At no 10: the 1995 Sega Saturn! Rushed into production to beat the Sony PlayStation it launched with only six games available. A massive advertising campaign couldn't rescue it's reputation...
At no 9: the 1982 Vectex! Who needs sprites when you've got vector graphics! Plus you could add a coloured sheet to the weird shoebox monitor to give you 'colour' graphics. A brave attempt...
At no 8: the 1995 Nintendo Virtual Boy! What do you get if you cross a ViewMaster with a Game and Watch and put it on a tripod? The answer was a commercial flop. Another brave attempt at something new, at a time when VR was all the rage...
At no 7: the 1990 Amstrad GX4000! Amstrad made a console? Yes they did! Was it any good? Erm...
At no 6: the 1994 Sega Mega Jet! A portable version of the Mega Drive this was used on Japanese airlines as in-flight entertainment. Many privately owned ones are apparently from a shipment hijacked by Indonesian sea-pirates that later turned up on eBay...
At no 5: the 1977 Coleco Telstar Arcade! Probably the world's only triangular console it let you drive, shoot and play tennis - but not at the same time alas...
At no 4: the 1994 Atari Jaguar! "The world's first 64 bit console" was actually two 32 bit systems crammed into the same box. That's not cheating, is it? Buggy hardware and a lack of games led to its demise and Atari's exit from the console market...
At no 3: the 2004 Nokia N-Gage! Was it a phone? Was it a console? Was it a digital belt buckle? Nobody knew. What we did know was what killed it: the iPhone...
At no 2: the Apple Bandai Pippin! Apple made a console? With Bandai?? With a croissant for a controller??? Quietly buried by Steve Jobs in 1997 next to the Apple Newton. Send no flowers...
And the no 1 best forgotten games console is... the 1984 Yeno Super Lady Cassette Vision - a pink console for the lady gamer!
If it's any consolation the boy's version was equally as crap...
More pulp video games another time. Most will be PAL compatible...
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He was the terror of London; a demonic figure with glowing eyes and fiery breath who could leap ten feet high. The penny dreadfuls of the time wrote up his exploits in lurid terms. But who was he really?
Today I look at one of the earliest pulp legends: Spring-Heeled Jack!
London has always attracted ghosts, and in the 19th Century they increasingly left their haunted houses and graveyards and began to wader the capital's streets.
But one apparition caught the Victorian public attention more than most...
In October 1837 a 'leaping character' with a look of the Devil began to prey on Londoners. Often he would leap high into the air and land in front of a carriage, causing it to crash. It would then flee with a high-pitched laugh.
Today in pulp I look back at New Zealand's home-grow microcomputer, the 1981 Poly-1!
Press any key to continue...
The Poly-1 was developed in 1980 by two electronics engineering teachers at Wellington Polytechnic, Neil Scott and Paul Bryant, who wanted to create a computer for use in New Zealand schools. Education Minister Merv Wellington liked the idea and gave it the green light.
Backed by government finances, and in partnership with Progeni Computers, Polycorp was formed in 1980 to began work on the prototype for the official Kiwi school computer.
It was the biggest manhunt in Britain: police, the press, aeroplanes, psychics all tried to solve the disappearance. In the end nobody really knew what happened. It was a mystery without a solution.
This is the story of Agatha Christie's 11 lost days...
By 1926 Agatha Christie's reputation as a writer was starting to grow. Her sixth novel - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - had been well-received and she and her husband Archie had recently concluded a world tour. But all was not well with the marriage.
In April 1926 Agatha Christie’s mother died. Christie was very close to her: she had been home-schooled and believed her mother was clairvoyant. The shock of her sudden death hit the author hard.
Many readers have asked me over the years what my definition of pulp is. I've thought about it a lot, and the definition I keep coming back to... well it may surprise you.
Let me try and set it out.
There are lots of definitions of pulp out there: in books, in academic papers and on the web. And most circle back to the same three points: the medium, the story type and the method of writing.
Pulp is of course a type of cheap, coarse paper stock. Its use in magazine production from the 1890s onwards led to it becoming a shorthand term for the kind of fiction found in low cost story magazines.
let's take a look at the extraordinary work of Victorian illustrator and cat lover Louis Wain!
Louis Wain was born in London in 1860. Although he is best known for his drawings of cats he started out as a Victorian press illustrator. His work is highly collectable.
Wain had a very difficult life; born with a cleft lip he was not allowed to attend school. His freelance drawing work supported his mother and sisters after his father died. Aged 23 he married his sisters' governess, Emily Richardson, 10 years his senior.
Over the years a number of people have asked me if I have a favourite pulp film. Well I do. It's this one.
This is the story of Alphaville...
Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965) was Jean-Luc Godard’s ninth feature film. A heady mix of spy noir, science fiction and the Nouvelle Vague at its heart is a poetic conflict between a hard-boiled secret agent and a supercomputer’s brave new world.
British writer Peter Cheyney had created the fictitious American investigator Lemmy Caution in 1936. As well as appearing in 10 novels Caution featured in over a dozen post-war French films, mostly played by singer Eddie Constantine whom Godard was keen to work with.