Obscure Gaming Consoles

VoutonBag

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I would say as an obscure console the PSVITA(PSP sucessor).
The design of the handheld is amazing but the lack of a exclusive title and Sony ignoring him aswell made him go to the dark.

Truth is, the console got a lot of games(in japan he received a lot), and for the emulator lovers he is considered of the best emulation devices to play, not only on hardware but because of the controls too.
 
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Trashboat

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What about the PSP that looked like a sidekick
1614050232771.png
 
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naa

The Vectrex is a home console from 1982 that came with its own display. The screen couldn't display color, but it came with a bunch of colored plastic overlays that could change the display to red, blue or green.
The shape of the display feels kind of intimidating, maybe ominous but I love how it's clearly meant to emulate arcade displays in a smaller, home console version.
641496A4-D996-45E7-A736-C350EB15D854.png

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s0ren

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I would say as an obscure console the PSVITA(PSP sucessor).
The design of the handheld is amazing but the lack of a exclusive title and Sony ignoring him aswell made him go to the dark.

Truth is, the console got a lot of games(in japan he received a lot), and for the emulator lovers he is considered of the best emulation devices to play, not only on hardware but because of the controls too.
I really liked the Vita but I picked it up after it was basically already dead in the West. The library was pretty weak, at the end of its life there was a decent amount of stuff worth playing but I can't imagine sitting keeping up with it post-launch. Wasted potential for sure and lots of things that I wish were brought over from Japan but weren't.
 
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elia925-6

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I've heard about a console released only in Taiwan called a'can and used the Motorola 68000 microchip, on par with genesis and neo-geo. Only 12 games released and the company afterwards destroyed all the production and sold remaining consoles as scrap. Considering it's from a country famous for its microconductor industry

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycy861t9m_A
 
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Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

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Ya'll ever hear of the Coleco Telstar Arcade? Well let me tell you what:
Are you tired of buying a light gun seperate? Did you get a racing game, but have no racing wheel? No worries my friend, that extra shit comes pre-built! Purchase this pyramid and your worries about having the right accessories will flow away with the breeze!

R.1b7347ab76e56f3dc2709aff842470de
 
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elia925-6

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I really liked the Vita but I picked it up after it was basically already dead in the West. The library was pretty weak, at the end of its life there was a decent amount of stuff worth playing but I can't imagine sitting keeping up with it post-launch. Wasted potential for sure and lots of things that I wish were brought over from Japan but weren't.
Makes me sad that Sony left the portable console market and considering the high sale numbers of consoles and the myriads of purchased studios, we could expect many amazing portable consoles and not limited to mobile game junk.
 
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SolidStateSurvivor

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The Famicom Titler
sharp-famicom-titler-other-1554188741-82.JPG

This Famicom variation allows the user to capture high quality video/screenshots of games, record audio over top, and even allowed for text overlay. Primarily for use by journalists, very rare today with an estimated 5,000 - 10,000 ever made.

Not sure if the Nintendo Gateway System counts, but it's fairly interesting.

Console Variations.com has a very detailed list on all this kind of stuff as well.
 
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s0ren

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Makes me sad that Sony left the portable console market and considering the high sale numbers of consoles and the myriads of purchased studios, we could expect many amazing portable consoles and not limited to mobile game junk.
Tbh I don't think they would have been able to compete with the Switch so it probably would have just gone the same as 3DS vs Vita in terms of market share. The 3DS winning that war was tragic because the Vita was objectively the better device, it just didn't have the dev support it needed. The Switch is great and has massive support due to being a console first, so I think it would probably win on both fronts and make it so the PlayStation Hypothetical would be DOA.
 
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brentw

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Tbh I don't think they would have been able to compete with the Switch so it probably would have just gone the same as 3DS vs Vita in terms of market share. The 3DS winning that war was tragic because the Vita was objectively the better device, it just didn't have the dev support it needed. The Switch is great and has massive support due to being a console first, so I think it would probably win on both fronts and make it so the PlayStation Hypothetical would be DOA.

And with the Steam Deck entering the market now to be the high end alternative to the Switch, Sony has no niche in that market, no chance.
 
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JihyoParkXX

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Saw a virtual boy for the first time in my life at Super Potato in Osaka. Anyone could try it out and it was a boxing game, I believe it to be Teleroboxer. When tried looking into it I was greeted with "YOU LOST YOU ARE WORTHLESS AND WEAK" which I thought was hilarious.
 

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punishedgnome

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I fell for the Game Com meme in the late 90S:

Game_com.jpg

I saw it advertised in all the magazines at the time and it seemed to have this amazing library. Sonic Jam, Resident Evil, Duke Nukem etc. It has an optional modem so you could browse text sites and send emails. TWO cartridge slots! This was a big deal at the time, because you weren't walking around with a phone full of games in your pocket and you had to carry around an extra cartridge for each game if you wanted to play a game waiting at the dentist or whatever. The still pictures of the games in magazines looked real pretty too. Imagine seeing this in the late 90s:
sonic-jam-tiger-gamecom-review.pngSonic-Jam-Boss.png
Look at how pretty and high resolution that is compared to Gameboy and even something like Game Gear. It actually looks like Sega Genesis in black and white.

I ordered a console that came bundled with Sonic Jam and Lights Out from a mail order ad in a Gamepro or EGM. It was a similar bundle to the one that includes Batman & Robin and Lights Out below:
gamecom2.jpg

Imagine my surprise when I actually played it. The screen was a blurry mess, the music was primitive and the controls were dogshit. It was easily one of the worst consoles I ever played, and was a less enjoyable experience than Tiger's handheld LCD games that were popular in the early 1990s. It played worse than one of those devices you can order off ali-express with all the pirated NES roms on it for like $10 today.

I donated it to good will in the early 2000s. I kind of wish I kept it just for the sake of having it.

Saw a virtual boy for the first time in my life at Super Potato in Osaka. Anyone could try it out and it was a boxing game, I believe it to be Teleroboxer. When tried looking into it I was greeted with "YOU LOST YOU ARE WORTHLESS AND WEAK" which I thought was hilarious.
A Zellers near me had a Virtual Boy set up from around the time Virtual Boy came out until the N64 was released and they replaced it with an N64 Demo kiosk. The only game I've played on an actual Virtual Boy is Wario Land which is phenomenal. I wanted to get one, but my mother wouldn't let me because of the warning on the box. I didn't know until years later that Wario Land was not representative of the library as a whole and that most of the games were terrible.
 
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punishedgnome

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How is that even possible!?
Because those old handhelds were playable. Imagine this:


With a screen so blurry you can't tell what in the fuck is happening. I think it may have actually been designed from the start to be able to sell games on still images and zero effort was put into anything else.
 
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