Take the recent revelation about an unreleased portable GameCube, for example. Portable consoles have plenty of appeal — consider the massive success of the Nintendo Switch — yet no such GameCube was ever made.
Panasonic had hopes of making a foray into the world of handheld gaming with the release of the "Jungle." The handheld was a clamshell-like device with a QWERTY keyboard and was specifically designed to play MMOs, which in and of itself was enough to give it niche appeal among online gamers. Pansonic scrapped plans for the Jungle citing "changes in the market," however, leaving Nintendo and Sony to dominate the handheld market.
Virtual reality still hasn't achieved mainstream appeal. That didn't stop Sega from trying nearly three decades ago. While the allure of playing Sonic in VR is undeniable, the headset had one major problem: it was making people, um, toss their cookies. Sega decided the whole motion-sickness thing probably wasn't a good selling point, so Sega VR lived and died as a prototype.
Yes, you read that right. Once upon a time, Nintendo and Sony teamed up to create a type of crossover console. The idea was to make CDs playable on the Super Nintendo in a format known as the Super Disc. The two gaming titans could never fully strike a deal that suited both parties and this powerful collaboration was game over before it ever made it to mass production.
Who doesn't love a good Game Boy? If you're from the peak Pokémon generation, you'll be saddened to learn that Nintendo scrapped plans for a bigger and more powerful Game Boy. Turns out the eventual prototype was a little too big and not quite powerful enough, so "Project Atlantis" was eventually sunk. The handheld also apparently took a game called Mario Castle along with it.
Ericsson, the Swedish communications company, tried its hand at the handheld console market with a Game Boy Advance competitor called dubbed "Red Jade." The device had bold ambitions, including PDA and cell phone capabilities, a digital camera, GPS, a web browser, and even Bluetooth. As Ericsson's phone business floundered so did its plans for Red Jade. Oh, to think what might have been...