Consoles. We know ‘em, we love ‘em, we probably have several in our basements or storage sheds. But no matter how complete your collection, there are undoubtedly some systems that’ve eluded you, and perhaps a few you’ve never heard of.

Here at Retro-Active World Headquarters, we feel it only fair to discuss the systems that failed to catch on as well as the ones we have such fond memories of… for we believe in the mantra “Those that forget the mistakes of the past are ever doomed to repeat them.” So I turned to my staff and asked them, “What are the biggest bombs that were ever dropped on the console world?” Their response made one thing abundantly clear: That I need to remember I don’t have a staff, this is strictly a one-man operation.

So I went with Plan B; I picked out four of my favorite flops of all time, and will briefly discuss them below. (Do not for a moment believe these are the only failed consoles there ever were. I have more I could have written about, but decided to stick to just these four for now. Trust me, I have enough material for a second or even third one of these posts, if there’s enough demand for them.)

Here we go…

Emerson Arcadia 2001 (1982): Don’t feel too bad if you don’t remember this little machine; even many professionally-written histories of video games tend to omit it. But it was a real console, not vaporware, and apparently a few people actually owned one back in the day.

The Arcadia is best described as the “missing link” between the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. The graphics are generally blocky and lo-res, but play is fairly complex thanks to a pair of very Inty-like keypad controllers (though Arcadia’s at least included a screw-in joystick for the infamous disc). Technically, the system represents an advance over the 2600, but falls far short of Inty and Colecovision.

The games are generally nothing to write home about, although there are one or two gems in the lineup, including a fun Pac-clone called Cat Trax and home conversions of little-known coin-ops like Jungler and Pleiades. The funny thing is, however, that Emerson actually had some good conversions of popular games (Galaxian, Berzerk, even Defender), but was obliged to cripple them into mere clones thanks to Atari waving its exclusivity rights around. It’s a shame, because the Arcadia, while very limited, could still have produced some ports that blew the doors off of Atari’s more half-hearted efforts of the time for the 2600.

More than anything, the Arcadia was a victim of the changing marketplace. Shortly after its release, Coleco came out with its system, and Atari was heavily pushing the 5200. When combined with Intellivision’s still-impressive audiovisuals, the Arcadia found itself embarassingly unable to compete in the “splash and dash” department, causing many stores to drop it just a few months after it came out.

Atari XE Game System (1986): Exactly what market Atari was looking to address with this odd duck, no one knows. They already had the Atari 7800 – released two years late, to be sure, but still a viable and attractive console at the dawn of the Silver Age. The XEGS, on the other hand, was based on their 8-bit computer technology, which in 1986 was already over half a decade old and had already served as the heart of the high-profile failure that was the Atari 5200.

The weird thing about the XEGS was that it wasn’t just marketed as a console. No, it was a bona fide home computer as well; came with a keyboard and everything. It was directly compatible with existing peripherals and software for the Atari 800 and its descendants, including the recently-released XE line (from where the XEGS took its name). In fact, for all practical purposes the XEGS was an XE computer with a detachable keyboard!

The problem here was not that the XEGS was using outdated technology – even though it was – but simple logic. Even if you didn’t necessarily want to buy a computer, Atari was selling its 65XE at this time for less than the cost of an XEGS outfit – and you could use XEGS cartridges directly on the computer. Who in their right mind would buy the more expensive XEGS when you could get the same thing in a more compact case? Even if you’d never use the 65XE as anything other than a game machine, it just made no sense to shell out for the XEGS. Sure, it came with two games – a light-gun shooter and the classic Flight Simulator II (a third game, Missile Command, was secreted away in the console as an Easter Egg) – but so what? It was nothing you couldn’t already get for the Atari 800 line, and cheaper besides (if purchased on diskette).

Don’t get me wrong. Atari’s 8-bit computers were and are excellent game machines, and the XEGS is no exception. It’s just that this system really should never have existed; it was the very definition of a redundant console, and it did nothing to help Atari’s already-tarnished image, beginning the inexorable downward spiral of what was once the most powerful name in home entertainment.

Worlds of Wonder Action Max (1987): Back when VCRs were still considered a novelty, there were many attempts to try and find some way to use videotapes to play games as well as movies. This led to a short-lived fad in the mid-’80s of “VCR board games,” where short video clips were used as play elements. It was about as much fun as it sounds… namely, none whatsoever.

Nevertheless, Action Max was born of this fad. It was nothing more and nothing less than a light gun game that used special videotapes to provide targets. During the video, several objects were given a seizure-inducing “strobe” effect; this is the target you’d shoot with the gun. A hit bumped up your score, while misses lowered it. The object, naturally, was to get as high a score as possible by the end of the (usually 15-20 minute) short film.

You’d think this would be an extremely limiting format to base a console around. Well, you’d be right. There were, I believe, a grand total of five (count ‘em!) different “games” for the system – Sonic Fury (aerial dogfighting; this was the pack-in tape with the system), .38 Ambush Alley (police academy gun training), Hydrosub 2021 (undersea adventure), The Rescue of Pops Ghostly (haunted-house hijinks), and even a licensed game based on the movie and TV show Blue Thunder. It was all the same game – shoot the flashing target on the screen – and it got old real quick. (To be fair, the system did offer a few minor variations and twists, including a limited-ammo option. But even so…) Nor did it help that the acting in the videos was about the most cringeworthy on record this side of porno and FMV games!

Action Max came and went so fast that most people aren’t even aware it existed. But it did. My best friend bought one, with two games, from a tag sale for about two bucks… less than six months after it was released. That should tell you everything you need to know about how well it did in the marketplace.

It was a nice stab at something different, but there was no way Action Max was ever going to be a serious contender in the videogame world – and certainly not with the NES beginning its rise to ultimate power.

(And yes, this is the same Worlds of Wonder that gave the world Teddy Ruxpin. Apparently they decided there was more money to be made in the preschool set…)

Commodore Amiga CD32 (1993-94): The story of Commodore Business Machines, Inc. reads like a manual of exactly how NOT to run a computer company. They produced the single most successful home computer of all time (the Commodore 64), as well as giving the computer world the beloved Amiga platform… then immediately set about proving these successes as mere flukes. I could go on for hours about the revolving-door management, the quirky hardware that was shoved out the door before receiving proper QA, bizarre decisions such as replacing the popular Amiga 500 with the considerably less versatile and powerful A600 (while still billing it as an upgrade!), and what has to be the worst marketing department ever. EVER, says I!

The CD32 was not Commodore’s first foray into the console realm; the company had some roots in the industry dating back to the Pong era, when they were one of hundreds of manufacturers with a “me too” bat-and-ball system on the market. They twice attempted to turn the venerable C64 into a cartridge console, first as the unreleased “Max Machine” (with just 16K of onboard RAM and a bubble-membrane keyboard), then later as the oh-so-creatively titled C64 Game System. Even the Amiga got the console treatment, sort of, with the release of the CDTV “multimedia entertainment system” in 1990 (essentially an Amiga 500 without a keyboard, but with a CD-ROM drive and TV output). They all, however, had one thing in common; they all failed in the marketplace. Miserably.

The CD32, Commodore’s last major product for the home market, continued in the tradition of using an existing computer as the “heart” of a dedicated game system; in this case, the Amiga 1200. (Ironically, this finally fulfilled Jay Miner’s original vision of the Amiga as the ultimate console, by mid-’80s standards at least.) Offering SVGA-quality graphics and full CD-ROM capability, as well as a surprisingly diverse lineup of interesting import games from the UK (where the Amiga was always most popular as a gaming platform), the CD32 actually had the chops to compete in the US console wars.

So why have you very likely never heard of the thing today? Again, it’s all about Commodore’s marketing… or, more accurately, the total lack thereof. In fairness, Commodore was dying by inches by this point, drowning in the proverbial sea of red ink, and most industry observers correctly pegged it as not long for this world. You have to have money before you can spend it on marketing, to be sure. But even so, the CD32 was virtually never advertised outside the pages of the few remaining Amiga magazines on the market (Amiga World and Amazing Amiga), and dealers were few and very far between, being mainly limited to the rapidly-diminishing number of Amiga dealers that stayed with Commodore products despite the company’s impending doom.

But I can’t put all the blame on Commodore’s mismanagement in this case. Unfortunately, the CD32 had the misfortune of being a CD-based game console at a time when “CD-based game console” had something of a stigma to it; this was the era of the CD-i, the 3DO, and the SegaCD, three systems that will never top anyone’s greatest-consoles-ever list. At this point in history, when you thought of CD gaming, you generally thought of either FMV crap like Night Trap or Sewer Shark, poorly-acted and with nearly nonexistent gameplay, or you thought of games that could be done just as well on lesser platforms, with only enhanced audio justifying the CD-ROM purchase. Nor did it help that the CD32’s lineup of games included titles and characters that were virtual unknowns outside of the Euro market.

The CD32, however, could be converted into a full-fledged Amiga 1200. This made it popular with Amiga fans looking for a relatively low-cost way to add CD functionality to their computers, as the 1200 (being of the classic “’80s style” all-in-the-keyboard design) wasn’t particularly conducive to hardware mods.

Sadly, the CD32’s legacy is that of being the last dying gasp of a company that at one time had reigned supreme in the home computer market. Of the Amiga line, it has often been said that “Amiga did not fail Commodore, Commodore failed Amiga,” and that statement can also be applied to the console that bears the hallowed Amiga name as well.

Did you actually own one of these consoles, or do you still? Or do you have a suggestion for another system I could classify as a bona fide marketplace flop? By all means, leave your comments and suggestions below!

If you liked that, try...

1. Retro-Active: Consoles That REALLY Never Made It
2. Retro-Active: More Consoles That Never Made It
3. Retro-Active: NES Tetris Revisited
4. Retro-Active, Part I: Jumpman
5. Retro-Active: Pinball Construction Set

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