These ideas were good. Not only good, but innovative and original, which is something to be proud of in an industry that produces DDR Extreme Revised 5, and John Madden Football 2009 shiny helmet edition. We at Gameist feel that good ideas should be honored, even if -- as is sometimes the fate of great ideas -- they became failed products.
So join us, won't you, as we take a look at four ideas that sound cool, could have been cool, and perhaps in some alternate universe, met with great success. Here, not so much.
4) Virtual Boy
Graphics on video games get better every year. (Which doesn't make up for the fact that the story and plot and character development sometimes gets worse -- we're looking at you here, Fallout 3.) But we still haven't gotten into true 3-D graphics. This is a shame, especially since modern systems are capable of rendering a more appealing female form than ever before, 3-D would probably be very popular.
Well, they tried it already. Back in 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy, a portable console that allowed gamers to play games in 3-D. Unfortunately, the graphics looked like this:
Like a Communist Gameboy
And, sure enough, before the year had even ended, Nintendo had killed off the Virtual Boy line. Fewer than 800,000 units were ever produced, and while there was some excitement when a crate was discovered last year in Dubai, the fact of the matter is that the Virtual Boy may have been Nintendo's biggest failure ever.
Maybe it was the fact that the gameplay wasn't terribly convincing. Maybe it was the fact that the console was the ugliest thing you've ever seen:
Johnny Five alive!
Maybe it was the fact that the terribly red graphics were like looking at the screen through bloodshot eyes. Or maybe it was the fact that the system came with a giant warning that staring at the screen for more than 15 minutes at once could cause eye damage. Because yeah, who plays video games for more than 15 minutes at once? Hell, these days, you're lucky if that gets you through the opening credits.
But still, 3-D. We had it. Then we lost it. Maybe one day we will be worthy again.
3) U-Force
The U-Force was developed by Broderbund Entertainment. Remember Broderbund? They made all of the Carmen Sandiego games, the only ones your parents would happily buy for you, because they were educational. Sure, your mom hated how much you played video games, but once you explained that the whole game was about learning geography and various other facts about countries all over the world, she was happy to buy the game for you. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Where in the Europe is Carmen Sandiego, even Where in Hell is Carmen Sandiego.
So with an educational company like that at the helm, you expect a gaming peripheral that uses a little intelligence, right? Well, the idea behind the U-Force was that it would create an electronic field and sense your movements to control the characters on-screen. This idea was smart, and sort of cool.
Sadly, finding anything else good to say about the U-Force is at least twice as difficult as finding Carmen Sandiego. First of all, it's one of the largest, blockiest controllers you'll ever see:
"Sup dawg, I heard you liked giant ugly boxes, so I put a giant ugly boxy controller in your giant ugly box."
It also cost too much money, although that's sort of a minor point, since free would have still been too much money. You'd have to be an idiot to have bought one. Which makes me feel even worse about owning one, because it was the least responsive controller I have ever used. Let me explain how it "worked": You moved your hand in front of one of these little circles. You could never be sure exactly where the sensor zone was, so it would take you five seconds of frantic hand-waving to accomplish the same input that a traditional controller would achieve with the A-button.
As an added bonus, during your flailing, you will inevitably have entered the correct commands to make your character die. It doesn't matter whether this required jumping off of a cliff, running into an oncoming bullet, or simply standing still to get punched to death. The U probably stood for "Unfortunate."
2) Nick Arcade
Long before G4TV, or all the streaming Internet video, there weren't many TV shows about video games. There also weren't many anything that let players actually jump inside of a video game. Nick Arcade was both.
This game show from Nickelodeon only ran for about a year in 1992, but it was wholly innovative and could have been great. Players started each show by facing off in "original" video game competitions, where said original games were mostly clones of Asteroids or Pong. Then the winning team would take control of the board, advancing to receive either puzzles, trivia questions, free points, prizes, or video game challenges.
These challenges asked players to play an actual video game for 30 seconds on screen and try to attain some easy goal:
The whole idea of watching people play video games on TV was totally novel. And for gaming fanboys like us, totally awesome as well. But the finale of every episode of Nick Arcade was the final battle inside a live-action game known as the Video Zone. Players would don kneepads and helmets, as they climbed in front of a giant green screen and play a game from the inside:
Sure, the live action sections always seemed painfully slow, and none of the contestants on the show seemed to know how to play video games. But the idea of living in a video game was still a beautiful thing, and we were sad when the show was cancelled.
1) Captain Power
Captain Power was the closest thing to Willy Wonka technology the world has ever seen. Using primitive technology, it actually allowed you to interact with a TV show, something which doesn't seem to have been repeated even to this day, unless you count those constant pleas to call the 1-900 number.
The way it worked was this. Captain Power was a cheesy live-action show that featured your typical crappy acting, lousy plots, etc. But the videos also contained cartoons where certain parts had shiny red bits that you were supposed to shoot at, and yellow enemy fire you were supposed to avoid. Actually, it's probably easier just to show you:
The idea was, you were watching a television show, but playing a video game at the same time. You'd be blasting away like crazy at the center of those sky mines, and then quickly try to pull your ship away from the photon blasts when the enemy shot back. Oh yeah, did I mention that your gun was a giant ship?
Gunblades are for amateurs. Real men use gunships.
It's a toy and a video game at once. As an added bonus, if you got shot too many times, your ship would explode, automatically ejecting your pilot through the cockpit. Yeah, in short, Captain Power was totally awesome.
Sadly, the hit detection was terrible, especially if you were foolish enough to play in anything but a windowless room with no light and no reflective surfaces. And in terms of actual gameplay, there really wasn't much.
But imagine if they brought it back, and whenever you watched C-SPAN, you could shoot at targets on the screen to score points, while trying to dodge pork bills that the Senators would throw at you. The implementation may have sucked the first time around, but in terms of innovation, that idea was pure gold.
Now they just need to figure out a way to send candy through the television.
Moonbeam Glasscock(12 months ago)
CAPTAIN POWER WAS NOT A FAILURE.
Papy(12 months ago)
I have CAPTAIN POWER and it was amazing!!
The cockpit jumping off and being able to shoot at the tv.. over 15 years ago?? wow
What a fantastic idea and product!
I still have the ship and VHS tapes for my future son to play with.
John(12 months ago)
Yes, Captain Power was pretty awesome. I never had a problem with the hit detection, I just got tired of the same three videos over and over. The animation was really cool, and I imagine to do the same today would be a lot cheaper as they'd just use CG. And with better infrared and bluetooth tech these days, the interaction could be a lot greater than just hitting or avoiding a target (which really wasn't reflected in the show--the events played out as scripted, whether you were playing the game successfully, or even at all, or not.) It was like Lazer Tag for kids with no friends, but it had more, if derivative, narrative.
Ben Dennison(12 months ago)
I loved Nick Arcade. Watching someone play 30 seconds of Sonic 2 was highly entertaining to me back in the day.
Tzvi(12 months ago)
Am I the only one who yelled out "POWER ON" when it reached that point in the YouTube video? I am amazed I remember that.
PcGamesGalaxy(12 months ago)
Captain Power has a fantastic idea as but it looks like hell....
sweetestsadist(12 months ago)
As much as I loved Nickelodeon game shows, I hated nick arcade with a passion. As a kid I realized that show was done by people who had no idea about video games. And the host was annoying. Between stating the obvious during the gaming and making up words to the music during the show, I found so much spite for him. If you want to praise a video game show go to Video Power. Still an annoying host, but at least the show was about video games. No questions from your homework, just video games. No camping equipment for your prizes. Your prizes were all the video games you could grab. And if you grabbed the right one you got a freakin' Neo-Geo. That show was awesome. I bought a copy of Kabuki Quantum Fighter just because every kid seemed to find that one in the maze and I wanted one myself. Even the old version that was just said annoying host giving game tips I already read about in Gamepro 6 months earlier was better than Nick Arcade.
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I totally want a game that lets me shoot all the people on television.
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