Additional notes that Pojr may have missed or may find useful: - Penguin Hideout and Popo Team were also originally on the NES (the former of which used a different name) - Not only is the screen resolution bigger (160x160) than that of the Gameboy's (160x144), but the screen itself was also bigger. - The supervision had far more exclusives (not counting clones) than the Mega Duck (1 exclusive). - The Supervision had a TV link cable, meaning users can directly play their system on a television. Unlike the Super Gameboy (which hadn't released yet at the time), any games connected with this cable took up the entire TV screen.
With how poor those games perform, I'd bet that poor little CPU is directly driving that LCD without any special graphics hardware. The gameboy had pretty good hardware dedicated to drawing and scrolling tiles of pixels, which frees up a lot of time for the CPU to handle game logic and input.
Being how the passive dot-matrix displays were very slow on these consoles, the flicker was probably designed to take advantage of the slow reaction time of said displays, so you'd have flicker-free play on original hardware.(Or very close.) There was one Game Boy game, forget what, that used this trick to make a translucent cloud layer going over the ground layer. In actuality the game would alternate between the ground layer, and the cloud layer to give see-through clods. On an emulator it was awful to watch as you see the alternating of the background, whereas the slow screen made it appear it was actually doing parallax scrolling, and transparency, but really couldn't.
So that flickering more than likely wouldn't be noticeable on the SuperVision's display. There are games on the Gameboy where the flickering isn't noticeable because of the similar display technology.
@@pojr The real hardware also has flickering, especially in games like 'Alien' (R-type clone), but since the screen refresh rate is quite bad, it is less noticable indeed.
I suspect that the flickering and the slow scrolling is because of a lack of a tilemapping engine, and maybe it even lacks (or only has a slow) blitter, which the Tiger Game Com and likely the Mega Duck had (don't have time to look it up, as it's a more obscure system). Both the Watara Supervision and the Mega Duck seem to have worse audio than the GameBoy.
There is one feature (two kinda) that it had a advantage over the Game Boy that would not be seen again until the PSP (except the kinda part). That feature was a TV output were you can plug it up to a TV with a optional adapter. Also the screen output will be in color as well (the kinda part). However the games is what sealed it's fate. I saw them a lot in mail order catalogs like Fingerhut.
@@MaxOakland It kinda is, but it's kinda not. The color plate is bad, and are prone to malfunctioning. While it was a neat trick it was executed poorly just like most of the games. Still they were the first to bring that to handhelds, and while Nintendo could have done the same only Watra delivered the goods. Nintendo used similar tech for their Game Boy Kiosks only until they released the Super Game Boy,. Since that required a Super Nintendo that is why I said what I said in the original post, because it requires a dedicated console to bring GB games to a bigger screen.
You know, if they were able to actually fit decent enough 2-in-1 games onto those carts while still having them function well enough, that could have been a very important strategic upside to this console, as it would have further increased the low-price aspect, and given the portable nature of these things, would have carried additional benefit from not needing to bring multiple cartridges on a trip or car ride.
The best portable system back then in my opinion was the Turbo Express Portable. I loved my Game Gear, but if my parents had an extra $150 to spend I would've gotten that instead. The same for me asking for the Neo Geo over the Genesis and SNES.
It wasn't that much better since it's basically just a portable PC Engine playing the exact same games but with few less compatibility (it could only play HuCard games, it can't play the CD ones so you can't even take Ys and Rondo of Blood on the go). It's basically like the Sega Nomad before its time but with no video output support.
*Neo Geo Pocket color* used to be my favorite back in the days nowadays, I'm satisfied with a cheap 20 dollar emulated handheld . Yeah maybe this channel needs to do a video on the turbo graphic handheld .
@@joezar33- That digital stick was a thing of beauty. I like the cross style Nintendo pads and the Sega circle pad as much as anyone; but, I wish at least one retro handheld developer would take some inspiration from the Neo Pocket for an upcoming device.
@VOAN During that that time, I was looking at the Turbo Express as a more powerful hardware compared to both the NES and Gameboy. I'm more into arcade perfect, and the Turbo Express was the closest thing around.
I actually knew someone with a SuperVision. The kids of a friend of my mom's each had one. I remember it being ok, and was curious where they got them. So they told me it was a game stall in a indoor swapmeet. So. I went there to see it, price, games etc. They didnt have anymore instock, so i forgot about it and bought StarFox for the Snes instead. 😂
One of my friend had one of those...never saw her playing with it. The games were abysmal and there were no expert developer able to put the machine to good use contrary to what happened on the gameboy.
Great video, and I'm glad that you this is the one this one, as this was the one I commented about on the last video where begged my grandmother for it back in the day with the OG SuperVision with the bendable screen being the one I saw in the Harriet Carter catalogue, but I don't remember being $50, I remember being $80 with 3, or 4 games being packed in, so I guess by that point they were just trying to get some more units sold, & out of the warehouse, so glad I ended up with a SEGA Game Gear instead 😁
It was the flickering issue that led to the short lifespan of the Supervision. During the 90s, no handheld gaming device managed to replicate the success of the original Game Boy.
And then the NeoGeo Pocket didn't learn the lesson of the Supervision and wanted to try again in 1998, by that time its too little too late as the Game Boy already evolve to become the Game Boy Color so NeoGeo Pocket only had one year to prove itself before it too jump the gun and evolve into the NeoGeo Pocket Color. It jumping the gun too soon also means not many players took the handheld seriously compare to the Game Boy. In 1999, another company Bandai also did not learn the lesson from the Supervision and the NeoGeo Pocket and launch the Wonder Swan. By that time nobody gives two crap about black and white screen handheld so no one bought the Wonder Swan. By the year 2000 it eventually evolve into the Wonder Swan Color and found little success but was eventually killed once the GBA launch worldwide. So far in the Game Boy lifetime, only four handhelds fought the Game Boy using black and white screen handhelds, those are the Supervision, NeoGeo Pocket, Game.com, and Wonder Swan. All failed but of all four of them at least the two Japanese ones: the NeoGeo Pocket and Wonder Swan both got color successors whereas the two weaker handhelds that western company made: the Supervision and the Tiger Game.com never got color successors were killed off. This proves the Japanese are better than Western company when it comes to hardware lifespan.
The thing would had a great library had Atari actually sign in more license. The thing does had a bit of third party support, the two Ninja Gaiden games on there were cool but are just ports play worst than the originals.
Gotta disagree with saying the Game Gear had a mediocre game library, sure it didn't outsell the gameboy but there was more than a hand full of good games imo
Yeap other than the PSP, the Game Gear was the first handheld to almost give Nintendo a run for their money in the handheld space. Had Sega not gave up too soon and actually create a legacy with the Game Gear brand, we would had Sega Dreamcast level of handheld by the time the GBA hits the scene.
@@VOAN Yeah man I would have loved to see that, Hell I'd say the PSP was far better than the DS not that I don't like the DS but PSP graphics were on a whole other level that and the fact it's an emulation machine and capable of running PS1 Isos flawlessly
The Game Gear was great, it’s just a sad fact that history is written by the winner, as as such the Game Gear, and even the Linx don’t get the credit they rightly deserve.
@@UltraslainmonkeyThe same with the master system in America. In Europe and Brazil it dominated the NES. Europe had new games 6 years after the US stopped
My wife bought me this system for my birthday last year. Sadly I like playing it on the Analogue Pocket better - no missing lines, no low res screen - but I still love that she did it!
*whispers* The Lynx predated the GameBoy. And the Game Gear had been in development since before the GB dropped. Also the passive LCD on those old handhelds would mean the flickering on the shmups would be invisible. .... It also meant that anything that moved looked basically unreadable. An old Ashens review of the Supervision had him playing Crystball on real hardware and filming the screen, and the ball just *disappeared* when it was in motion.
Sorry, but I heard *"Sewer Vision"* when you first said it. I thought "Wait, what? Someone made a game console with that name? That sounds like a joke." Weird how I never heard of this _Super Vision_ handheld before, and I've been into retro-gaming since 2003 as a 12 year old, so...
I just added Supervision games to my Anbernic35xx with GarlicOS....was always curious about this console since I saw their ads in the early 90s magazines. Can't wait to see what the games are like.
Because Sega does what Nintendon't! On a serious note; Nintendo eventually made a Game Boy revision, called the Game Boy Light, that had an illuminated screen. Unfortunately it was a Japan exclusive and debuted only a few months before the Game Boy Color launch.
The games are the real meat and potatoes people want in a gaming handheld, the Watara Supervision's issue was that 1. It was basically an unknown brand to begin with. 2. Most of its games had performance issues or are just not that fun to play. 3. It just look like a budget version of the Game Boy. All Nintendo had to do to beat it was lower the Game Boy's price and pack it with an awesome game like Link's Awakening or Super Mario Land 2 and then it's over. 4. Despite it having the same specs, it had no brand games and lack third parties support from the likes of Sunsoft, Konami, Namco, Activision, Capcom, SNK, Taito, Acclaim, Squaresoft, Enix, Asmik, Data East, Bandai, Hudson, Takara, idSoft, Jaleco, Accolade, Technos, Rare, LucasArts, UbiSoft, Electronic Arts, Majesco, Midway, Ocean, Interplay, etc., heck Watara themselves doesn't even make their own games. When you only rely on third parties without your own first party made titles then you failed.
At the end, the Games sell a Console. But the Problem is: to find enough Studios to want to make Games for your System, it need to sell first. The Game Cube is more powerfull than the PS2. but PS2 sold better, because of the success of the PS1, which lead to even more Games. This is always the case. Even a Wii U would be a success, if there would be more Games. Which most of them are Nintendo only, or Ports (a wonder, that a Series like Splatoon survived, but one Game alone can not save a Console) And the Switch says it all. A Console everyone said it's to expensive on release, yet the System still sell without major price drops (exept for revisions) If we use the idea many ppl want: "Sega should make another console", will only "MAYBE" work, if Sega make alle there published Games exclusive, but then they have to deal with Hardware Power, similar to the PS5 now. Or they try somehing gimmiky, but this can easy fail. (again, see Wii U ) or win (Wii, Switch ect.)
One of the other things that really helped PS2 sales vs. the GameCube is that the former played DVDs. DVD players at that time were ungodly expensive. At launch the PS2 was one of the best and cheapest DVD players on the market. It's hard to understate just how many families bought PS2s because they could justify the cost thanks to its dual use nature. I think the GameCube minidiscs are cool; but, for a home console they turned out to be an error on judgement.
I remember the old EGM magazine ad?! "' For gamers, we'd like to SHAKE your hands, we offer more than the other boys on the block with more software always more to come?! ". The system was known as GAMEMATE or something and that ad was either 1990 or 1991 as well. I was most interested in a Mega Man-like game that it advertised but then I never saw this advertised again....
My old man had the import licence for Australia. I think i still have the old tv commercial on vhs somewhere. One thing you missed was the tv dock. From memory this also gave a colour palate to the games. It fixed all of the issues with the flickering. I had most of the games you showed. Dad said the thing that killed it was pokemon. If it didnt have pokemon the gameboy was the choice. The accessories really made it something different.
I remember Stuart Ashens looking at the SuperVision and one problem he cited was the abysmally blurry screen when there was any sort of action going on. So I guess that's another negative against the handheld.
This Supervision video has been my introduction to this channel. I liked it, so, I'll stick around for a while. Much like this channel, I'd never heard of the Supervision before. It looks interesting with modern eyes, for sure, but I expect that I'd have been severely disappointed had I got one for a holiday back in the day. Still, yesterday's disappointment is often today's novelty. Such is the case here. Also, shout-out to the guy who made an emulator for this console. I have no clue why someone would go to the trouble; but, I'm happy they did. It's more proof that emulation is preservation, not piracy.
Game Gear would have been a shoe-in over the Gameboy had it not been for the bulky size and abysmal battery life. I remember being amazed as a kid playing something with a full colour screen and rather fun Sonic game (Sonic 2 at the time). I got one for Christmas when I was 9 but always played it with the power adaptor plugged in.
The Game Gear and Lynx 2 were a similar size to the Switch. The main issue was battery life. The Gameboy is the most overrated console in history. It's a toy compared to the other handhelds.
I was a kid when this thing came out. I remember seeing ads for it in gaming magazines, and seeing it as prizes on kid’s shows, but I honestly never saw one in a store. I didn’t even know it was only 50 dollars. I just thought the angled screen looked kinda cool, so I wanted one. But at the end of the day, games make a console, and this thing lacked games.
If you get one and you intend to play it; get the Majesco license built re-release Game Gear from the late '90s. I've read that the Sega-built Game Gears have issues with their capacitors dying of old age. It's a very fixable problem; but, it's a pain in the rear to do.
I had a weird fascination for Chimera released on the Supervision (a friend had the system with this game on it). The isometric 3D visuals and exploration based gameplay blew my mind at the time, since I had not seen anything like it on Game Boy (there definitely are way better isometric 3D games for it obviously, but I had not been exposed to them).
Cool video one minor correction though, Adventure Island is an adaption of the arcade game Wonder Boy, the SG-1000 games is also called Wonder Boy. Wonder Boy was first, adventure island followed on other platforms.
They didn't have any game developers from Japan. And it also looks like they didn't have the same level of hardware expertise or R & D as Nintendo or the other companies. Long story short, the hardware was worse, the games were already lousy and suffered moreso. Compare this with the Bandai WonderSwan and they are leagues apart.
You forgot about the turbo express, which has been the only handheld console to use the same cartridge as the main console Turbo Graphix 16. If they had been smart in competing with the prices . They may have been able to survive. Remember Turbo Graphix 16 was the first console to be able to utilize CD for games such as the original Street Fighter but the accessory for running CDs cost the same as the console itself. Also unlike Sega and Nintendo who kept lowering the price of the consoles, NEC didn't do the same and it cost them big time.
Nintendo really nailed that perfect mix of price, battery life and game library with the Gameboy. Kids today don't really understand but before the Gameboy there were no real portable game systems. The best you had were those lame tiger game things.
There was also the Microvision handheld which was the first ever handheld console with interchangeable cartridge but the games were more lame than fun. You only play with a dial and a few buttons and that's it. In that one the game cart made up 85% of the handheld which means the hardware itself is just a board shell in the middle and around. Without a game attach to it you couldn't even tell it was a handheld.
It really does look like this handheld platform was the right idea, it's just they didn't have the name recognition and I mean people were already buying Game boys left and right. If this handheld platform was able to get more support from greater developers like the Game Boy did maybe they could have been a legit competitor. I don't think they ever would have beat the Game Boy because no matter what the Game Boy was going to have a lot more better third party support and quality games but if this cheaper alternative had some more of that from bigger developers Maybe they would have had a shot of at least being relevant
With bad performance like those games shown I could see why third parties didn't bother. Not only that by Watara is basically unknown to a lot of big developers so that is also why it failed. To get games to your hardware, you also had to go out and make deals or sign license to get more games to your system, not doing that means it's dead on arrival just like Game.com which did do that but failed anyways.
In Argentina it was launched as Electrolab Supervision, I have one and as you said, the quality of the games is terrible, however the size of the screen is bigger that the Gameboy, that's the only positive I found haha
Only thing I wish you did in this video was say what year the consoles came out along with the price and then said what it would be in todays money so that people watching the video understand how expensive the consoles are.
I had a Supervision (Gameboy style). As far as I can remember, in the Netherlands you could only buy them at Dixons, but correct me if I'm wrong. To be honest: it was a (huge) disappointment. Yes, the screen was a little larger, but the sound was not as good as the GameBoy. Also, the games were far, far away from the quality you had on the GameBoy. And the biggest problem: there were almost no games available! I think I tossed the thing in the bin after a few months...
I had the folding big screen version. Got my mom to buy it it at Blokker for pretty cheap (When the Game Boy had clearly won the race) with a bunch of the better looking games. They were like fl 2,50 by that point. It was good for a laugh, but I went back to my GB pretty quickly.
The flickering happens because youre on emulator playing on a modern screen. Gameboy does it too but there are better emulators that hide it. The flicker is a way to get more shades of greyscale on screens with a low response time.
In Italy the Supervision was incredibly popular, but for only one reason: it was priced CHEAP! And with "cheap" I mean CHEAP, totally: despite the fact it was advertised in some commercial spots as "a cooler version of the Game Boy" (TRUE) and featured into a lot of kids TV shows and telephone TV games (do you remeber those?) as a prize, it was suspiciously cheap at the same. The cost of a game was a quarter of the price than a Gameboy game and the console itself, with Kristball included, was priced as a quarter of the Game Boy without Tetris as a pack-in game. The fun fact: all now grew-up ex-italian kids have no positive memories about it, because they all switched to the Game Boy after even just a couple of months, since even our parents have been able to notice how terrible that thing was! Damn!
Any word on whether the cruddy scrolling, low framerate and flickering was from a less capable PPU than the Gameboy's, or if devs just didn't learn how to use it properly?
Wow, uh... Grand Prix is a pretty blatant ripoff of F-1 Race for the Game Boy. The car and roadside billboard graphics are identical, the UI looks pretty close, and the China track is near identical to the Australia track in F-1 Race, which is pretty gutsy considering it's shaped like a Super Nintendo controller
9:15 This is an issue I see with A LOT of reviews especially of more obscure systems. Don't rely on emulation, outside of the popular systems emulation is between "mehh" and poor for most. In this case the flickering you wouldn't notice on real hardware due to the screen, same with framerate, due to the ghosting of the screen.
To survive the console war, the console has 3 jobs:
- Desirable price point
- Reliable (Good battery life, etc)
- Have good games
Indeed lol. The console definitely failed point #3.
And what about the PS1 and PS2? They were unreliable and prone to hardware failure. Yet they're some of the highest selling consoles ever.
@@pojr Also the hardware specs lacked ram which is why it is flickering most of the time.
It was a challenger to the *Gameboy* in the same way _Dylan Mulvaney_ is to actual women...
@@adamkane7513 🤣
Additional notes that Pojr may have missed or may find useful:
- Penguin Hideout and Popo Team were also originally on the NES (the former of which used a different name)
- Not only is the screen resolution bigger (160x160) than that of the Gameboy's (160x144), but the screen itself was also bigger.
- The supervision had far more exclusives (not counting clones) than the Mega Duck (1 exclusive).
- The Supervision had a TV link cable, meaning users can directly play their system on a television. Unlike the Super Gameboy (which hadn't released yet at the time), any games connected with this cable took up the entire TV screen.
The mega duck was kind of a "your government wont allow nintendo sales or sega sales or whatever so this is your alternative.."
With how poor those games perform, I'd bet that poor little CPU is directly driving that LCD without any special graphics hardware. The gameboy had pretty good hardware dedicated to drawing and scrolling tiles of pixels, which frees up a lot of time for the CPU to handle game logic and input.
"hash blocks" and "cryst ball" sound like street drugs.
Being how the passive dot-matrix displays were very slow on these consoles, the flicker was probably designed to take advantage of the slow reaction time of said displays, so you'd have flicker-free play on original hardware.(Or very close.)
There was one Game Boy game, forget what, that used this trick to make a translucent cloud layer going over the ground layer. In actuality the game would alternate between the ground layer, and the cloud layer to give see-through clods. On an emulator it was awful to watch as you see the alternating of the background, whereas the slow screen made it appear it was actually doing parallax scrolling, and transparency, but really couldn't.
I guess you'll end up talking about the Neo Geo Pocket and the Wonderswan.
Someday!
I sure hope so!
So that flickering more than likely wouldn't be noticeable on the SuperVision's display. There are games on the Gameboy where the flickering isn't noticeable because of the similar display technology.
Good point. It may look better on real hardware.
@@pojr The real hardware also has flickering, especially in games like 'Alien' (R-type clone), but since the screen refresh rate is quite bad, it is less noticable indeed.
Gameboy isn’t a thing.
1:54 Well we now know where Nintendo got the idea for the awful directional buttons that replaced the d pad for the switch's joy con.
I suspect that the flickering and the slow scrolling is because of a lack of a tilemapping engine, and maybe it even lacks (or only has a slow) blitter, which the Tiger Game Com and likely the Mega Duck had (don't have time to look it up, as it's a more obscure system).
Both the Watara Supervision and the Mega Duck seem to have worse audio than the GameBoy.
Nice one Pojr, cool seeing all these obscure handhelds
Thank you! Yeah I enjoyed covering it.
There is one feature (two kinda) that it had a advantage over the Game Boy that would not be seen again until the PSP (except the kinda part). That feature was a TV output were you can plug it up to a TV with a optional adapter. Also the screen output will be in color as well (the kinda part). However the games is what sealed it's fate. I saw them a lot in mail order catalogs like Fingerhut.
Woah, so if you attach it to a TV the games are in color? That's a cool feature
@@MaxOakland It kinda is, but it's kinda not. The color plate is bad, and are prone to malfunctioning. While it was a neat trick it was executed poorly just like most of the games. Still they were the first to bring that to handhelds, and while Nintendo could have done the same only Watra delivered the goods. Nintendo used similar tech for their Game Boy Kiosks only until they released the Super Game Boy,. Since that required a Super Nintendo that is why I said what I said in the original post, because it requires a dedicated console to bring GB games to a bigger screen.
Nobody wanted to play Christ Ball. We wanted Duck Tales!!
In the UK where this was released by QuickShot we seemed to get a lot of multicarts. 2-in-1 games were common.
Multicarts/a lot of games in one where also common on the nes specially in countries where bootleg nes games like those where common
You know, if they were able to actually fit decent enough 2-in-1 games onto those carts while still having them function well enough, that could have been a very important strategic upside to this console, as it would have further increased the low-price aspect, and given the portable nature of these things, would have carried additional benefit from not needing to bring multiple cartridges on a trip or car ride.
The best portable system back then in my opinion was the Turbo Express Portable. I loved my Game Gear, but if my parents had an extra $150 to spend I would've gotten that instead. The same for me asking for the Neo Geo over the Genesis and SNES.
It wasn't that much better since it's basically just a portable PC Engine playing the exact same games but with few less compatibility (it could only play HuCard games, it can't play the CD ones so you can't even take Ys and Rondo of Blood on the go). It's basically like the Sega Nomad before its time but with no video output support.
*Neo Geo Pocket color* used to be my favorite back in the days nowadays, I'm satisfied with a cheap 20 dollar emulated handheld . Yeah maybe this channel needs to do a video on the turbo graphic handheld .
@@joezar33- That digital stick was a thing of beauty. I like the cross style Nintendo pads and the Sega circle pad as much as anyone; but, I wish at least one retro handheld developer would take some inspiration from the Neo Pocket for an upcoming device.
@VOAN During that that time, I was looking at the Turbo Express as a more powerful hardware compared to both the NES and Gameboy. I'm more into arcade perfect, and the Turbo Express was the closest thing around.
I have the first "bendy" Watara Supervision. Got it a year before the GameBoy and I liked it! It's somewhere up in the loft 😃
Almost 20k! That is awesome! Love it when channels I love succeed.
Thank you! Excited to get there soon.
Is this that "adult supervision" I was supposed to get?
😂
I actually knew someone with a SuperVision. The kids of a friend of my mom's each had one. I remember it being ok, and was curious where they got them. So they told me it was a game stall in a indoor swapmeet. So. I went there to see it, price, games etc. They didnt have anymore instock, so i forgot about it and bought StarFox for the Snes instead. 😂
i had always wondered about this system after first hearing about it, great video about it Pojr!
Thank you!
“ 7:01 Seems like they achieved the 3D road movement using software” as opposed to what? 😂
Great vid btw!!
One of my friend had one of those...never saw her playing with it.
The games were abysmal and there were no expert developer able to put the machine to good use contrary to what happened on the gameboy.
7:06 : The graphics are also similar to F1-Race on Gameboy...
Is POJR unaware that Arakanoid is a Breakout clone ?
Great video, and I'm glad that you this is the one this one, as this was the one I commented about on the last video where begged my grandmother for it back in the day with the OG SuperVision with the bendable screen being the one I saw in the Harriet Carter catalogue, but I don't remember being $50, I remember being $80 with 3, or 4 games being packed in, so I guess by that point they were just trying to get some more units sold, & out of the warehouse, so glad I ended up with a SEGA Game Gear instead 😁
It was the flickering issue that led to the short lifespan of the Supervision. During the 90s, no handheld gaming device managed to replicate the success of the original Game Boy.
And then the NeoGeo Pocket didn't learn the lesson of the Supervision and wanted to try again in 1998, by that time its too little too late as the Game Boy already evolve to become the Game Boy Color so NeoGeo Pocket only had one year to prove itself before it too jump the gun and evolve into the NeoGeo Pocket Color. It jumping the gun too soon also means not many players took the handheld seriously compare to the Game Boy. In 1999, another company Bandai also did not learn the lesson from the Supervision and the NeoGeo Pocket and launch the Wonder Swan. By that time nobody gives two crap about black and white screen handheld so no one bought the Wonder Swan.
By the year 2000 it eventually evolve into the Wonder Swan Color and found little success but was eventually killed once the GBA launch worldwide. So far in the Game Boy lifetime, only four handhelds fought the Game Boy using black and white screen handhelds, those are the Supervision, NeoGeo Pocket, Game.com, and Wonder Swan. All failed but of all four of them at least the two Japanese ones: the NeoGeo Pocket and Wonder Swan both got color successors whereas the two weaker handhelds that western company made: the Supervision and the Tiger Game.com never got color successors were killed off. This proves the Japanese are better than Western company when it comes to hardware lifespan.
The Atari Lynx model 2 had a longer battery life (the one shown in this video is the model 1)
The thing would had a great library had Atari actually sign in more license. The thing does had a bit of third party support, the two Ninja Gaiden games on there were cool but are just ports play worst than the originals.
@@VOANI see but the game Rygar on the Lynx is SOOOOOOOO much better than the NES version of the game
Gotta disagree with saying the Game Gear had a mediocre game library, sure it didn't outsell the gameboy but there was more than a hand full of good games imo
Yeap other than the PSP, the Game Gear was the first handheld to almost give Nintendo a run for their money in the handheld space. Had Sega not gave up too soon and actually create a legacy with the Game Gear brand, we would had Sega Dreamcast level of handheld by the time the GBA hits the scene.
The Lynx also had some great games. Most of these Nintendo fanboys never even played it
@@VOAN Yeah man I would have loved to see that, Hell I'd say the PSP was far better than the DS not that I don't like the DS but PSP graphics were on a whole other level that and the fact it's an emulation machine and capable of running PS1 Isos flawlessly
The Game Gear was great, it’s just a sad fact that history is written by the winner, as as such the Game Gear, and even the Linx don’t get the credit they rightly deserve.
@@UltraslainmonkeyThe same with the master system in America. In Europe and Brazil it dominated the NES. Europe had new games 6 years after the US stopped
I got one at a discout store for £15. I think I only had the game that came with it. I never knew that there were that many gamess for it.
My wife bought me this system for my birthday last year. Sadly I like playing it on the Analogue Pocket better - no missing lines, no low res screen - but I still love that she did it!
*whispers* The Lynx predated the GameBoy. And the Game Gear had been in development since before the GB dropped.
Also the passive LCD on those old handhelds would mean the flickering on the shmups would be invisible.
.... It also meant that anything that moved looked basically unreadable. An old Ashens review of the Supervision had him playing Crystball on real hardware and filming the screen, and the ball just *disappeared* when it was in motion.
I loved the Lynx! It was so ahead of its time
Love the smooth 2fps some games run at.
Maybe if you're lucky, 3 fps lol.
Sorry, but I heard *"Sewer Vision"* when you first said it. I thought "Wait, what? Someone made a game console with that name? That sounds like a joke."
Weird how I never heard of this _Super Vision_ handheld before, and I've been into retro-gaming since 2003 as a 12 year old, so...
I just added Supervision games to my Anbernic35xx with GarlicOS....was always curious about this console since I saw their ads in the early 90s magazines. Can't wait to see what the games are like.
It's worth checking out. Some titles like Galaxy Fighter are actually not bad.
Pyramid has a spiritual successor called Tritris and it's ten times better.
I'll check this out. Never played Tritris.
If the game gear had a light up screen why couldn’t Nintendo have that in the game boys
Because Sega does what Nintendon't!
On a serious note; Nintendo eventually made a Game Boy revision, called the Game Boy Light, that had an illuminated screen. Unfortunately it was a Japan exclusive and debuted only a few months before the Game Boy Color launch.
Wow, that Watara handheld looks so much like the GBA SP! Pretty cool.
Thanks for this video, Pojr.
That was actually a thought of mine too, it does have similarities to the SP. Thank you!
How could you say the music for Grand Prix was terrible? My pals and I like cranking that song up in our Yugo while rolling through the hood.
Everybody knows that the Lynx is the best handheld console. Bigger = better!
7:00 That's some Temple OS quality music there
Jeez dude this "-ssss" after each sentence is just killing my ears. Really interesting material but I phisycally can't stand listening to it.
🐍
7:08 I need to listen to a palate cleanser after this, like Burning Men's Soul from Persona Trinity Soul...
I had one, w/ cryst balll. That was it. 😢
It's amazing how long the GameBoy lasted despite it's limited hardware. Great console
The games are the real meat and potatoes people want in a gaming handheld, the Watara Supervision's issue was that 1. It was basically an unknown brand to begin with.
2. Most of its games had performance issues or are just not that fun to play.
3. It just look like a budget version of the Game Boy. All Nintendo had to do to beat it was lower the Game Boy's price and pack it with an awesome game like Link's Awakening or Super Mario Land 2 and then it's over.
4. Despite it having the same specs, it had no brand games and lack third parties support from the likes of Sunsoft, Konami, Namco, Activision, Capcom, SNK, Taito, Acclaim, Squaresoft, Enix, Asmik, Data East, Bandai, Hudson, Takara, idSoft, Jaleco, Accolade, Technos, Rare, LucasArts, UbiSoft, Electronic Arts, Majesco, Midway, Ocean, Interplay, etc., heck Watara themselves doesn't even make their own games. When you only rely on third parties without your own first party made titles then you failed.
Can you do a video about the Cassette 50? Its pretty much like Action 52, but for the Spectrum computer.
Never heard of that thing
@@W4lmartbag it was sold in Europe.
At the end, the Games sell a Console. But the Problem is: to find enough Studios to want to make Games for your System, it need to sell first.
The Game Cube is more powerfull than the PS2. but PS2 sold better, because of the success of the PS1, which lead to even more Games.
This is always the case. Even a Wii U would be a success, if there would be more Games. Which most of them are Nintendo only, or Ports (a wonder, that a Series like Splatoon survived, but one Game alone can not save a Console)
And the Switch says it all. A Console everyone said it's to expensive on release, yet the System still sell without major price drops (exept for revisions)
If we use the idea many ppl want: "Sega should make another console", will only "MAYBE" work, if Sega make alle there published Games exclusive, but then they have to deal with Hardware Power, similar to the PS5 now. Or they try somehing gimmiky, but this can easy fail. (again, see Wii U ) or win (Wii, Switch ect.)
One of the other things that really helped PS2 sales vs. the GameCube is that the former played DVDs. DVD players at that time were ungodly expensive. At launch the PS2 was one of the best and cheapest DVD players on the market. It's hard to understate just how many families bought PS2s because they could justify the cost thanks to its dual use nature. I think the GameCube minidiscs are cool; but, for a home console they turned out to be an error on judgement.
I remember the old EGM magazine ad?! "' For gamers, we'd like to SHAKE your hands, we offer more than the other boys on the block with more software always more to come?! ". The system was known as GAMEMATE or something and that ad was either 1990 or 1991 as well. I was most interested in a Mega Man-like game that it advertised but then I never saw this advertised again....
My old man had the import licence for Australia. I think i still have the old tv commercial on vhs somewhere. One thing you missed was the tv dock. From memory this also gave a colour palate to the games. It fixed all of the issues with the flickering. I had most of the games you showed. Dad said the thing that killed it was pokemon. If it didnt have pokemon the gameboy was the choice. The accessories really made it something different.
I remember Stuart Ashens looking at the SuperVision and one problem he cited was the abysmally blurry screen when there was any sort of action going on. So I guess that's another negative against the handheld.
This Supervision video has been my introduction to this channel. I liked it, so, I'll stick around for a while. Much like this channel, I'd never heard of the Supervision before. It looks interesting with modern eyes, for sure, but I expect that I'd have been severely disappointed had I got one for a holiday back in the day. Still, yesterday's disappointment is often today's novelty. Such is the case here.
Also, shout-out to the guy who made an emulator for this console. I have no clue why someone would go to the trouble; but, I'm happy they did. It's more proof that emulation is preservation, not piracy.
Thank you! I appreciate you being here. I used the supervision core on my mister FPGA to record the footage.
Game Gear would have been a shoe-in over the Gameboy had it not been for the bulky size and abysmal battery life. I remember being amazed as a kid playing something with a full colour screen and rather fun Sonic game (Sonic 2 at the time). I got one for Christmas when I was 9 but always played it with the power adaptor plugged in.
The Game Gear and Lynx 2 were a similar size to the Switch. The main issue was battery life. The Gameboy is the most overrated console in history. It's a toy compared to the other handhelds.
I was a kid when this thing came out. I remember seeing ads for it in gaming magazines, and seeing it as prizes on kid’s shows, but I honestly never saw one in a store. I didn’t even know it was only 50 dollars. I just thought the angled screen looked kinda cool, so I wanted one. But at the end of the day, games make a console, and this thing lacked games.
I wanna game gear really bad, I’m trying to save my money to get one, and batteries, lots and lots of batteries.
If you get one and you intend to play it; get the Majesco license built re-release Game Gear from the late '90s. I've read that the Sega-built Game Gears have issues with their capacitors dying of old age. It's a very fixable problem; but, it's a pain in the rear to do.
I had a weird fascination for Chimera released on the Supervision (a friend had the system with this game on it). The isometric 3D visuals and exploration based gameplay blew my mind at the time, since I had not seen anything like it on Game Boy (there definitely are way better isometric 3D games for it obviously, but I had not been exposed to them).
Great video, I enjoyed learning something new. The sv would have been a system I would have own had I knew about it.
Cool video one minor correction though, Adventure Island is an adaption of the arcade game Wonder Boy, the SG-1000 games is also called Wonder Boy. Wonder Boy was first, adventure island followed on other platforms.
I remember seeing this in the back pages of some magazines.
Tried saving my money to order one, glad I never did
The smile in the intro. Thats what got me
Thanks lol. Love hearing that
@pojr I like your content. It's very well done. Keep up the good work 👏
So glad you did this video 😁
Pyramid AND Master of the Maze mentioned in one video? It's like this was made specifically for me.
7:03 WE GETTING A CEASE AND DESIST WITH THIS ONE 🔥🔥🔥🗣️🗣️🗣️
They didn't have any game developers from Japan. And it also looks like they didn't have the same level of hardware expertise or R & D as Nintendo or the other companies.
Long story short, the hardware was worse, the games were already lousy and suffered moreso. Compare this with the Bandai WonderSwan and they are leagues apart.
Hey, I have one of those from when I was a kid! I thought no ones ever heard of it but me.
Jacky Unlucky is more like it 👍👍
Indeed lol.
That Pac & Mouse game is just Pengo, the old Sega arcade game. Almost all of these games appear to be clones.
You forgot about the turbo express, which has been the only handheld console to use the same cartridge as the main console Turbo Graphix 16. If they had been smart in competing with the prices . They may have been able to survive. Remember Turbo Graphix 16 was the first console to be able to utilize CD for games such as the original Street Fighter but the accessory for running CDs cost the same as the console itself. Also unlike Sega and Nintendo who kept lowering the price of the consoles, NEC didn't do the same and it cost them big time.
I remember playing on that thing back in the day and the screen was borderline unusable with how much motionblur there was
That racing game is more or less plagiarized from F1-Race, a first-party game on GameBoy. That should have been in the knockoff section.
Nintendo really nailed that perfect mix of price, battery life and game library with the Gameboy.
Kids today don't really understand but before the Gameboy there were no real portable game systems. The best you had were those lame tiger game things.
There was also the Microvision handheld which was the first ever handheld console with interchangeable cartridge but the games were more lame than fun. You only play with a dial and a few buttons and that's it. In that one the game cart made up 85% of the handheld which means the hardware itself is just a board shell in the middle and around. Without a game attach to it you couldn't even tell it was a handheld.
6:51 this looks just like F1 Race on the actual Game Boy
my parents bought me a supervision for Christmas '93 (I think), confusing it for a game boy, and of course because it was cheaper. I still have it 😎
I remember the Supervision from, like, DAK catalogs or something.
One other thing you didn't mentioned which would also cripple a competitor's sales...no RPGs.
Watched all your vids ... You are doing great
I had one. It was ok for holidays etc
It really does look like this handheld platform was the right idea, it's just they didn't have the name recognition and I mean people were already buying Game boys left and right. If this handheld platform was able to get more support from greater developers like the Game Boy did maybe they could have been a legit competitor. I don't think they ever would have beat the Game Boy because no matter what the Game Boy was going to have a lot more better third party support and quality games but if this cheaper alternative had some more of that from bigger developers Maybe they would have had a shot of at least being relevant
With bad performance like those games shown I could see why third parties didn't bother. Not only that by Watara is basically unknown to a lot of big developers so that is also why it failed. To get games to your hardware, you also had to go out and make deals or sign license to get more games to your system, not doing that means it's dead on arrival just like Game.com which did do that but failed anyways.
I can’t. The way you stress your ‘S’.
In Argentina it was launched as Electrolab Supervision, I have one and as you said, the quality of the games is terrible, however the size of the screen is bigger that the Gameboy, that's the only positive I found haha
I like the chapter titled "Downfall of supervision" lol
10:20 is it Perisai Jitu song on background?
Pojr Reviews the Watara Supervision
A few of these Games are "Beatable" but glitch out or Crash
Only thing I wish you did in this video was say what year the consoles came out along with the price and then said what it would be in todays money so that people watching the video understand how expensive the consoles are.
It was the lack of good IPs and the sonic games were more or less ports of the mega drive 8 bit.
I had a Supervision (Gameboy style). As far as I can remember, in the Netherlands you could only buy them at Dixons, but correct me if I'm wrong.
To be honest: it was a (huge) disappointment. Yes, the screen was a little larger, but the sound was not as good as the GameBoy. Also, the games were far, far away from the quality you had on the GameBoy. And the biggest problem: there were almost no games available! I think I tossed the thing in the bin after a few months...
I had the folding big screen version. Got my mom to buy it it at Blokker for pretty cheap (When the Game Boy had clearly won the race) with a bunch of the better looking games. They were like fl 2,50 by that point. It was good for a laugh, but I went back to my GB pretty quickly.
Mega Suck I mean Mega Duck no what never mind I definitely mean MEGA SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!
Its mega turd not mega duck or mega suck
@@W4lmartbag or MEGA SUCK DUCK TURD🦆💩
Omg. I had a Supervision growing up.
It looks like a mix between the GameBoy Advance SP and the GameBoy
That Hero kId is the poor man's Wonderboy
The flickering happens because youre on emulator playing on a modern screen. Gameboy does it too but there are better emulators that hide it. The flicker is a way to get more shades of greyscale on screens with a low response time.
Love the video. Thank you
You forgot to mention what the cost of the games were compared to the cost of the game boy games at the time
In Italy the Supervision was incredibly popular, but for only one reason: it was priced CHEAP! And with "cheap" I mean CHEAP, totally: despite the fact it was advertised in some commercial spots as "a cooler version of the Game Boy" (TRUE) and featured into a lot of kids TV shows and telephone TV games (do you remeber those?) as a prize, it was suspiciously cheap at the same. The cost of a game was a quarter of the price than a Gameboy game and the console itself, with Kristball included, was priced as a quarter of the Game Boy without Tetris as a pack-in game. The fun fact: all now grew-up ex-italian kids have no positive memories about it, because they all switched to the Game Boy after even just a couple of months, since even our parents have been able to notice how terrible that thing was! Damn!
Any word on whether the cruddy scrolling, low framerate and flickering was from a less capable PPU than the Gameboy's, or if devs just didn't learn how to use it properly?
In the end, it's about the games......... you've got to have good games and plenty of them.
I honestly don’t remember this system at all. I must have though it was a gameboy variant
Oh man, this seems like one of those knock-off consoles that would be advertised to on an infomercial.
Wow, uh... Grand Prix is a pretty blatant ripoff of F-1 Race for the Game Boy. The car and roadside billboard graphics are identical, the UI looks pretty close, and the China track is near identical to the Australia track in F-1 Race, which is pretty gutsy considering it's shaped like a Super Nintendo controller
Did you try the flickering on the original screen ?
9:15 This is an issue I see with A LOT of reviews especially of more obscure systems. Don't rely on emulation, outside of the popular systems emulation is between "mehh" and poor for most. In this case the flickering you wouldn't notice on real hardware due to the screen, same with framerate, due to the ghosting of the screen.