1UP profiles four systems that never made it to the US:
- MSX (1983) - Metal Gear and Dragon Quest debuted on this platform, which had a enough support to compete with Nintendo's Famicom in Japan.
- X68000 (Sharp, 1987) - its power came with a price: $4,000; it did feature some impressive ports of Castlevania, Ghosts 'n Goblins, and Strider.
- PC-FX (NEC, 1994) - TurboGrafx-16's successor; easily trumped by PlayStation, degrading into "a breeding ground for crappy anime and porn games."
- WonderSwan (Bandai, 1999) - Bandai had an exclusive license to port the original Final Fantasy titles ... until the games eventually landed on GBA.
Good news is Americans didn't miss much.
(Page 1) Reader Comments
Eitherway, the Wonderswan (technicolour)was definately comparable to GBA (and came out WAY before it), and had some unique games to boot. Quite sad that it went. (also, it encouraged portrait screen gaming)
Wonder if the intense rivary between MS and Sony begin at the MSX though.
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The Wonderswan Color did not come out "way before" the GBA - it came out in 2001, pretty much as a response to the GBA. (I'm not sure which actually hit the market first, but the GBA had at least been announced and demo'd at Space World.)
Anyway, the Wonderswan (non-color) was out in 1999 but was a lot less powerful than the GBA (as was the WSC) - it was not comparable to it. It had a 16 bit 3mhz CPU, vs. the 32 bit 16mhz ARM CPU in the GBA. It was more comparable with the Neo Geo Pocket Color than the GBA.
It was more powerful than the original GameBoy but it lacked color initially - which the GameBoy Color had. So Bandai was playing catchup pretty much the whole time.
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I would still say that the WSC is comparable to the GBA though, even if it`s the same comparison as GC to PS2 (in terms of games, not profit) (Game quality is my opinion, and should not be mistaken as average consumer opinion)
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As compared to what? All those systems that are breeding grounds for award-winning anime and porn games?
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NEC was forced to be less scrupulous in licensing its games. Sure, the porn games did reach the other systems, but it's a stain on the console-maker's record if they get there legitamately. Not too mention it was 1992 technology rushed out in 1994 to compete with the Playstation and Saturn. Which... well... is retarded to begin with.
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here are two battle heat reviews:
http://www.pcenginefx.com/PC-FX/html/pc-fx_world_-_game_reviews_-_b.html
http://www.pcenginefx.com/PC-FX/html/pc-fx_world_-_game_reviews_-_b1.html
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Man the Spectravideo kicked arse!
256x192 colour resolution.
32 hardware sprites
32k of ram (I was uber and had 80k!)
Built in joystick!
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Porn you say? hmmmm...
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It still does in Japan (for DQ and FF)
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America didn't miss much... only 2 of the strongest game computers ever made and a fairly nice handheld that scared Nintendo into retiring a decade-old brick that wasn't very impressive when it came out.
The MSX series(mainly MSX2) and x68ks are legendary for their games, and with good reason.
The fact that they never made it out of Japan to any real degree(there WAS an international MSX presence, but it was minimal) was a serious loss for the rest of the world.
The Wonderswan had a chance, but it was never pushed quite hard enough. Still, it DID take a signifigant number of sales from the Gameboy for a time. I believe it peaked at about 8-10% of the japanese handheld market. Not very impressive, until you realize every single one of those points was against a GameBoy in full-on Pokémadness.
As far as system evolution goes...
Gameboy Color was a quick&dirty hack to give the GameBoy an edge against the newer and better game machines that were coming out(The NeoGeo Pocket hit shelves about the same time as the GBColor, and the original 'Swan hit about a year later) and hold market share while Nintendo developed a REAL next-gen handheld.
The WonderSwan Color was a quick&dirty hack to make the 'Swan competitive with the GameBoy Color. Same deal for the NeoGeo Pocket Color.
NGPC landed about the same time as the original 'Swan, with the 'Swan Color landing about a year later, and the GameBoy Advance landing a year after that.
The SwanCrystal was going to be Bandai's answer to the GBA, but by the time it came out, Bandai was getting ready to pull out of the market. The GBA had already shredded the 'Swan, so the 'Crystal was basically stillborn.
But the PCFX was crap. No question on THAT point.
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The only problem with it, was that the "D-Pad" (the up, down, left and right keys) had stopped working, so we had to buy a joystick for it. This was not a big problem as it was much better to play with the joystick anyways :D
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King's Valley 2 (MSX2) ,King's Valley1 (MSX1) and King's Valley 1 Plus (MSX1) worth buy this machine just to play those games!
And also had others gems like Metal Gear 1 and 2 (both MSX2).
Konami had a strong line of games for MSX1/MSX2
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being sold as a music computer,...) at http://www.woomb.net/ you can get your
hands on some Japanese MSX classics translated to English.
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