Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

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Sut
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Re: Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

Postby Sut » September 16th, 2016, 3:45 pm

Definitely the Action Max. I picked it up from a car boot for £2, I would struggle to say I got my money's worth from it. For anyone who's never played this 'console' it uses VHS tapes as the game medium. So imagine every FMV game you've played on the Sega CD or 3DO and try to imagine even less interactivity. The video stays the same regardless whether you hit the targets or not, so your actions have no results on the video, meaning your watching the same footage over and over. You'll complete the games everytime, your just competing with yourself for high score and trying to stay awake.
The system merely counts your score of successful hits, truly, truly bad. The only positive thing I can say is that I managed to sell it on for £15 resulting in a handsome profit !

Re: The 32x. It gets a bad rap these days but it did deliver what it promised. Games you couldn't play on your Sega or Nintendo.
The 32x 3D games may not have particularly aged well but they were cool for the time. Like many who weren't into PC's at the time 32x Doom was the first FPS I played and despite its obvious limitations and shortcomings it still plays a fun game of Doom.
Virtua Racing Deluxe is the best playing version of Virtua Racing (Yes IMO better than the Saturn and PS2 ports).
Shadow Squadron, Star Wars and Virtua Fighter are well worth playing and they all run smoothly. Metal head is a fun game if you can forgive it's technical limitations but at the time of release - pretty impressive despite those South Park style talking heads !
What surprised me with the 32x is how poor it can be at 2D and unfortunately many third party releases had Sega CD syndrome, ie slightly jazzed up 2D 16-bit ports.

On the flipside though some good 2D games are the ports of After Burner and Space Harrier which are fantastic. Blackthorne is one of the best games I've ever played. Chaotix and Kolibri have some neat graphical touches and are rather experimental concepts worth visiting.

It has a small library of 40 games if you count the CD titles. But I would say you will find a quarter of it's games are worth owning. 25%+ good game ratio ain't too bad is it ?

goldenband
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Re: Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

Postby goldenband » September 16th, 2016, 3:55 pm

Funny, the 3DO is the fifth-gen console I play the second-most, after PlayStation. A lot of those 3DO > PS1 and Saturn ports were botched to varying degrees: Psychic Detective has big cuts, Star Fighter has graphical downgrades, etc. I don't do PC gaming so I wouldn't know much about those, but I've read that even some of the PC ports are flawed, e.g. Killing Time which got substantially rewritten and lost a lot of its charm.

I have to agree that the ColecoVision is probably at the bottom of my list. The controllers are horrific, the graphic architecture is so generic (pretty much the same as MSX, TI-99/4A, SG-1000, and several other platforms), and the sound chip has no bass register and square waves get pretty old fast. Plus the hardware is fragile and notoriously failure-prone.

It's a shame since it's got some good games, but I have no interest in playing them on the actual CV hardware (which I do own). I used to want to see SG-1000 ports on the CV, but nowadays I'd almost rather see games ported the other way!

DaHeckIzDat
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Re: Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

Postby DaHeckIzDat » September 16th, 2016, 4:41 pm

Hate to say it, because I actually really like it, but the WiiU. It's got some awesome games and had a ton of potential, but it didn't go anywhere. I've only had it half a year, and it's already going to be irrelevant as soon as the NX comes out.

Wallyworld
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Re: Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

Postby Wallyworld » September 16th, 2016, 6:14 pm

3DO was a good console in its day but has probably aged the worst of any console. Not a single shmup in the entire library. Even the Jaguar had a few shmups.

Breaker
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Re: Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

Postby Breaker » September 16th, 2016, 11:31 pm

I can't explain why, but threads like this always make me want to buy a Jaguar...

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BlasteroidAli
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Re: Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

Postby BlasteroidAli » September 17th, 2016, 7:05 am

The GAME stick.
As soon as it was released it was out of date. If you have a mobile phone you can get most of the games on it. I keep thinking it is the one console that rules them all then I read the previous post about the action max. A vhs console. It just sounds so appalling.
I remember when they were saying that the android consoles would take over. This was conclusive proof that they would not.
They tried valiently to get it working as a games system but it had two things against it. First the controller was atrocious. All spungy and juddery. Secondly and probably most damning was that it was under powered by the time it was released. It had a dual core processor to keep the heat down. Unfortunately everything else was released for quad code. This mean that it could not play the more modern games.

I now have fire tv which is pretty much the same as the gs but is more powerful. It runs all the games but it is android and for the most part the games are garbage.

brendand
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Re: Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

Postby brendand » September 17th, 2016, 8:04 am

I don't agree with the 3do ,Wonderswan or Saturn post all of those have some good games you just need to look harder! you can do alot worse then those 3! now i do agree with the Game.Com terrible machine only 20 games on it

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scotland
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Re: Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

Postby scotland » September 17th, 2016, 9:05 am

BlasteroidAli wrote: I now have fire tv which is pretty much the same as the gs but is more powerful. It runs all the games but it is android and for the most part the games are garbage.


Glad to have your opinion on this. I was in need of a streaming device, and thought maybe this would be an option. At this stage in my life, whether its multicarts, Steam sales, Android devices - I have more money than time to game. When I was younger, it was the opposite. I would play a game for hours, whether it was a good, bad, or mediocre game, because I had so few. Now adding a game in my collection is like picking up a pretty shell on the beach after you already have a lot. Its definitely coloring my opinions.

brendand wrote:I don't agree with the 3do ,Wonderswan or Saturn post all of those have some good games you just need to look harder! you can do alot worse then those 3! now i do agree with the Game.Com terrible machine only 20 games on it


Same thing for my opinion on the Colecovision and the Saturn. I am not dismissing the systems, the game library, or the fans who love those systems. Its great for everyone to have different favorites - its why Baskin Robbins has more than chocolate and vanilla, right. In fact, if you are a fan, tell us about the game you love and why. I would not only enjoy reading some of your reader reviews or comments on the game and the system, but I just enjoy someone who loves the same hobby I do, video games, but maybe loves it in a different way. Its like when SpiceWare comes around and posts. Its just neat, and I enjoy his posts, even though I am not part of the homebrew community.

Its just for me, I would rather sink both my time and money into consoles I really enjoy. The fun of a library tends to feed off itself. Zelda on the NES is better because its in such great company. Neutopia on the TG16 would not get the playtime it does, except its on the TG16 with a bunch of games I also like. Even if I found a handful of great Colecovision or Saturn games, they would be the exception and not the rule to the system, and I probably still would not plug them in all that often. The 2600 and NES and Genesis and N64 and Gamecube and some other systems get plugged in all the time and when I do, I am not even sure what game I'm going to play. Its not like, well, here are those 1 or 2 good games, guess I'll play those. Its here is a shelf of good games, from which I'll choose whatever strikes my fancy today. It might not even be an A game, even though my time is limited, I'll explore the C games with a better mindset...hey look, its TMNT...cowabunga!

PAAGaming
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Re: Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

Postby PAAGaming » September 23rd, 2016, 3:22 pm

If I was to state my least favourite people would say I was trolling. However I can say it's a CD based console.

Sut
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Re: Most Worthless Console You have Ever Owned?

Postby Sut » September 23rd, 2016, 4:33 pm

PAAGaming wrote:If I was to state my least favourite people would say I was trolling. However I can say it's a CD based console.


Hmm I'm guessing the PS1 ?


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