Life after death, or non-gaming incarnation of consoles

Sooner or later, the life cycle of any electronic device to exhaust the technological potential is coming to an end. And game consoles are no exception. The most successful ones manage not only to cross with the successor console, but also to retire with honors. Leaving gamers a rich legacy, such systems will forever enter the retrogaming hall of fame, where they gain lifelong authority and cult status.

The development of advanced technologies, coupled with aggressive marketing and a sense of time, exalted some manufacturers and afflicted others. So the alternate leadership of Sega and Nintendo in the fourth generation by the beginning of the 90s ceased to be stable and predictable. From now on, Philips (with CD-I), Atari (with Jaguar) and the just-founded The 3DO company (with 3DO Interactive multiplayer) wanted to compete with the “king of the hill”. But time put everything in its place: and at the cost of fleeting (sometimes even imaginary) success, in the end, it became a natural oblivion ...



One way or another, outdated consoles settled not only in stock flea markets and garages, but also on the shelves of collectors and gamers. And it’s all the more pleasant for supreme console justice that some systems managed to continue their posthumous existence, however, in a slightly different role. Someone was allowed to atone for their lifetime failure, while someone, on the contrary, was able to strengthen their previously won positions.

But first things first.

The first semi-autonomous Sega Genesis 32X console was dropped from the generation race. The 32-bit cartridge add-on was a soft preparation for Sega Genesis owners for the nascent era of 3D games, polygon graphics and a completely new gaming experience. But the price of $ 159 and the numerous announcements of the upcoming Sega Saturn crippled the future of the device right at the start of sales (in November 1994). Third-party game developers did not see in 32X the potential that Tom Kalinsk (president of Sega of America) constantly exhorted, so they preferred to work with the familiar Genesis or even concentrate on its full-fledged successor - Sega Saturn.



So the disagreement between the Japanese center and the American unit put an end to 32X. Neither the Doom port, nor the best adaptation of Mortal Kombat II, nor Virtua Fighter, nor Knuckles' Chaotix saved the console. The production of the addon was hastily curtailed within six months after launch. But unlike the Sega CD, the 32X iron, having passed the “console purgatory,” found a new life in 1996, this time in the Picture magic graphics tablet . Which, you see, is quite worthy for such an ambiguous basic device.



In the same year, Jaguar ordered to live long, turning out to be Atari's big bluff. Neither the best Doom port, nor the Alien vs predator, nor the Sega cash injections after the protracted lawsuits, nor the Jag-CD, nor the promised virtual reality, helped to stay afloat. Nothing! The trust of the players was undermined forever and was not subject to rehabilitation. Interestingly, the new incarnation threw Atari Jaguar into dentistry, where a medical whale was made of it, transforming the original to absolute perfection. In fact, the world received just such a Jaguar, which he deserved.



Together with Atari Jaguar, the oblivion river swallowed the first console from The 3DO company. Mostly, the prohibitive price and poor support of third-party developers predetermined the inglorious end of the first full-fledged 5th generation console. The head of the company Trip Hawkins, realizing his mistakes and the real strengths of his competitors, in 1994 he preoccupied himself with the creation of the second, 64-bit generation of 3DO machines. 3DO II, further simply M2, was thought of as an add-on extension to the base machine, but at the design stage it took on the shape of a full-fledged console.



After a year of hype and active bluffing, the M2 specs were successfully sold to Matsushita. Unfortunately, the Japanese giant did not analyze the correlation between the successful launch of the PlayStation and the purchase of Sony's Psygnosis studio. But, having owned, say, Studio 3DO and even Electronic Arts, launching the M2 would have been easier than ever. Fumbling until mid-1997, Matsushita curtailed the project, forever dropping out of console wars. The result of the uncertainty policy was the use of M2 iron in automatic ATMs, coffee machines and the like, hopelessly far from the gaming industry. Ingloriously locked iron was used for its intended purpose only in Konami's arcade cabinets Polystars, but due to problems with the game data carrier, the cabinets never gained popularity.

In contrast to the 5th generation outsiders, the leader Sony PlayStation felt confident not only in the game role, but also in the music field. Indeed, early revisions of the console, for example, SCPH-1002 with the akm4309avm chip, nicknamed the “audiophile” ones, successfully competed with hi-end CD players in the category of up to $ 1000. Later, Sony will repeat this with the PlayStation 2, whose DVD player will be the most budget-friendly in history, and with the PlayStation 3 with its Blue-ray ROM. But these examples are more of a lifetime dual purpose than non-gaming incarnation.



PS By the way, Sega Genesis iron turned out to be to some extent audiophile as well, whose sound capabilities are actively used by Kasser synths to create its own synthesizers .



DJ Remutewent even further. Having recorded his album "Technoptimistic" in real time on the same Genesis hardware, he released it on the original cartridge. So, if you want to listen to what else 16-bit old Sega is capable of, then this album will be quite out of place.



But the “cherry on the cake” for you will be that Remute announced its new album “The cult of Remute” in the form of an edition on media for Super Nintendo (!). The first of its kind album, respect for the father of the sound chip SPC700 Ken Kutaragi will be released very soon, March 29, 2020. So do not miss!

Afterword

Interestingly, the philosophy of home consoles implied a game existence without too much interactivity. And when in practice, after the end of support, some of them gained not only a second wind, but also new meanings, you begin to perceive this only with admiration and great interest ...