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Ten Horrible Game Consoles, Most Of Which You've Never Known

Mattelhyperscan Whenever the gaming community sets up a top ten list of the worst gaming consoles of all times, the list is pretty standard: Panasonic 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Nintendo Virtual Boy, and sometimes the Sega 32X (if add-ons are included).  PC World takes a different tactic and has a top ten list of the worst game consoles that are actually terrible.  They are so terrible, in fact, that you've probably haven't heard of most of them.  What the heck is a Mattel Hyperscan?

The Hyperscan was a marketer's dream--a product that incorporated video games and the game card collecting craze. For every Hyperscan game available on CD, Mattel also sold booster packs of paper trading cards, each card embedded with an RFID chip. During a playing session, the user could scan the trading cards to load new characters or abilities into the game. Theoretically, Mattel could have continued to make and sell new cards forever, putting an essentially infinite tail on sales of any game.

Signature problems: Flimsy construction. Terrible games. Flaky RFID reader. Extremely long loading times.

Redeeming features: First game console to use RFID technology. Admittedly, Mattel set its sights low for this system, so its fall to earth was far less spectacular than it could have been.

Yes, old favorites like the Philips CD-i and Gizmondo are included, but then there's the Gakken TV Boy, RDI Halcyon, and the pathetic Tandy/Memorex VIS, a CD-based multimedia monster that sported a blazing, uh, 286 CPU.  How many CD games can you play on the VIS in your lifetime?  One, if you hurry.

(via Vintage Computing)

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