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:
Well well well! An interesting week with an interesting 'winner'. GBATemp selected none other than:
The Mircosoft Xbox! Congratulations Microsoft! Your first foray into the console business was apparently not as good as the panned Gamecube!
A very interesting poll. I do not envy the voters and the choices they had to make.
Rules:
Enough of that crap, time to get started!
Intro:
So now we're in the Seventh Generation of Handhelds! What an interesting round this'll be. I hope some of you will have heard of these 'obscure' consoles especially since they're oft discussed in the Other Handhelds forum.
This Week's Challengers are:
The Game Park Holdings Wiz/Caanoo
Apart from form factor these systems are essentially the same, so I'm lumping them in together. Also, I'm skipping the GP2X. I don't think anyone will lament these concessions. And if you do... sorry? No, I'm not sorry.
Some of you may remember my rantings on an earlier Game Park handheld, the GP32; the wonderful little system that started the ‘open handheld’ trend. Did you know that Game Park kept making handhelds?
Both systems featured the same style of ‘open handhelding’ seen in the original GP32 (as well as the skipped-over GP2X. I hope there aren't any GP2X fans in the forum) in that the onus was on the coding public to make games for it. Both were Linux-based systems, drawing in former Dreamcast coders and the like.
The Wiz featured a touch-screen (just like the GP2X) and it’s only real defining features were its crap-tastic A, B, Y and X buttons, as well as better hardware than the GP2X (as there really isn’t much you can do to distinguish yourself in the open handheld market).
The Caanoo had hardware that was, obviously, more powerful than the Wiz’s, but on top of that featured haptic feedback (rumble). It certainly makes the Caanoo distinct…
Both are, of course, fantastic handhelds, and are great at what they do: play emulators. The only problem with them is that they were rather expensive when released (Wiz $180US, Caanoo $150US), making them a tad inaccessible to poor, unemployed coders.
The Dingoo A320
Now if only there was a relatively cheap option in an ‘open handheld’… Oh wait! There is!
Keeping in the tradition of open handhelds with batshit crazy names, the Dingoo A320 came out of a small Chinese company that hoped that its cheap little console would be enough to make some money off of. For some reason they decided to name it after a misspelling of the name for a wild Australian dog…
Not originally an open console, the Dingoo was released in February of 2009 for ~$80US (almost half the cost of the Caanoo!). The apparent cheapness in price, but no so cheapness in build quality, led it to be an attractive little console for hackers. Before long Linux was running on it and everyone and their sister was porting their favourite emulators and games to the thing.
As all things are in China, success does not go ignored, and soon the market was befuddled with poor quality imitators and, more annoyingly, clones. While it’s relatively easy to steer clear of the clones, the Chinese open handheld market seems to have had a bit of a boom, with new consoles being released weekly (an exaggeration, of course).
I think this system's popularity has waned quite a bit. The hindsight goggles make it clear that it wasn't great, but it did what it could. A close to full speed SNES emulator and a laggy PSOne one ain't bad.
The OpenPandora Pandora
More open handhelds? OK!
This time from Germany, some hardware nuts decided to make their own console.
It all seemed great. The console seemed robust, it had a plethora of inputs and SD card slots, was Linux based, etc. But it turns out that making consoles is hard and a bunch of hardware geeks aren't necessarily renowned for their business acumen.
The console started having manufacturing problems and to fund the initial orders that were costing more than was anticipated they opened up sales for a second batch. Components continued to fail and you would be lucky if you got your hands on one.
Sadly a few years ago I bought in to the second batch from a GB reseller. He declared bankruptcy and my money is gone. I learned an expensive mistake that day, Tempers. One I will not forget.
The Nintendo DS
When Nintendo announced that their next handheld system would be have two screens people simply didn't understand why. Why two? That just doesn't make any sense.
With the Game Boy Advance having been released in 2001 it was a bit odd that Nintendo would release another handheld a mere 4 years later. Wouldn’t they be cannibalizing their own market?
Amid speculation that the DS’ rapid release was in anticipation of Sony’s forthcoming handheld, the PSP, Nintendo assured the public that the DS would join the GC and GBA as a ‘third pillar’. As testament to that pledge Nintendo would release two more GBA models during the DS’ lifetime.
When we finally got to see the DS a lot of people were sceptical. It looked silly with it’s bulky design and the two screen and touch screen features seemed gimmicky. Some of the early DS games, like Yoshi’s Touch & Go, Electroplankton, and Feel the Magic XX/XY, seemed more like tech demos than games.
Before long developers began to experiment with how to use both screens and with different uses for the touch screen and microphone features. The result was some very unique games, like The World Ends With You and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! (aka Elite Beat Agents), and even some non-game titles like KORG DS-1 Synthesizer.
When the DS started to sell quite well Nintendo quietly retired the GBA and released the second model of the DS, the DS Lite.
Nintendo would go on to release two more hardware revisions (The DSi and DSi LL/XL, both of which dropped GBA backwards compatibility in favour for an online store) and we would see some spectacular games released for the system, as well as see it become one of the best selling consoles of all time (although Nintendo tends to roll all hardware revisions into that figure…)
Sony PlayStation Portable
In 2004 Sony released their first handheld video game console to the market; the PlayStation Portable (PSP).
Sony hoped to have the PSP be the bastion for their proprietary overpriced media. To that end the PSP stored music, video, game saves, and eventually games on Memory Stick Pro Duo cards (later Memory Stick Micro/M2 cards) and the, universally disliked, Universal Media Disk (UMD) for games and movies.
After years of Nintendo handhelds I often worried that the PSP would crack in half if gripped too hard. And an overzealous UMD slot meant it was possible for the UMD to go launching out of the system when the PSP was twisted slightly.
Ultimately Sony would release four revisions of the system and abandon the UMD unceremoniously. UMD movie prices would drop dramatically and the all-digital model, the PSP Go, would be lambasted for abandoning physical media altogether.
Despite an untrue stigma of having no games, the PSP would manage to gain a larger portion of the market share than any other non-Nintendo handheld competitor ever did.
Outro:
And there you have it! A very different generation if you ask me.
Who will 'win'? Will it be Sony? (Probably not.) Or the Dingoo? (Maybe.) Perhaps the Wiz/Caanoo? Who knows! You do, GBATemp, you do.
Current Standings:
Recap:
Well well well! An interesting week with an interesting 'winner'. GBATemp selected none other than:
The Mircosoft Xbox! Congratulations Microsoft! Your first foray into the console business was apparently not as good as the panned Gamecube!
A very interesting poll. I do not envy the voters and the choices they had to make.
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?
Intro:
So now we're in the Seventh Generation of Handhelds! What an interesting round this'll be. I hope some of you will have heard of these 'obscure' consoles especially since they're oft discussed in the Other Handhelds forum.
This Week's Challengers are:
The Game Park Holdings Wiz/Caanoo
Apart from form factor these systems are essentially the same, so I'm lumping them in together. Also, I'm skipping the GP2X. I don't think anyone will lament these concessions. And if you do... sorry? No, I'm not sorry.
Some of you may remember my rantings on an earlier Game Park handheld, the GP32; the wonderful little system that started the ‘open handheld’ trend. Did you know that Game Park kept making handhelds?
Both systems featured the same style of ‘open handhelding’ seen in the original GP32 (as well as the skipped-over GP2X. I hope there aren't any GP2X fans in the forum) in that the onus was on the coding public to make games for it. Both were Linux-based systems, drawing in former Dreamcast coders and the like.
The Wiz featured a touch-screen (just like the GP2X) and it’s only real defining features were its crap-tastic A, B, Y and X buttons, as well as better hardware than the GP2X (as there really isn’t much you can do to distinguish yourself in the open handheld market).
The Caanoo had hardware that was, obviously, more powerful than the Wiz’s, but on top of that featured haptic feedback (rumble). It certainly makes the Caanoo distinct…
Both are, of course, fantastic handhelds, and are great at what they do: play emulators. The only problem with them is that they were rather expensive when released (Wiz $180US, Caanoo $150US), making them a tad inaccessible to poor, unemployed coders.
The Dingoo A320
Now if only there was a relatively cheap option in an ‘open handheld’… Oh wait! There is!
Keeping in the tradition of open handhelds with batshit crazy names, the Dingoo A320 came out of a small Chinese company that hoped that its cheap little console would be enough to make some money off of. For some reason they decided to name it after a misspelling of the name for a wild Australian dog…
Not originally an open console, the Dingoo was released in February of 2009 for ~$80US (almost half the cost of the Caanoo!). The apparent cheapness in price, but no so cheapness in build quality, led it to be an attractive little console for hackers. Before long Linux was running on it and everyone and their sister was porting their favourite emulators and games to the thing.
As all things are in China, success does not go ignored, and soon the market was befuddled with poor quality imitators and, more annoyingly, clones. While it’s relatively easy to steer clear of the clones, the Chinese open handheld market seems to have had a bit of a boom, with new consoles being released weekly (an exaggeration, of course).
I think this system's popularity has waned quite a bit. The hindsight goggles make it clear that it wasn't great, but it did what it could. A close to full speed SNES emulator and a laggy PSOne one ain't bad.
The OpenPandora Pandora
More open handhelds? OK!
This time from Germany, some hardware nuts decided to make their own console.
It all seemed great. The console seemed robust, it had a plethora of inputs and SD card slots, was Linux based, etc. But it turns out that making consoles is hard and a bunch of hardware geeks aren't necessarily renowned for their business acumen.
The console started having manufacturing problems and to fund the initial orders that were costing more than was anticipated they opened up sales for a second batch. Components continued to fail and you would be lucky if you got your hands on one.
Sadly a few years ago I bought in to the second batch from a GB reseller. He declared bankruptcy and my money is gone. I learned an expensive mistake that day, Tempers. One I will not forget.
The Nintendo DS
When Nintendo announced that their next handheld system would be have two screens people simply didn't understand why. Why two? That just doesn't make any sense.
With the Game Boy Advance having been released in 2001 it was a bit odd that Nintendo would release another handheld a mere 4 years later. Wouldn’t they be cannibalizing their own market?
Amid speculation that the DS’ rapid release was in anticipation of Sony’s forthcoming handheld, the PSP, Nintendo assured the public that the DS would join the GC and GBA as a ‘third pillar’. As testament to that pledge Nintendo would release two more GBA models during the DS’ lifetime.
When we finally got to see the DS a lot of people were sceptical. It looked silly with it’s bulky design and the two screen and touch screen features seemed gimmicky. Some of the early DS games, like Yoshi’s Touch & Go, Electroplankton, and Feel the Magic XX/XY, seemed more like tech demos than games.
Before long developers began to experiment with how to use both screens and with different uses for the touch screen and microphone features. The result was some very unique games, like The World Ends With You and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! (aka Elite Beat Agents), and even some non-game titles like KORG DS-1 Synthesizer.
When the DS started to sell quite well Nintendo quietly retired the GBA and released the second model of the DS, the DS Lite.
Nintendo would go on to release two more hardware revisions (The DSi and DSi LL/XL, both of which dropped GBA backwards compatibility in favour for an online store) and we would see some spectacular games released for the system, as well as see it become one of the best selling consoles of all time (although Nintendo tends to roll all hardware revisions into that figure…)
Sony PlayStation Portable
In 2004 Sony released their first handheld video game console to the market; the PlayStation Portable (PSP).
Sony hoped to have the PSP be the bastion for their proprietary overpriced media. To that end the PSP stored music, video, game saves, and eventually games on Memory Stick Pro Duo cards (later Memory Stick Micro/M2 cards) and the, universally disliked, Universal Media Disk (UMD) for games and movies.
After years of Nintendo handhelds I often worried that the PSP would crack in half if gripped too hard. And an overzealous UMD slot meant it was possible for the UMD to go launching out of the system when the PSP was twisted slightly.
Ultimately Sony would release four revisions of the system and abandon the UMD unceremoniously. UMD movie prices would drop dramatically and the all-digital model, the PSP Go, would be lambasted for abandoning physical media altogether.
Despite an untrue stigma of having no games, the PSP would manage to gain a larger portion of the market share than any other non-Nintendo handheld competitor ever did.
Outro:
And there you have it! A very different generation if you ask me.
Who will 'win'? Will it be Sony? (Probably not.) Or the Dingoo? (Maybe.) Perhaps the Wiz/Caanoo? Who knows! You do, GBATemp, you do.
Current Standings:
