The Gizmondo (2005, $ 400 or $ 229 with ‘Smart Adds’)
The only portable game console ever – as far as we know –released by former members of the Swedish Mafia, the Gizmondo actually looks pretty good on paper. At the same time an MP3 player, GPS (to keep your kids safe, see), SMS device, and game console, the weird little digital potato feels smooth enough when you see it running. And if that $ 400 price tag seems exorbitant, go ahead and buy a “Smart Adds” capable model, for nearly half the cost – in exchange for watching a few streaming ads a day, of course. (This is perhaps the most progressive aspect of this whole piece, now that we think about it.)
Released by Tiger Telematics (no relation to Tiger Electronics), the Gizmondo didn’t even have to wait for Nintendo to crush it; massive overspending of promotions, incredibly lax sales, and what were reportedly rather shady financial self-editors led to a quick bankruptcy for the other Tiger in 2006. didn’t go out and bought a majority stake in a modeling studio just to promote the damn thing.
digiBLAST (2005, $ 90)
Among the several devices on this list that were essentially embryonic tablets – two years before Apple finally made a good effort to crack the concept with the original iPhone – Nikko’s digiBLAST is a classic case of trying to do too much with way too little. . Released mainly in European markets, the Strange Square was both a media player and gaming device, allowing kids to watch (muddy) versions of their favorite TV shows on the (decidedly muddy) screen, before shutting out cartridges to create blurry performances. playing from Rayman or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4
In Nikko’s defense, Nintendo also tried to tackle this idea of a video player in the days of the GBA. (May we interest you a showing of the GBA cut of TenetBut by 2005, the company had embraced the idea that its devices were gaming machines in the first place, and only – perhaps because it had seen so many other competitors knock themselves out of the race by trying to be everything to all kids.
Caanoo (2010, $ 150)
Throughout history, we have placed a great deal of focus on the role Nintendo’s software library has played in driving handheld sales. Well, we’ve finally come up with a system that can also take advantage of all of Mario’s hard work through the magic of, uh, stealing. (Or emulation, if you want to get specific.) Released by GamePark Holdings in South Korea, the Caanoo was one of the few portables to hit the market during the DS era that stood out for being open source – that is, , anyone could write software for them without worrying about certification from Nintendo or anyone else. These boxes, containing the Dingoo and the later Pandora, were essentially just small, portable computers that anyone could program. And what they usually programmed them for was playing old NES, SNES, Game Boy, and Genesis games because, frankly, why wouldn’t you?
The Caanoo itself didn’t last long, but open-source portable platforms have only been gaining interest, despite what Nintendo, the famously intolerant of anyone working with its copyrights, would probably prefer. (God only knows what they think of the Arduboy, an Arduino-powered riff on Nintendo’s most famous handheld that’s about the size of a credit card.)