The Story of Nintendo's Lost Project Atlantis - The Unreleased Ultra Game Boy From 1996
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- Опубліковано 11 вер 2024
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Lady Decade takes us all back to 1996 to look at the history of Project Atlantis, a powerful colour handheld system that Nintendo had in development that never saw the light of day. What happened to this unreleased system and what is its legacy? Let's find out!
Additional Information Sources
gameboy.fandom...
sm64-conspirac...
www.resetera.c...
www.wired.com/...
Additional Footage Sources
www.youtube.co...
The 26 Best Game Boy Games of All TimeS0
Nintendo Life
www.pngegg.com...
• ARM Processor - Sowing...
ARM Processor - Sowing the Seeds of Success - Computerphile
Computerphile
www.youtube.co...
Edge Magazine issue 34, July 1996
Robert August de MeijerQ
• ARM vs x86: Explained
ARM vs x86: Explained
Techeck Tech Tips
• How Fragile Is a Moder...
How Fragile Is a Modern Intel CPU Socket?
CareyHolzman
• World's Most Powerful ...
World's Most Powerful ARM Desktop: Marvell ThunderXStation ThunderX2 Workstation
Charbax
• What's Inside AA and A...
What's Inside AA and AAA Batteries
Mad Russian Scientist
• The 26 Best Game Boy A...
The 26 Best Game Boy Advance (GBA) Games of All Time
Nintendo Life
• Pokemon Red Game Boy I...
Pokemon Red Game Boy Intro and Pallet Town
darkmurkrow
• Nintendo DSi - GDC 200...
Nintendo DSi - GDC 2009 Overview Trailer
planetnintendoit
• Nintendo's Satoru Iwat...
Nintendo's Satoru Iwata gives the GDC 09 keynote
Gieson Cacho
• GDC: Nintendo Goes Aft...
GDC: Nintendo Goes After the Hard-Core Crowd
WIRED
• Highlights of the Atla...
Highlights of the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games
Olympics
• Gameboy Color lense re...
Gameboy Color lense replacement tutorial
OldSchoolNYCGamer
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I feel like making an OnlyFarts comment simply because I love the video when you blasted everyone ! lol.
I recently commented on Top Hat about you.. Love the show! Keep up the great work you 2! Gaming love from Texas to you an Top Hat!
Awesome video can't wait for the next video
Greatest content Ms. Decade 👍
You do an excellent job with this stuff. Thank you.
Just when a person thinks they know the history of Nintendo, this pops up. I had Zero idea that this project existed.
I had forgotten about it until this popped up in my recommendations. I'm still blown away that I forgot about this for over twenty years. 1992-1999 were amazing times for new videogame tech and rumors.
Same. I vaguely recall an issue of Diehard Gamefan (or was it Next/Edge magazine?) mentioning the Ultra Boy in a small news blurb. I remember looking for updates on this new handheld in other gaming magazines back in the day (i.e. EGM, EGM2, Gamepro, Nintendo Power, etc.), but nothing ever materialized. It’s a shame really; the Ultra Boy would have sold like gang busters….
@@Turbotef Very true. Nostalgia buzz.
You're not alone. But figure this, most original ideas end up with new concepts that we now have today. Those ideas run through their heads but tend to take longer to make but thats because of the technology available.
Plus, imagine a kid from 1995 time traveling to 2021 and seeing the games we have today... mind crunched all the way!!!
True story. I was that one kid with a Gameboy whilst everyone in school had a psx. Most in my school would play their psx and then...one day....Pokémon blue/red released and from being one of the few kids that had a Gameboy in my class and school, suddenly the whole world had it.
@Dirk Platinum not every rpg is a "dragon warrior clone"
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 They began developing Pokémon as early as 1990 and the concept was there from the beginning (there were capsules rather than balls). Chunsoft/Enix may have beaten them to market, but that's not where the idea came from.
@@aclstudios Every jRPG is. The overworld of Ultima. The battle interface of Wizardry. That, my brother, is a "dragon warrior clone".
@Dirk Platinum Then Dragon Warrior Monsters happened, so seems pretty fair. Plus the first game of that was amazing haha.
It's funny i got a gameboy in the early 90s and by the time pokemon came out I'd probably got rid of it.
I remember reading about it in magazines. Always just figured this is what became the Gameboy Advanced years down the road.
Honestly love seeing prototype images of handhelds and consoles. There's always a kind of...futurism style, three-decades-away look to them. Always black or chrome, with nice curvy bits and a Blade Runner look. Then they finalise the design. And it...always just looks like what you'd expect a gaming console to look like haha.
I don't understand why you don't have more subs.
I'm saying and one thousand percent agreed! Wake up world, and subscribe! 😁👍
Aye, some damn good content here.
I love all your videos they are so interesting and educational. I have watched so many channels but I haven't learned this much about video game consoles until I started watching your channel! Keep up the amazing work
I'd love yo hear how you came up with the name "Lady Decade." The lady part's obvious, but why Decade? It's cool, I like it. Just curious why. Great channel, great videos!
She flipped through a dictionary with her eyes closed and picked a word at random.
To be honest, I don't know why she chose "Decade", but she was originally called "Lady Deathstrike", but some social media platform wouldn't let her have a name with "Death" in it... 🙄😅 Also, she's married to "Top Hat Gaming Man"...! 👍😁
I call her lady cade
@@madwax4771 Lady de Cade 😁
@@JSmooth-UA-cam That's cool, love his channel too. I know he's a teacher and covid hit them hard last year. Hope things are better this year.
I remember the ARM cpu's from that era as I covered coding and working with them for an Open University diploma I did back in the late 90's, I also covered making apps for the emerging Symbian OS on phones, if you showed me a page o' code today and it would be all gibberish but back then I could still compile in me head... then old age happened... :(
Man I'm glad they didn't call the GBC the "Color Boy". Ha
Another great video @LadyDecade! I remember reading articles on this. I was excited until it never came when expected. I did get the Gameboy Advance and man was it awesome playing some of the SuperNes releases on the GBA. #Nostalgia
this show rocks! it appeared in my feed out of seemingly nowhere! thank you for your time and research.
Another great video, keep them coming! I'm really amazed by the variety of the footage stuff that you (and TPHGM, too) include in your videos. I guess you should have a pretty huge database of clips now
Never heard of this one. I had the original game boy, and loved it. Those were the days. Great video Lady Decade. Thank you very much! 😊
Excellent video! I keep learning new things from you! :) RIP Satoru Iwata.
0:37 I thought I saw this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Thank you for covering topics rarely seen on gaming channels. Your recent videos on international variants of systems, lost prototypes, etc. are all great watches! It's cool to find a channel that doesn't just do "Top 10 Rare Gems" that we've all seen a million times.
I honestly have never heard about this. Thank you!
Lady Decade, if you don't do voice-over work in Hollywood, you should. Your voice is great. 🙂🙂🙂
I've actually known about Project Atlantis since 2001, when I was 13! (turning 14 later that year)
I read about it on the Nintendoland website!
I never heard about that until watching this
Keep it up, Lady Decade!!
Yourself and John from Digital Foundry would make an incredible DF Retro collaboration.
I used to have a Gameboy. "Now you're playing with Portable Power!" was the slogan in the American adverts.
I love learning new things about my birth year!
So often, ideas and products are just ahead of their time!
And the “See you later, GOOD BYE!” was funny!
God, O love the GB! Mario 1 for this is fave Mario ever. Another great ♥️
I love your channel, saludos desde Argentina!
I think the reason the Game Boy hung around so long was because there was basically nothing else around. I've heard that around 95 developers were getting pretty fed up with the systems limitations, Saga released the Nomad around that time but it had basically the same issues the Game Gear had some years before. It was super expensive and took a tone of batteries. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if they had just released an updated version of the Game Gear that was smaller, with better battery life and screen.
I love that you use the Bomberman hero music absolutely love that game You are phenomenal
So the real question, do we consider this just an early GBA prototype or not? The form factor and specific 32 bit cpu from ARM are different, but aside from the ridiculous claims of battery life and the release year this sounds a lot like what would become the GBA
Another Banger Lady Decade . Better than a Basket of Fish and Chips from the Pub.
Nice use of the Plok OST eheh
I remember seeing this in a mag, asking about it in Mr Games shop, N14, they replied "do you mean the Virtual Boy?"!
"Chicken chaser, he chases chickens!" Thank you for bringinf back wonderful memories of my beloved Fable 😌
30 hours of battery life sounded way too good to be true and should make anyone skeptical. Especially with SNES-like graphics. Heck Advance years later had only half of that on the good day.
It's even more absurd when you consider just how insanely powerful this thing was supposedly going to be.If anything, it was closer to the Playstation(albeit without the 3d capabilities) than the Super NES.Completely overkill for a device that focuses mostly on 2d games. It would've probably been a battery hog and insanely expensive. Which in hindsight is probably why this thing was scrapped.
Nintendo Ultra Gameboy would have 32bit, ok??? This is equivalent to Gameboy (ULTRA!!!) Advanced
And would it have a touchscreen? GBA wanting to be an NDS? In 1996??? An idea far ahead of its time...
Nice video indeed.. Was really out of my mind this one. And iam old in consoles.. Very old.. Btw.. In this video, your marvelous legs its the missing project. Love and peace
Good video you know I'm a fan when I am in the comment section 3 minutes into the video! 🤯🤯🤯
You and Ellie Gibson should do some sort of collaboration. Your knowledge of retro gaming history is awesome. I know about a lot of old consoles, but you never cease to come up with obscure systems with history that I've never heard of. Keep up the good work.
If I were Sega, I would've made the Saturn my sole focus for the 32 bit console generation, given more quality control to 1st party games, and worked on a proper 16 bit handheld to be released around 97/98 to be a true successor to the Game Gear and compete with the Game Boy Color!
You mean the scrapped handheld with touchscreen feature?
@@Anonymous-oh4xw No, I mean I would’ve had a 16 bit Game Gear successor ready for late 97, taking notes beforehand from the 32 bit Atlantis handheld Nintendo prototyped!
I just love the B-roll of you holding the Virtual Boy. It's as if I can hear you think "what should I do with this unwieldy device from hell?"
Huh, I thought I knew everything about 90s Nintendo, but I never heard of the "Project Atlantis."
3:07 Manta ray!
Your videos are great…no only fans necessary 😁😉
Ah, now I know why I missed the Pokémon hype. I haven't played Gameboy since 1993. Didn't know it still got games.
Such great work! You did a lot to make sure you dug down into a hidden chambre of lost gaming artifacts. We appreciate your gaming archeology, and your high quality presentation!
I love learning about these never released consoles
With all the talk of whether or not they will make a switch pro this video was crazy interestinggg
Each of your videos is a pearl.
What is it with Nintendo and the word "Ultra"? Ultra Game Boy, cancellef, Nintendo Ultra64, renamed. If Nintendo would've named N64 the Ultra64 i would've stayed in the Nintendo camp!
ULTRAAA COMBOOO!!! SUPREME VICTORY!!! PERFECT!!! (KILLER INSTINCT)
How do you find this stuff? 30 years retro gaming and I know nothing next to you.. Bravo
I really wish Nintendo had used backlit screen for the gbc.
I remember the Project Atlantis system when it was first announced. I also remember the Playstation add on for the SNES system and if those had came out then history would have been changed drastically
Great video! My new favorite channel! 👏🏻
"A whole new world" I love the reference
I really dig these vids. I grew up reading EGM... it was an exciting time pre-internet when those magazines hit shelves each month. And I love the old commercial footage you use, too, keep up the great work!
Atlantis not happening, is one of the biggest reasons why ARM started making SoC's. Poor graphics performance meant external solutions, which meant less performance, and less money for them.
SoC's with licensed GPU cores (Or rather, SoC's with licensed ARM cores) exist because of situations like this couldn't be overcome without them.
I had no idea about this, fantastic video!
That was a really interesting dive into one of the odd few things I hadn't heard of before.
Thank you for talking about this, I remember seeing it in a old Nintendo power very young and never thought about it till now
The amazing & Gorgeous Lady Decade taking us back to Glorious Golden age of gaming. Halcyon Days
As always, great video! I get excited everytime I see a new video of yours.
Good investigation, a real throwback experience between footage and sound and sources, it teleport me to the 90's again. Kudos!
LOVE THE STUFF YOU PUT ON THIS CHANNEL! STUFF I never knew existed WOW 👌
Good to see the Mitchell brothers.
I remember reading this very magazine in the west. Talking about the new RISC Processors for games like Starfox! You bought me back decades! (Pun Attack!).
Hey is that all the games you had while growing up or have you collected them gradually over the years ? Looks like a big collection of games there.
Thanks for a great video. I had no idea about this, I had a game boy back in the early 90s I had all the Nintendo systems at some point but my game it came everywhere with me and loved the games I’d love to own another one and get mario land was the only game I never got.
It’s a shame Nintendo never released this as playing snes games on a game boy in colour back at that time would’ve been awesome and I think it would’ve been highly collectible I think Nintendo should rerun the game boy with modern tech with new and snes games but not as big or expensive as the switch
A handheld snes tier system would have been a stretch in 1996, especially how they given how they prefer low cost hardware. Nintendo would never release something like the TurboExpress…. Not if they expected to sell tens of millions. Shame we didn’t see much about Atlantis in the Gigaleak
GBA is SUCH a good system with its seamless backward compatibility. Atlantis might have had that feature
Wow, no idea this handheld almost happened! Cool stuff!
Love your videos. Emilia Clark and you should have a fight for the most expressive eyebrows ever.
This was pretty cool, though given the issues you talked about, it was probably a good idea that this didn't come out back in the day, as it probably would have been too expensive, much like the Saga offerings.
All the talk of a 32-bit handheld in 1996 that can run on two AA batteries makes me wonder why the Game Boy Advance was so weak in 2001. It's instead probably the case that at the beginning of the Project Atlantis project the designers wanted those specs, but realized it wasn't feasible. The Virtual Boy from 1995 after all was 32-bit and needed six AA batteries and it saved on performance by being in red color only. And also the GBA was a sub-$100 machine.
It was ironic they named it after a lost sunken city...
and based from what I read, the Ultra gameboy would've been way more poweful than the GBA. With a chip that is comparable to the N64 :O
Maaaan!
I remember Project Atlantis and all the crazy rumors that surrounded it.
If social media existed in 1995, Game Boy Pro rumors would be a big topic.
"The rain in Spain falls gently on the plane "
Gotta love marketing blips like "Oh yeah, the Atlantis is great.... Nintendo basically built a supercomputer which usually takes up entire floors worth of office space, and they went and got it all pocket sized while able to run off of a couple of AA batteries, and for like 30 hours too" ... Immediately consumed and believed by all... ... .... ....
Not that things weren't happening, lol.. clearly they were. But a supercomputer, Strong ARM 110s, AA's, lol? O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-kay
Love the Vids Lady Decade Much love and many blessings to you and Top hat Gaming man And the little ones much respect
Nintendo just realized it didn't need powerful hardware to sell consoles. The lack of competitors made it easier. With the Pokemon fever they just released the GBC which was both cheap to produce and offered the bare minimum improvement above the original GB. Project Atlantis most likely became the GBA years later, by then another underpowered console.
I hope that handheld is somewhere ihidden in a wearhouse and that it will be revealed from all angles with the exact specs of it so we can make clone versions and homebrew games for it,
Also We will probably never know whether this handheld would,ve been more powerful then then gba and if it would,ve been 3D capable whether or not.
ARM chip listed as SA-110 in one mag. So if true, and didn't pan out, huge hit to DEC? Is this a hidden reason for the gobbling up of DEC by Compaq, and the end of the Alpha and the consolidation of the Itanic?
Video after video you post interesting content. You're killing it
I thought I knew the history of the game boy family, fantastic video, thanks for this.
@LadyDecade I remember Nintendo was talking about a 16 bit game boy as early as 1991.. in fact they briefly talked about it on a old TV show called video power.
Apparently there was (earlier on) going to be a colour version of the original Game Boy as well (years before the Game Boy Color) and the screens for it ended up going to Sega for the Game Gear.
Great video from the lady with the best hair on youtube 🙂😊💛
What a combo, beauty and gaming
The portable *Turbo Graphics*
Great channel! Once again, another piece of obscure gaming knowledge to add to brain files!!
I love it!
🤔 I wonder, as a Sega game gear owner (back in the day), do you have any inside goss about THAT 'Gameboy killer' 😜😸
Cool, this is all fresh news to me. I always thought ultra boy was a first moniker for virtual boy which we all know where that went. At same time there was also ultra 64 then turned into N64.
Thank you for sharing this info.....
Love your channel this is awesome 👌 👏 👍 😍
Keep up your amazing videos, you totally rock
_"Oh no, she didn't !"_ 😅
You are a legend
Thank you !!!
Missed title opportunity: How Project Atlantis Sank.
Three pillar strategy, feh! They always use that excuse! Sooner or later that third pillar gets smashed to rubble and the pieces get swept away when nobody's looking. See also Wii U, Nintendo DS.
But yeah, I'm satisfied with the Game Boy Advance as the system we were promised five years earlier. No way Nintendo was going to pull off that kind of hardware in the 1990s, with a color screen and reasonable battery life. Heck, even the Game Boy Advance had a lot of kinks in the design that weren't fully addressed until the release of the AGS-101 and the Game Boy Micro.
I do appreciate the video, though! Someone should put a Game Boy Advance SP into a Project Atlantis style shell... there are "unhinged" GBA SP mods that look like a sleeker version of it.
Game mags used to talk sooo much BS back then. They regularly took unsubstantiated rumours and spun up entire articles with them 😂
I LOVE your channel and content, Lady Decade! The haters can bugga’ off! Say ‘Hi’ to Top Hat Gaming Man for me! ☺️❤️👍🏻