Consoles From The Eighth Dimension!

Ace Rimmer

Spaceman
…That no one will ever play.

This thread is sadly dedicated to this years lesser known (virtually unknown) consoles that nobody will ever play. Starting with VTech’s “V.Flash”, a console about two generations behind which retails for about $100 (yes VTech, the inventers of the “Skype Phone” and “Teddy Ruxpin”), it’s a marked improvement over their last console, the “Nitro Vision”, which was about four generations behind what was current at the time(still selling for about $50).

“V.Flash” console and games:
V.jpg

vgames.jpg

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Old “Nitro Vision” console:
Nitro_Vision.jpg

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“Skype Phone”:
skypephone.jpg
 
I saw a commercial for the one with the keyboard yesterday. Some play on how video games are violent so kids should play those boring pieces of crap instead.
 
Finally... a console more expensive than the PS3!

Finally... a console more expensive than the PS3!

Another example of a lesser known console that nobody has heard of is the seventh generation “Evo: Phase One”, which sells for $679.99 online only, as of October 20th the company that makes it (Envizions) is currently accepting pre-orders for a December 2006 release. I am very interested in seeing how they plan on marketing it because this lesser known console is supposed to be on par with the 360 and the PS3, equipped with liquid cooling system, and integrated biometric fingerprint reader. I think it’s biggest selling point is the fact that it’s a console that’s actually compatible with PC games!
Evo.jpg
 
I don't think AceRimmer understands the purpose of the VTech "consoles". They're educational systems, not "gaming systems" in the usual sense.

VTech is attempting to corner the old "educational videogame" market that started with the Wiz-Kid back in the 1980s.

In this sense - the thread is silly and possibly pointless.
 
Yeah, these have been a constant for the past two plus decades. It's an entirely separate industry, and one that's very succesful in its own right -- there's a huge market for the 5 to 10 year olds who want to play video games like the big kids.

I remember my little sister being very proud of her "computer", a VTech game designed to look like a laptop, when she was that age. I'm not really sure why any of it would interest *us*, though -- they aren't *for* us.

That said, the greatest console never played is decidedly the 3DO M2 -- for which some progress was made on developing an advanced Wing Commander III port, before everything fell apart.
 
That said, the greatest console never played is decidedly the 3DO M2 -- for which some progress was made on developing an advanced Wing Commander III port, before everything fell apart.

This is the first I've heard of it. How much do we know about this port?
 
Very, very little. It's one of four ports that appear on a list of significant cancelled games, generated by an anonymous former Origin employee. The others are WCIV 3DO and WCIII and WCIV for the Sega Saturn.

WC3 Saturn interests me the most right now. EA was a strong early supporter of the Saturn. They planned to release several 'waves' of Saturn games... the first made it out, and included it Crusader: No Remorse. The second wave, which was demo'd at trade shows and advertised in print, included Wing Commander III (and two other games). WC3 Saturn exists in some form, somewhere -- but the system died a crib death (I believe they sold one of them... to ace).

Not only that, but games from the unnanounced third wave do exist in prototype form... the former Origin Museum has the Saturn port of Crusader: No Regret. Presumably this third set of releases would have included Wing Commander IV... so it's possible that serious work was even done there. It's problematic contacting the people who worked on the ports, though, because they weren't necessarily dedicated game developers and because we really don't know who they are -- nobody ever bothered profiling the men and women behind the PSX and 3DO ports properly.
 
nobody ever bothered profiling the men and women behind the PSX and 3DO ports properly.

Thats strange, given that I had no problem contacting the people involved in the WCIII PSX port (who also helped with the WCIV PSX port) way back when.

I can't speak of the 3DO ports though, as I never had the system.
 
It depends on the person -- I did have a nice e-mail exchange with the guy who produced WC3 3DO recently... but he wasn't sure who worked on these cancelled ports.

The 3DO port of Wing Commander III is amazing -- if you find a 3DO somewhere, buy it. It's a completely different game experience. They opted to redo all the gameplay to make it be fun for the system, instead of trying to use up all their resources trying to copy the PC version as closely as possible (as in the PSX version).

If Wing Commander III M2 or Wing Commander IV 3DO exist in some form somewhere, it'd be quite a find.
 
Vtech makes excellent equipment. Their phones work perfectly and are pretty much indestructable. Compared to 90% of their competitors, they make pure gold.

Occasionally on eBay, stuff claiming to be working M2 hardware with working M2 games appears, but it's usually D2, I think. I bought my 3DO for WC3, and I've only ever played the 3DO version.

It's really a great system, there are more than a handful of excellent games available for the system that you can't play on anything else, or couldn't initially.

People giggle about the 3DO because it's considered a failed and obscure product, but it's really, really great. It was widely and powerfully supported by developers and has a pretty huge library of games, the controllers are excellent, and it had some features that - at the time - were pretty fabulous, like the audio visualizer for CDs. It simply priced itself out of existence. No console at that price was going to do well.

I love mine.
 
Yeah, these have been a constant for the past two plus decades. It's an entirely separate industry, and one that's very succesful in its own right -- there's a huge market for the 5 to 10 year olds who want to play video games like the big kids.

I remember my little sister being very proud of her "computer", a VTech game designed to look like a laptop, when she was that age. I'm not really sure why any of it would interest *us*, though -- they aren't *for* us.

Yeah, there's nothing stupid about these. We had old VTech devices like this in my home 15 years ago or so, and they did exactly what they were designed for. Around the time Mario Paint came out for the SNES, they had a great drawing tablet that was a self-contained unit and worked really well.
 
Around the time Mario Paint came out for the SNES, they had a great drawing tablet that was a self-contained unit and worked really well.

I think Mario Paint was one of those great little ideas that never really caught on, sadly. There was something always really strange about drawing on your TV to me, but I had a lot of fond memories of Mario Paint at my friend's house.
 
Finally... a console more expensive than the PS3!

Another example of a lesser known console that nobody has heard of is the seventh generation “Evo: Phase One”, which sells for $679.99 online only, as of October 20th the company that makes it (Envizions) is currently accepting pre-orders for a December 2006 release. I am very interested in seeing how they plan on marketing it because this lesser known console is supposed to be on par with the 360 and the PS3, equipped with liquid cooling system, and integrated biometric fingerprint reader. I think it’s biggest selling point is the fact that it’s a console that’s actually compatible with PC games!
Evo.jpg

Interesting video game system. Never heard of it.
 
I don't think AceRimmer understands the purpose of the VTech "consoles". They're educational systems, not "gaming systems" in the usual sense.

VTech is attempting to corner the old "educational videogame" market that started with the Wiz-Kid back in the 1980s.

In this sense - the thread is silly and possibly pointless.

I remember them as a kid. :cool:
 
3DO made some good games for the XBox and PS2, I guess they went the way of SEGA at first, but they seem to be chapter eleven right now.
 
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