Top Ten Handhelds That Didn't Make It? 114
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "Over at GameSpy, they're running a feature looking at the top ten handhelds that never made it. Included on the list are such 'favorites' as the Atari Lynx and the more recent Nokia N-Gage, as well as commentary by the GameSpy editors on why these portables failed to set the gaming world on fire."
Gamespy at it again? (Score:3, Insightful)
The list both the Gamegear and Wonderswan, both of which are/were solid systems. The gamegear sold quite a number of units when it was released, and gave some decent competition to the Gameboy. The wonderswan is still going stron in Japan.
What exactly qualifies as "making it" for these guys? By their measurements the only systems that ever "made it" were the GBA and gameboy. The latter being 10+ years old, which is a phenomenon in itself, and the former just happening to be the only handheld currently available in the US. (That Ngage thing is not real).
Re:Gamespy at it again? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Another name for the article could be (Score:5, Insightful)
I rather doubt that. Considering that the market is (arguably) supporting three home consoles, whose prices are all more than the GBA, I would say that the market is there for another great handheld. The problem is just that no company has released a great handheld to compete with Nintendo's GameBoy. I think it takes a number of factors for a handheld to be great. Long battery life, comfort, compactness, and great games are probably the most important. The problem with many of these other handhelds is that they have focused on flashy graphics and sound to the detriment of some of the more important factors. That's what I think, anyway.
Re:Gamespy at it again? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe being successful enough for the company to be willing to expend more money in the market before discontinuing the product? I only knew one person with a GameGear, and one person (other than myself) with a Lynx. Bandai (WonderSwan) for one reason or another gave up when the GBA came out.
I was never particularly fond of the GameBoy, and the GBA-SP is the first handheld I really think Nintendo's done a good job on, but I've at least been able to admit that no one, for one reason or another, has been able to compete with them, yet.
Re:Another name for the article could be (Score:2, Insightful)
The two markets are related but also different so I don't believe you can jump to such a conclusion based on your evidence.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH MICROVISION?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually had one of these when I was a kid and it r0Xored! It was the first hand-held with a dot-matrix display that used cartridges and therefore wasn't limited to one game, so I don't have any idea why it's on this list other than journalistic myopia.
Also, the article is factually incorrect in one place. The snap-on cartridge/faceplates didn't have a whole set of controls in the cartridge - that would be stupid and expensive. Instead, the device had a touchpad matrix of FLAT calculator-style button "areas" (like a Sinclair ZX81 or an Atari 400 keyboard) above the paddle on the base unit. The cartridge faceplate, supplying a decorated film that fit over this area, just functioned as an overlay, masking off the buttons you didn't need and labeling the ones you did. I'm not sure why GameSpy editors don't know this because they *SHOULD* have actually inspected physical units before reporting these facts and it's a technique that's been used elsewhere [atariage.com].
Sega * (Score:2, Insightful)
Firstly, I never even knew the Nomad existed until well after its death. I didnt exactally live under a rock either. I know I would have saved my pennies for this, vs something like a gameboy.
Then we have the Game Gear. This one was more out in the open, but the true treasure of it was NEVER known by many people... that you could buy a $10 adapter and play your old Sega Master System games! Had my friends and I known this much earlier in its life, we ALL would have owned one.
Sega made good stuff. They just didnt know how to sell it.
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's all about the games (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in Brooklyn and ride the subway to work every day. I'm 30, know a lot of other 25-30 year olds who all have gameboys. On any given day I'll see 5-10 GBA SP's on the subway, and usually only one of those will be in the hands of a kid.
At home I have a gamecube, decked-out pc, and what I find myself playing the most are my gameboy games. Wario Ware, Advance Wars 1 & 2, Golden Sun, Mario & Luigi... these are all just great games. Sure I can load stuff up on the tv, but I can play my gameboy in the subway, I can take it with me on lunch breaks, I can play it in any room in the house, take it on planes, trains, etc.
Gameboys are not just for kids. That's similar to how people erroneously state that all gamecubes are owned by kids. Plenty of adults play and enjoy gameboys. They have incredible, quality games on them. I can name more wonderful gameboy games I've played in the last year than I can for my console and for my pc. There's some serious creativity going on with that platform.
Granted I didn't have this same love of my gba before the SP. I had a number of games that were fun, but I had to play those in good lighting, or buy a separate light kit. Plus the unit was so large. My SP fits in my coat pockets, heck, even in my jean pockets if the pants are baggy enough. Great games and portability, it's a good thing. Can't wait to see how the PSP does.
Punk Rock (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I somehow found this really sad (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes. As far as the majority of gamers are concerned, the SNES vs Genesis war was either nothing more than a blip in their real lives or they were too young to even realize it. Some modern gamers, at least the more vocal ones, tend to be whiny 13 year olds who think the PS2 is the greatest thing since their parents bought a HDTV and let them play games on it. I wouldn't be surprised if some gamers didn't even know that Atari was once a big competitor in the video game industry or simply know about E3 (E3 is basicly a media show, without the internet it'd be nothing but a marking of the month we get a momentary glut of gaming news in magazines.)
Re:Game Boy (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and we can't forget a legion of brainwashed Nintendo Power subscribers, back in the day.
Some complaints... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Microvision also failed for a very good reason: It was horribly underpowered. I know it was released in the 70's, but the thing uses a 100kHz 4-bit CPU (I'm not kidding here), 32 nibbles of ram (Since the CPU is less than 8-bit, it's meaningless to refer to things in bytes), and the screen resolution is 16x16 (again, I'm not kidding). I seriously don't see how you can actually do anything meaningful with a system like that. I commend Milton Bradley for their innovation, but the technology just wasn't there.
I also question the wisdom of including handhelds that were never released in North America. Even if we're talking about worldwide sales, the fact that the Wonderswan and GP32 were never released here pretty much guarantees that they won't be successful regardless of how good they are.
Having said that, I think the Lynx and Nomad are very underrated... the Lynx had a lot of nifty features, like the ability to turn off it's backlight to save batteries when you pause, the ability to flip the screen so you could play left handed, and some games could play sideways to get a better aspect ratio. It really could have used more big name games though... all it really had were Atari's arcade ports, which weren't as popular as they were in the Asteroids heyday. Atari's marketing certainly didn't help either.
As for the Nomad, the system was overpriced and undermarketed... aside from the fact that it tears through batteries (If you got three hours from 6 AA's, then you did good), it's a very impressive system from a technical standpoint. A friend of mine has one, and he plays it all the time. You really need an AC adaptor for this one though.
I wish... (Score:2, Insightful)
Lots of people hate it, that's for sure, but did anyone ever try modding one to do something else, maybe play a game they made themselves, or add another colour or two to the display? ambitious, yes, impossible, dunno.
Also, are there any handhelds that allow you to develop your own games for and play them on the handheld? I've heard of the lik-sang(sp?) ram carts that could allow you to do this, but it's frowned upon as far as I know.
Wouldn't it be nice if the Nintendo DS came with or allowed you to buy flash carts that had pc interfaces to allow you to develop your own games, let the public try their hand at taking advantage of two screens!