Failed game systems come in two flavors. Some are simply bad ideas, conceived in delusion and marketed in hubris. These systems, one could argue, deserve to die early and unpleasantly. Other systems aren't to blame for their downfalls. They fail because something went wrong at a higher level, and they end up the victims of a few bad decisions, misguided marketing, or the specter of internal corporate squabbling.
We've covered three of these unfairly doomed systems before, and now we return to the halls of failure and the game systems that rest there. We're playing by the same rules, so we won't change a console's internal, game-playing capabilities. We'll just look at what these three game platforms could've done to succeed -- and what happened when they didn't.
The Atari Lynx
The close of the 1980s found Atari in an awkward position. The company had survived the console crash of 1983, but the shakeout let Nintendo seize the reins of the industry. Atari, once the dominant force in game consoles, saw the Atari 7800 beaten thoroughly by Nintendo's crushingly popular NES. Atari would try again, this time in the handheld market.
As Nintendo prepared its black-and-white Game Boy for a 1989 launch, Atari planned a counterattack. A weapon was found at Epyx, where Amiga designers R.J. Mical and Dave Needle created a portable system called the Handy in 1987. Atari bought the device, rechristened it the Lynx, and debuted it in September 1989, only a month after the Game Boy. The two systems forged different paths. A rampant success, the Game Boy went through several redesigns and wasn't retired until 1998. The Lynx let out a final breath by 1994, with only a fraction of the Game Boy's market share. Perhaps there was no way to beat Nintendo, but the Atari Lynx might well have stuck it out.
Make it Smaller and Longer-Lasting
Handheld game units existed before 1989, but they were usually single-game diversions with basic displays. The Game Boy and Lynx offered the interchangeable cartridges of a home system, and the games they ran felt much like the things you'd see on an NES or, in the Lynx's case, a decent computer of the era. Most importantly, they were portable. Kids could throw the systems in their backpacks and pockets, and they could play them without tying up the television.
And here the Game Boy excelled. Nintendo luminary Gunpei Yokoi designed a system that offered the responsive controls of an NES pad in a device not that much larger than a point-and-shoot camera. The Lynx had to be bigger by necessity: it had a large color screen and a design that allowed left-handed players to flip the system and use the D-pad on the other side. But it also needed to last.
What Happened Instead:
Lynx games looked better than the Game Boy's black-and-white display, but the system couldn't run them for extended periods. The Lynx was lucky to squeeze five hours from six AA batteries, while the Game Boy lasted twice as long with fewer batteries.
"I rarely put batteries in my Lynx," recalls Chris Bieniek, who reviewed and previewed Lynx games extensively at VideoGames Computer Entertainment. "It just wasn't worth it to play without the power adapter. On the other hand, people tend to forget how long you could play the original Game Boy on a set of four AAs. It was a pretty good, long time. For somebody like me who played both systems regularly, it seemed like an eternity compared to what you'd get out of the Lynx, which could suck six batteries dry in an afternoon."
The Lynx was also a bit too big. Atari went with a large, bone-shaped chunk of gray plastic, with plenty of grip space and two separate buttons for ON and OFF. It was nearly twice the Game Boy's size, and it proved cumbersome to carry around. Lynx co-designer R.J. Mical attributes the handheld's size to focus groups, who suggested a large system... and then complained that Atari's final design was too large.
"It might have been a few pennies cheaper, but not enough to change the price, I don't think," Mical says. "But people would have thought differently about it, and that would have made a huge difference... no pun intended."
Atari redesigned the Lynx in 1991, resulting in a smaller system with better grips, a lower price, and better battery life. By the time the Lynx II came out, however, it was competing against the Game Gear as well as the Game Boy... and many players had already decided against Atari.
Remake Atari's Image
Technical comparisons were one thing, but Atari truly suffered when pitted against Nintendo's brand. Pervasive and kid-friendly, Nintendo was buoyed by its own magazine and marketing that made the company's name synonymous with video games in the late 1980s. This success came at Atari's expense.
"Nintendo tried to rebuild the trust of retailers and consumers by drawing a clear distinction between its products and the bloated, headed-for-a-crash games business of the early '80s," says Bieniek. "Sullying Atari's reputation was one unavoidable side effect of those efforts."
Atari needed a makeover to refashion itself and its systems into valid rivals of Nintendo. Sega did as much for itself in the early 1990s, mocking Nintendo with catchy marketing. Atari could try that, but first it would need to shake the dead weight of an era gone by.
What Happened Instead:
Atari mounted a meager offensive. Perhaps inspired by Sega, the Lynx's marketing teams devised a few confrontational ads, and one TV commercial opened with the unsubtle "You gonna buy the same old game, boy?" It did little good against Nintendo's defenses.
"Comparing the Lynx and the Game Boy is almost an apples-to-oranges proposition," Bieniek says. "People weren't going to the store looking for a portable game system and weighing the merits of the available handhelds. In a scenario like that, who would choose a blurry, Gatorade-colored LCD screen over a color display? The truth is that the specs didn't matter much. They bought the Game Boy because it was a new game system from the company that made the NES, which was awesome. And if you look at it that way, maybe they didn't buy the Lynx because it was a new game system from the company that made the VCS, which was old hat."
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