Mere weeks before the launches of the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, Mattel stormed confidently back into the console wars with an idea nobody had asked for since 1992: “What if we needed to scan cards to play our video games?”
Mattel’s new console was called the HyperScan, a large black and red unit promising a hybrid gaming experience using both physical collectible cards and digital gameplay. The main difference from traditional video games would be the use of “IntelliCards,” a card with an RFID reader that would allow players to access their digital game information, like unlocked abilities, saved statistics, and custom characters, by swiping these cards against the HyperScan.
From a theoretical standpoint, the IntelliCards were a significant improvement over their original Barcode Battler concept. From a practical standpoint, however, it was just a rehash of a long-dated technology concept hastily assembled to trick parents unready or unwilling to spring for one of the real consoles on the horizon.
The cards themselves barely worked. They were capable of storing information so users could take their upgraded characters to a friends HyperScan and compete, effectively a trading card that remembered who you were.
They were also horribly volatile and unreliable. Place a card close to a fairly small amount of magnetic interference, like a speaker or poorly shielded television, and voila! Your mutant, hero, or wrestler would revert to default settings.
When the HyperScan first shipped in late 2006, it retailed for $69.99. Each game was designed to require the purchase of multiple “booster packs” of additional IntelliCards to gain access to playable characters, moves, and upgradeable attributes that would enable users to fully enjoy their games. This ultimately created one of the most bizarre legacies of the HyperScan brand.
The HyperScan’s version of the X-Men game, which came pre-installed with the console, was later packaged and sold as a standalone TV game. However, this new package contained no RFID scanner, and therefore, users lost the ability to access and utilize the majority of their playable characters, moves, and upgrades, resulting in a neutered, incomplete experience.
While the HyperScan’s internal hardware did little to improve the overall quality of the console, the low-end Sunplus SoC processor and 16MB of RAM provided a brawler game experience comparable to that of the original Sony PlayStation’s worst shovelware, complete with long multi-minute loading times. Pauses in gameplay caused by scanning the IntelliCard during battle created a stop-motion type of feel to the matches being played.
A total of only five games were released for the HyperScan, and reviews universally panned the product. Retailers were forced to lower the price of the HyperScan to $9.99, with expansion packs going for as little as $1. Eventually, retailers were forced to send what remained of the inventory to the graveyard that also holds the Mega Duck and Barcode Battler before it.
The HyperScan was not completely off base. Its basic premise, physical items interacting with digital games, would eventually explode onto the scene in the form of Skylanders, Amiibo, and Disney Infinity.
Mattel was somehow ahead of its time, but, unfortunately, the right hardware, the right technology, and the right decade were not part of the equation.
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