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Everybody loves free stuff.
When I bought an iPod, the first thing I gravitated toward was the podcasts. They're all free, and some of them are truly extraordinary.
Among those I'd call the best of the best is a gem from ON Networks. It's called Play Value and gives a deep insight into the history of video games. I especially enjoyed Atari vs. Nintendo.
Here's the website. I'd highly recommend you either watch them on the web, or download them to your iPod, Zune or whatever you young people own these days.
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The Virtual boy wasn't the least successful system; the Microvision was. The VB had 14 games, and the Microvision had only 13.
I don't care if it was the least successful system- I LOVE my Virtual Boy
i think you should make a part 3 and spend the time on the very lesser known horrible systems like
r-zone
cd-i
gizmondo
n-gage
and couple other systems
You should have just mentioned the R-Zone, that was a terrible piece of equipment, not much to say about it but it might have been worth mentioning.
In my opinoin, the Sega master system is not better thanthe NES. Why? cause ithe master system had no good games!!!If it had atleast a couple good games, it would've had a chance
Yeah, it was just better as far as its technology.
Another great video. I agree about software vs. power. I can't believe Sony thought we would pay $700 CDN for a console with no game and only one controller. Nice to see they have been humbled. The Wii brought me back into video games, but I could do without all the flood of crappy party games.
The lamest accessory I had for a system had to be the power glove, especially when playing the original Mario Bros.
Wait wait wait. Something's wrong. In this video, you said that the TurboGrafx-16 is the first 16-bit console to hit the market, launching in 1989. But in Part One of Failed Consoles, you say that the Intellivison is a 16-bit console that came out in 1980. 1980 is obviously before 1989, so is one of your videos wrong?
The intellivision had a CP1610 general purpose CPU chip which was capable of supporting 16-bit addresses. So it is technically the first 16 bit console. But by the age of the Turbographics-16 ten years later, consoles had more than just a CPU; they would also have a seperate graphics chip. And the Turbografx-16 was the first to have a 16 bit graphics chip in addition to its 8-bit CPU, so it is also referred to as the first 16 bit console (because it had a 16 bit dedicated graphics chip). Both could claim (and both do) the title of "first 16 bit console" based on how that title is defined. Kudos to you- you've noticed something that perhaps we should talk about in a future episode- all the arguments between companies about who was "first" to do something, and how that they justify claiming the title. Sometimes one is right; sometimes they're both right, sometimes they're both wrong. There was much fighting over these issues in all the advertising between companies back in the day, and the fighting was really nasty.
Can I be smug and say I managed to buy an Official UK Turbographx 16 a few years ago? Dosn't sound interesting until you learn that the system was never released here.
NEC sold about 100 prototypes/beta machines to Telegames, but for some reason never really pushed it, possibly as the MD was already established here and the SNES was on the horizon.
It's almost exactly the same as the US one, even being only compatible with US games, only difference is they dropped the "16" bit, so it's just "Turbographx".
Dude! Sweet find! That's some rare history, right there.
ShootingLove:
I actually own a copy of "Chi No Rhondo" and we are all very well aware that it was a pc engine game from Japan. However it was available for purchase in the US only via magazines ads While you correctly point out that the PC-engine was a fairly decent hit in Japan (as was the Saturn), it was not in Amercia, which is the market that Play Value focuses on. Were this show 30 minutes instead of 8, I would love nothing more than to go into Japan in each episode, but alas.... I would claim that because all the really great games were availble in Japan and not in the US, this was proabaly the exact reason it was a hit there and not here. Also, the CD-Rom add on WAS difficult to find in the US. It was available mostly in major cities, but not in smaller ones. It was not available in the city I grew up in, and I was personally forced to buy it via mail order. It came in an absurdely huge box that was 90% foam padding, and I was fored to buy all my games for it via mail order as well, due to the lack of software support from my local Toys R Us. This experience was not uncommon. The Sega CD's improvent in power was not MUCH more, as you claimed. The addition of Red Book Audio was great, but not something that exactly blew minds for most consumers, and the Genesis was still limited to 64 simultaneous colors (a huge, huge drawback for FMV games) and the output limitations of the same old Motorola 68000 processor that the Genesis had. Anyone with an internt connection can go to wikipedia and see the hardware specs, but my point is that the hardware improvents were negligible, and mostly didn't even bring the Genesis up to the (in terms of graphic output) hardware specs of its chief competitior, the Super Nintendo, which had a clock rate of 21 Mhz, and 256 simultaneous colors out of a possible 32,000! It was the addition of hundreds of MB of more starage was the main leap in technology (at least for consoles, as PCs were already had CD-roms for quite some time). Perhaps, I should have stated "the hardware upgrade was negligible in terms of enhancing the graphic output given a $150- $200 price tag, and red book audio or no red book audio, most consumers were not impressed."
However, thanks for bringing up some great points of clarification to the discussion. Please keep posting on issues such as these, to help clarify some deeper points that deserve more depth than an 8 minute show is able to provide.
Cheers and happy gaming- Jeremiah Black
Another poorly researched video.
There was never a Castlevania game for TG-16. If you are going to mention the Japanese Super-CD PC-Engine game "Dracula X: Chi no Rondo", then you should also point out that the TG-16(Pc-Engine) was one of the most successful systems ever released in Japan.
The CD-Rom add-on for the TG-16 was not difficult to find as stated by your actors. While it was expensive, and hardly any games were released for it, it was always available on the shelves at any Toys-R-Us.
The Sega-CD add-on actually did make the Genesis much more powerful, contrary to what is reported in this video. The Sega-CD added a MC68000 CPU @ 12.5 MHz with hardware scaling and rotation to supplement or work in tandem with the Genesis's internal 7.67 MHz CPU. The sound hardware is also more powerful in the Sega-CD, adding 8-channels PCM sound, along with (of course) Red Book cd-audio streamed from the disc. Granted very few games were programmed specifically for the Sega-CD (as most were simply upgrades from a Genesis/Mega-Drive programmed game) but the few that were; Batman Returns, Soul Star, Thunder Strike, and Eternal Champions CD, among others, clearly show that the Sega-CD added significantly to the "power" of the Genesis.