Welcome back to thaddius’ Console Roast 2014 Edition. For those of you who are not aware this is a poll where you, the GBATemp user, get to vote on what GBATemp thinks is the worst console ever is. For more information check out the Rules section below.
Recap:
Yet another decisive win this week. And I'm happy to announce that this week's winner is:
The Nokia N-Gage! Congratulations, Nokia, your phone will go down in infamy as the worst handheld of the Sixth Generation of Handhelds. People had been clamouring for a Game Boy with phone capabilities for some time, but the N-Gage certainly wasn't a Game Boy...
Speaking of which, the Game Boy Advance was voted for by 15 clearly mentally handicapped individuals. I feel sorry for them really. Never knowing the sweet embrace of Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, Mario & Luigi, decent ports of the Donkey Kong Country games, ad infentum. Great system.
And congratulations on everyone else for not being voted worst of the generation. Not even you, Tapwave Zodiac.
Anyway, for more details about how the voting went you can check out last week’s thread here.
Intro:
We've passed the half way point! There's no going back now.
So yeah, the Sixth Generation of Consoles! Microsoft's first foray into the console hardware business. Sega's last. And a couple in between. So who will 'win' this time? Who knows. But first, the rules!
Rules:
Enough of that crap, time to get started!
This Week's Challengers are:
The Sega Dreamcast
The Dreamcast was to be Sega’s epic comeback. There were no surprise release dates that pissed off retailers. The console was up to the task this time with no distracting previous generation getting in the way. Tons of great new features including online capabilities and cool interchangeable Visual Memory Units (VMUs) for storing your saves. And the Dreamcast was given a huge head start with the ’98 Japanese release which people claimed (at the time) would give them a huge lead in sales putting them on top this generation.
After a brief hardware supply issue sales were just fine. But they began to slow much quicker than anticipated. With the Playstation 2’s release date coming up consumers were looking forward to Sony’s new console with DVD playback. Suddenly the Dreamcast's head start wasn't looking like the best idea...
Another problem began to surface when the Dreamcast’s proprietary disc, the GD-ROM, was compromised. It was quickly discovered that when Dreamcast game data was burned onto a regular run-o-the-mill CD it would boot no problem in the Dreamcast as Sega failed to add more levels of anti-piracy protection to the console. A hardware revision was made to correct this oversight, but it didn't help their situation.
By the time the Gamecube and Xbox rolled around the Dreamcast was limping, and Sega announced that it would be backing out of the hardware business.
Within a few years Sonic Adventure was ported to Gamecube and everyone knew that Sega could never to what Nintendon’t. The Dreamcast went on to gain a cult following during the next few years, but the fervour seems to have died down.
The Sony Playstation 2
Sony released their Playstation 2 whose main selling feature was the ability to play DVDs.
At the time you could buy a Playstation 2 for less than a vanilla DVD player (strange to think, I know) so why would you bother buying anything else?
This was kind of a risky move in light of previous generations. The CDi and 3DO could play VCDs and audio CDs, so why would you bother with an expensive VCD and CD player when you could own a console that could do all that and play games? And Sony, inventor of the BetaMax format, knew all too well the perils of relying on untested media.
But it worked. DVD sales started to catch on and people began to accept that if they wanted to watch their favourite movies they’d have to buy them again. And for a while the joke was the the PS2s best selling title was The Matrix on DVD. The mere thought of a console like this was enough to sap the strength out of Sega once again.
The PS2 would go on to outsell every console that generation and be dragged along on life support as the PS3s second tier in hopes of detracting from the Wii’s market.
The Nintendo Gamecube
Nintendo decided to finally accept the disc-based medium with their Gamecube, but opted for a proprietary ‘mini’ disc, a truncated DVD disc, in an effort to curb piracy. While this led to the Gamecube being one of the last consoles in the generation to have widespread piracy, it was lambasted for it’s meagre 1.8GB capacity.
Due to the disc size some multi platform games, like the Prince of Persia reboot, had textures and audio with more compression than those found in the Xbox or PS2 versions of the same game. This didn’t stop Nintendo and their second party studios from releasing some stellar games for the system. But, just like the N64, the Gamecube would be widely considered to have been ignored by third part developers.
The Gamecube is also remembered for having their own version of the Dreamcast to VMU and Dreamcast to Neo Geo Pocket-like connectivity in the form of Game Boy Advance to Gamecube connectivity. While it was often criticized for being an expensive endeavour (1 Gamecube + 1-4 GBAs + 1-4 connecting cables), it was wildly popular with developers as a large number of games support some kind of connectivity; some were as shallow as unlockables transferred between the GC and GBA versions of the same game, and some were as deep as 4 player private screen action.
The Microsoft Xbox
After a few delays, Microsoft released its DirectX Box in 2001. This was obviously their first entry into the video game console market and this was seen as a bit of a surprising turn for some. It is believed that consoles, namely the Playstation and the forthcoming Playstation 2, were stealing developers away from Windows. Japan had long ruled the console business (some of you might have noticed the number of Japan-only systems discussed in recent polls) and it was time for Western developers to make another big push.
Microsoft made a surprising deal with then Apple exclusive developer Bungie for a launch title called Halo: Combat Evolved. Initially panned for repetitive level design, Halo would not only go on to become a system seller for the Xbox (very rare for a launch title), but it would launch a multi-billion dollar franchise and make Halo a household name synonymous with Microsoft’s Xbox consoles.
Taking a page out of Sega’s playbook, Microsoft launched their own proprietary online service known as Xbox LIVE, which would ultimately become the measuring stick for console multiplayer services.
In addition to online capabilities, the Xbox came with a hard drive, which would become a standard feature for later consoles.
Sadly though, the Xbox’s similarities to a PC made it easily hacked, and before long people were using the onboard HDD to run game backups and unsigned code.
Outro:
And there you have it, Roast Fans, the Sixth Generation of consoles! A nice small poll here this week. I'm personally interested to see what gets voted. See you all in the comments!
Current Standings:
Recap:
Yet another decisive win this week. And I'm happy to announce that this week's winner is:
The Nokia N-Gage! Congratulations, Nokia, your phone will go down in infamy as the worst handheld of the Sixth Generation of Handhelds. People had been clamouring for a Game Boy with phone capabilities for some time, but the N-Gage certainly wasn't a Game Boy...
Speaking of which, the Game Boy Advance was voted for by 15 clearly mentally handicapped individuals. I feel sorry for them really. Never knowing the sweet embrace of Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, Mario & Luigi, decent ports of the Donkey Kong Country games, ad infentum. Great system.
And congratulations on everyone else for not being voted worst of the generation. Not even you, Tapwave Zodiac.
Anyway, for more details about how the voting went you can check out last week’s thread here.
Intro:
We've passed the half way point! There's no going back now.
So yeah, the Sixth Generation of Consoles! Microsoft's first foray into the console hardware business. Sega's last. And a couple in between. So who will 'win' this time? Who knows. But first, the rules!
Rules:
There can only be one!
Each week I pit each console generation against itself to determine what the worst console of that generation was. Updates will hopefully be up every Thursday from now till the end.
We’re going to work our way up through consoles and handhelds until we reach the current generation. Once that’s all done, we’ll determine the worst console and the worst handheld. From there we choose the definitive GBATemp-approved WORST CONSOLE EVER.
Your only job, Mr. or Ms. GBATemper, is to cast your vote for what you think the worst of the generation is. Please try to do some research, watch some videos, maybe play a few of these games on a (completely legitimate) emulator, and you just might learn a little about the weird amorphous blob that is video game history. But I can't (and won't) keep you from just shooting from the uninformed hip. You're also encouraged to explain your choice in the form of a response to this topic.
In the event of a tie, I (Sir thaddius prigg) will cast the deciding vote. It is my Roast after all...
The Generations are taken from Wikipedia as I've deemed that to be an appropriate neutral third party. I understand if you might have some concerns that I've put things in the wrong generation in your opinion, but I'm not too concerned about that. Generations are murky constructs at best and are based on arbitrary distinctions made by outsiders as post hoc rationalizations that don't mean anything to anyone anyway. Don't take any of this too seriously. I'm not going to change the polls based on your opinion of them.
Aggressive discussion is allowed, but please try to keep within the rules of the forums. Just try to have fun and don’t be a jerk, k?
Each week I pit each console generation against itself to determine what the worst console of that generation was. Updates will hopefully be up every Thursday from now till the end.
We’re going to work our way up through consoles and handhelds until we reach the current generation. Once that’s all done, we’ll determine the worst console and the worst handheld. From there we choose the definitive GBATemp-approved WORST CONSOLE EVER.
Your only job, Mr. or Ms. GBATemper, is to cast your vote for what you think the worst of the generation is. Please try to do some research, watch some videos, maybe play a few of these games on a (completely legitimate) emulator, and you just might learn a little about the weird amorphous blob that is video game history. But I can't (and won't) keep you from just shooting from the uninformed hip. You're also encouraged to explain your choice in the form of a response to this topic.
In the event of a tie, I (Sir thaddius prigg) will cast the deciding vote. It is my Roast after all...
The Generations are taken from Wikipedia as I've deemed that to be an appropriate neutral third party. I understand if you might have some concerns that I've put things in the wrong generation in your opinion, but I'm not too concerned about that. Generations are murky constructs at best and are based on arbitrary distinctions made by outsiders as post hoc rationalizations that don't mean anything to anyone anyway. Don't take any of this too seriously. I'm not going to change the polls based on your opinion of them.
Aggressive discussion is allowed, but please try to keep within the rules of the forums. Just try to have fun and don’t be a jerk, k?
This Week's Challengers are:
The Sega Dreamcast
The Dreamcast was to be Sega’s epic comeback. There were no surprise release dates that pissed off retailers. The console was up to the task this time with no distracting previous generation getting in the way. Tons of great new features including online capabilities and cool interchangeable Visual Memory Units (VMUs) for storing your saves. And the Dreamcast was given a huge head start with the ’98 Japanese release which people claimed (at the time) would give them a huge lead in sales putting them on top this generation.
After a brief hardware supply issue sales were just fine. But they began to slow much quicker than anticipated. With the Playstation 2’s release date coming up consumers were looking forward to Sony’s new console with DVD playback. Suddenly the Dreamcast's head start wasn't looking like the best idea...
Another problem began to surface when the Dreamcast’s proprietary disc, the GD-ROM, was compromised. It was quickly discovered that when Dreamcast game data was burned onto a regular run-o-the-mill CD it would boot no problem in the Dreamcast as Sega failed to add more levels of anti-piracy protection to the console. A hardware revision was made to correct this oversight, but it didn't help their situation.
By the time the Gamecube and Xbox rolled around the Dreamcast was limping, and Sega announced that it would be backing out of the hardware business.
Within a few years Sonic Adventure was ported to Gamecube and everyone knew that Sega could never to what Nintendon’t. The Dreamcast went on to gain a cult following during the next few years, but the fervour seems to have died down.
The Sony Playstation 2
Sony released their Playstation 2 whose main selling feature was the ability to play DVDs.
At the time you could buy a Playstation 2 for less than a vanilla DVD player (strange to think, I know) so why would you bother buying anything else?
This was kind of a risky move in light of previous generations. The CDi and 3DO could play VCDs and audio CDs, so why would you bother with an expensive VCD and CD player when you could own a console that could do all that and play games? And Sony, inventor of the BetaMax format, knew all too well the perils of relying on untested media.
But it worked. DVD sales started to catch on and people began to accept that if they wanted to watch their favourite movies they’d have to buy them again. And for a while the joke was the the PS2s best selling title was The Matrix on DVD. The mere thought of a console like this was enough to sap the strength out of Sega once again.
The PS2 would go on to outsell every console that generation and be dragged along on life support as the PS3s second tier in hopes of detracting from the Wii’s market.
The Nintendo Gamecube
Nintendo decided to finally accept the disc-based medium with their Gamecube, but opted for a proprietary ‘mini’ disc, a truncated DVD disc, in an effort to curb piracy. While this led to the Gamecube being one of the last consoles in the generation to have widespread piracy, it was lambasted for it’s meagre 1.8GB capacity.
Due to the disc size some multi platform games, like the Prince of Persia reboot, had textures and audio with more compression than those found in the Xbox or PS2 versions of the same game. This didn’t stop Nintendo and their second party studios from releasing some stellar games for the system. But, just like the N64, the Gamecube would be widely considered to have been ignored by third part developers.
The Gamecube is also remembered for having their own version of the Dreamcast to VMU and Dreamcast to Neo Geo Pocket-like connectivity in the form of Game Boy Advance to Gamecube connectivity. While it was often criticized for being an expensive endeavour (1 Gamecube + 1-4 GBAs + 1-4 connecting cables), it was wildly popular with developers as a large number of games support some kind of connectivity; some were as shallow as unlockables transferred between the GC and GBA versions of the same game, and some were as deep as 4 player private screen action.
The Microsoft Xbox
After a few delays, Microsoft released its DirectX Box in 2001. This was obviously their first entry into the video game console market and this was seen as a bit of a surprising turn for some. It is believed that consoles, namely the Playstation and the forthcoming Playstation 2, were stealing developers away from Windows. Japan had long ruled the console business (some of you might have noticed the number of Japan-only systems discussed in recent polls) and it was time for Western developers to make another big push.
Microsoft made a surprising deal with then Apple exclusive developer Bungie for a launch title called Halo: Combat Evolved. Initially panned for repetitive level design, Halo would not only go on to become a system seller for the Xbox (very rare for a launch title), but it would launch a multi-billion dollar franchise and make Halo a household name synonymous with Microsoft’s Xbox consoles.
Taking a page out of Sega’s playbook, Microsoft launched their own proprietary online service known as Xbox LIVE, which would ultimately become the measuring stick for console multiplayer services.
In addition to online capabilities, the Xbox came with a hard drive, which would become a standard feature for later consoles.
Sadly though, the Xbox’s similarities to a PC made it easily hacked, and before long people were using the onboard HDD to run game backups and unsigned code.
Outro:
And there you have it, Roast Fans, the Sixth Generation of consoles! A nice small poll here this week. I'm personally interested to see what gets voted. See you all in the comments!
Current Standings:
