Most obscure video game consoles

[SylverReZ]

Magistr 16 - Sold in Russia, this is a Mega Drive clone but in the form of a functional computer. Has a built-in floppy drive for loading and saving BASIC programs, LPT and COM ports, PS/2 connectors for mouse and keyboard, and some kind of expansion port. I would assume that it was to expand the memory in the system to take advantage of games that use it, but that never got used for anything afaik.

Subor SB-926 - A family of consoles that somehow tried to trick the Chinese government's gaming restriction laws by advertising itself as an "education device." Just like the Magistr 16, it's a Famiclone computer with a keyboard built-in. It has a desktop UI built in with a wide range of educational games, such as learning English words and mathematics. In addition to it being a computer, it has composite output, an LPT port to hook up a thermal printer, some variants, to my knowledge, have a floppy drive to load games, and of course a cartridge slot to load a 60-pin Famicom game.


Do you have any obscure and fascinating consoles to share?

 

[SylverReZ]

Mega Duck computer with its own thermal printer and mouse.
Originally, it was in a handheld form-factor, and was competing with the Game Boy hype at the time.

 

[OilFreak]

The Super A'Can. It had twelve games, none of them were very good, one of them was a Monopoly clone where you play as Hitler.

 

[benone]

Mega Duck computer with its own thermal printer and mouse.
Originally, it was in a handheld form-factor, and was competing with the Game Boy hype at the time.

The music of Snake Roy's cartridge is massive! it's a shame that the commentator was speaking a lot during the gameplay, he seemed a little hyperactive...

 

[kijetesantakalu042]

How about the Lico Cai system

Post automatically merged: Oct 22, 2024

https://fcgamer.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/those-mysterious-cai-carts/

 

[SylverReZ]

How about the Lico Cai system

Post automatically merged: Oct 22, 2024

View attachment 466433
https://fcgamer.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/those-mysterious-cai-carts/

Very little is known about these. They only seem to be sold in Taiwan, and nobody has ever dumped or reverse engineered the hardware or carts. Would be nice to see a video of it in action, hopefully it's better than the LJN VideoArt.

 

[Ryccardo]

The Digiblast!

OK, obscure is a negotiable word - it was advertised quite a bit - but I suspect that if you ask a few people who had Internet at the time "name a failed gaming platform from the early 2000s" the N-Gage and the Gizmondo rank higher

For good reason too, those had clever if not world-first ideas, while the Digiblast was supposed to be the "cheap alternative to the GBA" (in 2005, wasn't it?) "with multimedia features", ie along with games it also has GBA Videos and UMD Music Video (just the one) and play/prev/next buttons
You could also buy a GBA MP3 player card and a basic digital camera like the 3rd party one for the GBA...
It also uses 4 AA NiMH batteries, in case you want to get one and the microscopic charger jack is busted!

While I don't have a cool story about it it was made by an Aussie then-startup called Grey Innovation,

which is not only still around (doing medical products) but seems to have completely forgot about it

Taking on the major toy companies of the world, digiBLAST is the first portable entertainment system on the market offering video, gaming, MP3 and digital photo capability all within the one handheld device. Backed by major European toy companies including Nikko, GP Group and Vivid Imaginations, digiBLAST is predicted to be the most significant new product entry in the UK toy market of 2005. Grey’s major challenge was to bring digiBLAST to market at a price that beats competition globally. The end result is a well designed, low cost product set to be the latest craze in the tween market.

No further information is provided, but the mysterious "GP Group" seems to be Giochi Preziosi, a huge Italian toy conglomerate that at the time was buying its main rival Gig, a long-time partner of Nikko (so those alleged 3 partners are not as independent as it seems);
as for the "low cost", I don't remember what it cost like, but given its premise it must have been the PSP Street/Wii Mini of its time - too little and too expensive compared to an used "real console", but without the well estabilished library of freely downloadable via P2P games

 

[SylverReZ]

The Digiblast!

OK, obscure is a negotiable word - it was advertised quite a bit - but I suspect that if you ask a few people who had Internet at the time "name a failed gaming platform from the early 2000s" the N-Gage and the Gizmondo rank higher

For good reason too, those had clever if not world-first ideas, while the Digiblast was supposed to be the "cheap alternative to the GBA" (in 2005, wasn't it?) "with multimedia features", ie along with games it also has GBA Videos and UMD Music Video (just the one) and play/prev/next buttons
You could also buy a GBA MP3 player card and a basic digital camera like the 3rd party one for the GBA...
It also uses 4 AA NiMH batteries, in case you want to get one and the microscopic charger jack is busted!

While I don't have a cool story about it it was made by an Aussie then-startup called Grey Innovation,
View attachment 486533

Speaking of 'personal media centers,' there was another competitor during the media player wars of the 2000s called the "JuiceBox.".

Developed by a company called Emsoft, it is a media player running on an ARM-7 core processor alongside uClinux. Videos are sold separately as 'cartridges', the videos themself are compressed to fit on the 240x160 pixel screen at a measly 10 frames per second, which doesn't look that good from the naked eye. Not only does it play videos, but as the name suggests, it can play MP3s and view pictures with the MP3 player accessory which can be bought separately.

The company no longer exists, but there are talented hobbyists out there who are hacking the device to run just about anything (see here). I wonder if one day it'll run Doom.