Junior-sized Video Game Consoles

When video consoles come out, banners fly, flags unfurl, and all talk is of the future.  What kinds of things are you going to hook up to your game's special expansion port?  What cool add-ons will keep away the grim reaper of videogame obsolescence?

Flash forward a few years.  We're near the end of a console's life, and often few of those things have actually happened.  Witness the basically unused expansion port on the bottom of a Super-NES, the side connector on an Atari 7800, pretty much anything to do with the Sega 32X... the list goes on and on.

Many popular consoles are re-released at the dawn of the next generation in cost reduced form.  Console makers figure they can capture a market of gamers reluctant to spend a lot on next gen tech, and releasing a cheaper version of a successful game system really doesn't cost that much in R&D.  You strip away the features that few people use, put it in a much smaller form factor, and you're off.

 

Consequently, these "junior" versions are made in smaller numbers and later become desirable among collectors.  Sometimes they are actually improved over the original - for example the top-loading NES goes for big bucks on Ebay because the cartridge connector is much more robust than the failure-prone one on the original NES (but the toploader only has RF output to your TV - blech!). 

Usually features disappear; Sega Master System II can only play cartridge games and cannot use the 3D glasses, SNES junior loses S-VHS output, and the Atari Junior is...uh... made of much crappier plastic with nasty switches.  Even the current generation of consoles has produced the "slim" PS2 that won't accomodate the hard drive add-on.

Despite their shortcomings, there is one thing that these mini versions are great for; hacking into portables.  Ben Heckendorn, granddaddy of making any system portable, usually uses these mini versions of consoles to make his work easier.  If you're a videogame completist, or just short on room, you may want to consider these mini consoles. Be prepared to shell out more than the original system goes for, and make sure that you won't miss any of the reduced features.

Help out RT by picking up Ben's book on hacking old consoles