Worst game console ever.

[GoodSarmatian]

Legend of Zelda for Virtual Boy is the hugest piece of c**p ever made.

huh
There was no Zelda game for the VB.

 

[GinandTonic]

But Wipeout sucked... the guy who did the collision detection couldn't work out how to make the ship slide along the wall (hint: dot products) so your ship just sort of stopped when you hit the wall.

Also, try playing Wipeout and then playing F-Zero X.

That completely misses the significance of Wipeout. It was the first game to be "cool". Up until then gaming was something to be ashamed of. Then a buch of fellas in Liverpool got Orbital (on the back of their glasto '94 gig of the year set) and Leftfield (on the back of the intro to 94's Shallow Grave (the coolist movie of the year) and Chemical Brothers (who everyone thought were the comming thing) for the soundtrack. As a compilation album that would have been impossibly cool. As the soundtrack to - what was fighting to escape from being seen as - a childs toy? It didnt just challange the stigma, it rewrote the asumptions.

Wipeout isnt the moment where video games grew up, but it is the moment where video games left the bedroom and scored a four-pack and a sixteenth.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Yeah, but as a game Wipeout sucked. The 2nd one was OK but F-Zero was out by then I think.

The PS1 formula 1 game was miles better than wipeout as a racer anyway. Shame the people who made it are weirdos (I remember your strange interview, Bizarre Creations )

EDIT: And I reckon it was Tomb Raider that pushed gaming into the mainstream myself.

 

[GinandTonic]

Yeah, but as a game Wipeout sucked. The 2nd one was OK but F-Zero was out by then I think.

The PS1 formula 1 game was miles better than wipeout as a racer anyway. Shame the people who made it are weirdos (I remember your strange interview, Bizarre Creations )

EDIT: And I reckon it was Tomb Raider that pushed gaming into the mainstream myself.

Tomb Raider was still a boys toy though. I remember living with a Stomp dancer in 95-6 who commented "I'm not sure whats more wrong, that my girlfriend is jealous of a computer sprite or that she has cause to be". Wipeout was the moment the girls stopped shaking their heads and kissing their teeth.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I think motion control is just a gimmick.

 

[Earthling]

That completely misses the significance of Wipeout. It was the first game to be "cool". Up until then gaming was something to be ashamed of. Then a buch of fellas in Liverpool got Orbital (on the back of their glasto '94 gig of the year set) and Leftfield (on the back of the intro to 94's Shallow Grave (the coolist movie of the year) and Chemical Brothers (who everyone thought were the comming thing) for the soundtrack. As a compilation album that would have been impossibly cool. As the soundtrack to - what was fighting to escape from being seen as - a childs toy? It didnt just challange the stigma, it rewrote the asumptions.

Wipeout isnt the moment where video games grew up, but it is the moment where video games left the bedroom and scored a four-pack and a sixteenth.

I'm going to totally disagree, first because I haven't heard of any of the titles/people/companies you mention (though cities, I understand), and that gaming at least on the PC had already broken out prior to the mid-1990s. So you're only left with really pushing the point of exactly when gaming became cool, to which one could argue that it's even still not, and certainly not before more modern stuff like the Xbox + Halo/the Sims/WoW.

 

[Ramius75]

i will say the NEO GEO... exceedingly expensive for teenager to afford... karma for them to fail.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

i will say the NEO GEO... exceedingly expensive for teenager to afford... karma for them to fail.

They Neo Geo failed ?
Too expensive and too focused on one genre, but the system wasn't even meant for the mainstream market. It was around for a pretty long time and I think it did fairly well in it's little niche. It was neither badly designed nor a financial desaster like other consoles listed here.

 

[GinandTonic]

I'm going to totally disagree, first because I haven't heard of any of the titles/people/companies you mention (though cities, I understand), and that gaming at least on the PC had already broken out prior to the mid-1990s. So you're only left with really pushing the point of exactly when gaming became cool, to which one could argue that it's even still not, and certainly not before more modern stuff like the Xbox + Halo/the Sims/WoW.

You havent heard of Tomb Raider and Wipeout? You havent heard of Glastonbury? In this case, with the greatest possible respect, your opinion as to what was "cool" in the mid 90's is irrelivant.

Sims was never "cool". It was huge. It brought in a lot of gamers, esp women. But it wasnt "cool".

WoW isnt "cool". It is huge. It brought in a lot of gamers and is hugely addictive. It is completely geeky. It is aggressively "uncool".

 

[Mad Man]

does anybody here remember the R-Zone? It was a portable game system made by Tiger that you strapped over your face.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

No, but if I had known about it I would have bought one for some of my ex-girlfriends.

 

[bhsup]

The NES.

Some might disagree with me, but try being the only kid with an 8 bit system while everyone else in class had the newer 16 bit Sega Genesis and then upgraded to N64's and Playstation's! AND I UPGRADED MY NES WITH A GAMECUBE!

Whiner. Try being the only kid with pong when everyone has upgraded to the Atari 2600.

 

[Leonel]

Whiner. Try being the only kid with pong when everyone has upgraded to the Atari 2600.

... touche, Vile Right Wing Conspiricy Agent...

 

[Earthling]

You havent heard of Tomb Raider and Wipeout? You havent heard of Glastonbury? In this case, with the greatest possible respect, your opinion as to what was "cool" in the mid 90's is irrelivant.

Sims was never "cool". It was huge. It brought in a lot of gamers, esp women. But it wasnt "cool".

WoW isnt "cool". It is huge. It brought in a lot of gamers and is hugely addictive. It is completely geeky. It is aggressively "uncool".

Well, I was about five in the mid-90s so that's ok, but I have heard of and played the original Tomb Raider (I was just saying the specific bands/games you were mentioning there, which looking it up seem to be entirely on Playstation as well, might explain why I hadn't heard of them). However, I still don't see your basic premise - that circa 1995, due to Wipeout or related material, videogames became "cool." Unless you're saying that then videogaming became rapidly uncool again in say, 1996, then continued with trends towards the present...I don't know what metric you could be using - pre-1995 videogames were already cool among kids/teens, and I'd say it wasn't till the early 2000s that one could say anything except the mainstream adult population being entirely contemptuous, which only began to change with the widespread popularity of sixth generation systems. The only remaining thing I could see is the argument of when/if videogaming became popular among females, but I have no clue how that would really relate to Wipeout. I'm pretty sure any one of us on here could verify that almost no girls/women would have ever heard of it.

 

[Mise]

Wipeout made it mainstream is what he means. Lots of people might have been embarrassed to play games before Wipeout, but Wipeout featured a genuinely cool soundtrack (like G&T said, it would have made a pretty good mix-tape in its own right), which meant that it was no longer a hidden passion for the bedrooms of teenagers. It went mainstream; and it grew up.

Then again I was 10 in 1995 so I'm just repeating what I read in magazines at the time. I never went mainstream. And I haven't grown up...

 

[Earthling]

Ok, so Wipeout was a big hit in the UK then , apparently more of a breakout than earlier stuff like Doom and various arcade games or the slightly later Mario 64. If anyone else shares that experience elsewhere worldwide then maybe I have missed something in videogame history (too bad they don't teach that class in schools...)

 

[bhsup]

Wait, what makes a game "cool" or not? If YOU think it is cool, then it is cool. Who gives a flying rat's backside stuck to a flying monkey what someone else thinks about a game you enjoy?

 

[Mise]

@Earthling: Yeah, it might just have been a UK thing. The soundtrack certainly was very British, and the guys that made the game were from Liverpool, so...

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Nowt to do with me though, I must point out. I KNOW how to make ships slide along the wall

 

[GinandTonic]

The only other games that can really compare in terms of "coolness" (and god knows Im not suggesting thats a metric of any particular value) would be the GTA games. Doom was a great game, but it wasnt really "cool" at all.