Why is this in the PC section? It has nothing related to PC gaming at all. ConsoleSpot running out of ideas for PC articles as usual?
@-Unreal- They don't make news they just report it. Consoles are just more popular right now, get over it.
The Hardware That Never Was
By
Brendan Sinclair, Senior Editor
Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Sega patented these game systems and controllers, but stopped short of releasing them.
There's little more tantalizing for gamers than what might have been. What if the Nintendo-Sony partnership on the Super Nintendo CD add-on didn't fall apart, causing the two to become console war rivals? What if Sega hadn't pulled out of the hardware race after the Dreamcast? What if Atari had given its game developers credit instead of alienating its best and brightest until they left to form Activision?
While we don't always have great insight into the roads not taken by console makers, they do give us glimpses here and there. For instance, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Sega have all patented much of their hardware, either in function or in form factor. We dug up some designs from the last three decades and asked each of the companies to tell us about their old plans and why these items apparently never made it to market. While they were uniformly unhelpful on that front, there's still room for speculation. We've given our idea of the purposes and pitfalls of these abandoned accessories, but chime in and set us straight or offer your own theory as to why these particular roads turned out to be dead ends.
This was quite possibly the first and last time Nintendo met a portable redesign it didn't like enough to put in stores.
The GameBoy With a Girlish Figure
These days, Nintendo reflexively redesigns its portable hardware every year or two and gives it more makeovers than Sally Jessy Raphael in sweeps week. [Feel free to insert a more era-appropriate reference of your choosing here. -Ed.] However, it wasn't always so. Nintendo introduced the original GameBoy in 1989, but didn't even release the system in different colors until the 1995 Play It Loud series debuted with an assortment of extreme/obnoxious colors like green and yellow, along with a transparent system that let players get a glimpse of the GameBoy's innards.
Nintendo apparently considered a hardware refresh well before then, as the company filed a patent application in 1992 for this curvier design of a portable gaming system, which seemed to keep all the key parts in the same place (except for the headphone jack). Interestingly, in Leonard Herman's exhaustive reference book Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Video Games, he details a rumor making the rounds at that year's Winter CES of a new color GameBoy that would have been backward compatible with the existing GameBoy library and retailed for $99. The GameBoy Color would eventually become a reality, but not until 1998, when it hit shelves around the world with a $79 price tag.
By
Brendan Sinclair, Senior Editor
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
95 comments
i would actually love to see and xbox controller, or any controller with A B X Y buttons on the back as well as the front. it would quicken my in game actions.
Great article. The Saturn controller seems like it could work and resembles that silver prototype PS2 controller in shape.
Pretty interesting stuff, I kinda liked the Saturn pad and the Motion Controller, cool stuff.
That Saturn-Era controller actually looks pretty cool, it'd be a nightmare to adapt to though. Also in todays video-gaming culture, one D-pad is usually enough, if it's used at all. Gotta give some of these designs props for at least TRYING to think outside the box!
@OverHaze This is to increase the clicks on the site, which means raising the site's rank globally. You're welcome.
I thought the "ergonomic" NES pad interesting. I see the format of the A and B then cascaded to the SNES pad. Why they thought this angle of the A and B buttons more ergonomic I don't know. Using the SNES pad for example, I've always found it was more comfortable to use Y and B rather than B and A because of the natural positioning of the thumb, as it tilts slightly upwwards rather than downwards when holding either pad...
The Xbulk 360 controller looks like it would shout the phrase "I have you now!" at you and then start shooting lasers at you.
Holy cr*p, the Sony Dualshock to the right made me "Wtf" a lot. I mean, how the hell are you supposed to hold the damn thing?
I was baffled at first till I read the correction as I have seen 3 of these systems around where I live. Unless they are uncommon elsewhere :/
Looking at Sony's concept dualshock on the very right makes you wonder how you hold the darn thing. I can only see your pointing finger do the moving, with the middle prepped to press L1/R1 and L2/R2. And then came the nightmare that is pressing the L3/R3 button with said finger. It's uncontrollable, especially when you're in a tight spot! Though the only positive is that you get a seperate finger for the analog stick, unlike now where the thumb has the face buttons and the stick.
@maaly81 Did you bother to read the article? Note the sketch was a redesign some years after original release...
Remember The "U-Force" or of course the "Power-Glove" for NES? Remember when the future was going to be like that? Didn't they also try to make an interactive Robot too?
although i'm a sony fan, xbox definitely nailed the controller design. its comfortability and intuitive layout is unrivaled
If the 360 would come out with a much less clunky controller, I would get one. Maybe somewhere in between the Dual Shock 3 and the 360 one.
The dual d pad idea ended up getting used by Nintendo anyway... haha virtual boy was such a fail!
That sega dual controller would actually have been cool I think. However the Xbulk and dual shock controllers are just revolting.
one thing people need to realise is that motion controls are only good for piloting mechs ^_^ and the ps cannon sticks? weaponize that!
These are really interesting. But WTF is up with the PS controller with the analog cannons at the top? How the hell would that even work?
Kinect for Xbox 360 brings games and entertainment to life in extraordinary new ways without using a controller...is it ?
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