The most promising system?

[AtticGamer]

What do you think is the most promising system that was eventually discontinued by lack of company funds/company interest?

 

I think the CD32 was system with potential and was having lots of success but Commodore didn't have money to afford it. It was a 32-bit system with a 2x drive and expandability.

 

Other systems like this would be the Atari Falcon.

Edited August 20, 2008 by Atari_kid

[Atarifever]

Nokia N-Gage. Doesn't quite count though, as they gave it something like 3 years of strong support and then pushed the hardware forward into a new product line (so it doesn't even really count as discontinued). Still, the original should have gotten more support from the gaming community. Games like High Seize, Pathway to Glory, Worms World Party, and Pocket Kingdom show what could be accomplished with true portable online service (as in play anywhere, not just in hot spots). They also made some incredible games, and even gave away one great one for absolutely free.

 

The other system is the Atari Jaguar. Please hear me out. In my opinion, the Jaguar's problem was largely being ahead of its time, and having a dying company behind it. Look at the problems people complained about:

No sales in Japan.

Poor (large) controller that needed to be upgraded.

Few exclusives.

Most of its best games were also on computers.

 

Atari does this with no money and it is a failure. Microsoft does it with a lot of money and makes itself a console contender.

 

Also, if Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Iron Soldier, and Alien Vs Predator prove anything, it is that with the right people behind it, the Jag could put out some incredible stuff.

[fiddlepaddle]

The Amiga, another bright spot on the technology front slowly squandered away by inept management.

[vdub_bobby]

I'd say the Dreamcast: nice controllers, good-looking system, great (Sega) exclusives, nice technology. Died anyway.

 

The crash killed off a couple promising systems as well: the CV, 5200, and 7800 all had some potential and were crippled, to some extent, by the crash.

Edited August 19, 2008 by vdub_bobby

[liveinabin]

Yeah, the Dreamcast. That could really have been so much more given time. I mean, look at the PS2. That was just a slightly up-specced uglier Dreamcast.

Still, the VMUs were a pain in the ass but the idea was sound.

 

Ha. Not a convincing argument, was it?

[Lord Helmet]

I'll agree with the Dreamcast. Great 1st party games, online play, good controllers. Died way to early.

 

Aside from that, I'd say Colecovision. It would be interesting to see where Coleco would be had it not been for the crash and cabbage patch kids.

Edited August 19, 2008 by Lord Helmet

[Atarifever]

I hadn't thought of the Coleco, but yeah, that one had promise. Imagine what they could have pumped out of that thing by 1986 or so. Look at what the 2600 got in the late 80s and what INTV put out for the Intellivision and it's pretty clear what the Colecovision could have done.

[Artlover]

Add my vote for the Dreamcast.

[games-video]

Magnavox Odyssey, could have ruled the 70s:

[AtticGamer]

Odyssey?

Oh god no. That's almost an electronic board game.

Edited August 19, 2008 by Atari_kid

[nathanallan]

I agree with the Dreamcast, but also cast a vote for the Genesis. Why? It was networkable out of the box (with the EXT port on the first model and then port 2 on the second) and actually had a service once, X-Band. There could have been much more to the Genesis other than a reputation of riding the coattails of Nintendo but it was never realized. If Sega had pushed it like they pushed the Dreamcast, maybe a little more, then it would have been a more memorable system and not what it is. It has a lot of unrealized potential.

[Pixelboy]

I hadn't thought of the Coleco, but yeah, that one had promise. Imagine what they could have pumped out of that thing by 1986 or so. Look at what the 2600 got in the late 80s and what INTV put out for the Intellivision and it's pretty clear what the Colecovision could have done.

Indeed. Just by releasing a 16K RAM cartridge (for the expansion port) and implementing a bankswitching scheme in their carts, Coleco could have developed a new generation of bigger CV games. But they went with the ADAM instead. Oh, what could have been...

[Atari2008]

I'd have to concur with the Colecovision. It was only around for maybe 2 years or so but in that short time had made a splash. Who knows what it could've accomplished had it lived longer. I also think the 5200, with some nice alternative controllers and the release of the Jr. could've gone some interesting places as well. It was a very powerful machine.

[theking21083]

Magnavox Odyssey, could have ruled the 70s:

I'm sure you are just joking, but Odyssey had no potential seeing as all of the games were built in and you couldn't expand on it.

Edited August 19, 2008 by theking21083

[pixelated]

I'll admit I've always been a little critical about Sega, and I suppose you could call me a Nintendo fanboy...well I was once, anyway, but my adoration for the Dreamcast knows no bounds. It's ironic that this was Sega's last system, and it was also maybe their best. Even if it didn't sell enough, technically, they did so much right, after doing so much wrong (*ahem*32X, Sega CD). Some of my fondest memories of gaming happened on my friend's Dreamcast, and this is coming from someone who doesn't even worship the Genesis (though, yeah, I really liked it).

 

Another one would perhaps be the Sega Master System (good god! another Sega console). I love that thing. Sure, it was idiotic how they had the pause button on the #%&@ console itself, and there weren't enough good games, but what was there was so good and there was so much potential for more. It's weird getting into that now, because when I was a kid in the late '80s, the world was all about the NES, and I still love that console more than any other, except for the SNES. But man, looking back, the Master System was really advanced. You ever play Shinobi? I remember playing that at the local 711 back in like '87-'88. Loved that game. It did come to the NES, and it's okay, but then I played the SMS version and it was so much closer to the arcade, I was blown away. And this was only a couple of years ago!!

Wow, what a great console. People need to make more awesome homebrews for this baby so that it can continue to impress, decades after it died horribly.

[liveinabin]

The SMS was certainly impressive. I remember being totally blown away by Outrun and Space Harrier.

While it was eclipsed by the NES in the states, it did really well here (UK) blowing away Nintendo's sales (as did the Megadrive to the SNES).

[supercat]

I'm sure you are just joking, but Odyssey had no potential seeing as all of the games were built in and you couldn't expand on it.

 

The Odyssey was designed to use cartridges that consisted of nothing but jumpers to interconnect the various shape and motion generators in various ways. I'm not sure how far one could go beyond the games that Magnavox produced if one stayed within those constraints. On the other hand, if one added enough other circuitry, one could probably do just about anything one wanted in black and white (not sure if greyscale would be possible, but dithering probably would be). Add a speaker and one could add any desired sound effects as well.

[Artlover]

I'm sure you are just joking, but Odyssey had no potential seeing as all of the games were built in and you couldn't expand on it.

 

The Odyssey was designed to use cartridges that consisted of nothing but jumpers to interconnect the various shape and motion generators in various ways. I'm not sure how far one could go beyond the games that Magnavox produced if one stayed within those constraints. On the other hand, if one added enough other circuitry, one could probably do just about anything one wanted in black and white (not sure if greyscale would be possible, but dithering probably would be). Add a speaker and one could add any desired sound effects as well.

http://www.pong-story.com/odyssey.htm

 

Odyssey’s cartridges contain no components: they are basically wirejumper sets. When plugging a cartridge into the console, internal diode logic circuits are interconnected in different ways to produce the desired result. As a matter of fact, the Odyssey contains everything to make a game based around a ball, one or two paddles representing the players, and a central or off-side vertical line which serves as a net or a wall. The cartridges act to connect the machine’s diode logic circuitry to set the aspect and the position of the vertical line (normally centered for ping pong and tennis but located on the left or on the middle for handball and volleyball respectively, or not displayed at all for Chase games and gun games), and to determine the interaction between the ball and the other graphic objects: bounce or erase either a player or a ball spot when there is a collision with a player or the central line (a player could even be erased after a collision with the ball). During the winter of ’72 – ’73 Ralph Baer designed several advanced cartridges equipped with some additional active components so as to add some more realistic features to the Odyssey. Unfortunately, Magnavox chose not to go along with these new ideas. Recently, Ralph rebuilt two active cartridges. One plays Tennis with sound effects, the other is a form of Squash with sound and an active wall which moves from left to right, thus increasing the game difficulty.

 

[Wickeycolumbus]

I'm sure you are just joking, but Odyssey had no potential seeing as all of the games were built in and you couldn't expand on it.

 

The Odyssey was designed to use cartridges that consisted of nothing but jumpers to interconnect the various shape and motion generators in various ways. I'm not sure how far one could go beyond the games that Magnavox produced if one stayed within those constraints. On the other hand, if one added enough other circuitry, one could probably do just about anything one wanted in black and white (not sure if greyscale would be possible, but dithering probably would be). Add a speaker and one could add any desired sound effects as well.

http://www.pong-story.com/odyssey.htm

 

Odyssey’s cartridges contain no components: they are basically wirejumper sets. When plugging a cartridge into the console, internal diode logic circuits are interconnected in different ways to produce the desired result. As a matter of fact, the Odyssey contains everything to make a game based around a ball, one or two paddles representing the players, and a central or off-side vertical line which serves as a net or a wall. The cartridges act to connect the machine’s diode logic circuitry to set the aspect and the position of the vertical line (normally centered for ping pong and tennis but located on the left or on the middle for handball and volleyball respectively, or not displayed at all for Chase games and gun games), and to determine the interaction between the ball and the other graphic objects: bounce or erase either a player or a ball spot when there is a collision with a player or the central line (a player could even be erased after a collision with the ball). During the winter of ’72 – ’73 Ralph Baer designed several advanced cartridges equipped with some additional active components so as to add some more realistic features to the Odyssey. Unfortunately, Magnavox chose not to go along with these new ideas. Recently, Ralph rebuilt two active cartridges. One plays Tennis with sound effects, the other is a form of Squash with sound and an active wall which moves from left to right, thus increasing the game difficulty.

 

 

Someone (david winter?) also recreated the round ball generator, which generated a compleatly round ball instead of the normal square one.

 

I also nominate the odyssey, all of the pongs that came after it were inferior.

 

EDIT:

Also, the pokemon mini, if they released mario and zelda games, it would have been the best handheld ever. Also, there are hints in the system's internal eeprom that lead you to believe that the project started as a gameboy mini and got dumbed down in to a pokemon system. The first 4 bytes in the eeprom are "GBMN" which many people believe means Gameboy Mini.

Edited August 20, 2008 by Wickeycolumbus

[theking21083]

Yeah but basicly all you can do with the Odyssey is tweak it to make some minor differences. You really can't be too inovative with it. Maybe somebody could make some different ball games but in the end it's all the same thing. Just like the different versions of Pong.

[JamesD]

There are so many different systems that might qualify that I'm not sure what I'd choose.

 

The Tandy CoCo. Tandy almost killed it with lack of support. They killed off an early upgraded version with a real serial port and RAM drive. Then they drug out development for and stripped down the CoCo3.

 

The European equivalent, the Tano Dragon is another candidate. The company had prototypes for a couple professional machines already working and one on display at computer shows when it went into receivership. One had built in 3.5" drives and the other had dual 6809 CPUs. I think if the company hadn't gone under they would have done pretty well. They were much more ambitious at development than Tandy... although some of the accessories were slow to market. They were even trying to break into the US market and it had real potential.

 

The Adam had serious potential but including the printer and a tape drive that accidentally erased tapes hurt them. I think the latter stalled sales and the crash finished the job. I had a friend who had tapes get erased and it the machine got returned. I'm guessing retailers had visions of a repeat of the TS1000.

 

The Commodore Plus 4. What was supposed to be an inexpensive machine got blown into something it was never intended to be and it's fate was sealed by going up against the C64.

 

The Commodore portable that got axed before it was ever released. It would have given the Tandy 100 fits in the market.

 

The Amiga... oh man... talk about mismanagement. Duel CPU boards, DSP, more advanced graphices.... all canceled by management.

[Wickeycolumbus]

Yeah but basicly all you can do with the Odyssey is tweak it to make some minor differences. You really can't be too inovative with it. Maybe somebody could make some different ball games but in the end it's all the same thing. Just like the different versions of Pong.

 

Not true, you could add more spot generators to the carts and other things as supercat has already pointed out

 

Im sure that if you spent enough time on it, you could generate people like shapes.

[theking21083]

Yeah but basicly all you can do with the Odyssey is tweak it to make some minor differences. You really can't be too inovative with it. Maybe somebody could make some different ball games but in the end it's all the same thing. Just like the different versions of Pong.

 

Not true, you could add more spot generators to the carts and other things as supercat has already pointed out

 

Im sure that if you spent enough time on it, you could generate people like shapes.

I still wouldn't call that promising.

[RangerG]

The Colecovision really had promise. It is still a great system, but it and the the 5200 really had less than 2 years of support. Atari it seems was already on to the 7800, but Coleco was fully behing the Colecovision. It would have had the money of Cabbage Patch Kids and the Super Module ready to compete for several more years. Adam and the crash ended these plans.

[dreamcastrip]

I'd vote for Dreamcast, Saturn, Jaguar and Adam.