What was the worst system ever made?

[CatPix]

E5Frog showed it could do things right. I'm not sure the Channel F deserves to be called the worst, as it was the first. Early Atari games were barely better, and it's mostly only a lucky accident that the Atari TIA conception allowed for more graphic freedom than on the Channel F and the Videopac.

Also the Channel F worked with half of the Atari  RAM as well. In fact, it's quite impressive what they managed to make games for it, period.

The worst home console of the second gen has to be the RCA Studio II. Released later than the 2600, yet, games that were barely more impressive that PC -50X pong games, black and white, abysmal control scheme... it takes the cake. Even the 1292 APVS is better, as it had better graphics, real controllers (even if clunky ones ) and way more games.

Edited May 2, 2022 by CatPix

[Hwlngmad]

20 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

I was watching some high score attempts for the Mattel Aquarius earlier, and holy gee. Move over game.com, step aside Cougar Boy, stand back Supervision, take a seat PlayStation 5, get out of the way CDi, we are talking Mattel Hyperscan levels of badness here.

 

Look at this:

 

I mean, LOOK AT THIS!

 

 

It’s always embarrassing when you forget to implement enemy collision detection.

 

 

And then listen to this!

 

 

To be fair, not all of the games look this atrocious, but most of them are abject and horrid clones of popular arcade games. There were apparently only ten official Mattel releases, of which Utopia and Treasure of Tarmin were the only real good ones, and not many more third party releases.

It lasted for FOUR MONTHS on the open market before Mattel paid Radofin, the manufacturer, to TAKE BACK THE MARKETING RIGHTS.

 

How is it that the Intellivision was so advanced and worked so well and this “computer” manufactured by the same company, Radofin, was so awful? Every official game released for this thing was already on the Intellivision in better form except arguably Utopia.

 

To be fair, I have never played a real one, but I owned two controllers that I sold on the newsgroups long ago. My recollection is that they were like the Intellivision controller I dislike but even worse.

 

Is there really a worse system than this that has ever been released? Maybe the Hyperscan is worse but I don’t think it is.

Yeah, the Aquarius is crap.  Makes one wonder if Mattel hadn't tried to do a home computer and just concentrated on the Intellivision line of consoles if it could have survived.

[Hwlngmad]

13 hours ago, electricmastro said:

Well, I say that CD-I is one of the worst, but that said, their version of Lemmings seems pretty decent.

 

 

True, the CD-i was a crap gaming console for the most part.  However, that's the thing, though.  It was not meant to be a games console.  Instead it was intended to be a multimedia device that had the ability to play games.  Honestly, it gets too much hate when it wasn't even really meant to be a pure gaming device.

[jerseystyle]

19 hours ago, atari2600land said:

You people are forgetting one thing:
ActionMax.

Loved Actionmax. Used to play the haunted house game with my grandad back in the day. I think we picked up the whole system and 2 games for like $10 also.

[+jgkspsx]

The N-Gage had many killer exclusives including exclusive entries in the Elder Scrolls, King of Fighters, Warhammer, and other series, and a bizarrely large number of very good exclusive games across all genres. It sold 3 million units. I am not sure it even counts as a failure much less a bad system. I think a lot of people mentally group it with the Tapwave Zodiac and the Gizmondo, both of which are a lot more failed and a lot less good.

 

EDIT: oh man, the Channel F is one of my favorite systems and has one of the most wonderful controllers ever. Quite a few good games and what @e5frog and @Mikebloke and @Arlasoft and @3DMAZE and @atari2600land have done and are doing on it is remarkable.

[Hwlngmad]

37 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

EDIT: oh man, the Channel F is one of my favorite systems and has one of the most wonderful controllers ever. Quite a few good games and what @e5frog and @Mikebloke and @Arlasoft and @3DMAZE and @atari2600land have done and are doing on it is remarkable.

100% agreed.  What can be done on the 'ole Channel F is quite remarkable.

[Steven Pendleton]

Isn't the HyperScan only semi-functional at best? That's not even counting its game library, just the fact that it barely works properly. Include the games and...

[mr_me]

22 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

...

How is it that the Intellivision was so advanced and worked so well and this “computer” manufactured by the same company, Radofin, was so awful? Every official game released for this thing was already on the Intellivision in better form except arguably Utopia.

...

The Intellivision was advanced for 1979 but in 1983 Mattel Electronics was working on its replacement.  In the meantime they came out with some stop gap products.  Unlike the Intellivision, the Aquarius computer wasn't designed by Mattel Electronics.  It was a low end, entry level computer that would compete with the Timex Sinclair.  It has no programmable graphics capability, so not a good choice by a games company. Mattel insisted on making the Aquarius a games system anyway. It was a capable BASIC language programmming computer and suitable for online use at the time.  Then the Commodore / TI price wars ruined the market for low end computers. 

Edited May 2, 2022 by mr_me

[electricmastro]

1 hour ago, Hwlngmad said:

True, the CD-i was a crap gaming console for the most part.  However, that's the thing, though.  It was not meant to be a games console.  Instead it was intended to be a multimedia device that had the ability to play games.  Honestly, it gets too much hate when it wasn't even really meant to be a pure gaming device.

Yeah, at best, it seemed more like a media device for schools since educational games was prob the most prevalent genre on it.

[roots.genoa]

I'm reading an article about the CD-i and it's clear it was not designed for games, indeed. Basically the project started in 1987 and they kept the specs of that time; it uses a 68000 but without all the other stuff the Genesis, the NeoGeo, or the Jaguar has for instance.

- It doesn't have hardware sprites for starters ?‍♂️

- It has so little RAM you can't scroll for more than 2/2,5 screens total (which is probably enough for most Lemmings levels I guess) ?

- They thought they didn't need some audio chip because it had CD, but you can't play music from the CD while doing something else, unless using some complex intertwined data. And it was a 1x drive obviously. ?

- Controllers were analog, and the IR was not reliable

To be fair they didn't plan to have games on it indeed, but I know people pushed Philips to get traditional games. The hardware was OK for RPGs or basic action/adventure (though the former were not very popular in the West at the time), and it's quite impressive developers managed to create beat 'em ups or action games.

[Austin]

With the CD-i, Philips eventually pushed it hard as a gaming platform, so despite it not being designed to do that, we still have to look at it as one. While I have a soft spot for it, I personally place it at the bottom of my "mainstream game platform" console tier list. Some games are pretty enjoyable, but the quality of its game library as a whole is all over the place, typically leaning more consistently towards the "bad" end of things, which is just unfortunate.

 

I do see the N-Gage listed frequently, but I feel that's just people not having really dived into its library as well as harping on some of its "less than ideal, but not deal-breaking" issues, like its vertical screen. Problems with the first unit were solved with the second, so I generally don't factor that in either. There are quite a lot of solid titles on it, many of which are exclusive to it (or are exclusive versions of multi-platform titles). N-Gage emulation is also a thing now, so hopefully people start exploring its library and see it for what it is, which is a fun portable machine with a lot of interesting titles. For anyone genuinely curious about the platform, I'm going to shill/drop a live stream I did of it years back, showing off a bunch of solid titles, as well as showing off the units, game packaging, etc.

 

Things like the Jaguar, 32X and Virtual Boy are odd to talk about in the context of best and worst, because obviously something is going to have to be at the bottom. I'd say they deserve lower positions for various reasons, but they still have fun libraries. VB is a little more difficult to justify as it's honestly just painful to use (being hunched over at a desk trying to use it these days kills my aging back), and the VB experience is a little more iffy to emulate, as its controller layout is unique and nearly impossible to replicate properly with modern controllers. Its library overall is pretty high quality though and worth checking out. Looking forward to getting mine modded later this year so I can play it on a TV.

 

The Game.Com deserves the reputation it has. Even if you get past the poor screen quality, you're dealing with a tiny library like with the Virtual Boy, but without the consistency of the VB's lineup. The touch-screen games work well but a lot of the other action games just do not hold up well at all.

 

Hyperscan is.. well, it's the Hyperscan. Definitely deserves its reputation too, which is honestly kind of a bummer. It seemed like it had some decent 2D potential.

[+jgkspsx]

The gamecom is definitely NEAR the bottom. But I bet it’s ahead of a bunch of 70s-early 90s obscurities we just don’t remember (including the Aquarius). I wish there were a good emulator for it so more people could experience the games as they were instead of in an even worse form.

 

I love everything about the Virtual Boy except the ergonomics. It still breaks my heart that Nintendo didn’t release it on the 3DS virtual console.

 

Of course, even if there were an objective ranking, people may like systems more or less than that.

 

I was hoping to hear more about more obscure consoles. Is there a killer app on the Bandai Playdia or Apple Pippin? What is the saving grace of the Cougar Boy? The BBC Micro has lots of great games - are there other obscure microcomputers with good libraries?

[mbd39]

I've never seen one in person, but RCA Studio II sure looks like the worst. As AVGN said, "I'd hate to see the RCA Studio I."

 

[CatPix]

I remember reading that there was a Studio I, which wouldn't have been a home console but a "bar/diner" system, which would have bet set on the side of a table or a bar. Basically the equivalent of the mini-arcade cabs filled with gambling game you see today.

The project was abandonned for some reason, but the Studio II inherited the form factor and the keypad of the Studio I (I suppose that it was planned to use chicklet keyboards which can be easily sealed to avoid food and drink intrusion and be easily cleaned, unlike joysticks).

 

[zzip]

On 5/2/2022 at 10:16 AM, CatPix said:

I'm not sure the Channel F deserves to be called the worst, as it was the first. Early Atari games were barely better, and it's mostly only a lucky accident that the Atari TIA conception allowed for more graphic freedom than on the Channel F

 

On 5/2/2022 at 10:41 AM, jgkspsx said:

EDIT: oh man, the Channel F is one of my favorite systems and has one of the most wonderful controllers ever. Quite a few good games and what @e5frog and @Mikebloke and @Arlasoft and @3DMAZE and @atari2600land have done and are doing on it is remarkable.

I haven't seen Channel F homebrew attempts,  I'm just based it on what I saw BITD,  my friend had one (yard sale find, I think), and a few games.   The games were very primitive and made the TV buzz something awful.  We had fun with it for the wrong reasons,  made up our own gameplay because the gameplay on those games was nearly nonexistent.  These games were definitely more primitive than early 2600 games,  but I'm sure there may have been other titles more on par with 2600 that I haven' seen.

[+jgkspsx]

2 hours ago, mbd39 said:

I've never seen one in person, but RCA Studio II sure looks like the worst. As AVGN said, "I'd hate to see the RCA Studio I."

 

I got one from a garage sale in high school but it had neither power adapter nor cartridges. I think I sold it on Usenet and never heard back from the person who bought it…

[+jgkspsx]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

The games were very primitive and made the TV buzz something awful.

The first model of the Channel F did not send sound to the TV. You had to turn the TV down. The speaker was in the console itself.

 

Quote

We had fun with it for the wrong reasons,  made up our own gameplay because the gameplay on those games was nearly nonexistent.

I mean, the built-in games were pong and foosball games that were much better than Atari’s own games. You may have had cartridge 1, which had two games (tic tac toe and shooting gallery) and two drawing programs (doodle and quadradoodle, which was kind of like a kaleidoscope). Some of the other games were rudimentary but most of them were comparable to or better than the first wave or several of 2600 games. It’s also possible your controller was broken, or you didn’t know how to use it.

[wolfy62]

I don't know if this qualifies for making it the worst,but definitely the most frustrating from a hardware perspective has to be the Genesis 32x. The games looked ok,it was just so hard to set up to play.

Those stupid metal clips you had to insert into the Genesis were a complete pain in the ass and would constantly get dislodged or not stay in place.

Just a horrible design.

Edited May 5, 2022 by wolfy62
Added content

[zzip]

1 hour ago, jgkspsx said:

The first model of the Channel F did not send sound to the TV. You had to turn the TV down. The speaker was in the console itself.

it was a CRT TV thing that sending certain signals would cause a buzzing from the screen,  the channel F caused some of the worst buzzing I heard.   It wasn't supposed to sound like that.

 

1 hour ago, jgkspsx said:

I mean, the built-in games were pong and foosball games that were much better than Atari’s own games. You may have had cartridge 1, which had two games (tic tac toe and shooting gallery) and two drawing programs (doodle and quadradoodle, which was kind of like a kaleidoscope).

The drawing programs sound familiar.   I don't remember any built-in games--   unless my friend never bothered to try it without a cart inserted!

[+jgkspsx]

Weird. The Channel F version 1 sounds awful if you have the TV sound on, but if you turn it down it can sound amazing:

 

 

Then again @3DMAZE got fairly terrifying results from that rom, so maybe the system can fail in some cacophonous way.

 

 

[Mikebloke]

A bit like the odyssey, the fairchild channel f started out as something of an amusement device. It's the 2600 that really kicked off what a home video game system should be like, so unfortunately you are left with games like states, Simon says and wipeout for the odyssey, and 'games' like doodle, naughts and crosses, slot machine and others on the channel F. Clearly early 2600 games are capable on the channel F, possibly even mid range ones and the later library features some of what you might say were stereotypical games for the time such as the breakout and space invader clones, but it's failings is mainly its lack of colour to represent more things. It's speed and ram is not a big issue at all really, it's just its initial programmers didn't have that same coin dropping drive that atari formulated. 

 

So really there's 3 degrees of 'worst' 

 

1) the hardware is not up for scratch, and it's an abysmal failure due to poor design. 

2) the hardware is fine, but it's lacking in light of already released contemporaries. 

3) its hardware is probably cutting edge, but programmers were not able to follow through with software design and innovation - but homebrew proves more is possible. This one isn't really a fault of the console hardware itself, but there have been plenty of systems with poor documentation for first hand developers! 

[famicommander]

ZX Spectrum all day every day. I know it's technically a computer but that thing is a war crime against the eyes and the ears. Makes the most primitive, flicker-heavy 2600 games seem like beautiful Neo Geo sprite work.

[+jgkspsx]

And yet it has a bunch of amazing exclusive games or games that were first released for it, so at worst it’s middle of the pack

[CatPix]

1 hour ago, famicommander said:

ZX Spectrum all day every day. I know it's technically a computer but that thing is a war crime against the eyes and the ears. Makes the most primitive, flicker-heavy 2600 games seem like beautiful Neo Geo sprite work.

Amusing, to me it's the opposite, most"primitive, flicker-heavy" 2600 games are garbage compared to ZX Spectrum.

The 2600 have the edge in the sound department but not by much (and lose completely if we move to ZX Spectrum 128 era)

 

I mean, is really this :

worse than the Atari version on every level?

 

(yes it's probably unfair to compare it with Pac Man, but 1) you said "the most primitive, flicker-heavy 2600 game" and I think Pac Man 2600 fits the bill enough ; 2) this is an Atarisoft game. It's Atari's own ZX Spectrum version!

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by CatPix

[famicommander]

18 minutes ago, CatPix said:

Amusing, to me it's the opposite, most"primitive, flicker-heavy" 2600 games are garbage compared to ZX Spectrum.

The 2600 have the edge in the sound department but not by much (and lose completely if we move to ZX Spectrum 128 era)

 

I mean, is really this :

worse than the Atari version on every level?

 

(yes it's probably unfair to compare it with Pac Man, but 1) you said "the most primitive, flicker-heavy 2600 game" and I think Pac Man 2600 fits the bill enough ; 2) this is an Atarisoft game. It's Atari's own ZX Spectrum version!

 

That looks like a power point presentation with a soundtrack played through a digital watch. ZX Spectrum games in motion look horrible. I feel like I'm having a stroke just watching it. And let's not forget the Spectrum came out in 1982 versus 1977 for the 2600. While Europe was just getting the Spectrum the US was getting the Coleco Vision, Atari 5200, and Vectrex and Japan was just a year away from the Famicom.

Edited May 6, 2022 by famicommander