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It’s rare I go for the negative threads, but I have to do this one. What do you, in your own tastes, think is the most worthless system or system add on of all time?
For me, no add on will ever be as funny and as tragic as the Atari Jaguar CD. Jaguar’s core problem… wasn’t that it didn’t have enough storage space. Maybe it would eventually. Actually, yeah, it probably would since N64 struggled its whole life, but if they knew it would be an issue, I have to ask why it wasn’t built into the console in the first place. Perhaps it was for cost, but the main point is this: the Jaguar is the LAST console that should have sought an add on at that point in life. Creating an add on has never AND WILL NEVER spark sales to go up for a system in the U.S. retail market. And the Jaguar was basically only sold in the U.S. and a few were sold in the UK, so the dominant audience was never going to take to it. SEGA PROVED THAT ALREADY! And with a much better add on! One that added much more to the base machine’s repertoire and had way more “killer apps” in just its first year on the market than the Jaguar CD ever had. And even it was a total disaster for sales thanks to its gobsmacking asking price. There was already a large example of why this add on market was a bad idea, but 90’s Atari still went for it because their leaders were more attracted to gimmicks than to quality game design to sell their device. The final spit in the face is that the drive is pathetically cheaply made. It dies very easily, even moreso than the notorious model 1 SEGA CD from four years earlier, and a reminder that this device was on the market the same year that the PS1 and Saturn came out, both of whom had far stronger and longer lasting drives. It’s an absolute insult to the people who stuck with Atari in this generation, and it’s nothing more than a desperate plea for help that should have never made it to shelves, no matter what games ended up on it. Thank GOD many of them were ported to the better systems of the day, otherwise we’d have good games rotting on the loveseat of misery that is the Jaguar and Jaguar CD’s porcelain throne combo.
(An honorable mention goes to the PSVR 2. What a horrible disaster this whole thing has been. “Hey folks! We know you already think our console is maniacally expensive and has no games, so we made a new headset that is even MORE expensive and has EVEN LESS SOFTWARE made for it!” Worst part: it’s not compatible with games for the first VR. That’s dismal. Sony systems ALWAYS have fantastic backwards compatibility, so creating a device that literally can’t work with the old software while also being as expensive and niche as it is can only be described as a bad joke. I can muster up a defense for several PS5 era things, but this I cannot and simply won’t. It’s not worth it to defend the ultimate hardware example of Sony’s greed and overfunding of unworthy projects. It’s thanks to Sony’s negligence and marketing failures that VR will never be the “next big thing” and that sucks. It really… really sucks.)
For me, no add on will ever be as funny and as tragic as the Atari Jaguar CD. Jaguar’s core problem… wasn’t that it didn’t have enough storage space. Maybe it would eventually. Actually, yeah, it probably would since N64 struggled its whole life, but if they knew it would be an issue, I have to ask why it wasn’t built into the console in the first place. Perhaps it was for cost, but the main point is this: the Jaguar is the LAST console that should have sought an add on at that point in life. Creating an add on has never AND WILL NEVER spark sales to go up for a system in the U.S. retail market. And the Jaguar was basically only sold in the U.S. and a few were sold in the UK, so the dominant audience was never going to take to it. SEGA PROVED THAT ALREADY! And with a much better add on! One that added much more to the base machine’s repertoire and had way more “killer apps” in just its first year on the market than the Jaguar CD ever had. And even it was a total disaster for sales thanks to its gobsmacking asking price. There was already a large example of why this add on market was a bad idea, but 90’s Atari still went for it because their leaders were more attracted to gimmicks than to quality game design to sell their device. The final spit in the face is that the drive is pathetically cheaply made. It dies very easily, even moreso than the notorious model 1 SEGA CD from four years earlier, and a reminder that this device was on the market the same year that the PS1 and Saturn came out, both of whom had far stronger and longer lasting drives. It’s an absolute insult to the people who stuck with Atari in this generation, and it’s nothing more than a desperate plea for help that should have never made it to shelves, no matter what games ended up on it. Thank GOD many of them were ported to the better systems of the day, otherwise we’d have good games rotting on the loveseat of misery that is the Jaguar and Jaguar CD’s porcelain throne combo.
(An honorable mention goes to the PSVR 2. What a horrible disaster this whole thing has been. “Hey folks! We know you already think our console is maniacally expensive and has no games, so we made a new headset that is even MORE expensive and has EVEN LESS SOFTWARE made for it!” Worst part: it’s not compatible with games for the first VR. That’s dismal. Sony systems ALWAYS have fantastic backwards compatibility, so creating a device that literally can’t work with the old software while also being as expensive and niche as it is can only be described as a bad joke. I can muster up a defense for several PS5 era things, but this I cannot and simply won’t. It’s not worth it to defend the ultimate hardware example of Sony’s greed and overfunding of unworthy projects. It’s thanks to Sony’s negligence and marketing failures that VR will never be the “next big thing” and that sucks. It really… really sucks.)
