Bandai may be joined at the hip with Namco these days, but once upon a time the company stalked the edges of the video game industry, desperate to find a route into the potentially profitable hardware arena. It released consoles such as the Pippin (in conjunction with Apple) and created the WonderSwan handheld, but neither was a massive success.
Even earlier in the '90s, Bandai teamed up with Nintendo to produce a laptop which could play SNES games, and even got as far as showing off a prototype at the 1993 Tokyo Game Show.
The Bandai HET (Home Entertainment Terminal) had a tiny 4-inch screen and TV Tuner, and was capable of interfacing with optional peripherals - like CD-ROM drives, modems or printers.
You can watch some footage below of the HET taken from the Toyko Game Show floor. Not much else is known about the machine, and it is believed that Nintendo pulled the plug before production could be release.
[source gonintendo.com]
Comments 10
Pc gaming
would have been sweet
I saw this in Super Play magazine in the 90s.
I heard about this back in the day, in EGM they said it was a portable SFC. The peripheral rundown in the article sounds like speculation to me. Just because it had an "EXT" connector, it doesn't mean it was to make it a computer.
The projected price tag or the choice of the Super Game Boy project over it could have been the reasons for which it was never released or maybe it was the use of a DBZ cart in the demo that scared investment away (just kidding, DBZ fans, but you have to admit those SFC fighting games are not that good).
Wonder why they didn't allow Pioneer to put a SFC module into that laserdisk player. (That had PC Engine and Megadrive).
I can imagine changing their mind at the last minute would have annoyed the people making this sort of stuff.
@unrandomsam The LaserActive also allowed for CD-ROM^2, Super CD-ROM^2 and LD-ROM^2 for PC Engine/TG-16 and Mega/Sega CD and Mega/Sega LD for MD/Genesis. The SNS/SFC never had the CD add-on so putting a module on the LaserActive would have been a quite pointless.
Hm...interesting.
Thank goodness it was never release, I don't think I could handle that tiny FC-16 Go style screen and the awkward control setup.
Meh. The 3DS is better. Built in web browser and SNES style buttons. Where's mah SNES Virtual Console? Well I got a Supaboy for carts, but my pockets protested and the 3DS won.
What is the guy in the middle of the video doing? Some video motion control a la Kinect?
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