Never Released Consoles

The Action Game Master was a 16-bit portable console designed by Active Enterprises, the creators of the "Action 52" 52-in-1 multicart for Sega Genesis
and NES (which really sucked, by the way). The console was announced at the 1994 Consumer Electronics Show. The console was on its early design phase when the company went bankrupt and disappeared, so it was never released. But based on its design it would have a rechargeable battery pack, power adapter, car lighter power adapter, a foldable 3.2 inches color display and a cartridge slot. This slot would be used to load original Action Game Master Cartridges as well as any of 4 expansion packs, sold separately. The 4 expansion packs would be used to load games from other platforms, something similar to the "Super Gameboy" cartridge for the SNES. This expansion packs were for the Sega Genesis, NES, SNES, an PC-CDROM. A TV tuner expansion pack was also planned for this console. Only one game was planned for the console by the time: Cheetahmen III (a sequel of the main game in the Action 52 cart).

If you ask me, I think this console was a "dream" more than a design. Based on its specifications, a console like this would be extremely difficult to manufacture at a reasonable price, even more back in 1994. It was a great idea, but remember that "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is"...

This gaming device was designed by Apex Digital (well known for their "25-30 bucks" DVD players sold at Wal-Mart and similar stores) in a joint venture
with VIA and S3. The ApeXtreme was officially announced at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show, but then it was canceled later that year. Original plans were to be released by spring 2004 in two different models (a basic model for $299 and an advanced model for $399).

The game console would include a DVD drive that would reproduce music CDs,CDROMs, DVDs, VCDs and Slideshow CDs. It also has MP3 playing capabilities, and would include a keyboard, mouse and remote control (keyboard and mouse would be connected using any of the four available USB ports). On the hardware, the unit would include a VIA C3 1.4GHz CPU, and an S3 "DektaChrome" acceleration video card with at least 64MB of VRAM (allegedly, it would produce graphics comparable to Nvidia and ATI counterparts from that year). It would also include 256MB of RAM and 20GB HDD. On the software, it had an embedded version of Windows XP and a PC gaming technology called "Drop & Play", developed by DISCover. This technology would allow you to insert a PC game CDROM or DVDROM into the unit DVD
drive and play "on the fly", with no installation or patching required.

On paper it sounded pretty neat, however it never worked out. Some people says Apex Digital didn't have enough resources to cover this project needs,
others say that Apex saw in this project a higher risk than originally expected (console prices were high for its era, there was a cheaper and probably better console alternative called "XBOX", and there were speculations that PC gamers would prefer to continue playing with PCs rather than buying this console).

For all this, the ApeXtreme turned from winner of the "Best of CES 2004" award for the home audio and video category, to a prototype console that was never released. Very disappointing.

The Atari 2000 came from the idea of making a cheaper version of the Atari 2600, intended for kids. The internal parts were identical to the ones found in an Atari 2600, however the main differences were that the Atari 2000 was blue colored and it had the controllers built into the system unit (as older preprogrammed console systems like "pong"). It was fully designed and even manufactured in small quantities for marketing tests, however for some reason the project was cancelled. Some people say that the marketing tests proved the console design to be a failure, as it was uncomfortable plus controllers were unresponsive and easier to break, which was a "no go" for a system intended for kids. This is a true collectors item, since it's believed that only less than 2000 of this units exist today.

Here's another video game system by Atari that was never released, and very similar to the previous one. This prototype was never produced, and it is not even documented. But it's been said that it was created in 1981 as a way of making a cheap version of the Atari 2600, in order to keep the console at a competitive price (due to the amount of consoles that were in the market by that time). The unit controllers were built into the system, however it also had two controller ports at the back of the system just in case you want to play with a regular joystick. Since this prototype was never documented, exactly why it was never produced remains unknown (although we might assume that there was some kind of problem with the unit design).

Atari?... Again?... Oh well... Yet another version of the Atari 2600 that was never produced (also called "Atari Remote Control"). Again this was an Atari 2600 with new state-of-the-art wireless controllers and a redesigned system case, with a storage area at top to store the controllers. The controllers were great, they worked as both joysticks and paddles, they were very comfortable and responsive, and set/reset buttons were relocated to the controller for ease of use (just like in modern controllers). Everything was ready for production, until they noticed that the controllers working radius was 1000 ft. and there was no simple way of limiting or reducing that radius. It could affect the operation of other remote controlled appliances on similar frequencies (like automatic garage doors, TVs, and other Atari 2700s). For fixing this problem, Atari would have to invest millions of dollars. And since the wireless controllers were the whole "gimmick" of this console, they decided to simply cancel the project and keep going. Later on, the unit case basic design was used in the Atari 5200 system and the wireless controllers were sold separately as an "addon" (a crappy version of the controllers, that is... bulky, unresponsive, and with horrible battery life).

Atari again... wtf???... "Midsummer" was a console that just reached to mid-development phase during the mid 90's (mid-summer, mid-development, mid-90's... all in one sentence... *phew*). It was also nicknamed "Jaguar II" since it would be Jaguar's replacement console. It would have better graphics than the Jaguar, as well as backwards compatibility with Jaguar carts and CDs. But in 1996 Atari was acquired by JTS Corp, and the project was shelved.