A Look At: Pippin - Discover the Rare 5th Gen 1996 Video Game Console by Apple-

[@retroprojections]

Edutainment?! Ain't nobody teaching me how to have fun! 😅 Apple 🤦 WOW!!? That is the least convinced I have ever been by a commercial! 😵‍💫 "Pippin, it's not a Mac!" 🤣

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Right!?! I couldn't find an American commercial for the @world Pippin. I searched the internet archive, library of congress, etc., nothing... So I don't think one exists. That last japanese commercial is pretty funny. Get a pippin not a computer. Computers are too complicated. 🤣 That cracked me up.

[@tarstarkusz]

8:15 What is Pippin? It's a stripped down mac pretending to be a console without any decent graphics hardware. It sucks as a mac and it sucks as a console. Too many compromises for too much money, just like the PC version of the same idea with the Memorex/Tandy VIS system.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Agreed. If Apple wanted this to be successful, they should have developed it with a GPU and 3d hardware. QuickTime, really Apple?? Lol. Then they expected their licensee's to develop the GPU/3d hardware, which you know nobody would. They tried the same computer as a console idea that several companies tried and failed at. Atari, Commodore, Amiga, and like you said PC even.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@RetrogamerGenX They should have used an older oxo chip, like the 030 but with good graphics hardware, like the 3dfx. This was always the strength of arcade hardware. They used cheaper CPUs, far less RAM (which couldn't be helped with a CD based system)and powerful graphics & sound chips. Look at the Neogeo! This was an 80s system that survived into the new millennium. But above all, they needed to give Pippin an identity. Instead, they delivered a weak system with no identity for a massive price. They should have looked at the CDI and said, "yeah, we don't want to do this"

[@RetrogamerGenX]

lol, sounds like the Amiga CD32 your describing there, although it had the 020. And yet another example of a failed attempt at the computer to game console idea. But I'd love to have one in my collection, and the Pippin.😉 Ah yeah, the Neo Geo. Man what a great console. I could never afford one myself back then, but a buddy of mine had one. Talk about the arcade at home, it really was.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@RetrogamerGenX I didn't mean they should make an obsolete mac into a game system. I wasn't even considering any kind of mac compatibility or a Mac's ability to run the game. It's rather about where you put the money. Rather than putting a processor costing hundreds of dollars into a game console and no graphics hardware, which is the ultimate dumb thing to do, instead put the bare minimum into the CPU and the real money into the graphics hardware. You would have been surprised back then at the hardware in the arcades (we know now). A lot of them had a 68k or a 68020 or 68030. You really don't need that much of a CPU when the hardware is doing all the work. It's how a SNES would blow away a 486 in 2d games. The 65c816 was more than enough for the code because all the work of graphics was being done by the graphics hardware. A PC or Mac is simply not optimized for games. Absolutely nobody was asking for a TV based console that could run some rudimentary mac software very poorly. While I am sure there were developers who thought this idea was the bees knees for saving on development costs, the end user is getting screwed because he has to pay for what is essentially a low end Mac. Nobody wanted to pay mac-like prices for a very week game console. The internet would suck on the Pippin too. Most TVs are simply not suitable for high resolution displays. The absolute best they could display was 640x480 and not very well. So this would probably have to be very hobbled to an even lower resolution because unlike game graphics, every pixel is important when you are reading the screen. I'm really surprised they even tried this. It was such an obviously bad idea from the start. For the amount of money this thing cost, you were getting pretty close to a cheap Mac, particularly if you already owned a monitor. A Performa ran usually from about 1000 dollars (& up), so more than 1/2 way to a cheap Mac.