10 Forgotten Pieces Of Gaming Tech

Video games are great right? Thousands of worlds for you to jump into and explore and mess around in, containing hours of enjoyment. But as physical objects, well, they are a bit crap, I mean, they’re almost non-existent as a “real” thing these days with digital markets being ubiquitous. And even when you do have an actual disc or cartridge the only thing that they’re good for is either to lose or to play “Hey, who can throw this small shiny makeshift Frisbee the furthest”.

That’s why I love consoles and accessories. They are a physical thing that you can display and ogle at as well as being the thing that makes the funny character on the telly move. But sometimes game companies try and do something different and unique with their product. And sometimes, these products can be great fun ideas. Other times, it can be a machine made before the technology is ready for it.

With the latest generation of consoles underway, what better time than now to look back at some of the weird and forgotten pieces of tech and tat throughout the history of gaming?

That’s right, we’re starting off with a PS1 accessory only ever released in Japan.

Released in 1999, the PocketStation was a weird half-PS1 memory card reader and half-handheld console with five buttons, four of which were the D-pad. Its function was simple. Insert a PS1 memory card with data from a select number of games and it would load up little minigames based on the PS1 game. Have you ever wanted to play the Boulder level from Crash Bandicoot on a tiny 32x32 monochrome LCD screen? Why? Do you not have better things to do?

Even though it was only released domestically, it still somehow managed to sell around 5 million units. And just a few years ago Sony added a PocketStation app to PS Vita, but it was also only released in Japan so no need to dust off your Vita yet.