Many people can almost track the milestones and trajectory of their lives through when they owned various iconic video game consoles. Maybe you grew up with the likes of the Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo 64, or your entertainment space is filled with devices like the Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, and PlayStation 5. So many of these devices have brought countless hours of joy over the years.
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Of course, you don’t need an article to tell you how awesome a Switch is. In fact, the Nintendo Switch has nearly become the best-selling gaming console of all time, beating out the PlayStation 2 in the process. But not every new development that emerges makes a similar dent to those successes within the never-ending console wars. We’re not talking about infamously unwieldy gaming peripherals like the Wii remote or the trident-like Nintendo 64 controller — there are whole consoles you may have completely forgotten about.
You may be hearing about some of these items for the first time here, because they were such spectacular failures, their companies promptly filed them away (or went out of business altogether), never to be heard from again. Some of these devices can sell for a ton of money on eBay these days because they’re so rare, despite how the general public wanted nothing to do with them at the time of their release. However, while they represent the lower echelons of the video game console hierarchy, they may be worth a second look.
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