If you read the previous useless tech, we dove into the 80's and 90's and the ridiculous tech you could buy and we barely scratched the surface of what we thought was cool... well here is another list for you to relive those bad memories from the golden age of gaming.
1 – Ever been stuck between a rock and a hard place? Well in the 80's, Nintendo was just throwing things at the rock. Trying to fill a void in the gaming market where there wasn't one. But the endless spew of shit produced something that is both cool looking but stupid. I give you R.O.B.
This 'Robot' was to be sold to retailers to convince them that there was not a game crash in 83 and gaming was only getting popular. I think they couldn't make a peripheral any worse to use than this.
Only working with two games 'Robot Gyro' and 'Gyromite' it relied on having it lined up with an old type CRT TV, it would receive cues from the game and would carry out a simple task. Pushing buttons. When it would be easier to use a second pad.
If you think about it thou. It is. Wall. E. A rubbish collector.
Only working with the NES at the time, it seemed that Nintendo were wasting resources on stupid crap instead of making good quality games that Sega were actually good, ish, for.
Now however, they are far and few between and do make a good addition to Retro gaming collectors.
2 - 1990's was an awesome time for gamers, the Play station was available and millions of games were available for it. High end graphics, seamless playability, and very fast. But every now and then, a new pad would come along seemingly to help improve gameplay, and Nemoco always had a solution to another problem that never existed.
Why then, did they give this new pad a name that sounds like a mid 80's north Korean porn film? The NeGcon (Nee-Gee-Con) was designed to be used with racing games. Instead of using ''the D-Pad'' or a ''Steering wheel'', you would twist the entire pad in opposite directions depending on if you wanted to accelerate or brake? Really? Because pushing ''2'' different buttons was to fucking hard?
The controller worked well enough. But it didn't last, and just like most things Namco made, it cost the company more money than it wanted as they couldn't sell the thing. So surprise! It discontinued shortly after its launch.
3 – When I first got a Gameboy in 1990 for my birthday. I was stoked. I took it to school to show it off and play in class. When in the car and even at the dinner table. And its a similar story for a lot of people who first got the Gameboy. It was hugely popular and sold over 60 million units by 1994. but just like many game companies. Their greed won out and started to make yet more crap that we didn't need or want.
In the 90's we weren't narcissistic as some of the younger generation now. We didn't know what a 'selfy' was nor did we care. If we wanted a picture. We would have to buy the film. Put it in the camera. Take a dodgy shot. And not know how it turned out in the end until a week later after it had been developed. But Nintendo thought it could cash in by giving us the option to buy a Camera and Printer that was used with the Gameboy.
The camera/printer combo was Shit. The quality was that of the first Pong game and you had to print it out onto Thermal Paper and was black and white. Good luck finding more thermal paper back then. It was another classic Nintendo flop and we wouldn't see this type of product again until the Nintendo DS nearly a decade later.
4 – Multiplayer gaming is now the norm. Most game developers work on the intent of making a game playable online with multiple people.
If back in the day we wanted multiplayer, we would have to put up with the screen being split, unless of course you had Teken. But 98% of games back then were split screen for multi player.
Sony tried to get around this problem with the PS1 Link Cable. Great, no more split screen, you could enjoy a full screen to yourself when playing Collin McRae against your best friend.
There was a problem thou. The cable was fairly short. You must have, 2 consoles, 2 TV's and 2 identical Games. So unless your friend had the exact same setup. It was, well, useless. Great idea. But wank.
5 – Full body motion detection is something that we have only just acquired when the Kinect came out for the Xbox right? Wrong. Back when we had the Sega Genesis in the 90's they attempted to do full body tracking with the Sega Activator. Well that's how it was advertised anyway.
It was designed to work with games like mortal kombat, eternal champions... well fighting games in general. And the advertisements shows someone performing martial arts in the octagon. Awesome right? Set it up, kick some imaginary arse and flail your legs and arms like a 90's inflatable tube man and watch your character do the same on screen. AWESOME.
Well, that's the thing. You see the way it actually operated was, each of the eight sections was mapped to a corresponding button, and when you waver your foot or hand over it it pressed said button. So if you did a roundhouse like good ol Chuck Norris. You were essentially mashing every button on the pad.
With a mountain of bad reviews, angry customers wanting their money back and a price tag of £80, yeah. Sega pissed off a lot of mortal Kombat fans. Including my Brother. (he is a twat anyway and deserved it)
I'm gonna ask my brother if he still has the Activator. It would look good on my Nostalgia, retro shelf.
Don't forget to upvote, resteem and follow for more useless tech.
Thanks for reading.
@TechMojo
Images...
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/vg/nesrob.htm
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sony/ps1/the-namco-negcon-and-the-playstation-games-supported
http://www.diyphotography.net/shooting-nintendo-game-boy-camera-1998/
https://www.farpost.ru/khabarovsk/tech/computers/accessories/playstation-1-link-cable-36777357.html
https://www.vidaextra.com/cultura/sega-y-su-creacion-mas-gore-activator-como-la-wii-pero-mejor!