Concept consoles are the machines that never were. Some were made but never got mass produced. Others like the Apple I-Play (Pic Left) never made it off of the drawing board.

We can only speculate what the I-Play may have been like. We aren't even sure at RH wheter this concept was an official Apple plan or a mock up. Still if the Pippin is anything to go by maybe it was for the best that Apple stuck with what it does best.
















The Panasonic 3DO M2. 2nd generation 3DO machine. Improved to go head to head with the Playstation. Unfortunately Sony's machine had already picked up a huge head of steam when this was unveiled. A few exist and go for huge amounts of money.

Goldstar (LG) also planned the release of an M2. (Picture below)



This is the only picture RH could find of the Goldstar M2 3DO.


Now here's one that will make your mouths water. The Atari Cosmos. A handheld console that used holographic back ground screens. It was similar to other small video games of the era that used a simple LED-based display, but superimposed a two-layer holographic image over the LEDs for effect. Two small lights lit up one or both of the holographic images depending on the game state. The system was never released, and is now a coveted collector's item. There are believed to only be 5 in existence. One cropped up on Ebay and sold for over $20,0000. Wow.








The Sega Neptune (picture right). This was never released. It is a simple Megadrive and 32X
combination that was to be a stop gap until the Saturn came out. Hindsight is an exact
science but I'm sure that they should have released this instead of the Mega CD and
32X add ons.











The controversial "Phantom" system was a concept by a company called Infinium. It was to be the first console to play PC software titles. It was going to ditch the disk in favour of the download. It was initially to launch in 2002.
Infinium have changed their name to Phantom Entertainment. On August 15, 2006, Phantom Entertainment announced that the Phantom game console would no longer exist. Their focus is now on a client online content delivery system comparable to Valve's Steam. Interestingly the Phantom aimed at delivering games to the public exactly the way that Microsoft would like to deliver games in the future.
There are Phantoms in existence.









Another Phantom this is an artists
impression.









See page 2 for more weird and wonderful prototypes.

Dont forget if you know more about these systems, contact me!


Created by Paul the Elder.