Is there any retro consoles that you never lived up to their potential? where the games fell short of the hardware?.
Personally I feel that the NDS was under-utilized, as it was a fully 3d capable console, that was used mostly for 2d pixel art games, and platformers. When it was able to support full 3d platformers and even a fan remake of portal.
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I think the PlayStation 3 is old enough now that some people consider it to be “retro” (ugh 😩). But the PS3 was notoriously difficult to develop game for, thanks to it’s unique architecture. This meant that games that were on multiple platforms looked worse and ran terribly on the PS3 since the devs didn’t have the time or resources to optimize their games on the system. Even first party devs took nearly the entire consoles life span to properly utilize the hardware with Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, and maybe Guerilla Games’ Killzone 3. Overall, it’s really disappointing that Sony made such a powerful console that was such a pain in the ass to dev for that no one really took advantage of all that power
The Dreamcast never really got given a chance. They killed it so fast, and even in its short lifespan it had a great library. It might have even been able to keep up with the PS2, at least for the first year or two with what I’ve seen of porting projects where people got shit like GTA3 running on it.
For such a short lifespan the Dreamcast had an abundance of peripherals too which were underutilized. Some of them were ahead of its time but you have to admire the passion!
- Fighting controller
- Arcade stick
- Fishing controller
- Karaoke add-on
- Maracas
- Light gun
- Keyboard & mouse
- Dream Eye
- Microphone
The PSVita but I’m a GenZ so I haven’t used any hardware before the PS2
The Vita’s first-party though are remarkable compared to other stuff releasing, it kinda felt like everyone wanted to port PS3 games and forgot to make games targeting the handheld itself, the community is making a great job though, you can run CUPHEAD AND HOLLOW KNIGHT on that tiny beast
I am old and agree with you. The touch backplate was a little gimmicky but over all an amazing handheld
I feel like 3do never quite got the success that it deserved. At the time it was pretty advanced, one of my buddies had one but there weren’t a lot of games available
Lack of advertising and its business model of the hardware basically being produced by licensees tacked on to other electronics products of the time ended up crippling consumer awareness, and the price point was the big nail in the coffin, at roughly $700 in the early 90s you really had to commit to wanting one. Unlike most other console companies, 3DO couldn’t afford to sell the hardware at a loss because they didn’t have much, if anything, for first party games to make up for it. It had some games that look like they’d be decent, at least a better quality library overall than arguably the Jaguar and definitely the CDi, but it’s that tough cycle in gaming where you need good games to sell consoles (especially at $700, in any time) but third party devs won’t make good games for consoles that don’t sell.
The Sega Mega CD and the 32x were genuinely great pieces of hardware…but nearly all the games were awful. I love the Mega CD in particular, and I say that as a Nintendo kid.
Lunar 1&2 were originally released on the Sega CD, as was shining force CD.
There were a few decent games on it, but agreed, not many.
GoldenEye on the N64 was the only game I’m aware of to have a control layout where you could use the left and centre prongs to get a proto-dual-stick experience
The WiiU’s second screen is great for asymmetric multiplayer or an auxiliary screen for things like inventories, most games just duplicated what was on the main screen
Perfect Dark (spiritual successor to GoldenEye) iterated on that. You can use two N64 controllers, one in each hand, to get a true dual stick experience
As far as hardware gimmicks go, I agree that the WiiU’s gamepad could’ve done so much more, I can think of so many different unique ways a game could’ve made use of it, like having two different perspectives or mini games like in GTA Chinatown wars.
The Wii U tried to bring the DS to console, but there was one major limitation that kept it from being used the way the DS was: human eyes cannot focus on screens at different distances from the eyes. The DS only worked because both screens were right next to each other.
The one thing the Gamepad could do that worked quite well and deserved to be explored more was asymmetric multiplayer. But at the same time, it felt like it was an era too late to be a big deal - giving players separate screens is something we can already do via online multiplayer.
