Mattel, that's right the creators of Barbie, Matchbox cars and Fisher Price toys, has recently begun marketing their new "gaming console," the
Hyperscan. As you can see from the above picture, this abomination is colored red and black, most likely to appeal to hip third graders, and features a controller that looks like a mishmash of the DualShock, the Xbox Controller S, and what I left in the toilet last night after eating at my college's dining hall (yeah, yeah I know, a poop joke). It can even fold up!
More analysis after the jump.
The Hyperscan works much like the Gameboy Advance's failed add-on, the E-Reader. Players must scan the decorated embedded tags on each game card, that work in accordance with a game disc, over an RFID reader to load their characters onto the screen and play with them. After you're done playing, you just scan your card again and all data, up to 128 bytes of information that is, is saved onto the card, ready to be used again and again.
As of now, Mattel has only three "games" lined up to be released for its' Hyperscan:
Ben 10, an alien action/adventure side scroller/puzzler in which the hero, Ben Tennyson, must defeat aliens to keep the evil Dr. Animo from stealing the Ominitrix, a watch of unexpected infinite value that for no reason at all attached itself to Ben's arm;
X-Men, a brawler featuring everybody's favorite mutated superhumans such as Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, Sabretooth and many more; and last but not least, my favorite,
IWL (or
Interstellar Wrestling League), a wrestling game where you play as various 2D Clay Fighter-esque creatures intent on pummeling the bejeezus out of each other.
Mattel intends to sell the Hyperscan for $70, including the system, one controller, and the
X-Men game complete with six character cards. Also, expect Mattel to sell additional gamepacks, that include the game CD and a few scannable character cards, for $20 and additional booster-packs of six character cards for a measley $10.
Look at those graphics in the screen above. Would you pay $70 for those? You couldn't pay me to wipe my ass with those graphics! Some of you Nintendo sympathizers out there might scream out, "But what about the gameplay?" To let it be known, I've seen, and I'm sure many of you have as well, commercials for this on TV. In the X-Men game, there are about four attacks for each character, one unique to each of the brightly colored controller buttons. That's it. Gameplay looks to be about as fun as watching ice melt, or perhaps even watching grass grow!
On the other hand, I'm really going to feel sorry for the kids who wake up on Christmas morning expecting to find a Wii but who instead find this piece of junk under the Christmas tree. Let's give a nice and early "Thanks!" to Mattel for ruining childrens' future Christmases and Hanukahs across the United States. What do our readers think?
Contest:
5:10 PM on 10.10.2006
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