A few weeks ago we picked five superb console redesigns that outshone their lineage. Our five gained features, lost bulk or otherwise refreshed a console. This time around we’re looking at the desperate, the greedy, ill-judged and just plain bad console redesigns that don’t hold a candle to the original.
Nintendo Wii Mini
Nintendo Wii had two redesigns in its lifespan. Both removed features to cut costs, first the GameCube compatibility, then the ‘everything else’. Both console redesigns are considered inferior models to collectors. However, Wii Mini is probably the worst console redesign in history.
Nintendo Wii’s original iteration was tiny as it was and was able to undercut its competitors when it came to pricing and pack-ins. The need for Wii Mini in 2012/13 was questionable to begin with and the delivery was beyond awful.
Nintendo pushed out a unit barely smaller than the original in an aggressive colourway that could not be any less ‘Wii’ unless it was soft and brown.
Gone was the entire ability to access the internet. No Wii Shop, no Virtual Console. 480p Enhanced Definition was stripped. Nintendo even removed the SD Card slot.
While Nintendo had slashed the price to around €90, it came at a huge cost to the functionality of the console and it’s a rare specimen these days.
Sega Mega Drive 3 / Sega Genesis 3
The Mega Drive had run its course long before Majesco acquired the rights to repackage MD games and sell official hardware. By 1998, Sega had long abandoned all platforms bar Saturn and the upcoming Dreamcast but Majesco felt there was life in the 68000-fired 16-bit machine yet.
Majesco released the Mega Drive 3 at $50 or so at first but quickly slashed the price to shift their unwanted stock.
Of course, the machine itself fell prey to bad timing so few know about Mega Drive 3’s inferiority to its older brothers. The console was far too light and a gentle tug of the controller could see it launch across your bedroom.
It wouldn’t work with games that exploited a famous Mega Drive bug like Gargoyles. Virtua Racing wouldn’t work on the Mega Drive 3. It lost any ability to easily output a component signal.
There was no power light. A simple fluorescent sticker told you the switch was set to ‘on’ and that was it.
You can go too cheap and Majesco went all the way.
Sega Master System II
Another Sega console to get an inferior follow-up console redesign was the Master System. The original was a bold, very 1980s mixture of black and red with fine white detailing. Its angular but flat design resembled Japanese sprint cars of the era. Tell me the OG Master System doesn’t remind you of the Corolla AE86.
The follow-up was the much plainer, almost utilitarian-looking model that ultimately made Sega’s Master System competitive in Europe and Brazil. The pleasing details were gone, the angles smoothed out and rounded off.
But more importantly, Sega Master System II lost the ability to read Sega Cards – tiny credit card-sized games that did it years before the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. That card slot, like the Nintendo DS’s Advance slot could do more than play games. For example, if you wanted full-colour stereoscopic 3D you needed that card slot.
PSP Go
Once upon a time, Sony almost competed with Nintendo in the handheld gaming sphere. Their PlayStation Portable captured a huge slice of the Japanese market but didn’t take hold elsewhere.
By 2009, PSP was losing momentum worldwide, even in the East. Their answer was a new model that stripped away one massive feature, closed off a huge portion of the library and cost more than the original. Needless to say, it did not revitalise the PSP.
A digital-only machine was perhaps ahead of its time, even in 2009. Sony’s online store lacked volume next to their physical library. Memory cards for original PSPs were expensive and not large enough to haul around a media library – M2 cards for PSP Go were even more expensive and could be even smaller.
Sony quietly retired the PSP Go in 2011 and replaced it with the reduced-cost, awful in its own right, PSP E1000. That final roll of the dice from Sony is a full-sized, UMB-equipped, cut-price PSP that lacks WiFi.
It’s curious that Sony tried to sell an entire console line on a digital-only model, only to follow it with a device running a no-digital model.
Nintendo DSi
Slicing access to masses of games turned out to be a terrible idea for most console redesigns. In fact, only PlayStation 3 has really done so and managed to sell well. The aforementioned PSP Go and Wii Mini are prime examples.
2008’s Nintendo DSi lost a lot and gained little of note in return when it lost its Game Boy Advance slot. That Advance library was huge, beloved and hadn’t seen many ports on other systems at that time. Losing these alone was a tragedy.
But the DSi lost a lot more than backwards compatibility by losing that GBA slot. It also lost a world of zany peripherals. Guitar Hero plug-ins, tiny keyboards for your music training software, a paddlewheel controller. Some of Nintendo DS’s most novel and exciting experiences were bricked off from DSi owners.
The final killer of DSi’s specs is its battery life. While the outrageously popular Nintendo DS Lite could crack out up to 15 hours of gaming, DSi would tap out after around 10.
Dishonourable Mentions
We’ve already mentioned the bizarre WiFi-less PSP E1000 as one of the worst console redesigns – a complete overcorrection from Sony that almost comes across as spiteful. “Oh, you don’t like all-digital distribution? OK then, how about ZERO digital distribution?!” The device was also plasticky and light in a way that no Sony product ever was before and rarely has been since.
Mega Drive II could have been here. For a start, it doesn’t look nearly as good as the original model. And it lost the stereo headphone-out with volume slider. In exchange, we got stereo sound via the TV and the unit was priced to perfection, helping Mega Drive/Genesis continue to spread like wildfire. Even the shoddy sound of the later Mega Drive II systems doesn’t drag this console redesign far enough into the mire to make our final five.
