Coleco’s Gemini was a sleek Atari 2600 clone with a clever combo joystick/paddle controller, but it launched into the 1983 crash and vanished almost instantly.
Browsing: Retro gaming
Zeebo was a 2009 console by Tectoy and Qualcomm that used 3G to download games, avoiding piracy. Poor pricing, weak mobile hardware, and few games killed it.
RGC-BASIC V2.0 adds MOD tracker music, three new screen modes including 640×400 RGBA, 256-entry live palettes, alpha compositing, and parallax scrolling.
C64-Live is a new browser-based platform that lets users host live Commodore 64 sessions, invite a second player, and stream to spectators online.
VTech twice chased hybrid “edutainment” consoles with CreatiVision and Socrates and proved one thing: they didn’t learn from the first failure.
SNK and Plaion Replai have announced the Neo Geo AES+, a re-engineered ASIC-based console with original cart support launching November 12 from $249.99.
Afterplay has launched a ROM storefront where players can buy new indie retro games from studios like Incube8 and Mega Cat Studios and play them instantly.
The G7400/Odyssey³ offered modest upgrades over Odyssey² but launched as the crash hit, computers rose, and NES loomed; caught between eras with nowhere to go.
The 3DO’s $700 price, multi-manufacturer chaos, and FMV-heavy library killed it by 1995 when PlayStation and Saturn arrived with better games and lower prices.
Amstrad’s 1990 GX4000 reused CPC computer hardware with a tiny 25-30 game library of mostly recycled ports, no third-party support, and vanished within a year.