the tale of gaming's strangest and most forgotten console

this video game console had every right to make a permanent Mark in gaming history it had so much media coverage between being featured on the news and on talk shows it had multiple Publications voting it one of the best toys of the year it came from a company with an established history backed by industry veterans whose names were respected and yet despite everything it somehow managed to sink Into Obscurity and 20 years later has been completely forgotten what happened how could it go so wrong and just how deep does this Rabbit Hole go our Story begins in the Year 1997 with a company called MGA entertainment not only were they the ones behind the brand Little Tikes but they also made a name for themselves creating everything from walkie-talkies to RC cars to virtual pets they also had a wide range of licensed handheld video games with plenty of recognizable names such as Mario and Pac-Man the marketing director for MGA at the time was a man named Brian dubinsky he's a toy designer and an Ambi entrepreneur and he knew all too well how profitable the toy business could be and he wanted a bigger cut for himself so he left MGA and started working with his new business partner Hong Kong based Trading Company manly toy Quest and this is when we meet our main character a man by the name of Bob Del Principe not only does he specialize in toy design but he's been working on something revolutionary for his entire career and Brian saw the potential in him so Bob was brought onto the team as research and development for toy quest with Bob Proficiency in toy making and Brian's expertise in marketing they spent 3 years crafting one of the most famous and influential toys of all time in the fall of 2000 toy Quest launched techno the robotic puppy techno the robotic puppy he's light activated touch activated come on techno and voice activated techno the robotic puppy comes with his own dog bone and card trick techno was such a worldwide phenomenon that it went on to sell 40 million units during its original 4-year run just to put that into perspective it was pulling Rubik's Cube numbers and the media absolutely took notice here it is in the news here it is on The Tonight Show here it is with a standalone cover on Time Magazine to say techno was culturally relevant to the early 2000s would be an understatement but here's the thing this was not Bob's revolutionary idea which he had started developing before he was even brought onto the toy Quest team with the incoming funds from techno success they further funded what Bob considered to be his magnum opus so let's jump forward to 2 years later in 2002 Bob has been working on his crazy idea for 10 years now and it all came to a head after all this time his magnum opus was finally complete he had managed to develop a baby doll that can see and her name is Cindy smart Cindy can really see Cindy you can ask Cindy to read words and solve ma problems 7 equal 19 well done Cindy she can tell the time 10:00 and identify pictures learning has never been so much fun with Cindy smart she's powered by a 16-bit processor and a camera in her torso critics thought it was groundbreaking industry veterans saw it as revolutionary I thought it was really creepy but compared to the smash hit that was techno it only received a modest amount of success but toy Quest they just kept on trucking they made some backyard water park toys kind of like a slip and slide and they also made a few different squishy stretchy action figures if you were a network executive this is what I'd do to you and finally this is around the point where they started getting into video games they made like a VR headset with arm and leg bands that are motion controlled so you can punch and kick like a real ninja I can't find any documentation on this thing at all it has just completely vanished from the public Consciousness but thankfully it hasn't vanished from eBay so maybe I'll take a look at it sometime so remember earlier when I was telling about how Brian left MGA to go work with toy Quest mga's sales numbers were down when Brian left and I'm sure he felt proud of that move after techno became insanely successful but a year after techno's release in 2001 MGA would drop their own bombshell called Bratz I'm sure you've heard of them they would go on to sell 125 million units in their first run they tripled the sales of techno right away and a few years later would capture 40% of the doll Market competing right up against Barbie MGA was absolutely slaying with Bratz meanwhile toy Quest was over here struggling to stay afloat like Disney princess keyboard uh Sesame Street blocks anyone and finally 2 years later in 2004 they found some success once again when they released a series of electric vehicles called MiniMoto their little bikes and carts that kids could ride around and and that was finally enough to put them back on the map for a while mini moto ended up being a really big hit and so toy Quest had a bunch of PR photo shoots done and that's why half the photos I have of Brian are of him riding on a stupid little car it's because mini moto was his cash cow so that's all the backstory that I'm going to give of course it's not a comprehensive history of toy Quest or anything it's just the highlights that I felt were valuable for context and also there are some gaps in my knowledge that I couldn't fill because information about toy Quest is really hard to find but now it's finally time for everything to culminate and get into the actual subject of this video so Bob wasn't happy with the fact that his big idea the one he put a decade of effort into ended up as just another mediocre mark on toy Quest record but thankfully with the mini moto popping off they were able to put more funding into Bob's next idea which was to combine the attributes of Cindy smart with the world of video games in June 2005 they took their familiar territory of the 16-bit processor and the camera and they reworked it into the go go TV Video Vision game console now the main idea behind this whole thing was to get kids Physically Active when playing video games using the console's camera you are on the TV and you are the controller now to be fair toy Quest was way ahead of the curve on this one the whole motion gaming thing hadn't happened yet the Wii wasn't out yet the PlayStation Move wasn't out yet the Microsoft Connect wasn't out yet so this idea was still really fresh the most common point of comparison was the PlayStation ey toy which was a camera that you plug into the PlayStation 2 it was immediately more accessible than having to buy a new console but the go- Go TV was in development before the ey toy even released and toy Quest wasn't happy with the fact that they kept getting compared to it I thought that was pretty funny considering the fact that they were so ahead of the motion gaming Trend and the fact that toy Quest was a recognizable brand at this point it's not that surprising that they got a lot of media coverage for their exciting new video game machine the timing of the Gog go TV's release also helped tremendously because it was right at the peak in awareness of the Obesity epidemic so parents were on the lookout for solutions to encourage their children to lose weight and the goo te fit the bill nicely it got a huge initial Boost from being featured on Regis and Kelly and a couple of news stations picked up on the story as well and then tons of big stores started carrying stock and commercials went out on TV and that was all it took to get some glowing reviews and some really good press family fun place to the go- go tv as their toy of the Year 2005 it had absolutely everything going for it so why does no one remember it why have I never heard anyone talk about this thing's existence why had I never heard of it and until I started researching for this video I had to get to the bottom of this thing so I sought out every single goo TV related thing that I could find it wasn't easy and it definitely wasn't cheap but I believe that at this point my go- go TV collection is as complete as it could possibly be the business model for the go go TV was to sell the console at a loss and games at a markup which is standard practice for the console Market they planned eight games for launch and seven new games every 3 months they also claimed that they were working with Disney and DreamWork to make some licensed games for the go- Go TV obviously they were anticipating success and trying to fuel the ecosystem in advance but we already know that didn't pan out so those Disney Dreamworks licensed Gog go TV games they never saw the light of day the only thing that ever did release were the eight games that were proposed for launch which are basketball football tennis dodgeball baseball paintball whack-a-mole and snowboarding all of these games are on the go- Go TV website from the time but some of them are so rare that their existence is unconfirmed we have no idea if football ever made it into stores because no one can find a copy of the game or even a photo of the thing snowboarding paintball and football are all insanely rare or were never released at all so my complete collection of Gog go TV stuff consists of these five games basketball tennis dodgeball baseball and whack-a-mole every game comes with a unique set of peripherals alongside the cartridge we'll take a look at each game in a little bit but for now let's dive into the console itself so it comes with the console power adapter C cartridge and an instructional DVD which caught my eye so let's Slide the whole thing out of the box and set aside the instruction manual I picked up the power adapter and noticed that it politely asks me to watch the included DVD okay fine I will do that as soon as I unbox it when I removed the console I noticed that the AV cables were extremely dirty thankfully they weren't deteriorating or anything they were just really dusty I assume from being in a warehouse for 20 years but yeah now you can see the console itself and it is way smaller than I thought I thought this thing was like twice this size for some reason but no it is Tiny and it is light as a feather this thing feels just like an empty plastic shell now finally we have access to the instructional DVD I've heard so much about welcome to the instructional DVD video for goo TV the new video game system that puts you right into your favorite video games it's essentially just reading the instruction manual to you but they put some nice visuals to it like look at this TV remote that is the most 2001 TV remote I have ever seen when they're showing the power adapter for some reason they're using a Magnavox Odyssey 2 power adapter even if the voltage is line up it wouldn't work because it uses a different connector to the one the goo TV uses but aside from that the instructional DVD is just not that interesting I can imagine it would be a good resource to have if you've never owned a video game console before or never plugged anything into your TV before but when I was a kid I could figure out how to plug my Nintendo 64 into my TV just fine so yeah I'm going to move on but I put it on archive.org if you want to watch the whole thing so I have the console sitting on top of my record player which is sitting on top of my CRT and because it's a camera game I also have these led panels pointing directly into my eyeballs so the go- Go TV console comes with its own cartridge and it's got four games on it I'm going to take a look at them one by one the first one is balloon juggling you might recognize this game it's because it's the game they kept showing in all the commercials and in all the media and that's because it's the perfect demonstration of what the Gog go TV is capable of it is very simple but it's immediately intuitive and easy to understand which is good especially since they're Target demographic were kids ages 3 to 8 if it isn't obvious how this thing works it detects changes in each pixel of the camera to determine Collision which means it's very easy to cheat like like very easy you can just kind of flap your hand around a little bit and you'll just win forever but you can even take a step further than that I'm going to show a strobe light for a second so if your photo sensitive or you just don't like flashing lights then skip forward 15 seconds okay 3 2 1 here we go all right so I discovered a really funny way to cheat which was to use my smartphone and pull up like a strobe light video on YouTube and then just kind of Mount my phone in front of the go go TV I left it on for about 30 minutes or so and discovered that the highest score you can possibly get is 20 9,999 I don't know why specifically that number it's not like they were anywhere near a 16-bit integer limit or anything but I maxed out the phunometer and that's all that matters yeah next up is penguin maze you play as a penguin and you have to collect all the fish and melt all of the Snowballs using the Firepower up this game is immediately less intuitive than balloon juggling I'm controlling the penguin by Rolling my hand over a virtual onscreen d-pad but why am I directing a penguin through the maze why can't I go through the maze myself I'm right there I can see me on the screen this feels like a game that was designed with a controller in mind and they added in the camera gimmick after the fact thankfully break a brick is more in line with what the go go TV is good at it's a breakout clone where you are the paddle the only thing is you really want to feel like you're directing the ball a certain way by like scooping it with your hand in one specific Direction but the only thing it detects is Collision it doesn't know angles it doesn't know Direction it doesn't know anything but even then the Collision detection although it's actually pretty good for the time it's not amazing I feel like a lot of the time my hand just goes right through the ball and that's really frustrating the PlayStation ey toy was out at the time and it had a lot of these same problems of just kind of being inconsistent in an unfun way shall we say but the go go TV has a major advantage over any of the digital USB cameras that were around at the time including the ey toy it runs at 60 FPS and it's on a CRT so it feels like there's no delay to this thing the fourth and final game is flashcard fishing you just solve math problems and hover your hand over the bubble that has the correct answer I feel like for any kids's console it's pretty reasonable to have something educational to convince the parents with it's a necessary evil fair enough the games that come with the go go TV are very unexceptional they demonstrate the core idea just fine like it's a good introduction to camera games but if this is all you had I can't imagine kids wanting to boot up the go- Go TV more than maybe three times maximum but the good news is I have all the games right here so maybe these games will give the go go TV a chance to show its true potential let's begin with basketball you know how usually basketballs have wires coming out of them well this one's a wireless basketball so you don't got to worry about getting tangled up no more I just got Deja Vu opening this because opening the games provides like the exact same unboxing experience as the console it's really weird let's just take the ball oh uhhuh I see what's going on you got to take the two halves and make them a hole and now it is an infrared ball with a strap on it and of course there's the game cartridge which plugs into the console I actually had to open the basketball back up so that I could put some batteries into it but yeah the ball has an onoff switch a singular button and a giant infrared panel on the front old cartridge out new cartridge in and we're ready to go so you're playing as the white team and you're versing the red team it's like a first-person perspective when you pass a ball to one of your fellow team members it switches to their perspective and you have to get close enough to the basket so that you can shoot and whether or not the ball makes it in is just a dice roll optimizing my passes to see how quickly and efficiently I could sink a shot without getting blocked it's a pretty fun gameplay loop as almost good as this game is it is a very bad Go Go TV game in the sense that it requires nearly no no movement you press a button on the ball to pass to throw the ball you have to trip the accelerometer by swinging your arm and have it overlay on top of the onscreen Arrow I don't know how else they would have done it so I'll cut them a little bit of slack but it's right in this weird range where I feel like this game would be too complicated for a 3 to 8 year-old and not Dynamic enough for it to be fun for more than 15 minutes these games retailed for $30 each when they were new so I expected a little bit of substance hopefully this doesn't set a precedent for the rest of them next up we've got tennis this feels like a really good fit for the go-o te TV if it works as they're claiming it does but considering how rudimentary the accelerometers were in the basketball I'm not holding my breath this is the only go go TV thing that I have that has very clearly and obviously yellowed it might be because it uses a specific kind of plastic or maybe this one was just exposed to a little bit more Sun than it should have it's also the first Go Go TV thing that feels physically heavy like they weighted it towards the end of the racket so when you swing it it really feels like it's got some Mass to it it uses the camera and the accelerometer to see if you're lined up with the ball when you actually swing it's super intuitive being able to look at yourself like you're looking in a mirror to know where the ball is relative to you it might be a little weird it might be a little Jun but this is a perfect example of a Gog go TV game my only complaint is that the tennis racket handle is a bit too small for my hand but it's perfectly appropriate for kids so fair enough this is easily my favorite game On The go- Go TV so far and next on the list is dodgeball there's an infrared hand controller so that you can throw and catch the dodgeballs on screen So based on where you are in the camera view it creates this triangle on the bottom and if an opposing ball hits that triangle then you get hit so because of the way the tennis racket worked and the way that the basketball worked I thought I would have to swing my arm every time I threw turns out it doesn't care about the velocity of your swing at all you can just press the button and it throws the exact same way every single time this game would actually be a lot more fun if I could swing the controller really hard and have the ball move like five times as fast as it is it's just okay I actually quite like the idea of using the camera to determine if you're dodging on screen balls or not but it's not very consistent about moving the triangle and figuring out where you are so it feels kind of unfair sometimes now my plan was to give baseball a try next but oh boy did I try and I tried but this cartridge don't want to work I shoved it into the console a hundred different ways I jiggled it all around turned it off and on 9 million times no dice I tried cleaning the cartridge itself I tried cleaning the cartridge slot on the console it just would not give and I was like okay something has to actually be wrong here so I opened up the cartridge and oh I found the issue in fact the issue was staring me right in the face if you no these two pins at the end there on the top right those are mysteriously unsoldered for reference here's what it's supposed to look like it's not that the solder joints broke they just were never put on in the first place so you know what I did I soldered the pins and the cartridge started working immediately I watched the instructional DVD I read the instruction manual and it didn't say anything about having to solder the pins in my cartridge to play the game this thing sat in its original box unopened for 20 years just to be Factory defective and I can't tell if it's just that the cartridge was defective or if the whole thing is defective I can't hit a single ball in this game swing and a miss swing and a miss strike strike strike strike strike I can't hit a ball I really thought my bat was broken and honestly it might be because in my 20-minute play session I hit one ball and I cheesed it like that wasn't you're not supposed to do it like that but I tried to recreate that strategy so that I could hit one more ball and I couldn't I went out of my way to give this game life support and it still refuses to cooperate with me I am genuinely shocked by how bad this game is and the final game we're going to look at is whacka mole yes they made the mole Caked Up why I don't know I don't know but yeah this game has a goofy Hammer that you swing around I'm just going to say it flat out this game is excellent it's another instance where the mirrored camera makes it easy to understand where you are in 3D space and where you need to swing it's a great use of the hardware in that regard it's also the only game on the system that isn't easy to cheese swinging when and where you need to and not when you don't is the most optimal way to play the game you can swing the hammer all over the place and hit all the moles but you waste more energy that way and get tired quicker than you otherwise would the accelerometer works great here it's incredibly consistent and fair the only problem I have is I wish the camera feed was visible on more than just half of the screen like I want the ground to be transparent as well after swinging the hammer I would lose track of where I was for the next swing since I couldn't see where my hand was anymore so I kept having to raise my hammer back up after every single swing which might be why the accelerometer was working better maybe that's part of the design but yeah as the game goes on more mold show up and you have to move faster and be more efficient with your swings this game is pretty good all right well that's the entire library for the console we've seen the extent of what it's capable of I'm quite a big fan of weird esoteric video game machines so I think the go- Go TV is really cool for what it is and we can only guess as to why this thing was a commercial failure but I think I have a pretty good idea it's just that the go- Go TV isn't very good at doing what it's trying to do the games are incredibly shallow they exhaust themselves of content almost immediately and the gimmick of every game coming with its own controller Feels Like A desperate attempt to make it feel like a better value the games are for kids of course they're going to be simple but kids get bored really quick there has to be something else aside from just swinging a tennis racket over and over in Wii Sports tennis you challenge gradually more difficult opponents as your skill level increases and it kept me engaged enough to want to keep playing and that system was plenty accessible to me as a 7-year-old toy Quest got so lost in the sauce of trying to find a way to make video games accessible to kids that they didn't question if that was needed video games were already accessible to kids like I started playing NES games when I was maybe four toy Quest was already halfway to making a physical whacka mole toy they should have just finished the job instead of introducing kids to this half-baked weird dissonance of swinging a plastic Hammer into the air I would rather kids bnk toy moles on the head with a mallet that is universally the preferable option all right well that's my YouTube video thank you for watching thank you to all of the patrons at patreon.com stay tuned hit that subscribe button I have uh more videos in the Chamber coming out real soon [Music]

Channel: planet clue

Views: 372,724

Keywords: evan clue, kkclue, clue media, eclue, clue's house, toys, wholesome, animal crossing, acnh, new horizons

Id: k4PbDuOye0s

Length: 20min 44sec (1244 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024