Gaming consoles at its worst. Here is “My” list of the top 10 worst gaming console that I think should never even be on the market decades ago.
Skip to top 5 worst gaming consoles
10. Sega Genesis Add-ons (32x, CDX etc)
Year – 1994
Launch Price – $400 for the CDx.
To squeeze some more life out of your Sega Genesis, Sega decided to build horrible add-ons which was barely compatible on all of their machines. 13 years ago a friend had loan me a 32x addon in which failed to work on my system. I soon tested it on a couple of other machines, and to my surprised it didn’t work as well.
The 32x offered little significance over the aging Genesis, updating the consoles 16bit graphics and sounds and delivering very few great games such as “Sonic” on the process. With just a few months away on the release of the much awaited Sega-Saturn. Sega 16bit along with its add-ons was soon left in the dust.
9. Phantom – Infinium Labs
Year – 2002?
Launch Price – ???
The Phantom is not really a bad console, it offers gamers what they needed; powerful CPU, 40 gig Hardisk, Nvidia Video card and an online subscription in which featured a “pay 2 play” system. However, the console was never released. This was all thanks to Infinium Labs who continued pushing and pushing the release date until it dugged out its own grave. Oh by the way, did I mention all the financial problems Infinium Labs had during their operating years?
Infinium Labs claimed it would be released on November for the holiday season; however the company still had not developed the online delivery software, licensed any games nor found any retailers. The company missed all the deadlines, while at the same time sending thousands of faxes claiming the system would be ready and launched in January 2005.
I would also nominate the company behind this for the worst ever gaming console management of all time.
8. Studio II – RCA
Year – 1977
Launch Price – $149
Hey dude, my mom bought me a new video game machine, and we can play Pong. The graphics are in black and white and it has this amazing beeping sound. This is totally cool. Oh c’mon, everybody played Pong right?
RCA could have made this better than its 1970’s rival “Fairchild Channel F” which fortunately offered corded joystick and colored display. And how do you even play with that built in controller?
With the release of Atari 2600 just 10 months away, not even Pong and 5 built in video games could save the Studio II from being crushed by the dominance of the Atari juggernaut.
7. Nokia NGauge
Year – 2003
Launch Price – $299
Nokia should have stayed away from the Gaming industry rather than releasing this terrible device. Their concept was to top the GameBoy Advance by developing a handheld gaming device integrated with mobile functions. Nokia just didn’t have the marketing strategy to be successful in gaming industry, releasing it more than twice as expensive as a Game Boy Advance SP was a bad idea.
It wasn’t fun playing with this crap; the keypad is poorly designed, the screen is vertical skinny, the games available are not as attractive compared to PSP and Gameboy. You would also have to take the damn battery out each time you decided to change the game. I guess Nokia did not have enough customer reviews before they released it.
Nokia then released the much and improve Ngage QD but it was a little too late, they already made a bad impression on their first release. Less than 100 games were made. Pocket Kingdom did manage to get a handful of appreciation but it was too late to have much effect in improving the perception of the N-Gage hardware itself to the eyes of the consumers and the press.
6. Cd-I – Philips
Year – 1991
Launch Price – $699
Although this may not seem like a video game console, but despite its appearance it actually can play games like any other game machine. Online a handful of games were ever developed. It did have quite an accomplishment, over 500,000 units were sold. Parents figured it would save them more money because this machine can do more than just game. It provided support for video as well, great idea but unfortunately only a handful of games were ever developed. The clunky controls and predilection toward dull interactive movies and multimedia encyclopedias over actual games made it horribly unpleasant to serious gamers.
Even if Philip’s managed to market the Cd-I via infomercials, consumer interest in CD-I titles remained low thus Philips halted the production line on 1998 when Playstation had begun to dominate the video game era.