10 Unreleased Video Game Consoles You Never Knew Existed
8. Namco Super System
In the late eighties, Namco thought they were untouchable. Their arcade division had become so successful that they had even taken a controlling stake in one of their biggest rivals - Atari Games.
This arrogance led to fall out with Nintendo over their draconian rules on how many games you could release for their Famicom/NES system per year. Namco decided to not only focus their attention on producing games for the rival PC Engine/TurboGrafx console, but to produce a console of their own that would put the recently announced 16-bit Super Nintendo to shame.
Namco quickly developed a hugely powerful 16-bit console called the Super System, that was based on their own System 21 arcade hardware. It would boast far better specifications than both the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive, but just as Namco were ready to show the prototype console to developers, they bottled it.
Worried that it would struggle to find a place in an already crowded market, they dropped their own plans for release and instead decided to partner up with Hudson Soft and NEC to turn it into a PC Engine 2.
However, NEC and Hudson were worried they would lose control of the system to Namco, and so severed the agreement before rushing the ill-fated SuperGrafx console to market instead.