THE SYSTEM
CROSS-REFERENCE JESSBOARD
The Jessboard is
back with an all-new edition, ready to rile up the fanboys
with a rank for nearly every game console and handheld system
ever made. Here's how it works... every system on
the Jessboard has been assigned a number from 1 to 48.
The lower the number, the higher the rank. Each system's
rank is determined by a number of criteria, including hardware
performance, software quality, market penetration,
industry influence, and of course, good old fashioned personal
bias.
The Jessboard
reads from left to right, with the best consoles ever designed
on the leftmost side of the board. As you proceed to the
right end of the board, the systems get less and less
impressive, with the colors on each square reflecting the
change in quality. On the far right, you'll find the
worst game systems in history; disasters like the game.com,
Emerson Arcadia, and the 32X which should never have been
invented. Any consoles that don't appear on this list
simply haven't been rated... their absence from the list is in
no way an indication of their quality.
Now it's time to
explain the ratings each console was given. The opinions
expressed here are entirely my own, so if your favorite system
got a raw deal on the list, don't take
it personally... this is by no means objective.
Here we go!
CHAPTER 1:
GAMING GOODNESS
First up to bat is the NES, which wins The Gameroom
Blitz's not-really-coveted-but-still-pretty-impressive award
for the best game system ever made. This is the console
that changed the industry forever, transforming video
games from simple twitch-fests to sprawling
adventures. Rather than being trapped in a single,
claustrophobic screen, NES games gave you the freedom to
explore entire worlds! The NES also gave the industry
more classic series than any other system, including The
Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear, Castlevania, and Ninja
Gaiden. Even the controller included with the console
was an important advance for the industry, offering
the razor-sharp precision that was absent from past game
systems. It just doesn't get any better than
this!
Next is the
Playstation 2 and its predecessor. The PS2 had a rough
start, but redeemed itself in a big way a couple of years
after the Dreamcast fizzled out. Weak launch titles like
Kessen and Eternal Ring were eventually replaced with a wide
variety of classics for nearly every taste. The shooter
fans have Gradius V and R-Type Final to scratch those itchy
trigger fingers. Music enthusiasts can get their groove
on with Guitar Heroes and Gitaroo-Man. Gamers looking
for great platforming action will find it in Sly Cooper and
Ratchet and Clank. If by some odd coincidence
there isn't a Playstation 2 title that appeals
to you, you'll almost certainly find one that does in the
original Playstation library... which the PS2 just happens to
support. It's one-stop shopping for the gamer of the
21st century!
Of course, without the original Playstation, the PS2
just wouldn't have been possible. Although saddled with
an unfortunate no 2D games policy at the beginning of its
life, the Playstation ultimately proved itself worthy of the
hype with its versatile, powerful hardware and a huge catalog
of outstanding titles. The console had a nasty
reputation of becoming unreliable after frequent use, but
let's face it, even the NES had its own issues playing games
after a couple of years. I must have blown enough air
into Nintendo cartridges over the past twenty years to inflate
a tractor tire!
Next on the menu
is the Sega Dreamcast. The system had such a short life
in the United States, but as they say in science-fiction
circles, the candle that burns out twice as quickly burns
twice as bright. Or was that the other way around?
Anyway, nearly three hundred games were released for the
Dreamcast during the two regrettably brief years it was
supported... and the vast majority of these titles were
amazing, demonstrating marked visual improvements the past
generation of consoles. Cars became almost real
enough to touch, and heroes became more human, with expressive
faces, hands with flexible fingers, and clothing that's worn,
rather than painted on the skin. All this made the
already entertaining games on the Dreamcast that much more
exciting!
In an industry where the leader
is often far ahead of the pack, the Super NES and Sega Genesis
were a bit of an oddity. The two systems (and their
respective fans) were locked in a vicious battle for many
years. When the fighting finally ended, the Super
NES had one broken finger dangling over the finish
line, with the Sega Genesis gasping for breath just a couple
of feet behind it. I loved the Genesis when I was a
teen, but over the years I've come to realize that the Super
NES, with its superior audiovisuals and strong Japanese
software support, was ultimately the better of the two
systems. That's not to knock the Genesis, though... it
had several advantages of its own, including a swift
processor, a keenly responsive six button controller...
and oh yeah, a little game called Gunstar
Heroes.
The Game Boy
Advance still holds the distinction of being the best handheld
on the market, despite stiff competition from newcomers like
the PSP and Nintendo's own DS. An extensive library of
games (there are literally thousands of titles for the system,
not including Game Boy and Game Boy Color releases), plus
hardware powerful enough to handle nearly every 2D game that's
thrown at it, makes the Game Boy Advance an essential travel
companion for any serious player. Thanks to the compact
size of the Game Boy Advance SP and especially the Micro,
there's no reason to leave it behind on your next
trip!
The Atari 2600 squeaks into the top ten with a wide
range of addictive games, all with a distinctive look that's
best described as charmingly primitive. The characters
in many 2600 titles (particularly Activision's) are drawn with
layers of color, giving them an appealing artsy aesthetic
that's missing from nearly all of its
competitors. The console also has a simple but
easy to use interface... a flick of the Game Reset switch or a
tap of the fire button is all it takes to set many games in
motion. Replace that clumsy 2600 joystick with a Sega
Arcade Pad, and you're guaranteed hours of retroriffic
fun!
Like the shiny red
Ferrari gleaming in your neighbor's yard, the Neo-Geo is a
sexy piece of equipment that was always just out of
reach. When it was first released, the system cost over
seven hundred bucks, and the games followed suit with price
tags of two hundred dollars or more (much more, now
that they've appreciated in value). You didn't always
get what you paid for, either... launch titles like Ninja
Combat and Robo Army were barely worth the handful of quarters
you'd need to finish them in the local arcade.
Fortunately, as time passed, SNK finally learned to make
the most of the system's hardware, releasing spectacular games
like King of Fighters '99 and Garou: Mark of the Wolves that
were worth the kingly sum SNK charged for them.
Well, almost.
Then we have the Sega Saturn. The
system's runaway success in Japan, and its complete lack
of it in America, makes me feel like I'm reviewing two
consoles rather than just one. If you're buying a Saturn
just to play Western games, you're going to be sorely
disappointed... Sega and Capcom were the only two companies
that had given the system the support it deserved.
However, in the land of the rising sun, things were far
different. The system that was stone cold in the States
was on fire in Japan, with hundreds upon hundreds of quirky
games tailor made for a Japanese audience. If you get a
Saturn, make sure you get a Pro Action Replay Plus and a
handful of imports to go along with it... it's the only way to
truly experience the system.
I've got mixed
feelings about personal computers as entertainment
systems. The x86 PC in particular was never
really intended to play video games... after all, they
don't call the designer of the first batch of these systems
International Business Machines for nothing.
Now that PCs have advanced to the point where you can use them
to play streaming music and video, burn DVDs, and talk to
friends, sometimes all at once, they're more than powerful
enough to handle mindblowing games. The only problem is,
most of what's available on PCs just doesn't appeal to
me. Doom? Yawn. Age of Empires?
Bleech. Starcraft? The Koreans can have that
one. Still, the ability to play games for nearly every
other console through the use of emulators makes the PC
impossible to ignore as a game system.
The original Xbox is a close cousin of the x86
PC, sharing most of its technology. However, it was
designed for one purpose and one purpose alone... playing
video games. This sharp focus makes it more
appealing than the average PC for gaming. There's
no need to sit through a ten minute
installation... the only set up you'll need
is opening the drive door and inserting the game you want
to play! The XBox is also more powerful than any of its
contemporaries, and the ability to create custom soundtracks
really comes in handy when the threat of EA Trax rears
its ugly head.
The PSP? The
Nintendo DS? It's a tough choice for sure, but one that
many cash-strapped gamers have had to make. I've got
both, but if I were forced to make a choice, I'd go with...
hmm... let me think about this for a second... wait, wait...
all right, the PSP. The DS has some pretty sweet games
available for it, but like the Sega Saturn in the 90's, only
Japanese developers take it seriously. Nearly everybody
else treats the system like a Game Boy Advance with a
touchscreen grafted onto it. The PSP is not immune to
half-hearted game design, but it's finally making its mark
with great titles like Pursuit Force, Maverick Hunter X, and
its kid brother Mega Man: Powered Up. On top of that,
few portables have been as open to homebrew and emulator
development as the PSP. Neo-Geo and Super NES games on
the go? Sign me the hell up!
Trailing behind them both is the Neo-Geo Pocket,
which helped me keep my sanity through the dark days when the
wretched Game Boy Color dominated the handheld market.
For years, this was the only way to go for serious gamers fed
up with the Pokemon hype. Seven years after its debut,
the Neo-Geo Pocket is still home to the best handheld
fighting games ever made. Just try to find a versus
fighter on a portable system that plays as well as Match of
the Millennium... it just ain't gonna
happen!
On we go to
Nintendo's GameCube. It could have been a contender...
after all, there was nothing wrong with the hardware, which
was a step above the Playstation 2 and not that far behind the
Xbox. There were also a lot of fine games starring
Nintendo's most popular heroes, but what it was
missing was third party support. The big N took
steps to bring back the licensees that were disillusioned
by the Nintendo 64, but the company's refusal to hop aboard
the broadband train resulted in the cancellation of important
GameCube games like Burnout 3: Takedown. The
constantly delayed Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess won't
help the system die a dignified death,
either.
I'll wrap up this chapter with the TurboDuo and
Vectrex. It would be easy to dismiss the Turbografx-16
CD as just another flashy add-on designed to extort money
from gamers who would be just as happy with the base
system, but NEC was a lot more dedicated to their CD expansion
(and the integrated system that it would eventually inspire)
than Sega. Instead of taking ordinary cartridge
games and throwing in redbook audio and a couple of
full-motion video scenes, NEC justified its use of the new,
high-capacity media with original efforts like Y's Books 1
& 2, a great RPG made better with double the content and
quality voice acting.
Most game systems
designed before the industry crash of 1984 haven't aged
well. The Vectrex is a major exception to the
rule. Its vector graphics, shown on a monochrome
display built into the unit, are as striking and stylish as
the colorful characters in the Atari 2600's best
games. The Vex is also packed with power, capable of the
scaling and rotation that wouldn't be introduced to raster
scan systems until the turn of the decade. The system's
got a small library of games and an incredibly lame mascot
(Spike, a stick figure with a jagged head), but past that
there's little to criticize about this eight pound
gorilla.
CHAPTER 2:
MIDDLE OF THE ROAD
Middle of the road... you see the darnedest
things! That includes Microsoft's Xbox 360, the first of
the next generation of game consoles. Now here's a
system I want to like more than I actually can. Sure,
it's packed with more power than any system that has come
before it, and the multimedia features are even more robust
than those in the already impressive Xbox. There's just
one problem, though... the games just don't seem to take
advantage of that muscle. Once you get past the colorful
candy shell of games like Project Gotham Racing 3 and Kameo,
all you'll find inside are ordinary Xbox titles. The
Xbox Live Marketplace holds promise, but the shelves are
pretty empty at the moment, holding only twenty downloadable
games. There's only one reason to own an Xbox 360
if its multimedia features aren't important to you... but
the outstanding Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the only reason
you need!
Twenty five years
ago, the Mattel Intellivision was the most advanced game
console money (and preppies!) could
buy. At first glance, it seems to offer everything that
the Atari 2600 has, plus a whole lot more... but looks
can be deceiving! The Intellivision has
a number of aggravating flaws, with those
blasted hardwired controllers being at the top of that
list. After twenty minutes of struggling with that
unresponsive bronze dial and those stiff side buttons,
you'll start to feel as chained to
the misconceived controller as the system
itself. And oh yeah, if your temper gets the best
of you and you smash the accursed thing to bits, you get to
replace the entire system! Oh joy! The
Intellivision's got almost enough great games to make up for
this grievous design flaw. It's the only way to play
Burgertime outside of an arcade, and B-17 Bomber is still one
of the most engaging flight simulators to ever hit a game
console... classic or otherwise. Who says there's
no room for another World War II
game?
The Turbografx-16 is next on the list. The
system loses a lot of its impact without the optional CD-ROM
peripheral, but there are still enough fine
games here to make it worth kicking it into
turbo. Some of the better cartridges for the
Turbografx-16 include nearly airtight conversions of
arcade hits like R-Type, SideArms, and Galaga '90, as well as
Japanese exclusives such as 1943 Kai and Rabio Lepus Special
(Rabbit Punch). You're probably noticing that all of the
games mentioned here are shooters. That's because
they're the Turbografx-16's specialty... neither the Genesis
nor the Super NES can outgun it in this department. The
system doesn't perform as well in other genres, however.
For instance, Bonk's Adventure doesn't measure up to
the timeless gameplay and charming characters of Super
Mario World, or the sleek visuals and blazing speed of Sonic
the Hedgehog.
Lots of competent
arcade conversions, an uncomfortable knob controller, and a
tendency to rust. That's how you know it's a
Coleco! The ColecoVision controller takes a little too
much inspiration from the crummy Intellivision pad, but at
least you've got the option to replace it with something more
comfortable and responsive (if I might make a suggestion, how
about the Sega Arcade Pad?). You won't find much here
that you haven't already played elsewhere, but the
ColecoVision does have some passable arcade ports, as well as
Fortune Builder, the game that was Sim City before Sim City
was a twinkle in Will Wright's eye!
Trailing behind the ColecoVision is its competitor,
the Atari 5200. The 5200 was quickly thrown together
with Atari 800 computer components, but despite the hasty
design and some truly horrendous stock controllers, the
system's got its strengths. The Atari 5200 can
push brighter colors and more of them than the
ColecoVision, and the scrolling is smoother in most
games. On the downside, the resolution is lower,
resulting in backgrounds and characters that are a little on
the chunky side. There's also the issue of the included
controller, an awkward marriage of the stiff 2600 sticks and
the numeric keypad on the Intellivision. It's no worse
than the ColecoVision knob, but the Atari
5200 stick frequently breaks and is more difficult
to replace.
Next comes the
Astrocade. The system's got a lot going for it... an
excellent BASIC interpreter, fun conversions of early Midway
arcade titles, and most importantly, an input device that
ISN'T total crap. Take a pistol handle, then cap it with
a dial that doubles as a wonderfully responsive thumbstick,
and that's the Astrocade controller in a nutshell. Yet
for all its strengths, it just can't hang with the big boys of
classic gaming. There's practically no third party
support (sorry, those BASIC games written by Astrocade
fans don't count), and the resolution is pretty
dismal. On top of all that, there's a limited selection
of colors at the Astrocade's disposal, although the few that
are available are as vibrant as anything you'll find on a
pre-NES game console. Bally's system had potential, but
the company abandoned the Astrocade years before that
potential could be fully tapped.
Well, on to the Nintendo 64, the
first disappointment in this list. Oh, Nintendo...
after the excellence of the NES and Super NES, how could you
give us THIS?! The Nintendo 64 was the first home game
console without the benefit of strong third party
support. All the killer apps that appealed most to the
average gamer were either delayed on the Nintendo 64 or never
arrived on the system. Without Final Fantasy, Tomb
Raider, or Street Fighter, it's easy to see why the Nintendo
64 quickly lagged behind in the console wars of the mid
1990's. There were a few great first party titles on the
system, but not as many as Nintendo fans were expecting
after coming down from the high of Super Mario
64.
By contrast, the
Lynx wasn't what gamers had expected at all from Atari.
Long considered to be on the dull edge of technology, Atari
shocked the world by releasing a handheld system that ran
circles around Nintendo's GameBoy. Why settle for a
blurry monochrome games that are a step behind their NES
counterparts, when you can have a truly advanced portable
gaming experience? Well, because it cost a whole lot
less. That full color screen and the fancy hardware
built into the Lynx came with a hefty
price... nearly two hundred dollars at launch.
On top of that, all the most popular games of the
time went straight to the GameBoy. Nobody was going
to settle for ports of creaky Atari arcade titles
when they could take favorites like Super Mario
Bros. and Mega Man on the go, even if they were
slightly compromised.
It's clear from the name that Sega had high hopes for
the Master System, but the sleek black console never really
lived up to that title. It was technologically
superior to the Nintendo Entertainment System, with a faster
processor and a more diverse color palatte. In the end,
though, it's all about the games, and that was the one area
where the NES was the real master. Since Nintendo had
already staked a claim on the most popular arcade titles and
the best original software, Sega could only fall back on its
own coin-op library, as well as the rare third party
release that slipped through the cracks. A dependence on
arcade hits left the Master System library without the depth
and long-term replay value that was so abundant on the NES,
one of the many reasons that the console was left in the dust
a few short years after its debut.
The Game Gear is
the Master System's handheld cousin, which Sega somehow
expected to perform at the same level as the 16-bit Sega
Genesis. Far too many Genesis games were ported over to
the Game Gear, and it was abundantly clear that it just didn't
have the power to handle them. Many of these titles were
severely downscaled on their way to their new home... Streets
of Rage lost much of its impact and intensity on the Game
Gear, and the Japanese exclusive Gunstar Heroes was stripped
of several stages, including the fan favorite Black's
Dice Maze. Rather than forcing Genesis games into the
tiny frame of the Game Gear, Sega should have released games
designed especially for the handheld. If more Game
Gear titles had been like The GG
Shinobi and its sequel, the system could have went a few more
rounds against Nintendo's pocket powerhouse before hitting the
mat.
Just barely squeezing into this chapter of Systematix
2006 are those eternal rivals, Panasonic's 3DO and the Atari
Jaguar. One was designed as a
top-of-the-line multimedia device with all the fixin's, and
the other was Atari's attempt to play the numbers game with a
64-bit console. Panasonic gets points
for ambition... at the time of its release, there really
was no other CD-based game system that could stand on even
ground with the 3DO. The console was like a
proto-Playstation, with the muscle to
display texture-mapped polygons and crisp full-motion
video. It also had an outlandish price, tipping the
scales at seven hundred dollars (and you thought the
Playstation 3 was bad!). At $250, the Jaguar was more
economically priced, but it just didn't pack the punch of the
3DO. Some Jag releases were barely upgraded
ports of Genesis and Super NES games... and not even the good
ones! A few titles carried more impact, especially
Jeff Minter's psychadelic masterpiece Tempest 2000, but
practically everything else in the Jaguar library smacked of
desperation... the kind of desperation that can only come from
ten years of bleeding money in the hopes of dethroning
Nintendo as the king of the video game
industry.
CHAPTER 3:
DOWN FOR THE COUNT
The lesson learned from the Atari 7800 is that when
you go to war with a company that's on its way to industry
domination, you don't step into the battlefield with last
year's ammunition. The 7800, developed in 1984 and
released two years later, had no chance against the more
advanced, forward-thinking Nintendo Entertainment
System. The NES offered bright colors, sharp artwork,
and lively animation. The best the 7800 could muster
were muddy, dated graphics best suited for old-school arcade
games like Centipede. The NES had thunderous explosions,
pounding bass, and clear voice digitization. The 7800
was stuck in the 1970's with a stone-age, single-channel sound
processor. The NES had a four button joypad that gave
the player more options and precision than anything that had
come before it. The 7800 only had two buttons on its
uncomfortable, oversized joystick. The only advantage
the Atari 7800 had was once again rooted in its unwillingness
to let go of the past... it was backward compatible with
nearly every 2600 game ever released. The only problem
was, anyone who still wanted to play these golden oldies
either already had a 2600 at home, or could get one for fifty
dollars. Whoops!
Many will argue
the GameBoy's unenviable position on this list. Frankly,
I don't care. Sure, it had plenty of games, based on
strong Nintendo properties like Super Mario Bros., Mega Man,
and Castlevania. However, many of those games paled in
comparison to their NES counterparts, especially The
Castlevania Adventure, with its super sluggish Simon Belmont,
and Super Mario Land, whose entire
cast of characters could fit on the head of a pin. Even
more damning was the fact that the GameBoy was singlehandedly
responsible for keeping handheld technology in the stone age
for nearly a decade. With its sickly green monochrome
display and lackluster hardware specs, it was as far behind
its competition as the Atari 7800 was the NES. A
tempting price point and Nintendo's industry dominance kept
the GameBoy on top much longer than it should have been, but
these days, nobody would dare play the system or its games for
ten minutes. After the first three, you'll run out of
the room screaming, with your hands clutching your bleeding
eye sockets!
The Sega CD will forever be known to gamers as
"strike one" for Sega. More than just an optical disc
drive, the Sega CD brought scaling, rotation, and a more
advanced sound processor to the Sega Genesis.
Unfortunately, the add-on did more to undermine the system's
reputation than address its shortcomings. Far too often,
Sega CD games were little more than standard Genesis titles
with redbook audio, grainy full-motion video, and the
unwelcome addition of excruciating access times. The few
games that didn't fall into this category were typically
64-color films with little player interaction, leaving a scant
dozen releases that helped the hapless Sega CD owner
stave off that nagging feeling that they had been
fleeced.
Speaking of
costly, pointless upgrades, the Supergrafx is next on the
list. Its predecessor, the Turbografx, didn't go
anywhere in America, but NEC had been doing pretty well in the
Japanese market, presenting a serious threat to Nintendo's leadership of the
industry. It would take a mistake of titanic proportions
to bring NEC's momentum to a screeching halt... and the
Supergrafx was that fatal error which dropped them into
the frigid waters of defeat. Only six games were
released especially for the Supergrafx, with a seventh
cross-compatible title offering special Supergrafx-exclusive
enhancements. Roughly half of that small stack of
HuCards were entertaining, with the arcade-perfect ports of
1941 and Ghouls 'n Ghosts resting on the top of the
deck. However, shuffle that deck a little and you'll
find just as many jokers, including the sad-sack
shooter Aldynes, the Mode 7-drunk Battle Ace, and Granzort
(worse than Keith Courage? You
betcha!).
Now onto the N-Gage. People who like this
kooky phone and gaming hybrid (and there are a few
of them out there) are quick to argue that its critics haven't
spent enough time with the system to judge it fairly.
OK, I'll bite. Even though I was turned off by Nokia's
image-obsessed marketing, I was willing to give the system a
fair shake, buying not only the more wisely designed QD model
but a handful of the N-Gage's better games. After
several frustrating hours of what could only be charitably
described as gameplay, I came to the same conclusion everyone
else had... that Nokia had no business being in the video
game industry. The controls alone make it clear
that they've got no idea why people play games in the
first place. If the stiff, stubborn D-pad doesn't kill
the N-Gage experience for you, the tight cluster of numeric
keys that serve as action buttons almost certainly will.
It's a shame, too, because N-Gage software is a big step up
from what passes for "games" on other cell
phones.
It's hard
to look back on your first gaming
experience without a hint of fond nostalgia... unless
your first happened to be the Odyssey2. Designed by
Magnavox and Philips at the beginning of the 1980's, the
Odyssey2 was so in love with its alleged technological
superiority that every one of its games came with a haunting
science-fiction scenerio. On the front of every box,
you'd find men drawn in laser lights, running from ominous
androids... it was almost as if the cast of Tron had stumbled
onto the set of Ultraman. It was the ultimate case of
false advertising when you popped a cartridge into
your Odyssey2 and found only square-headed robots that
looked as much like Lego men as the cybernetic menaces on the
front of the box. That feeling of disappointment went
from aching to crushing when you discovered that
those robots were in nearly every Odyssey2 release, even
sports games! Your only escape from the cube-headed
menace was in the twin Pac-Man clones K.C. Munchkin and K.C.'s
Crazy Chase; both awesome maze games that seemed as out of
place on the system as the square-headed robots were
in Pachinko! and Quest for the Rings!.
Next up is the Wonderswan, a low-rent handheld
which proved that Gumpei Yokoi was incapable of
learning from his past mistakes. Rather than
addressing the many flaws that made his last creation,
the Nintendo GameBoy, such a nightmare to use, Yokoi actually
worsened them with a control scheme so awkward and convoluted,
it made the clumsy D-pad and jumbled numeric keys of the
N-Gage look like a masterpiece of ergonomic design. The
Wonderswan's twin directional pads (broken into four separate
buttons each) were designed so that games could be played from
both a horizontal and vertical perspective; a feature that
typically proved more aggravating than useful. Instead
of designing games for one orientation or the other, many
Wonderswan titles used both interchangably, forcing the player
to flip the system at regular intervals. To add to the
"fun", the first Swan had a primitive monochrome display so
blurry that it made games nearly impossible to play, no matter
how you looked at them!
Before I begin
with the next entry, let me state for the record that I
absolutely love the Commodore Amiga. As a
computer. In the mid 1980's. However, it's not
nearly as appealing when you try to cram the hardware into a
game console and sell it as an alternative to the more
powerful and specialized 3DO. The Amiga CD32 was little
more than an Amiga 1200 computer with the keyboard and floppy
disc drive removed, bringing the grand total of Amiga games
that were compatible with the unit to el zilcho grande.
Gamers could beat the system by purchasing an expansion unit
for the CD32, but they were much better off forgetting about
it entirely and buying a real Amiga computer
instead.
On the subject of computers with gender-reassignment
surgery, there's the Atari XEGS, intended to replace the 7800
as the Tramiels' secret weapon in the 8-bit console
wars. What Jack and company failed to understand was
that the XEGS, cobbled together from bits and pieces
of computers dating back to 1979, was even more outdated
than the system it was supposed to succeed! The XEGS did
have the advantage of an established library of games- it
could play practically any cartridge designed for the Atari
400 on up- but titles like Space Invaders and Galaxian were
from a different era of gaming, an era which Atari's
target audience had long since
outgrown.
The Neo-Geo CD was
designed with the best of intentions, but as the saying goes,
the road to obscenely long load times is paved with good
intentions. Well, it went something like that,
anyway. The Neo-Geo CD let gamers take home the
coveted arcade experience at a fraction of the cost of the
original console, without sacrificing anything. In fact,
gamers who bought the Neo-Geo CD got more than they bargained
for... namely, the worst and most frequent access times in
recorded history. Less demanding launch titles like
League Bowling started up after a reasonably short ten second
wait, but more advanced games like... well, every versus
fighter SNK ever released, threatened to bore players to death
with thirty second pauses after each match. In the time
it takes to play Fatal Fury Special from beginning to end on a
Neo-Geo CD, you could drive down to the local arcade, play
every Neo-Geo game there, then stop by the
supermarket for a half-gallon of milk and some chips.
You wouldn't even need to use the express
lane!
Poor Virtual Boy. You're such an easy target
that it's not even sporting to take shots at you!
However, for the sake of the list, I must forge onward.
I don't know what I can say about your paltry selection of
games (many awful), your ridiculous double D-pad controller,
or your eye-traumatizing LED display that
hasn't already been said before. So I'll try to think of
something nice to say instead. Let's see... you
were the first system to give Nester, the long-suffering comic
relief in the Nintendo Power comic strip Howard and Nester,
his own video game. That was really nice of you,
especially since you only had a dozen or so games to
spare. What else? Well, I don't think you ever
literally blinded anyone, so that's a big plus.
And oh yeah, your 3D is still more convincing than anything
I've seen on other game systems. Objects in the
foreground really do seem closer than those in the background,
which makes the only must-have in your collection, Wario Land,
more fun and immersive. Mmm... yeah, that's pretty much
it.
I wish I could
find something nice to say about Philip's other gaming
flop, the CD-i. There are just no words to describe it
that don't begin with an expletive. It was an insult to
gamers everywhere, but especially to
Nintendo's dedicated (and
then enormous) fanbase. The system actually
had more original Zelda games than either the NES or Super
Nintendo, but all three were completely terrible.
Imagine The Adventure of Link with hand-painted backgrounds
but the stiffest animation and control this side of a puppet
show, and you've got a pretty good idea of what to
expect. On the non-Zelda side of things, you had a lot
of pretentious full-motion video games which refused to
acknowledge how idiotic the genre really
was. At least Night Trap and Sewer Shark, as crappy
as they were, had the good sense not to take themselves
seriously!
You'd think that color would be a step in the right
direction for the GameBoy line of handhelds, but the GameBoy
Color proved that Nintendo still had a long way
to go before they could find an audience past the
ever-reliable Pokemon crowd. The system had great
promise back when it was shown at the Electronic Entertainment
Expo in 1999, with everything from NES classics to
adaptations of modern hits like Resident Evil on display for
E3 attendees. Then, once everyone went home and the
GameBoy Color was released, everything changed. The NES
ports weren't as good as the originals. Resident Evil
vanished from the radar, only to be replaced with an
unremarkable first-person RPG bearing that title. Then
the flood of craptastic movie-licensed games came.
Not a day went by that IGN.com didn't slam some awful new
Titus or T*HQ release for the system, but Nintendo did nothing
to stop the damage. They didn't need to! After
all, the system was carried entirely on the backs of Pikachu
and his verminous friends. Then, just as all hope seemed
lost, Nintendo mercifully put the GameBoy Color out of its
misery and replaced it with the greatly improved GameBoy
Advance, promising that third-party releases would be
subject to stringent quality assurance. Usually, nobody benefits when a game company
replaces its console after just two years, but the news of the
GameBoy Color's death came as a welcome surprise to
players who wanted more from their handheld gaming
experience.
Like Cleopatra to
Mark Anthony, or Kevin Federline to Britany Spears, the 32X
was the love interest which ultimately proved to be Sega's
undoing. It also demonstrated a contempt for the gaming
public that would leave even Sony in awestruck
admiration. In a letter sent to Ultra Game
Player's magazine in 1994, a Sega representative
responded to one reader's concerns about the questionable
32-bit upgrade by telling him to "get a life." Sega's
once loyal fanbase, already burned by the poorly supported
Sega CD, reacted by telling the company to get new
customers! They were wise to save their money, because
the 32X offered few advantages over a plain old Genesis and
even fewer games. It was also needlessly difficult to
install, requiring its own power supply and the insertion of
fussy metal strips which frustrated gamers
"affectionately" called electro-popamatic-plates.
Practically every game system, no matter how
terrible, is redeemed by at least one good game. In
the case of Fairchild's Channel F, that game is
Dodge-It. You're a little dot, avoiding contact with the
other tiny dots bouncing around the screen. The longer
you survive, the more dots you'll have to contend with, until
you're eventually overwhelmed by the little bastards.
Despite its simplicity, Dodge-It manages to keep you on the
edge of your seat with its strangely compelling
gameplay. If that sense of primal urgency had been in
most of the Channel F's games, it would have risen at least
five spots on this list, but sadly, the fun this ancient
system has to offer begins and ends with Dodge-It.
Everything else is so boring and primitive that the average
gamer will be begging to change the channel after a couple of
minutes.
Ten years ago, I
purchased an Emerson Arcadia 2001 from one of my brother's
friends. My cost for the system and a half-dozen
games? Twenty dollars. The opportunity to bust its
chops on The Gameroom Blitz for the next ten years and
beyond? Priceless. The Arcadia isn't so much a
classic game console as it is a tribute to everything that was
wrong with game consoles from the late 1970's and early
1980's. It's got the heartbreaking, thumb-aching dial
controller and numeric keypad from the Intellivision.
It's got the microscopic, rough-edged, single-colored sprites
from Fairchild's Channel F. It's got the screeching
musical accompaniment of the Atari 2600. It's got the
limited software selection of the Odyssey2, and box artwork so
hilariously bad it's in a class by itself. In short, the
Arcadia is everything you could possibly complain about in an
older game system, and a whole lot
more.
So that leaves us with two
completely horrible game systems, both wimpy monochrome
handhelds. Who will be the ultimate loser? Will it
be Milton Bradley's ambitious but misguided Microvision, or
Tiger's cynical cash grab, the game.com? Hmm... I guess
that answers the question right there. The MicroVision
came much too soon and was held back by the limited technology
of the time, but its designers had their hearts in the right
place. On the other hand, it's clear that whoever
created the game.com not only had his heart in his wallet, but
his head up his ass. The system that was hailed as a
marked improvement over the GameBoy was in fact ten times
worse, with an even blurrier black and white display and games
so choppy you'll be rubbing your eyes for weeks. The
game.com had a couple of good ideas- hell, even the world's
biggest moron has to stumble across a few of them in
his lifetime!- but anything the system could do, the
Nintendo DS can do better. Much better. Much,
much, much, much,
much...