Top 20 Amazing Facts About Technology: Video games have been around for quite some time now. Some of the video game consoles like the Game Boy and PSP were handheld and came in a compact form factor whereas full-fledged video game consoles compromised on portability but enhanced the gaming experience. Today, there are some crazy good gaming consoles that take realism to a whole new level. As a matter of fact, gaming-centric mobiles and PCs have also started coming out in huge numbers. Here are some amazing facts about technology related to gaming consoles. Let’s get started!
Top 20 Amazing Facts About Technology
1. The Game Boy was a handheld gaming console that became pretty popular among the 90s kids. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was a full-fledged gaming console but lacked power as compared to the Game Boy. The company decided to manufacture Super Game Boy as SNES’s replacement. Super Game Boy had the same hardware without the screen.
2. South Park’s Go God Go was much appreciated by Nintendo. To show their appreciation, Nintendo decided to give away free Wii consoles to South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
3. The Sony Play Station 1 was a technological gem. However, the controller of the console was 10% bigger in the US as compared to Japan. This decision was made after taking into consideration the different hand sizes of people in the two countries.
4. Atari 2600 is indeed the gaming console with the longest life span. Atari 5200 and 7800 were successors to the 2600 but were discontinued way before it. Atari 2600 was discontinued in 1992.
5. Game Boy was the first gaming console to go to space. Cosmonaut AleksandrSerebrov of Russian origin played Tetris on it.
6. Nintendo Entertainment System was a great gaming console but it failed miserably because of the anti-piracy chip installed in it. It caused a cartridge boot failure.
7. The Sega Master System gaming console is very popular in Brazil. It was launched in Brazil in1989. 150,000 units of the gaming console were sold in 2015 and the figure rose to 8 million by the end of 2016. This gaming console gets games that are made especially for Brazil (top 20 Amazing Facts About Technology).
8. Masayuki Uemura, the designer of Famicom, Super Famicom, and SNES decided to keep the cartridge eject button. He believed that the eject button was satisfying to the children.
9. Xbox 360 is one of the greatest gaming consoles ever. However, it encountered a problem called the ring of death. Approximately 30% of the Xbox 360 suffered from this problem. Repairing the affected consoles cost Microsoft $1.15 billion.
10. Play Station 2 was very popular and got new game titles a month before the announcement of PS4.
11. Nintendo Switch is one of the most popular and successful handheld gaming consoles. Nintendo sold more Switch units in the first year than Wii units in its entire lifetime.
12. Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and Game Boy were discontinued in 2003.
13. Phone making giant Nokia also tried its luck in the gaming console industry with N-Gage. Nokia claimed that 400,000 units were sold within the first two weeks of the launch. Later it was found that only 5800 units were actually sold.
14. Nintendo Ds was made to withstand hard environmental conditions. As a matter of fact, it worked on top of Mount Everest without any hiccup.
15. Sony launched a banana-shaped concept controller in E3 2005. The fans did not like it at all and hence, the plan was dropped to manufacture the same for PS3. The PS3 came with a Sixaxis model. This controller was an upgrade from the PS2’s controller.
16. Nintendo and Sony partnered to produce the Nintendo PlayStation/Super Disc. The project was abandoned after the prototype failed catastrophically.
17. Apple also tried its luck in the gaming console industry with Pippin. The product didn’t gain much traction and was discontinued shortly after the release.
18. PS2 was capable of running some pretty high octane games with just 32 MB RAM.
19. The Play Station controller is an iconic controller. On the controller, O stands for yes, X for No, for direction, and square for the menu (Amazing Facts About Technology).
20. Using a network adapter plugged to SNES, the user could play an online multiplayer in games such as NBA Jam, Mario Kart, and Mortal Kombat 3.
