Sins of the Silicon and Console Curios - The Bear and Badger

cockbeard

Still unsure whether it has aged well or badly, very desirable bit of kit back in the day, but now the height of it is a little offputting

Diluted Dante

I wasn't saying it was, I thought he'd missed it as I wouldn't have put it under portable, since the Mega Drive aspect isn't portable.

cockbeard

Not sure I understand, think we're at crossed purposes here

The multimega has a cartridge slot so it's just as portable as the cd bit, though obviously the telly isn't portable, but yeah you can easily run it round mates houses for a blast of WonderDog

Diluted Dante

I didn't realise he had the Multi-Mega in the list, because I would have looked for it under consoles.

A Multi-Mega is as portable as Mega Drive for playing games.

The only actual portable aspect of it is that it can be used as a portable CD player, but I'd argue this doesn't make it a portable, it's still a console.

cockbeard

Ahh, I'm with you, no screen, no portable

If MultiMega is portable then so is the GameCube, by virtue of it's size and it's handle

[Deleted User]

By that reckoning they are all portable, except the OG Xbox as that needed heavy goods machinery to move it around.

Yossarian

It needed to be big to fit the awesomeness of Halo inside. It's basic physics.

[Deleted User]

I do remember around then there was a run of attachable screens and battery packs to make consoles portable.
It started with the tiny PS1 slim iirc.
51XA739GA6L._SX425_.jpg

GC

Xbox lol

cockbeard

Yossarian wrote:

It needed to be big to fit the awesomeness of Halo inside. It's basic physics.

hahahahaha

Of course you'd say that

[Deleted User]

I have that screen for my PSone, Live, but no battery pack.

Remember when companies were doing carry-cases for the whole shebang? I often wondered how many of them got sold.

retroking1981

We had that GCN one set up behind the counter for a few days when I worked at GAME, was pretty cool.

That Xbox one looks ridiculous, the screen is about the same size as the other two, they didn't even utilise the extra space.

Afaik Sony were the only ones that were official.

Blue Swirl

I lusted after the PSone screen. Didn't realise there was a battery pack, too. Neat.

Blue Swirl

Didn't notice the discussion about the portability of the Multi Mega and such.

I've thought about this before, and I think it comes down to a difference between "portable" and "mobile". Way back in the days of CRT TVs, a portable set just meant "one that wouldn't put you in traction if you tried to pick it up". In terms of playing MD games, the Multi Mega is more portable than a normal MD console, but it's not mobile. If you want to play MD games in a mobile fashion, you'd need a Nomad.

I definitely spend way too much time thinking about pointless things.

Blue Swirl

Two interesting machines bought to my attention by the latest issue of Retro Gamer. Behold, the VHS-based Action Max and View-Master.

Here's the Action Max, by a company called Worlds of Wonder.

The system would sit between your VHS and TV, and allow you to interact with specifically produced tapes. All games were controlled with a light gun. As the "games" were on tapes, there wasn't any true interactive element to them. The unit would just display a score on the front.

Another company had a go at a VHS-based gaming system. Here's the Interactive Vision from View-Master. (The same company that made those stereoscopic image viewers of the same name, I think.)

Check out dat controller, yo.

Each system featured less than ten games, so a potentially easy "full set" for someone considering a collection of VHS games.

nick_md

Think I borrowed that first one off a mate, or at least had a vhs based lightgun game so similar. Was a flying around cliffs shooting stuff game. Was probably shite but kiddo me enjoyed it.

Yossarian

That put me in mind of a car racing thing I tried at a friend's house which involved a plastic car that you moved in front of a video of actual cars. It was pretty shite. I tried to find a picture of it and failed, but did find this which I also have vague memories of:

[Deleted User]

Tomy Turbo was great but it was a preschool toy really, it didn't really involve any actual gameplay.

RedDave2

Liveinadive wrote:

Tomy Turbo was great but it was a preschool toy really, it didn't really involve any actual gameplay.

Yeah, edge only gave it a 7 out of ten back in the day. They said that if only you could stop and talk to the other drivers, form alliances...

Yossarian

I wonder who wrote that line and if they are mercilessly teased about it to this day?

Blue Swirl

Yossarian wrote:

That put me in mind of a car racing thing I tried at a friend's house which involved a plastic car that you moved in front of a video of actual cars. It was pretty shite.

I have vague memories of something like that too. I'm pretty sure it was SEGA branded but I can't find anything about it.

Yossarian

Found it: http://www.consoledatabase.com/consoleinfo/videodriver/

Someone's even done an update which replaces the plastic car with a sprite:

davyK

There's a review of the original hardware by Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Blue Swirl

Something else I discovered thanks to Retro Gamer magazine: the Expansion Module 1 for the Colecovision. The Colecovision had an expansion port on the front, below the cartridge slot. Various peripherals were created for the port, including one that essentially turned the Colecovision into a Coleco Adam, Coleco's ill-fated computer follow up the Colecovision.

What makes the Expansion Module 1 interesting? It allowed the Colecovision to play Atari 2600 games, giving it access to the biggest games library of the day, and scoring a massive point over Atari. Atari took Coleco to court, but the court ruled in Coleco's favour, as the 2600 internals were all off-the-shelf parts. It's hard to imagine something similar happening today - if Microsoft released a PlayStation dongle for the Xbox One, Sony would land on them like a legal ton of bricks.

The only downside to the Expansion Module 1? It's pretty damn big, and definitely makes the Colecovision visually unappealing.

colecovision%20module%201%20full.jpg

The module.

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Attached to a Colecovision.

It's also worth noting I reckon that this came before the MegaCD/32X and when "console add-on" became a dirty word!

retroking1981

Blue Swirl wrote:

It's hard to imagine something similar happening today - if Microsoft released a PlayStation dongle for the Xbox One, Sony would land on them like a legal ton of bricks.

Mad thing is Sony lost the court case against Bleem in the late 90s.

Yossarian

Surely it would just be an emulator which is legal?

cockbeard

It's only legal until you add the system identity bit, that's only legal if you own the console that you clone

davyK

I knew about the 2600 adaptor - can remember the legal kerfuffle about it.

The Coleco had quite a few bits and pieces you could add to it if memory serves but I don't think much of it ever made an appearance that I can remember.

Blue Swirl

More random gubbins that I discovered when I probably could have been doing something productive. (Or at least playing games, rather than reading about them.)

Remember the Game.com, the black and white handheld from Tiger that had internet features and a touchscreen? Fairly space age for the dark days of 1997. Despite having a large list of licensed titles, it sold like a paper bag full of dog sick. Regardless, Tiger decided that not one, but two hardware revisions was a totally legit business decision.

Here's the original game.com, which apparently included two cartridge slots.

This is the first revision, the game.com Pocket Pro, which dropped the second cart slot and reduced the number of AA batteries required from four to two.
tiger-game-com-pocket-pro-backlight-handheld-with-sonic-jam-game-sega-1998-95f174875e8c6cb8249b120357d3afba.jpg

tiger-game-com-pocket-pro-backlight-handheld-with-sonic-jam-game-sega-1998-95f174875e8c6cb8249b120357d3afba.jpg

And here's the final version, the game.com Pocket, which dropped the screen light and added four translucent colours.

Talking about the licensed titles, I remember Resident Evil being on the system, but there was a lot more. Tiger managed to get some big names on board, including Duke Nukem, Fighters Megamix (!), Jurassic Park, Mortal Kombat, and a Sonic game. According to the heavily "citation needed"-ed Wikipedia article, cancelled games included Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (!), Command and Conquer: Red Alert, and Metal Gear Solid.

All I can surmise is that someone at Tiger Electronics gave amazing handjobs.

[Deleted User]

Ashens did a good review of that.

davyK

Is and was a pile of shite. I remember it in the shops and its blur-o-vision display was only fit for the Lights Out game.

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