The story of home video games is usually written by the victors. We talk about the Nintendo Entertainment System saving an industry from collapse, the Sony PlayStation establishing CD-ROMs as the standard, and Xbox popularizing online console gaming. Yet for every Nintendo, Sega, or PlayStation that reshaped culture, dozens of weird, ambitious, and bizarrely miscalculated consoles vanished into the margins of history.

These obscure systems reveal a wild, unpredictable landscape where tech giants, toy companies, and arcade developers threw everything at the wall to see what stuck. From consoles that printed real-life stickers to Apple’s disastrous first step into living room hardware, these are the forgotten gaming platforms you probably never knew existed.

RCA Studio II (1977): The Console Built Like a Calculator

Before the Atari 2600 made standard handheld joysticks ubiquitous, home video game hardware was an uncharted frontier. Enter the RCA Studio II, released in early 1977. RCA, a giant in mid-century consumer electronics, wanted to capitalize on the burgeoning home video game craze, but their design choices were fundamentally doomed from day one.

The most jarring feature of the RCA Studio II was its control scheme: it didn’t have any detachable controllers. Instead, two numeric 10-button keypads were embedded directly into the plastic casing of the main unit. To play a game, two players had to sit side-by-side, hunched over the main console box resting on the floor or a coffee table, poking at stiff plastic buttons.

Compounding the awkward physical design was its graphical capability. The RCA Studio II produced only black-and-white graphics at a time when color was rapidly becoming the industry standard. It launched with five built-in games (mostly simple sports and math titles) and accepted basic cartridges. However, when the Atari 2600 launched later that year with full-color graphics, detachable joysticks, and superior sound, the Studio II was instantly rendered an obsolete relic. RCA pulled the plug on the system by 1979.

Vectrex (1982): Vector Graphics in Your Living Room

In the early 1980s, video games were dominated by raster graphics—the standard method of drawing images using pixel grids on CRT televisions. However, arcade hits like Asteroids and Tempest used a completely different visual technology: vector graphics. Vector monitors fired electron beams directly to draw crisp, razor-sharp geometric lines, giving arcade games a smooth, glowing laser aesthetic that standard TVs couldn’t replicate.

General Consumer Electronics (GCE) solved this problem in 1982 by releasing the Vectrex. Rather than plugging into a home television, the Vectrex was a self-contained unit featuring its own built-in, 9-inch monochrome vector monitor. The hardware was an engineering marvel for its time, rendering buttery-smooth 3D-like wireframe environments with zero visual latency.

Because the vector display could only produce monochrome black-and-white lines, GCE included translucent plastic color overlays with every game. Players manually slotted these plastic sheets over the monitor screen, instantly adding static color regions, HUD boundaries, and background art to games like Minestorm and Armor Attack. Despite rave reviews and an incredibly passionate cult following, the Vectrex fell victim to the great video game crash of 1983, leaving its brilliant vector display tech behind as a uniquely isolated chapter in hardware history.

Action Max (1987): Gaming on VHS

During the late 1980s, the VCR was the undisputed king of living room entertainment. Toy company Worlds of Wonder decided to harness this ubiquitous device, releasing the Action Max in 1987—a console that couldn’t function without a separate, standard VHS tape player.

The setup was gloriously complex. Users connected the Action Max base unit to their TV and light gun, while simultaneously inserting a specialized Action Max VHS tape into their home VCR. The console’s internal hardware had no graphics rendering engine of its own; instead, it relied entirely on pre-recorded, live-action footage or footage-based animation stored on the tape. Red flashing target spots were embedded into the video stream, which the console’s light gun could detect.

While the concept of playing a live-action video game felt futuristic on paper, the interactive reality was severely limited. Because the footage was played off a linear VHS tape, your actions could never alter what happened on screen. Whether you hit every target or missed every single shot, the video tape played out identically every time. The console’s sole job was to track your score on a built-in LED counter. With only five games ever produced—ranging from military jet simulations to cheap sci-fi live-action footage—the Action Max quickly faded into garage sales.

Capcom CPS Changer (1994): Bringing the Arcade Board Home

During the early 1990s, SNK’s Neo Geo set the gold standard for arcade accuracy at home by essentially selling real arcade hardware directly to consumers. However, the Neo Geo was notoriously expensive. Capcom, eager for a piece of the high-end home arcade market, quietly launched its own solution in 1994: the Capcom Power System (CPS) Changer.

The CPS Changer was less of a conventional video game console and more of a streamlined JAMMA arcade harness housed in a sleek shell. It plugged directly into a television via S-Video or composite outputs and used Super Famicom (SNES) controller ports for input. The games themselves weren’t downgraded home ports; they were actual Capcom CPS-1 arcade system boards repackaged into protective plastic cartridges.

This meant gamers could play arcade-perfect renditions of Street Fighter II Turbo, Final Fight, and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs with zero hardware compromises. However, the system arrived far too late in the 16-bit console era and was sold exclusively via mail-order in Japan. With the 32-bit era of the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn right around the corner—promising 3D graphics and low-cost CD storage—Capcom discontinued the CPS Changer after releasing just 11 games.

Casio Loopy (1995): The Thermal Printing Machine

By 1995, the console wars were dominated by high-powered 32-bit hardware like the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, aimed primarily at male teens and young adults. Casio took a radically different path, releasing the Casio Loopy (subtitled My Seal Computer) in Japan, targeted exclusively at young girls.

The 32-bit console featured colorful, cheerful hardware and a software library centered on fashion design, digital diary keeping, anime character creation, and life simulation games. But the real star of the Casio Loopy was its internal hardware gimmick: a built-in thermal sticker printer.

At any point during gameplay, players could freeze the screen, edit the image with text or digital frames, and press a button to print a physical, full-color sticker directly out of the top of the console. Casio even sold an external accessory called the “Magical Shop,” which allowed users to plug in external video sources—like a VCR or camcorder—to capture real-world video frames and print them as custom stickers. Despite the novel printing technology, the system struggled to compete with the sheer processing power and game variety of the PlayStation, leading to its cancellation just two years later.

Apple Bandai Pippin (1996): Steve Jobs’ Forgotten Gaming Blunder

Long before the iPhone transformed mobile gaming into an empire, Apple made a brief, catastrophic entry into the home video game console market. In the mid-1990s, Apple envisioned an open hardware architecture called “Pippin,” designed to serve as a low-cost, multimedia computer and gaming platform. Apple licensed the technology to Japanese toy titan Bandai, who manufactured and distributed the unit as the Bandai Pippin @WORLD in 1996.

Under the hood, the Pippin was essentially a stripped-down Macintosh computer running a modified version of System 7 OS, powered by a PowerPC 603 processor and equipped with a 4x CD-ROM drive. It featured early web-browsing capabilities, network compatibility, and supported both TV displays and computer monitors.

Unfortunately for Apple and Bandai, the Pippin was an utter commercial disaster.

• Sky-High Launch Price: The unit hit the U.S. market at a staggering $600 (equivalent to over $1,100 today), vastly outpricing the Sony PlayStation ($299) and Nintendo 64 ($199).
• Poor Performance: As a computer, it was underpowered; as a gaming console, its CD-ROM load times were painful and its graphics capabilities lagged far behind dedicated hardware.
• Non-Existent Software: Developers showed little interest in porting games to the system, resulting in a tiny, lackluster software catalog.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he ruthlessly scrapped non-core hardware projects, killing the Pippin entirely. Out of an estimated 100,000 units manufactured, only around 42,000 were ever sold worldwide.

Hardware Feature Breakdown

ConsoleManufacturerYearKey Feature / GimmickPrimary Reason for Failure RCA Studio IIRCA1977Built-in keypad controllersBlack-and-white graphics; crushed by Atari 2600 VectrexGCE / Milton Bradley1982Built-in monochrome vector monitorVideo game crash of 1983 Action MaxWorlds of Wonder1987Uses standard VHS tapes for gamesNon-interactive linear video; score-only tracking CPS ChangerCapcom1994Plays genuine arcade system boardsHigh cost; late release in 16-bit generation Casio LoopyCasio1995Built-in thermal sticker printerNiche demographic; crushed by 32-bit competitors Apple PippinApple / Bandai1996Mac-OS hybrid gaming platformAstronomical $600 price point; lack of games

The Heritage of Failure

While these platforms are often dismissed as punchlines or obscure footnotes, they demonstrate the messy, evolutionary nature of video game design. Concepts pioneered by these forgotten platforms didn’t disappear—they evolved. The Pippin’s vision of a living-room multimedia computer paved the way for modern smart consoles, interactive video games eventually mastered real-time branching storytelling, and dedicated arcade hardware paved the way for digital emulation. These bizarre silicon misfires remain fascinating reminders of an era when gaming’s future was wide open, completely unpredictable, and delightfully weird.

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