanted to bump this thread up, Here's another obscure handheld console the digiBLAST. This was a handheld console released exclusively in Europe in 2005 and discontinued in 2008.

The system itself only had 21 games released for it and two addons which allowed MP3 playback and one to connect it to a TV, with a third one planned to be a 1.3 megapixel camera that ultimately went unreleased. The failure of the digiBLAST is sometimes attributed to a chip shortage that made it too costly to produce, and heck this was a decade or two before the global chip shortage.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The Vectrex, a home console released in 1982 that was developed by Smith Engineering and originally manufactured first by General Consumer Electronics (GCE) and later by Milton Bradley Company.

 

It was the first and only console that used a black and white CRT vector display built-in, which was only used in a few electronics and arcade games at the time.

 

Its two accessories the Light Pen and 3D Imager made the Vectrex the first console to have a stylus (predating the Nintendo DS and modern touchscreen mobile devices) and a 3D headset (predating the Famicom 3D System, the SegaScope 3D Glasses for the Master System and any modern VR headset).

 

Needless to say, the Vectrex didn't last long enough, as it was released a year before the North American Video Game Crash of 1983, resulting in the console being discontinued two years later in 1984.

[Panzermann11]

The OnLive game system was a console released circa 2010 that allowed for playing games through cloud streaming through the OnLive service. It was basically the precursor to not just Google Stadia, but also PlayStation Plus and Xbox's XCloud aswell. OnLive's patents would be later acquired by Sony, which eventually laid the foundation for PlayStation Now/Plus.

 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Panzermann11

[Panzermann11]

On 11/4/2021 at 8:57 PM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

OUYA, a kickstarter Android-based console that was below expectations when released in 2013, it was acquired by Razer and the hardware discontinued in 2015, and it's storefront was dissolved in 2019.

 

I wouldn't say the Ouya is obscure, though. If anything, I remember it was pretty much the console gaming community's ass of all jokes during its prime time.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Panzermann11