By Benj Edwards
Video game systems may be toys of a sort, but they’re also complicated machines. They require precision engineering, specialized hardware design, and careful industrial design to successfully achieve what seems like a simple goal: to play games on a television set. Throughout the history of home game consoles, each generation of machines has brought new opportunities to innovate. Along the way, companies have often slipped up and made mistakes that came back to haunt them later–some of which were so serious that they helped to destroy platforms and even entire corporations.
This list is by no means exhaustive, nor are all of these consoles bad overall (see The Worst Video Game Systems of All Time for that list). And though some of these problems keep popping up in one form or another–like the bad call of feeding power to the console via the RF switch shared by RCA’s Studio II and Atari’s 5200–other errors in judgments were unique to one console. Thank heavens for that.
In chronological order…
RCA Studio II (1977)
Problem #1: Poor Controllers
The RCA Studio II shipped with no external controllers, just a pair of built-in ten-button keypads. These keypads were awkward and uncomfortable to use. It made games difficult to control and limited the potential of software for the system.
What Were They Thinking?
My best guess is general cluelessness as to what constituted a decent game controller on RCA’s part. To some extent it’s excusable, since home video games were in their infancy in 1977. And there’s no doubt that omitting detachable controllers reduced the system’s overall complexity and thus manufacturing costs overall — but it also greatly reduced the consumer’s desire to buy and play the system.
Problem #2: Power Through RF Switch
Similar to the Atari 5200–see below–the RCA Studio II received main system power through the video output cable. An AC adapter plugged into a special RF switch that provided power to the console, but unlike the 5200’s switch, the Studio II’s did not include any special functionality. Studio II owners with lost of damaged RF switches found themselves regretting their purchase.
What Were They Thinking?
RCA’s engineers probably felt that it was simpler to have one cable going in and out of the system. It was simpler — in the short term–until someone lost their switch box. Today, the special Studio II RF switch is extremely difficult to find (and for an already difficult-to-find system, that’s bad).
Mattel Intellivision (1979)
Problem #3: Ergonomically Hellish Controllers
Like most keyboards on early personal computers, the hand controllers and joysticks included with early video game systems were typically pretty bad. It took a long time before one innovator clearly came along (in this case, Nintendo with its NES pads) and provided a truly easy-to-use, accurate, sensitive, and comfortable solution.
Mattel’s Intellivision controller is no exception to the early-but-awkward rule. It includes a digital 16-direction disc that players pushed inward to control an onscreen character, similar to operation of +-shaped Nintendo control pads, but nowhere near as precise. If you were tempted to rotate the disc while depressing it for quicker maneuvers, you’d quickly be disappointed by the controller’s erratic performance.
The controller also included two buttons on each side of the unit (each set with the same function) that were hard to push and provided poor tactile feedback. Even worse, the controller was an odd shape that didn’t fit well in any human’s hands.
What Were They Thinking?
The designers at Mattel responsible for the Intellivision controller probably thought they were being clever and innovative. Sadly, they were wrong. Many players suffered through the controllers anyway, as the Intellivision hosted a large share of great games. Like proponents of other bad-but-classic technologies, those who defend the Intellivision’s knucklebusters primarily do so out of nostalgia (i.e. we walked uphill both ways on nails and we liked it).
Interestingly enough, the Intellivision wasn’t the only “-vision” game console to ship with bad controllers — the ColecoVision also came with a pair of its own stumpy, keypad-laden ergonomic nightmares. But that’s for another article.
Atari 5200 (1982)
Problem #4: Unreliable Analog Joystick
The Atari 5200 shipped with a pair of analog, non-centering joysticks whose rubbery buttons provided little tactile feedback and would wear out or break easily.
What Were They Thinking?
Atari engineers likely wanted to try something new with the Atari 5200’s analog controller, which unfortunately didn’t translate well to the arcade ganes of the day. The controller’s absolute worst application was Pac-Man–a game that demands precise, 4-way digital control–that ironically shipped as a pack-in game for the console during its later years.
Had Atari put forth any sort of effort to develop new, original games that specifically took advantage of the 5200’s analog stick, the system might have fared much better than it did.
Regarding the buttons, they were unreliable due to the thin plastic flex circuits beneath them, which were prone to tearing from repeated pressure — the kind commonly seen in any button application. Oops. It’s likely Atari used flex circuits due to space concerns (the unit was pretty cramped) and because they were less expensive than rigid PC boards.
On the bright side, the 5200 joysticks included the world’s first on-controller pause button.
Problem #5: Power Through RF Switch
The original 4-port Atari 5200 model shipped with a special automatic RF (AKA “TV/Game Switch”) that required power through it to function. In turn, the 5200 console received power through the video out connector. If one lost or damaged this all-important switch, they quickly found themselves up Atari Creek without a paddle.
What Were They Thinking?
This odd setup was likely conceived to reduce the amount of wiring between the console and the TV set. One wire in instead of two. Also, it’s an “innovation” borne of convenience.
Console manufacturers included an RF switch with nearly every home video game console released in the US until the PlayStation era. The purpose of the RF switch box is to switch between the audio/video input from the video game console itself and from an external television signal (i.e. cable TV or an antenna).
If one wanted to leave a video game system hooked up to a TV set and then be able to watch standard television programming later, one had to manually slide a switch — that provided by the RF switch box — to select between the two signal sources.
The Atari 5200 contained the world’s first automatic RF switch box, which automatically switched to the console’s video input when the console was on. When off, the switch would let an antenna or cable signal pass through. In order for this to work, the switch box must know when the unit is turned on and be able to switch between the two signals itself. To do that, the switch box needs its own power supply, which in the 5200’s case was provided directly by the AC adapter.
Atari later revised the 5200 to omit this feature (in the two-port model), as it proved unpopular and confusing with customers. Interestingly enough, Nintendo was the first company to get the automatic switchbox right; it shipped with the NES.
Atari 7800 (1984)
Problem #6: Inferior Audio Capabilities
Despite having significant graphical upgrades from its predecessor, the Atari 2600, the 7800 uses the same sound chip as its little brother, providing very limited sound capabilities for its time (the Atari 2600’s sound features had been designed in the mid-1970s).
What Were They Thinking?
The lack of a new sound chip in the 7800 likely resulted from a cost or space issue. Since the 7800 included extra chips for 2600 backwards compatibility (including the TIA chip, which provided both graphics and sound for the 2600), Atari didn’t have room to place a special 7800 sound chip on the console’s motherboard. Furthermore, addition of another chip would have increased the overall cost of manufacturing the system.
Nintendo NES (1985)
Problem #7: The Blinkies
You place a game cartridge into the NES and the screen flashes. You pull the cartridge out, blow on the contacts, fiddle with it, and it might work–then you tap the console and the game resets. Every NES owner was intimately familiar with this often frustrating experience. You’ve got the blinkies.
The Nintendo Entertainment System’s front-loading design possibly cost Nintendo millions in repair bills over the system’s life span. The company notably omitted the novel mechanism in its 1993 redesign of the console.
What Were They Thinking?
Nintendo found great success in Japan with its Family Computer (Famicom) video game console, released in 1983. When it came time to bring the Famicom over to the US, Nintendo wanted to avoid Atari’s mistakes that led to the video game crash of 1983. Nintendo purposely designed the external appearance of their American Famicom — soon christened the “Nintendo Entertainment System”–to look more like a consumer electronics appliance and less like a child’s toy, which was necessary to win over retailers wary of another huge video game letdown after the Atari crash of 1983.
This new design included a VCR-like front-loading cartridge system that relied on a rather complicated cartridge insertion mechanism. It used a novel zero-insertion-force method: the user placed a cartridge into the slot then pushed it down, where it locked in place. In the down position, the cartridge slot mechanism pushed the cartridge’s contacts against a special connector in the back of the NES.
It sounds fine in concept. But in practice, the special connector commonly wore out from repeated use; its contacts bent and lost their spring, preventing a solid, electrically conductive connection with metal pads on the cartridge’s PC board. That connection was necessary for the console to read game data stored on the cartridge.
The “blinkies”–that annoying, flashing screen — stemmed from the NES’ lockout chip having trouble reading the cartridge properly, forcing the NES to reset until it read the proper response from the cartridge. (The lockout chip was put in place to prevent unauthorized games for the console.)
Despite its drawbacks, the original front-loading design may have served to separate the NES from its Atari-like predecessors as intended, ensuring its success against tough odds in the 1980s US video game market. Even so, that won’t make frustrated NES collectors feel any better about their unreliable consoles.
The only way to fix the problem is to replace the internal connector with a new one.
Atari Jaguar (1993)
Problem #8: Irrelevant Controller Design
The Atari Jaguar shipped with a controller that, while comfortable and ergonomic, possessed a largely irrelevant design for the period in which it was released. It included only three action buttons, a 12-button rubber numeric keypad that accepted plastic overlays, and an overly-complicated 24-pin connector that was prone to damage. It also looked kinda dumb and made Atari a laughing stock to less generous critics of the system.
Atari released the Jaguar when Street Fighter II-style fighting games were one of the hottest genres on home consoles and the arcades. Most of those games used at least four to six buttons, while the Jaguar only had three (Atari did release an eight-button “Pro Controller” late in the console’s run, but it came too late), making it innately unsuitable for those games and hurting its attractiveness for third party developers.
The controller’s numeric keypad proved mostly irrelevant as well. Special functions performed by the numeric keypad, if action-centric, would have been better suited to extra primary face buttons. And non-time sensitive selection functions utilizing the keypad could have easily been provided by on-screen menus.
What Were They Thinking?
The designers of the Atari Jaguar were clearly out of touch with the controller needs of modern video games. I’m not sure who would have thought it was a good idea to bring back the Intellivision-era numeric keypad, which is about as dorky as it gets. Either way, they probably lost their job(s), as Atari folded three years after the Jaguar’s release.
Sega Saturn (1994)
Problem #9: Overly Complex Architecture
The Sega Saturn contained two main CPUs, two graphics processors, and five other supporting microprocessors. This unconventionally large array of chips made the Saturn significantly complex to program for game developers (especially compared to the much simpler PlayStation) and more expensive to manufacture for Sega.
Chief among the hardware difficulties was the fact that the two main CPUs had trouble accessing the system memory at the same time. This situation often left one CPU waiting for the other to finish its task before beginning its own instructions, nullifying many advantages gained by having two processors in the first place.
Another complication of the Saturn’s design showed up later in the product’s life span. Throughout the commercial run of any game system, manufacturers typically find ways to reduce the complexity of their console’s hardware design, thus trimming production costs and allowing for lower retail prices. Unfortunately for Sega, the Saturn’s complex architecture made simplifying the hardware difficult, vastly reducing Sega’s ability to remain price competitive (and profitable) as the 32-bit generation rolled along.
Ultimately, these drawbacks allowed the Sony PlayStation to quickly overtake the Saturn in sales and third party support, ensuring Sony’s global video game market dominance for the remainder of the 32-bit era.
What Were They Thinking?
Sega’s Saturn was already under development when technical specifications for Sony’s new PlayStation console emerged in 1993. The PlayStation’s hardware–apparently much more powerful than anyone outside Sony anticipated–startled Sega management so much that the company ordered the Saturn design team to improve its console’s horsepower, especially with regard to 3D graphics capabilities. Any extensive re-design from the ground up would have added significant costs and delays to Saturn’s release at that point, so the Saturn team upgraded its console by piggybacking extra processors onto the extant hardware design.
Nintendo Virtual Boy (1995)
Problem #10: Red Monochrome Display
The Virtual Boy’s innovative 3D display could not display color–well, no color other than red.
What Were They Thinking?
It all comes down to price and power consumption. The 3D display tucked inside the Virtual Boy utilized a line of red LEDs (light emitting diodes) reflected by two vibrating mirrors that directed images to the user’s left and right eyes to produce a stereoscopic effect. Massachusetts-based Reflections Technology developed this novel display method and sold it to Nintendo. The LED and spinning mirror combo proved inexpensive and power-efficient compared to other head-mounted 3D techniques, which typically required two very expensive, high-resolution backlit LCDs.
Gumpei Yokoi, designer of Nintendo’s 3D console, originally considered making a full color version of the Virtual Boy utilizing similar spinning mirror technology, but his plans changed when he found that the color version would not simulate depth correctly and would have retailed for over $500. Ultimately, he stuck with the original red LED design created by Reflections Technology.
Red LEDs had numerous advantages: they were not only cheap, but they were brighter and provided a higher refresh rate and contrast performance than the alternatives (yellow, green, or blue LEDs) at the time. Also, since Nintendo intended Virtual Boy to be a semi-portable system, battery life was important. A display consisting of red LEDs consumed less electricity than other LED colors, and far less electricity than a pair of backlit LCDs.
Problem #11: Awkward Form Factor
Many people’s expectations regarding “virtual reality” in the early 1990s involved a very immersive wearable headset display. In contrast, the Virtual Boy sat on a clumsy stand, and Nintendo expected the user to crouch up to it to play — an awkward position no matter how you tried to contort your body.
What Were They Thinking?
Early on in the development process, it became apparent to Nintendo that the Virtual Boy could induce headaches and dizziness if played for extended periods of time. A wearable display would have encouraged the user to play for longer stretches without resting his eyes, and no doubt Nintendo was wary of legal liability problems from personal injury.
Moreover, the mechanically complex mirror and LED display in the Virtual Boy proved too heavy and bulky to have been comfortably worn on a player’s head. So the virtual ended up as an awkward, semi-portable tabletop console that quickly collected ridicule from most sectors of the video game industry.
Nintendo 64 (1996)
Problem #12: Stubborn Reliance on Cartridge Media
Nintendo’s move to stick to ROM cartridges was very controversial upon the N64’s release in 1996. Sega’s Saturn and Sony’s PlayStation had both made the switch successfully, but Nintendo stubbornly held back, and it caused a number of problems.
Third party game publishers for the Nintendo 64 were responsible for the cost of cartridge manufacturing up front, which proved to be a significant investment. If a game tanked, the publisher would be stuck with thousands of units of expensive inventory they couldn’t sell, adding up to a big loss on their part.
Compared to cartridges, compact discs were inexpensive to produce in mass quantities–just pennies apiece–and represented a substantially less risky investment and higher profit margins for the game publisher. Due to the attractiveness of CD media, publishers switched to the PlayStation in droves, and Nintendo began its ten-year decline in the home console market.
In addition to the cost issue, CDs could hold vast amounts of data. A cartridge with ROM memory chips of any substantial size (the largest available was only 64 megabytes) cost far more to produce than a CD that held 650 megabytes. If companies were reluctant to invest in cartridges, they were loathe to invest in more expensive, capacious cartridges. The complexity and depth of Nintendo 64 games suffered as a result.
What Were They Thinking?
During the controversy over Nintendo’s reliance on ROM media, Nintendo repeatedly claimed that cartridges were the superior format. They cited two reasons: access time and intellectual-property control.
Loading times for games on CD were very long in the mid-1990s, sometimes trying the patience of the player. This was especially true on the inexpensive-but-slow double-speed CD-ROM drives that console makers could afford to place in a consumer game system. In contrast, the access time for ROM chips in cartridges was nearly instantaneous, with nary a loading screen to be found. It made for a better user experience up-front, but ultimately that feature alone wasn’t worth the price of admission.
Also, Nintendo had been wrestling with software piracy since the 8-bit era. The historically protective and guarded company took one look at CD-ROMs and saw a potential nightmare scenario in publishing its games on the relatively easy-to-replicate medium. The cartridge format allowed Nintendo to keep a tighter leash on both unauthorized development and game piracy. It worked–the N64 suffered far less piracy than the PlayStation–but the big N’s obsession with control came at great expense for Nintendo, which lost its dominant position in the home console market.
Nintendo Game Boy Advance (2001)
Problem #13: Incredibly Dark, Non-Backlit Screen
Like every Game Boy model before it, the original Game Boy Advance model did not include a built-in light for its LCD screen. Unfortunately, the GBA’s vastly improved color depth made that a problem; more color depth made for more variations in screen opacity. The less transparent an image on a liquid crystal display is, the less an external light source can penetrate the display and reflect back off of a reflective membrane behind the screen. When light can’t reflect back, the “light” areas of the screen don’t look very light and don’t provide the necessary contrast to distinguish between the light and dark areas of the image.
To combat this problem LCD displays are typically uniformly lit from behind by a bright white light, thus obviating the need for an external light source. But the Game Boy Advance did not include any such light, and it made playing many games (especially darker ones) difficult unless one sat directly under a 100-watt light bulb or in full sunlight.
What Were They Thinking?
As with the original Game Boy, the GBA omitted any form of internal lighting to conserve battery power. And (as always) any component omitted also greatly reduces the cost of manufacturing the device when producing millions of units. That, in turn, results in a lower retail cost for the consumer.
It’s possible that Nintendo could have chosen a more reflective or higher contrast screen for its Game Boy Advance, but its choice was limited either by the available technology or cost of manufacture at the time.
Microsoft Xbox (2001)
Problem #14: Huge Honkin’ Controller
The original Xbox controller released with the US version of the system was enormous and uncomfortable for many people to hold. It also included a somewhat awkward button arrangement and an annoying lumpy digital directional pad.
What Were They Thinking?
This seems like a classic case of what scientists call “bad design.” If I had to speculate on a good reason for the controller’s immense girth, it’s possible that Microsoft thought they needed a large controller body to fit two plug-in expansion slots. Or maybe the designer had really huge hands?
Microsoft designed a different, smaller Xbox controller for Japan because Japanese people supposedly have smaller hands than Americans on average. Americans soon lusted after Japan’s smaller, sleeker, more sensibly designed Xbox controller, so Microsoft brought it over to the US as the “S-Type.”
Not too long after, the new S-Type unit became the standard controller shipped with the Xbox around the world, and people with small hands everywhere rejoiced. Andre The Giant, were he still alive, would be disgusted.
To be fair, many people prefer the original Xbox controller to the newer type, but Microsoft replaced it for a reason.
Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP (2003)
Problem #15: No Built-In Headphone Jack
If you wanted to use headphones with a conventional 1/8″ phone jack on the Game Boy Advance SP, you had to buy a special adapter from Nintendo that plugged into the unit’s power connector. As a result, one could not use headphones and an external power source at the same time.
What Were They Thinking?
It’s hard to fathom a good reason for omitting the headphone jack–commonly used on a portable device like the Game Boy — other than to save space in an otherwise already cramped handheld design. And as we’re discussed before, every component omission has a bonus: reduced production costs.
I personally doubt the omission had to do with making a few extra bucks on special headphone adapters, but that could have played a minor role in the decision. Thankfully, Nintendo once again included a standard headphone jack in the Nintendo DS.
There’s More Out There!
I’ve only scratched the tip of the iceberg here. Feel free to share your ideas for console design mistakes in the comments below–especially of a more modern sort. (Xbox 360 anyone? Red rings and scratched discs come to mind.)
Want to read about more boneheaded technology decisions? Read my story on 15 Classic PC Design Mistakes.
Source: Technologizer – Fifteen Classic Game Console Design Mistakes
