I suppose in many cases it's down to opinion whether or not any given machine flopped. I mean, some people no doubt say the N64 or Gamecube flopped, since they both lacked good third party support (both machines had some really good third party games, but in both cases it was mainly first or second party games that shone on the machines) and both consoles sold poorly in comparison to the winner in their respective format wars (Playstation 1 and Playstation 2, respectively). But on the other hand, both machines have a lot of loyal users even today, who (rightly) point out that the machines still have some of the best games not only of their generation, but of all time. And both machines did sell very well* (N64 - 32.93 million, Gamecube - 21.74 million**).
Even Jaguar fans, from what I understand, don't consider their machine to be a flop, just very, very unfairly ignored by most games companies in it's heyday. And Dreamcast fans are as loyal to their machine as any fans could be. And fair enough, the Dreamcast does have some very good games, and the Jaguar versions of AvP and Tempest 2000 are supposed to be legendary (I can't comment myself, as I've never seen a Jaguar or yet emulated it).
So what machines do you think were a flop? I'd say the Sinclair QL, though I admit that I've never owned one, so I might be wrong. And surely the Sinclair 2000, or whatever it was called, the PC released by Amstrad, was a flop. And that Amstrad e-mail phone answering thing that played Spectrum games, was that a flop? No one I know every even saw one, so I think it probably was...
** Though these otherwise very good figures pale when compared to the winner of each ones generation; N64 - 32.93 million compared to the Playstation 1 - 102.49 million, and Gamecube - 21.74 million versus 154.2 million
I dunno what I`d call a flop. Maybe a system that after a year or two has no more software support.If after a year or so you`re left with a handful of decent games and no prospect of anything new you would be a bit pissed I guess. A lot of these machines cost several hundred pounds.. I had a +3 and that could be considered a flop I guess. I also had a multiface 3, so I just saved the games to disk from tape...
I bought a QL. But I bought it post-flop, probably in about 1988 or so for a fiver at a school fete. I got quite a lot of use out of it, used the Psion software for writing GCSE assignments. I wrote a small terminal emulator in QL BASIC (which turned out to be a bit of a challenge because the QL I had, had the early buggy version of BASIC, but I did get the terminal emulator to work) which I used with an acoustic coupler BBS to use bulletin boards. I did butcher the horrible backwards BT style socket for the RS232 so I could connect a standard DB25 cable. The QL made for a decent machine for going online with a BBS.
I wish I still had it (and the acoustic coupler) but both long since disappeared over various house moves.
Argh. 200 quid down the pan. The 32X as well wasnt it? All those full motion video games that people were crying out to be banned too...
The 32X was Evil, Sega practically bankrupted themselves with it, and rumour has it the 32X is part responsible for the Saturns poor advertising campaigns. As apparently a lot of the budget that would've been used for pushing the Saturn was instead used on pushing that worthless piece of crap out like 2 months before the Saturns launch.
Remember how worthless the Saturns ads were, the Daytona ad was ridiculously cheap and nasty, as was the Virtua Fighter, and Sonic R ads.
I cant remember how bad the Saturn adverts where (Maybe that proves ya point). I can remember the Megadrive ones cyber razer cut or something I think. I thought they was kinda cool at the time.
No one I know every even saw one, so I think it probably was...
Down here you couldn't get away from them. Them things were in every single shop down town, with a big poster saying, "Plays Sinclair ZX Spectrum games!" Wish I'd asked to buy the posters from them.
Lots of people would gather round them saying how crap it was and that they all used email on their PCs anyway. A few people would add, "I hear that the games are good though!"
Saw one at the carboot 3 or 4 weeks ago. ?5.00. No ta!
PS: I've got a 32X but I just don't know how to use it. Got lots of games for it too such as Sonic and Knuckles (Oh, that's not it. It might be Chaotix), StarWars Arcade, Doom and more. Looks nice, but I need some instructions. :S
Bought it cheap from rumbelows when they were closing down.
Played Wolfenstein, Doom, AVP and Tempest to death.
Also loved iron soldier.
The thing about the jag is that it's a good idea crippled by cheap design choices, so the programmer really had to know their stuff. Add to that atari's crap development kits and support and it was dead man walking.
In plain 2d performance it really does take some beating though.
Isn't just a case of plug it into the top of the megadrive, plug the game in top of that, and away you go?
Tried that. Doesn't seem to be that simple. It's got an input for a power supply, plus a sort of cable that links one power supply to another. It's also S-Video out, I think. Me confused. Do I use the plastic seperator that comes with it? It seems to wobble about quite a bit. Hmmmmmmmm.
How many power supplies does it need to work? One, Two, Three including te Mega CD that I have attached? Where do I take the TV out to? Mega CD, Mega Drive, 32X or S-video. Seperator or no seperator. Too difficult for lil moi!
I'm sure the Saturn could quite easily administer that beating as well, then stamp on its' head when it's down ;)
Quite right. Sega designed the Saturn around it being a monster of a sprite machine (like a Neo Geo on speed), and it's probably the best sprite-handling console ever made as it had so many custom chips dedicated to it. I've read that it was better than the Dreamcast at handling 2D.
It's why it was a beast to develop for for many development houses getting into the burgeoning 3D market. It was only after Sony showcased the PlayStation that Sega realised it was in a 3D war, not a sprite war, that it threw chips and additional CPU's at the Saturn to try and be in the same ballpark. PlayStation had the dedicated hardware for 3D, Saturn didn't.
I've never really understood it, but a lot of reports refer to Saturn performing 'distorted sprites ' to render it's 3D graphics. Similarly PlayStation performed 'distorted 3D' to display sprite-based games.
I *really* wanted an Atari Falcon 030, and even sold my Amiga 500 (I kept my ST though) to partly fund it, but delays, price increases etc. eventually scuppered the idea. In hindsight, not getting one was one of the luckiest escapes I ever had, but I really missed my Amiga. Fortunately, I picked up an A600 a few years later, and an A1200 very shortly afterwards :)
I wanted a Falcon, but I had also developed an obsession with cars when it came out and the cost of running a Cavalier SRi meant the Falcon idea was forgotten, and I sold my STFM..
I`ve never bought a computer/console that flopped. I nearly spent ?300? I think it was 300 or maybe 400 on a cd32. I had lucky escape I guess :)
Anybody buy a computer/console only to see it fail? I imagine some people on here bought a Sam...
Musta been a pisser to see ya machine die an early death :(
I remember deliberating about wether to buy a Saturn or a Playstation. Luckily I played Wipeout on the Playstation which was imho the better game than Sega Rally. Both being part of the launch lineup on said 2 machines...
i bought a cd 32 on launch, i new it was going badly when the 'cd32 mag' stopped publishing after the 3rd edition, and sent my sub back.
although its the only console i wish i had never got rid of.
Quite right. Sega designed the Saturn around it being a monster of a sprite machine (like a Neo Geo on speed), and it's probably the best sprite-handling console ever made as it had so many custom chips dedicated to it. I've read that it was better than the Dreamcast at handling 2D.
Aye was it Dragon Force? 200 sprites onscreen at once with virtually no slowdown?
It's why it was a beast to develop for for many development houses getting into the burgeoning 3D market. It was only after Sony showcased the PlayStation that Sega realised it was in a 3D war, not a sprite war, that it threw chips and additional CPU's at the Saturn to try and be in the same ballpark. PlayStation had the dedicated hardware for 3D, Saturn didn't.
I though the saturns 3D was pretty much up to par with the PS titles that it shared, it's own 3D efforts were a little twitchy at times, and PS exclusive type games usually showcased 3D properties that pooped on our beloved giant black box. Thing that annoys me is the Saturn went down the pan just as companies were managing to squeeze the available 3D hardware of all it had and bring it up to par using just that. Prime example is the Saturn version of Resi-Evil, personally I think it was better than the PS1 version, even with reports of the hardware being noticably strained to achieve it, and of the colours being visibly drab and washed out compared to the PS version? I didn't really notice the difference, and I also didn't notice the machine struggling to cope in any way?
However it is very noticable that the Saturn 2D games were better, visibly, as well as with their content. The PS Capcom fighters especially suffered early on, and the SNK conversions were crap in comparison to the Neo-Geo versions, never mind the Saturn.
Now the thing that really annoyed me is Doom uses sprites, the only polygons it uses are the walls and obsticles, which are also plastered with pretty bog standard 2D textures, why was the Saturn version so crap? But the Saturn version of Exhumed (A shorter but much more technically advanced game for the time) shat on the PS version?
I've never really understood it, but a lot of reports refer to Saturn performing 'distorted sprites ' to render it's 3D graphics. Similarly PlayStation performed 'distorted 3D' to display sprite-based games.
Everything from back then seems distorted these days :lol:
I had a Vectrex when they were new, that flopped very quickly, so much so I went and bought another recently, one of the best things ive EVER bought!
I'm actually still surprised after all these years that the Vectrex did flop so soon, it's an awesome piece of kit. I had a mate who lived over the road when I was about 7 his dad had bought one and given it to him. He's still got it as far as I know? I remember him actually getting his copies of Spike and Rip-off as late as maybe 1989 or 1990. He even phoned me up to tell me about them, and I hadn't been round his house at the time for about 2 years :lol:
And that Amstrad e-mail phone answering thing that played Spectrum games, was that a flop? No one I know every even saw one, so I think it probably was...
Always made me laugh to see them on the desks in the fake reception / board room scenes in the first few series of The Apprentice.
I've never really understood it, but a lot of reports refer to Saturn performing 'distorted sprites ' to render it's 3D graphics. Similarly PlayStation performed 'distorted 3D' to display sprite-based games.
Both cheated when it came to texture-mapping. Neither did it in proper 3D.
The difference was the Playstation could resize a triangular texture to fit any shape of on-screen triangle. It sort of worked, but led to wonky lines when the texture was supposed to be a straight line 'into' the screen. It didn't apply perspective to the texture. It just squashed the texture to fit the shape in the 2D plane of the display. The way they got round it in later games was to dynamically sub-divide surfaces near the viewpoint into more polygons (allowing for perspective), and chop the texture up too, so that each bit got rendered separately and there was less overall distortion than if it was just one big triangle.
The Saturn worked with quadrilateral (square or rectangular) textures. These could actually look better than the Playstation's triangles if used for the walls in something like Doom; they wouldn't have perspective but they wouldn't have the odd skewed distortion along the diagonal split between two triangles. But most of the industry was working on complex triangular mesh 3D instead of cubes and corridors, and the Saturn's technology didn't suit.
The N64 did proper 3D, and could repeat texture patterns along a surface with no more effort; just not as many polygons as the Playstation.
I had a Vectrex when they were new, that flopped very quickly, so much so I went and bought another recently, one of the best things ive EVER bought!
The Vectrex is a great and unique little machine, but ultimately an evolutionary dead-end, because you can do just so much more with a raster display.
I have two of them (one of which has a dead power supply, but that's the only thing wrong with it). The Vectrex though was such a huge flop that I never even knew they existed until about 3 years ago!
... The Vectrex though was such a huge flop that I never even knew they existed until about 3 years ago!
Really? I remember lusting after them after seeing one in my mum's Grattans catalogue. (This was a few years before I discovered the lingerie section). :wink:
I've mentioned this before, but a firend of mine in primary school had a Vectrex and I loved playing it whenever I stayed at his place. His family were funeral directors, so were very well off and so, he pretty much had every game etc going for it, including the 3D viewer and light pen. I often wonder if he still has it all ;-)
As per another thread of mine, I've just got hold of a set of Hyperspin emulators and that has a seemingly full set of Vectrex games. I've only put it on once to see if it works ok, but when I've got the time, I'm going to put some serious gameing hours into those games :)
Minestorm and Clean Sweep are my fave versions of Asteroids, and Pac-Man, and the Vectrex versions of Beserk, and Scramble are class as well. I used to prefer playing Beserk and Scramble without the slides on the screen though.
Minestorm's the built in game as well, top notch choice if you ask me especially for the era it came out in! :D
Hmm well the only flop I ever really bought was a Mega CD unit for my Megadrive. That was rather pants with only about 2 games getting any regular play.
Could have been worse, you could have bought an Amstrad GX 4000 :)
I wouldn't mind one of those now, just for the sake of having one.
Wouldn't mind a PC Engine either, you could call that a flop, but only outside of Japan really. Can't even call it a European flop it never made it that far, and the only real one I've ever seen was in Microbyte (a long dead computer shop) it was a Japanese PC Engine not a TurboGFX. Those goons wanted 399 quid for it, and 60 quid per game, and this was 92/93 maybe?
I've never played a PC Engine game that was worth 60 quid...never, not even by the 1990's standards.
Wouldn't mind a PC Engine either, you could call that a flop, but only outside of Japan really. Can't even call it a European flop it never made it that far, and the only real one I've ever seen was in Microbyte (a long dead computer shop) it was a Japanese PC Engine not a TurboGFX. Those goons wanted 399 quid for it, and 60 quid per game, and this was 92/93 maybe?
There was a PC Engine in YorkCom (defunct York computer store) that always seemed to be demoing Drunken Master. Right up your street :D
There was a PC Engine in YorkCom (defunct York computer store) that always seemed to be demoing Drunken Master. Right up your street :D
You mean the kung fu master-a-like with the Bruce Lee looking geezer, the one with the really good graphics for the time with the huge sprites?
Nobody really knows the real name of that game I think, if it is the one you're on about? I've seen it as Drunken Master, China Warrior, Chu Man Fu, Fu Man Chu, and a couple of Japanese names that I can't remember or pronounce/spell :D
Anyway if it was that game it was basically nothing but a tech demo anyway, it's horrible to actually play :lol:
Actually now that I think about it Microbyte also had a Japanese Neo-Geo in there, they wanted 599 quid for that, and 199 per game, apart from World Heroes and Fatal fury they wanted 299 for those. I think the cheapest they had was League Bowling for 99 quid, and Magician lord for 150 (I understand before the Neo-Geo went CD based all the arcade tech was rammed inside those VHS recorder sized carts but still talk about steep) :o
Comments
Even Jaguar fans, from what I understand, don't consider their machine to be a flop, just very, very unfairly ignored by most games companies in it's heyday. And Dreamcast fans are as loyal to their machine as any fans could be. And fair enough, the Dreamcast does have some very good games, and the Jaguar versions of AvP and Tempest 2000 are supposed to be legendary (I can't comment myself, as I've never seen a Jaguar or yet emulated it).
So what machines do you think were a flop? I'd say the Sinclair QL, though I admit that I've never owned one, so I might be wrong. And surely the Sinclair 2000, or whatever it was called, the PC released by Amstrad, was a flop. And that Amstrad e-mail phone answering thing that played Spectrum games, was that a flop? No one I know every even saw one, so I think it probably was...
* Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_selling_consoles
** Though these otherwise very good figures pale when compared to the winner of each ones generation; N64 - 32.93 million compared to the Playstation 1 - 102.49 million, and Gamecube - 21.74 million versus 154.2 million
Happy days ;)
I wish I still had it (and the acoustic coupler) but both long since disappeared over various house moves.
The 32X was Evil, Sega practically bankrupted themselves with it, and rumour has it the 32X is part responsible for the Saturns poor advertising campaigns. As apparently a lot of the budget that would've been used for pushing the Saturn was instead used on pushing that worthless piece of crap out like 2 months before the Saturns launch.
Remember how worthless the Saturns ads were, the Daytona ad was ridiculously cheap and nasty, as was the Virtua Fighter, and Sonic R ads.
Down here you couldn't get away from them. Them things were in every single shop down town, with a big poster saying, "Plays Sinclair ZX Spectrum games!" Wish I'd asked to buy the posters from them.
Lots of people would gather round them saying how crap it was and that they all used email on their PCs anyway. A few people would add, "I hear that the games are good though!"
Saw one at the carboot 3 or 4 weeks ago. ?5.00. No ta!
PS: I've got a 32X but I just don't know how to use it. Got lots of games for it too such as Sonic and Knuckles (Oh, that's not it. It might be Chaotix), StarWars Arcade, Doom and more. Looks nice, but I need some instructions. :S
Taking of dodgy sega crap, and dodgy PC hybrids...
...Anyone remember the Mega-PC? Part 486, part Megadrive, all failure :D
Bought it cheap from rumbelows when they were closing down.
Played Wolfenstein, Doom, AVP and Tempest to death.
Also loved iron soldier.
The thing about the jag is that it's a good idea crippled by cheap design choices, so the programmer really had to know their stuff. Add to that atari's crap development kits and support and it was dead man walking.
In plain 2d performance it really does take some beating though.
Tried that. Doesn't seem to be that simple. It's got an input for a power supply, plus a sort of cable that links one power supply to another. It's also S-Video out, I think. Me confused. Do I use the plastic seperator that comes with it? It seems to wobble about quite a bit. Hmmmmmmmm.
How many power supplies does it need to work? One, Two, Three including te Mega CD that I have attached? Where do I take the TV out to? Mega CD, Mega Drive, 32X or S-video. Seperator or no seperator. Too difficult for lil moi!
I'm sure the Saturn could quite easily administer that beating as well, then stamp on its' head when it's down ;)
Quite right. Sega designed the Saturn around it being a monster of a sprite machine (like a Neo Geo on speed), and it's probably the best sprite-handling console ever made as it had so many custom chips dedicated to it. I've read that it was better than the Dreamcast at handling 2D.
It's why it was a beast to develop for for many development houses getting into the burgeoning 3D market. It was only after Sony showcased the PlayStation that Sega realised it was in a 3D war, not a sprite war, that it threw chips and additional CPU's at the Saturn to try and be in the same ballpark. PlayStation had the dedicated hardware for 3D, Saturn didn't.
I've never really understood it, but a lot of reports refer to Saturn performing 'distorted sprites ' to render it's 3D graphics. Similarly PlayStation performed 'distorted 3D' to display sprite-based games.
I wanted a Falcon, but I had also developed an obsession with cars when it came out and the cost of running a Cavalier SRi meant the Falcon idea was forgotten, and I sold my STFM..
Wish I had bought a Falcon when they were new, they're stupidly overpriced now... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ULTRA-RARE-VINTAGE-ATARI-FALCON-030-COMPUTER-MINT-/290663843198?pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&hash=item43acea457e
i bought a cd 32 on launch, i new it was going badly when the 'cd32 mag' stopped publishing after the 3rd edition, and sent my sub back.
although its the only console i wish i had never got rid of.
Aye was it Dragon Force? 200 sprites onscreen at once with virtually no slowdown?
I though the saturns 3D was pretty much up to par with the PS titles that it shared, it's own 3D efforts were a little twitchy at times, and PS exclusive type games usually showcased 3D properties that pooped on our beloved giant black box. Thing that annoys me is the Saturn went down the pan just as companies were managing to squeeze the available 3D hardware of all it had and bring it up to par using just that. Prime example is the Saturn version of Resi-Evil, personally I think it was better than the PS1 version, even with reports of the hardware being noticably strained to achieve it, and of the colours being visibly drab and washed out compared to the PS version? I didn't really notice the difference, and I also didn't notice the machine struggling to cope in any way?
However it is very noticable that the Saturn 2D games were better, visibly, as well as with their content. The PS Capcom fighters especially suffered early on, and the SNK conversions were crap in comparison to the Neo-Geo versions, never mind the Saturn.
Now the thing that really annoyed me is Doom uses sprites, the only polygons it uses are the walls and obsticles, which are also plastered with pretty bog standard 2D textures, why was the Saturn version so crap? But the Saturn version of Exhumed (A shorter but much more technically advanced game for the time) shat on the PS version?
Everything from back then seems distorted these days :lol:
I'm actually still surprised after all these years that the Vectrex did flop so soon, it's an awesome piece of kit. I had a mate who lived over the road when I was about 7 his dad had bought one and given it to him. He's still got it as far as I know? I remember him actually getting his copies of Spike and Rip-off as late as maybe 1989 or 1990. He even phoned me up to tell me about them, and I hadn't been round his house at the time for about 2 years :lol:
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
The difference was the Playstation could resize a triangular texture to fit any shape of on-screen triangle. It sort of worked, but led to wonky lines when the texture was supposed to be a straight line 'into' the screen. It didn't apply perspective to the texture. It just squashed the texture to fit the shape in the 2D plane of the display. The way they got round it in later games was to dynamically sub-divide surfaces near the viewpoint into more polygons (allowing for perspective), and chop the texture up too, so that each bit got rendered separately and there was less overall distortion than if it was just one big triangle.
The Saturn worked with quadrilateral (square or rectangular) textures. These could actually look better than the Playstation's triangles if used for the walls in something like Doom; they wouldn't have perspective but they wouldn't have the odd skewed distortion along the diagonal split between two triangles. But most of the industry was working on complex triangular mesh 3D instead of cubes and corridors, and the Saturn's technology didn't suit.
The N64 did proper 3D, and could repeat texture patterns along a surface with no more effort; just not as many polygons as the Playstation.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
The Vectrex is a great system!
I done a bit of a feature for it on Retro Aylum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUw6Dgc8VL0&feature=youtube_gdata_player
The Vectrex is a great and unique little machine, but ultimately an evolutionary dead-end, because you can do just so much more with a raster display.
I have two of them (one of which has a dead power supply, but that's the only thing wrong with it). The Vectrex though was such a huge flop that I never even knew they existed until about 3 years ago!
Really? I remember lusting after them after seeing one in my mum's Grattans catalogue. (This was a few years before I discovered the lingerie section). :wink:
As per another thread of mine, I've just got hold of a set of Hyperspin emulators and that has a seemingly full set of Vectrex games. I've only put it on once to see if it works ok, but when I've got the time, I'm going to put some serious gameing hours into those games :)
Minestorm's the built in game as well, top notch choice if you ask me especially for the era it came out in! :D
I wouldn't mind one of those now, just for the sake of having one.
Wouldn't mind a PC Engine either, you could call that a flop, but only outside of Japan really. Can't even call it a European flop it never made it that far, and the only real one I've ever seen was in Microbyte (a long dead computer shop) it was a Japanese PC Engine not a TurboGFX. Those goons wanted 399 quid for it, and 60 quid per game, and this was 92/93 maybe?
I've never played a PC Engine game that was worth 60 quid...never, not even by the 1990's standards.
You mean the kung fu master-a-like with the Bruce Lee looking geezer, the one with the really good graphics for the time with the huge sprites?
Nobody really knows the real name of that game I think, if it is the one you're on about? I've seen it as Drunken Master, China Warrior, Chu Man Fu, Fu Man Chu, and a couple of Japanese names that I can't remember or pronounce/spell :D
Anyway if it was that game it was basically nothing but a tech demo anyway, it's horrible to actually play :lol:
Actually now that I think about it Microbyte also had a Japanese Neo-Geo in there, they wanted 599 quid for that, and 199 per game, apart from World Heroes and Fatal fury they wanted 299 for those. I think the cheapest they had was League Bowling for 99 quid, and Magician lord for 150 (I understand before the Neo-Geo went CD based all the arcade tech was rammed inside those VHS recorder sized carts but still talk about steep) :o
No wonder the idiots went bust :lol:
Me too, and that Burning Rubber game really is amazing in looks/sounds 'n' movement. Worth it just for that.