Top 10 Notoriously Defective Pieces Of Video Game Hardware

well there's no patch for this welcome to watchmojo.com and today we'll be counting down our picks for the top ten notoriously defective pieces of video game hardware before we begin we publish new videos every day so be sure to subscribe for more great content for this list we'll be looking at pieces of video game hardware that had major technical problems or just plain never worked number 10 roll & rocker rollin rocker nope not rock n roller that would be too clever this contraption was meant to be used instead of the NES controls d-pad you'd stand on it and rock back and forth to move while touted to be compatible with every NES game it barely worked with a single one especially if you waited over a hundred pounds you still had to use the controller of course to press the a and B buttons so if you were doing that why would you just not use the d-pad instead of struggling with this unwieldy piece of plastic even if it worked the rollin rocker was pretty much useless each game responds differently but none of them work Adventure Island keeps walking right Excitebike keeps going down skater die goes in circles kungfu ducks to the right metal gear does nothing at all number 9 rob the robot when you master rob the video robot meet the challenge of gyromite you might know this cute but deadly robotic operating buddy from super smash brothers but rob was actually bundled with original NES consoles back in 1985 if you were expecting a rad futuristic experience though you were sorely mistaken he used flashes from the ECR TV to know when to move wood press the B or a buttons on controller 2 and would stack up colored cylinders the main problem was rob was horrendously slow so it was much easier to just press the damn buttons herself and to the fact that there were only 2 games that were made to use Rob and we have yet another NES accessory that we can do without number 8 voice recognition unit aka V ru let's play I can't take it anymore and the 90s and voice recognition you can guess how this turned out right looking for love here Nintendo's voice recognition unit known as B ru was a peripheral for the n64 it was supposed to allow players to talk and give simple voice commands in certain games it was only compatible with two games though Hey You Pikachu and this train conductor simulator anyway that's not even the worst part the VR u was made specifically for younger audiences with higher pitched voices that meant that anyone past puberty would have a lot of trouble getting the damn thing to work properly thankfully no other names required it and Nintendo semi redeems themselves here later with the we speak that's because Professor Oak's always there to help sometimes friends are good to have number seven the power glove au Nintendo Entertainment System the games alone okay if you want to look like a Jedi Master telekinetically moving objects on the screen with your arms outstretched then the power gloves definitely for you I guess while wearing it after setting up the sensors around your TV you could control the game using fists clenching finger wagging or hand waving well in theory anyway despite an awesome design in concept motion sensors in the late-1980s just really weren't all that good leading to trouble controlling nearly every game the wizard made it look really easy but that glorified ad kept the truth hidden well enough to sell the accessory that wasn't even enough though and thankfully the power glove was discontinued less than a year later I love the power glove it's so big number 6 Atari mind link ready for the amazing Atari mindly an exciting an unusual new way to operate Atari home computers if you thought having a robotic friend in the 80s was too ambitious first time you ain't seen nothing yet the Atari mind link was meant to be a hands-free controller reading DeMayo neural signal voltage from your forehead okay that sounds really high-tech but in practice you basically just place it on your head and move your eyebrows around the state of the art or the stage of your mind only three games were made to use this Bionic breakthrough telepathy and mind maze but none were actually released why well technically the mind link itself never got released testers got frequent headaches from moving their foreheads too much and it went down with the rest of the videogame industry during the crash of the mid 80s number five Sega activator the polar opposite of the mind-link the Sega activator released in 1993 has you punching and jump kicking to your heart's content after putting the plastic octagon together you just step inside it and infrared sensors detect which move you want to do the problem was that if you have any kind of ceiling decoration like lights or a fan the sensor won't work properly even if the setup was perfect it would be really inaccurate meaning your leaps and roundhouse kicks resulted in completely different moves on screen factor in its immense price tag at the time and you might want to deactivate your interest in the activator number for Atari 5200 controller in comparison to the other control devices on this list the Atari 5200 controller wasn't as innovative but it still managed to fail spectacularly not only that it's thought to be the main cause of the 52 hundredths commercial downfall the new Atari 5200 super system is here with a controller so advanced it plays our game it was supposed to be an upgrade on the Atari 2600 controller offering 360 degree analog control instead of the regular eight directional control it came with a number pad also and the now essential pause button which was pretty cool at the time unfortunately the joystick wasn't self-centering using rubber centering instead of Springs and the firing buttons were just too soft this led to nine different controller revisions and third-party developments but it was all discontinued as Atari focused on the 7800 [Music] number three konami laser scope the ladies our school put it on loop through the crosshairs at the picture and give it a voice command the laser scope was meant to be an alternative to the boring nes zapper just put on the headset and yell fire to shoot at the screen it was actually supposed to make your gaming experience quieter as the game audio came through your headphones but ironically and I'm sure you could figure this out having to yell every time you wanted to shoot made it way worse in some of these games you needed to be shooting constantly add to the fact that basically any noise the mic picked up caused it to fire even background noise and the device became completely ineffective as a plus though the headphones were advertised to be compatible with Walkmans but god help you if you decided to wear these in public even in the 90s number 2 Xbox 360 being that it's red leads me to believe that something is very wrong just when you thought you were free of the maddening blue screen of death Microsoft came out with a sequel the red ring of death seeing the three rings appear on your brand-new Xbox 360 was always heart dropping it indicated a general hardware failure and often came coupled with freezes graphical and sound errors I think we could have a billion dollar problem hip failure rates for the console reported as high as 33 percent according to retailers with a repair shop in the UK reportedly receiving 2500 defective consoles daily in a watershed moment Microsoft's management decided to pay for the shipping and repairs of the faulty Xbox 360s the high cost of 1.15 billion dollars was a blow to the company but that move is thought to have saved the Xbox franchise we were a wealthy company could afford to do that sure but not even hesitating because the brand was more important we hadn't made that decision there and then and try to fudge over this problem then the Xbox brand an Xbox one wouldn't exist today number one amstrad gx4000 the amstrad gx4000 mostly unheard of outside of the UK mostly unheard of inside of the UK amstrad's jump into the console market did not go as planned with this upgrade of their 8-bit CPC released in 1990 it was much too late to the party as the 16-bit era was just around the corner but the kicker was it's cheap power supply unit for whatever reason you had to plug the wire into your console before plugging it into the wall unplugging it from the console first or plugging it into the wall first risked either frying your unit or straight-up exploding it yeah you heard right your consoles power supply could explode there were warning labels on the power supply to alert users but eventually those wires weren't recommended to be used at all it's kind of a good thing this system failed at retail given the small size of a software library they make an ideal collector's piece even if you're unlikely to ever own chase HQ - do you agree with our picks check out these other great clips from WatchMojo and subscribe for new videos every day

Channel: WatchMojo.com

Views: 1,355,654

Rating: 4.7812018 out of 5

Keywords: Top 10, Top Five, List, Rank, Defective, Broken, Didn't Work, Video Games, Consoles, PC's Controllers, Amstrad GX4000, Xbox 360, Red Ring of Death, Konami, Laserscope, Atari 5200 Controller, Sega Activator, Atari Mindlink, Power Glove, R.O.D. The Robot, Roll n Rocker

Id: upBEinpk51I

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2017