Sega handheld an April Fool's gag

by Ross Miller { Apr 13th 2006 at 4:55PM }

It always kind of looked like total malarky, and now we have proof.

You might have noticed quite a few sites picking up on a rumor that Sega was jumping back into the portable console business with the "Hedgehog" (conceptual image to the right). It contains an Nvidia 3D chipset, a small Samsung RISC processor, a touch pad surface, and a 640x360 ... basically, everything but the kitchen sink. The suspected release date is 2007.

The information comes from a French video game site Inpact Virtuel, who posted it on March 31 at 5:01 pm -- which translates to 12:01 am on April 1st in Tokyo. If that was not enough to destroy this rumor (on top of the horribly unprofessional sketch of the console), then how about the revelation Inpact Virtuel put up on April 2nd? The first sentence says it all: "Alors, vous l'avez aimé, notre poisson d'avril?" (translation: So, did you like our April Fool's joke?").

Comedy is universal, but some things got lost in translation. Let's hope this rumor dies faster than you can say Pimps at Sea.

[via Press the Buttons]

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

JodyAnthony @ Apr 13th 2006 5:00PM

I'm calling fake on this one.

Raymond @ Apr 13th 2006 5:05PM

no, you think? seeming as that was just declasred in the article itself?

I think the USB storage would be cool. they could use less or more storage depending on how big the game was, or even let you dl games off the net and load them onto it, design is crap though.

epobirs @ Apr 13th 2006 5:10PM

Besides, Renasas has their 'Dreamcast on a chip' product. Surely any serious Sega handheld would want to take advantage of reviving parts of the Dreamcast library rather than starting from scratch.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1667467,00.asp

I've been hoping somebody would do something interesting with this thing but no products so far as I know.