What The Heck Is A XaviX??

The SSD XaviX Port video game console went all in on motion controls two years before the Nintendo Wii!
Is it good? Let's see what it's like inside and out.
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[@Samjay23]

The reason there's no icons after the Money icon is because they ran out of money.

[@Foxii-86]

1:23 Those buttons look like they were nicked from a cheap radio from the 2000s and an old Vauxhall

[@DUKE_of_RAMBLE]

Yea, cheap portable DVD player and other electronics as well. I worked at an auto parts store 02-03 _(here in the US)_ and they started having us sell all this literal junk. Said portable DVD player, with a *_TINY_* screen that it wouldn't surprise me if it was actually 1/2 the actual resultion, since the pixels were basically the size of my head lol

[@ezyto]

15:30 this feels like the old AVGN bit where he screams fire into Top Gun

[@racc5277]

FUCK! FUCK FIRE

[@Salisbury_Steak]

Australian Video Game Nerd *or* Australian Nugget Game Nerd before "Big Nugget" made him change his name for copylefts.

[@bepsibeverage4231]

Ah yes the Konami LaserScope “I just shot a duck by saying fuck!”

[@sashimipablo4384]

I remember these! The Domyos (PAL) version went on sale when I had my part time job at Decathlon and the staff was very confused as to why we were selling crappy video games in a shop for sports equipment.

[@autistic_furry]

Maybe they sold it because the games are sport related.

[@shiftfire4511]

​@@autistic_furry Almost certainly. You see that all the time, vaguely related products being stocked to try and grab more customers. Almost all of them end up at discount retailers after a few months.

[@Arum638]

The console slot looks like something that's be repurposed by a props department for a sci-fi movie. "Quick, put the macguffin drive into the flux capacitor!"

[@lvl90dru1d]

16:11 this thing actually OUTLIVED the Wii and was only discontinued in around 2017-2018

[@Laxora_NZ]

Holy heck, that's actually insane! I think if it hadn't been discontinued in that timeframe you mentioned, it absolutely would not have survived 2020.

[@AfferbeckBeats]

Who was buying them all that time?!

[@bootmii98]

Shakedown Hawaii

[@lvl90dru1d]

@@AfferbeckBeats you know what? i checked some things and it's still somewhat popular on the second hand market, in my region even more popular than the actual wii (only cause it's cheaper)

[@lvl90dru1d]

@@bootmii98 Just Dance 2020

[@DragonFruitZ01]

James Chanel

[@clebbington]

my favorite fragrance

[@riythemusicguy7696]

James Channel

[@georgevasilopoulos5359]

James Channel

[@cheesesandwich4577]

Cames Jhannel

[@nixaviation]

James Channel

[@E3kHatena]

The two thin PCBs that frame the giant hole in the console, the hand-soldered design, the way a cartridge sits flush in the top of the box, and the piezoelectric speaker being an impact sensor... this is McGyver-level electronics assembly

[@drmariomariomd6733]

I genuinely want to know if it detects a TV remote as input. What a fascinating pile of junk.

[@enragedgecko]

Wade: "oh my PKcells!!" James: "OH MY SERIAL NUMBER STICKERS!!"

[@hyperturbotechnomike]

Wade: ends video with quiet frank snake James: RRRREEEOOWW

[@Flavourius]

"Now I'm an adult with no spare time..." That's always the best reason to buy stuff you don't really need.

[@PiggyPorkchop]

"XaviX" sounds like a medication where half the commercial is listing off it's horrific side effects.

[@sonicunleashedfan124]

So theoretically someone could make a miniature Wii that could fit in the Xavix? That sounds like a cool project

[@metsu92]

The smallest Wii mod project gets it down to only slightly larger than two Game Boy Color cartridges stacked, so absolutely.

[@TheTwister999]

bringus studios

[@TDGalea]

This HAS to happen.

[@joshua21247]

The 2000s metro aesthetic is so good and that box is so cool for it

[@mistaecco]

If these things were more common, I bet someone would've made a homebrew carteidge by now to toss (insert your retro gaming compute unit of choice here) into the cart slot, thereby using the console itself just as a horrible AV and controller solution.

[@doq]

1:32 It is strange, but it's not never seen on a game console. The Xbox One had HDMI in and you could use the media remote to control like a cable box or other device over CEC. The whole One line kept this, even the One X, but it was dropped on the Series X|S, probably from lack of use or cost cutting. Sidebar, that startup sound is absolutely fire.

[@ozzie_goat]

Okay but has anyone made it run Doom yet???

[@minirop]

since the SoC is on the game cartridge, should be easy to just put a pi in it to make it run Doom.

[@ozzie_goat]

@@minirop I like the way you think

[@MDPToaster]

You really could just use a raspberry pie to hijack an existing cartridge and make it run doom that way.

[@StrangelyIronic]

@@MDPToaster Waste of a hard to find/get cartridge, would be easy to get a new PCB after figuring out what each line does/needs. It's just video out and some time of limited GPIO type interface from the IR receiver.

[@Eddie1992]

@@MDPToasterplaying doom with a tennis racket sounds a little difficult

[@willthefin]

Chames Jannel

[@Wearyourmaskpls]

Cames Jhannel*

[@Wanton110]

I have a CD player that looks identical to that.. it's somewhere out in the shed awaiting repair tho

[@josha_254]

Make it run DOOM now.

[@scrunkge]

We need Bringus

[@josha_254]

@@scrunkge bringus x james channel real

[@ferna182]

So it's basically a reverse wii. The "sensor bar" is on the racquets. EDIT: ok I should've waited a bit more before posting lol... interesting solution to transmit the action via IR but one problem, the leds will 100% be pointing somewhere else if I'm moving the controller arround!

[@totalphantasm]

The Xbox One has the same in-line HDMI in feature. You could jam a cable box directly into the Xbox then navigate your cable/satellite with an Xbox controller instead of a remote control with buttons designed for that (I think you can also use it as a DVR?)

[@josha_254]

Wait, you can jam a TV box INTO it?

[@totalphantasm]

@@josha_254 yeah the whole entire thing into the port. They’re really roomy if you relax.

[@josha_254]

@@totalphantasm Huh, that's neat. My friend has an Xbox One, I'll ask 'em.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@totalphantasm the trick is to get the TV into the Xbox _before_ you put the Xbox up your butt

[@QuinnKallisti]

Laying the screws out in the orientation they came from, I do this too, and I learnt it from Angelina Jolies Tomb Raider movie.

[@dontwannabeahero1570]

I once had a 3rd party ps4 controller I think you’d love to have seen the insides of, it featured 0 solder work, it was all hot glue, even on the circuit board it was honestly funny how ass it was

[@Braxel_]

That cartridge slot is actually cool, only thing that would be bad is if the spring or arms break and then you have to flip the console to get the game out.

[@seabit253]

OHHHH THIS IS WHO MADE THE MEGAMAN STARFORCE PLUG AND PLAY #

[@deamonsead]

james did? was that in a video? or something posted elsewhere?

[@andlabs]

Yep; XaviX would go on to take their proprietary SoaC designs and use them for various plug-and-play games, to much greater success than this thing. There's a lot of them documented in the MAME source code now (which also tries to talk about how much we know about the core system hardware for everything going back to this).

[@NicholasTobolski]

And the Beyblade Plug and Play. And the LOTR plug and play. And MX Dirt Rebel… and…

[@thegamerguru97]

How'd that work? Was it a platformer? Did it give you the battle cards?

[@S28426]

"Let's get more naked" - James

[@SimonStrange]

The way the cartridges go in looks really satisfying.

[@ezyto]

I wanna see someone put a Raspberry Pi in one now

[@DoeJam13]

I'm guessing the company was incorporated in Ireland for tax purposes. All the major companies like Google and Amazon are "headquartered" there for tax (or rather, lack thereof) purposes. Why does it have two LEDS though, it should only need one to send the signal to the console? Redundancy in case the user has it pointed weirdly?

[@arof7605]

6:26 They beat FF14 to that joke by 18 years

[@AfferbeckBeats]

Crazy to think Crysis came out this same year!

[@MikeStavola]

This was for sale at my local pharmacy, back in the day. I vaguely remember the price was *way* too high.

[@nerdspeed8982]

I remember this console and I used to call it the Jackie Chan console since he marketed this gaming device back then and most commercials featured him

[@EnforcerX71]

It amazes me that this thing is from 2004, the back of the box looks like a Pong console from around 1979.

[@johnboydojo]

"Would you like a game of the old Tennis Father?" "Oh no, I'm fine Mrs.Doyle..." "Ahh go on, go on, go on, go on" 😂 I remember seeing these in my local Market back in the day. Thought it looked rubbish. Nice to see I was right 😂

[@EdTheNerd]

My neighbors had this thing with the tennis game and boy is it just as good as I remember. Didn't take long for us to realize you could just sit down and hit the racket instead of getting up and being active as intended.

[@RisingRevengeance]

I've seen those screws on some garbage like my $2 electric insect racket. I've never seen it on anything expensive though, odd because it seems like a premium thing.

[@yellow_spinning_goose]

1:30 the Xbox one has something similar to that but its HDMI.

[@Nylveon]

1:35 the original Xbox One had something similar with an hdmi in

[@elfalcon666]

Chames jannel

[@mattwilson6981]

I wish so much for someone to find my childhood handheld. It was a dungeon crawling mech builder very basic dot matrix screen. But it has a wireless network. In the 00's that if there was another near by they would connect and be able to share between each other or battle

[@TheDarkNerd]

Did it come in 3 colours, each of which were a different "archetype" of mech you could build, and fighting other units of different colours allow you to collect their parts? I think I had something like that, but I forget what it was called. EDIT: the one I'm thinking of is called P-O-X, released by Hasbro in 2001.

[@rosariosalvatore5736]

domyos made a console bruh dude

[@davidverbeek4849]

the CPUs would be a 65C02 in the 8 bit game and a 65C816 in the 16 games. the 65C02 is a upgraded CMOS version of the MOS Technology 6502 made by WDC. what WDC did to upgrade the 6502 was add some more instructions to the CPU by using about half of the 105 unused 8 bit opcodes from the original mos 6502 giving it some more addressing modes. the 65C816 is a highly upgraded 16 bit extension of the 65C02 also made by WDC however it still only has an external 8 bit data bus (much like the 8088 with 16 bit internals but only 8 bit data). I know that they are using these chips as WDC will license out the cores to basically anyone willing to pay the fee, this is why the SNESs' Ricoh 5A22 CPU was using a 65C816 core. now one thing you might have noticed is I have not been talking in the past tense as WDC still makes and sells DIP and PLCC versions of both chips and works to improve the clock speed, the latest versions from just a few years ago will can clock at up to 14mhz and they are still commonly used embedded cores

[@JohnnyProctor9]

More fun when playing as a voice-sensing microphone, what does that tell you?

[@brazilian_oak]

...This is just a Pop Station on steroids. Down to the interchangeable cartridges being the actual guts of the console. Amazing stuff.

[@Cart1416]

Garbage Time

[@Deja117]

In theory, good idea. In reality, what were they thinking? The iPhone could even do more back then.

[@Metal_Maxine]

I thought they'd cribbed the icons from the Montreal Olympics but the boxer's arm isn't bent.

[@sniper2349]

Thank you for tearing apart your precious collectables for us James.

[@MotownBatman]

I remember seeing one in a Magazine or online at some point, but didnt think nothing of it. A Lot of plain 'ol DVD Players Looked Exactly Like this at the Time in the US lol

[@j0anbug]

this thing looks like 4 decades of cheap garbage. the box looks like it's from the 70s, the bad IR wireless controllers from the 80s, chrome plastic from the 90s and motion controlled sports games from the 00s i love it so much

[@DUKE_of_RAMBLE]

Hey James........ I *_gotta_* ask: what's with the cupboard/cabinet looking door handle on the back-left _(our upper-left)_ of your red desk??? 😅

[@DUKE_of_RAMBLE]

9:40 lawl... They mislabeled "doggystyle" as "knee-chest". Silly doctor chart. Or have WE gotten it wrong all these years??? _"Alright baby, it's knee-chest time_ 😏😏"

[@RyukyuShin1997]

I think there were some plug and plays that ran on XaviX hardware, like before the dedicated XaviX console, an example being the Dance Dance Revolution FamiMat

[@kami-kun_va]

Game Dave did a video on this a while back and reviewed a couole of games (Powerboxing and J-Mat) which were a collab with Jackie Chan. I shit you not, this was a thing that really happened.

[@Foostini]

I actually dig that cartridge port, keeps everything simple and compact.

[@Malao558]

Oh yeah, baby. This thing reeks of Mid-2000’s. It looks like a damn dentist’s office, it’s made of cheap plastic garbage and it’s selling itself on a stupid gimmick. You can carbon-date tech like this.

[@hakjobtm7472]

a PE speaker as an accelerometer is extremely cursed, especially in conjunction with the worst style of wireless data communication

[@Ironman1o1]

This thing seems like the "upmarket" version of a pop-station.

[@Furko08]

Were you really playing tennis in those positions? I'm worried for you

[@deihuey6959]

James, thanks to you and the James Channel I was able to fix my dads and gramps phone. Your explanations about "this thing does this thing and stuff happens" is really good to someone like me that just needs to understand the principle behind things. Thanks.

[@albertlin8437]

Before my dad was able ot get the Wii during the craze, he bought the family an Xavix (they were all on clearance, so he bought tennis, bowling, and baseball). Thank you for this video, it brought back many memories of my childhood. 🥺

[@startedtech]

1:33 The Xbox One basically had that to be fair, just with HDMI lol

[@justaguyandadog2984]

Next james proyect: run a xavix game without using the dock

[@Lewiiugamepad]

I didn’t knew there was a XaviX PAL version for certain countries. I know that France is the Domyos one. The thing I always wonder is the XaviX/Domyos a region free or locked. I would assume it’s free but I don’t really know.

[@Phos9]

Between how unresponsive it was and those LED’s (that I thought were photodiodes) I though at first glance that the racket controller just had photo diodes in it and they were assuming that swinging the racket would have enough change in brightness to said diodes that it could register

[@timsuttonlovinlife-]

James, I bloody love how you explain stuff and make it easy to understand exactly what it is you’re talking about, I could watch you all day mate 👍🏼

[@brad_soup]

I think this video was just an excuse for James to flex his giant stack of PS2s

[@pioneermega-ld3236]

Good to know that I'm not the only one with one of these nuggets! I found a boxed one with the Tennis set in, ironically enough, a Cashies. I'm from the UK mainland though my box also says that it's for Ireland / Northern Ireland only, and seems to be identical to this one. No clue whether it was also sold here or was purchased in Ireland and found its way here. Never thought I'd see James talk about this thing

[@der_kluger_gunther8391]

ok what a weird console, and they were lazy enough to copy the windows logo as well XD man if they were trying to beat the wii, they were pretty far. and don't let me started on the legendary ps2... at least there was an attempt (better than philips, know what i mean right??)

[@ChristianYoon]

"But now that I'm an adult, with no spare time, I get to finally own one." I feel attacked.

[@graemechapman41]

Surely all the VCRs and DVD players of that era had pass-through scart or hdmi ports?

[@bacon.cheesecake]

SSD company limited is pretty fitting given that they didn't use discs like every other console at the time.

[@samisntreal3278]

Hypothetically, you could play with a TV remote, if all it needs to trigger is the simple signal. A wiimote might’ve do something

[@HowDoYouUpload]

I had one of these as a kid! We had the bowling game with the bright green ball and it was as wack as you'd expect. I played it for hours though until my family got a wii in 2009

[@bacon.cheesecake]

Could the 1kb eeprom in the cartridge just be for save data?

[@caranook]

I’m Irish, ands it’s cool you got a console from Ireland! The fact that console even had a proper Irish release, and printed that on the box rather than just send us the UKs leftovers is a novelty!

[@QuinnKallisti]

When talking about piezo speakers you should say the electricity applied deforms the speaker instead of distorts, distortion is something entirely different in audio.

[@Deucecat5201]

James Channel

[@gokaisilver3801]

That cartridge mechanism is really weird, but I actually kinda like it?

[@stevep9177]

I like the idea of games being able to expand hardware through extra chips

[@Aldo.flores]

Little did I know all in this console turns around the cartridge and the peculiar way it connects to the console, this was developed by former Nintendo engineers tired of their rigid inflexible politics in the design process, and this signifícate change (and other that inserted the cartridge sideways) that made the console visually slimmer were rejected cause the perpendicular cartridge reader was a recognized sign for the company, and all this was only to prove it was posible and Integrated also their ideas for early motion controls.... wait! What?! Is there a Little Britain’s videogame? James are your kidding me?

[@BenjiLee53]

I have a vague memory of those rackets and the name being at a computer fair. I'm sure there must had been a demonstration because that's the sort of gimicky crap i would have got my dad to buy

[@theglitch7630]

that cartridge system could be really cool on a portable console where the console gets shaken a lot. Not that it really matters.

[@hyperturbotechnomike]

I feel ashamed for getting jumpscared by the cat at the end almost every time.

[@SonicBoone56]

It's always a good day when shitty tat consoles are covered. Can't wait for you to cover the legendary Timetop Gameking (heaven forbid you cause the ebay prices to skyrocket) and the Gizmondo lol. Or if you're extra adventurous, the Super A'Can lol.

[@bacon.cheesecake]

Literally laughed out loud at you controlling it by shouting at it, that's so brilliant, could say this is one of, if not the, first console with voice control lmao.

[@Markleford]

KITTY! Are you sure there's no tilt switch in there that sends at least a binary threshold angle data along with the timing of the piezo? I guess you'd have to get an IR receiver to display the data as you fiddle with the racquet to find out.

[@justminibanana9128]

1:33 the xbox one s does have hdmi in but will only passthrough via an app on the xbox itself.

[@AlexofZippo]

13:30 if it makes you feel better, rare in this instance almost certainly doesn’t mean valuable.

[@jama211]

Ahh such a shame, looked like a cool game if it actually had any kind of swing tracking!

[@xorwcnrssk]

I was wondering where I remembered this thing from and it turns out it was covered on Classic Game Room over a decade ago

[@cassandras8797]

I love to see notifications for your videos, thank you so much for making them!

[@HalNeinThousand]

Huh, you can find piezo "vibration sensor" modules on the usual Chinese sites for $1 shipped. You could probably make a recreation of the console with an ESP32 and a Pi Zero W for less than $20, AND it would have HDMI and Bluetooth to boot 😂 Actually, you can find actual accelerometers for $1.50, but I guess they weren't as cheap back then due to smartphones not being a thing yet.

[@albertlin8437]

I definitely remember raging at B. Lovely as a 5 year-old LOL

[@JessicaFEREM]

I think it would've been cooler if the cartridge port slid into place when you pushed down, so you just slam the cart in and it connects, and then you press eject and it pops straight out. the way it is now is clever but not super inventive.

[@DMacB42]

11:47 James casually headed in a Linda Belcher direction “all riiight”

[@megachair2]

If it's an Irish console, check the Argos catalogue, consoles and games were just after the toy section but this might be in the gift section

[@suntannedduck2388]

Ah the Xavix Port I know what that is because I look up consoles on Wikipedia and go huh ex Nintendo employees because ideas, leaving the company, releasing first and good luck selling it if anyone hears about it. Sport peripherals the console before Wii Sports. It's pretty cool. Seen other videos on it.