The Most Obscure Console Ever: The Nuon - Rerez

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Everybody knows about failed consoles. Consoles that just didn't make the grade, didn't sell enough units. But there are a lot of consoles out there that are failed that we remember. Things like the Sega Dreamcast, the N-Gage, Atari Jaguar, all of these systems are consoles that basically failed in the eyes of the public but are remembered in some unique way. But what happens when a console fails so fast and so hard that nobody knew about it when it came out? Well I think I found one. Allow me to introduce the Nuon.

The Nuon was developed by a company called VM Labs and released sometime in the early 2000s. The company was started up by a guy named Richard Miller who at one point was the Vice President of the Atari Corporation. The Nuon video game playing technology was built into a selection of DVD players produced by Samsung, Toshiba and RCA. VM Labs designed the Nuon tech, not the consoles themselves. This was similar to the business model for the previously defunct 3DO. The idea behind the 3DO was to allow external parties to produce their console while the 3DO company would develop and publish games. This concept while unique and really interesting turned out to be a horrible idea. The companies that would build the 3DO like Panasonic, Sanyo and GoldStar wouldn't see any of the profit from game sales. That meant that they would have to sell the consoles at seriously high prices. Initially the launch price was said to be sold at $599 in the US and this really prevented the system from making any real impact in the market because that was really expensive. Why should the story have been different for VM Labs and Nuon? Well back in the early 2000s DVDs were a pretty hot item so unlike the 3DO it was easier to mass produce a system bundled with a strange video game playing ability because someone who needed a DVD player could still conceivably buy the thing without having any interest in playing video games.

The model I got my hands on is the very first Nuon ever produced called the Extiva DVD N2000. It was released in July 2000 at a retail price of about $349 USD but there are several Nuon capable DVD players that were released. However all of them are different and some don't even play games. But why would they release this technology on a DVD player without the ability to play games? Well there were 4 DVD movies produced that had special menus only accessible by watching them on a Nuon capable DVD player. These movies included Dr. Dolittle 2, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, Bedazzled and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake. Ouch. I managed to get my hands on the last two films on the list and friends it's nothing special. Pretty much all the Nuon features are limited to a special section accessible from the basic DVD menu. The features range from the ability to zoom into footage, watch storyboards and art slides while the movie plays and even an early attempt at chapter selection with video playing to help identify the scene. While it's true that regular DVDs at the time were not capable of these features the Nuon player struggles to load these sequences leaving you waiting for sometimes a full minute before sequences can actually happen. Ever since the arrival of blu-rays the special features for Nuon DVD movies pretty much faded as blu-rays could produce better and more interesting experiences with less of a loading screen. Since I'm kind of a film buff the selection of these four titles seems really strange to me. I mean if they had any hope of this technology really taking off why would they use such unwanted films? It seemed like 20th Century Fox had some interest in this technology even going so far as to make an announcement of its use at CES in 2001. So why not use a movie like X-Men, Independence Day, Die Hard, Alien or even Fight Club as its home video release was much more popular and sought after than its initial release in theaters. I mean guys they’re 20th Century Fox it's not like they're lacking. I mean come on who runs out to buy a brand new DVD player loaded with all this amazing technology to watch some special features from Dr. Dolittle 2?

If you weren't gonna go get this for movies what were the games like? Well this is where the story gets really, really sad. There are only eight Nuon games that were ever released. Ballistic which is a port of a puzzle game available on the PlayStation. The game was packed in with one of the models of the Nuon. The Next Tetris, another bundled in game, also available on the PlayStation. Iron Soldier 3 the third part in a series of games that came out for the Atari Jaguar also available on the PlayStation. But then we come to Space Invaders XL. Finally a game not available on any other platform. However it doesn't need to be. The game is pretty much a slightly more colorful Space Invaders. Really putting that 128-bit chip to the limits with this game. Why even bother? Now the next game is funny. Technically Nuon does indeed have only eight released games but one of them was released on a Korean Nuon system that was region locked so you can't play this game on any other Nuon on the planet. As if that wasn't hard enough if you happen to own the specific Korean Nuon system you won't be able to play any of the other Nuon games on it because of region locking. That means that this Nuon system exists solely to play this one game. What an epic fail.

So that leaves us with three games all of which are unique to the Nuon. Let's start off with Merlin Racing. Merlin Racing is a Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart 64 ripoff. To begin let's look at the arcade mode. It utilizes multiple vehicles but they all pretty much handle exactly the same. Nothing like the variety that Diddy Kong Racing offers. It's easy to see the similarities between these two games but as for gameplay it feels more like a very unpolished Mario Kart 64. Everything from the controls, the items you use and the track design is just basic. Racing feels like a chore and incredibly difficult. The head racer will always be faster than you. I imagine they did this because they wanted to make you feel like you had some competition on the track but it just doesn't work and the majority of races it feels impossible to win. Although you will win some races just by chance. There isn't even a gradual climb in difficulty. The game outright ups the difficulty after the first level. It seems I wasn't able to get very far in this game mode at all and frankly I didn't want to. It's pretty terrible. Believe it or not this game actually has an adventure mode with a plot and here it is. Merlin the Magician is captured by the evil witch Prava who has stolen four zystral crystals that give Merlin his powers. Without his power he's defenseless against Prava who hides all the crystals behind some doors that are locked with keys. Your job as one of the creatures in this universe is to enter some kind of race and win all the races and get all the keys opening all the doors and collecting all four zystral crystals to free Merlin. However once you get into the game it feels nearly impossible to win. All the problems with the regular arcade mode are replicated here only in this mode you have access to a drivable overworld of sorts which looks like a heavily dumbed down version of the Diddy Kong Racing overworld. There are also two other modes, time trial and tournament, but just know that they are equally as bad as everything else in this game.

Next up is Freefall 3050 A.D. The plot of this game is that a sea virus of some sort threatens humanity so everyone goes to live up in the skies in cities that are floating. They really don't get into the details about that. You're a member of the Police Drop Corps, a Police agency that fights against crime syndicates that are trying to take over these sky cities. And how do you fight against crime? By jumping out of the building and fighting criminals on your way down. On first impression this game is freaking terrible. The controls are confusing, stiff and don't seem to do anything. That's about the time I made a discovery about the Nuon. There are eight games for this console and a total of four different controllers and each one seems to feature a different layout and a different button set. The system that I have came out with one controller called the Warrior Digital Gamepad but there is also one that looks almost exactly like a Nintendo 64 controller complete with a thumb stick, another looks like a variation of the original PlayStation controller and another third-party controller made by Logitech offers a different layout with seemingly the same button options as the N64 ripoff version. But why does that matter? Well Freefall 3050 A.D. seems to require the use of one of those other controllers with the extra buttons and thumb stick. That's right folks this console with a limited library of games couldn't even give you the ability to play all the games with the basic controller bundled in with the original unit. Other than the fact that this game is unplayable, since I didn’t have the fauxtendo 64 controller, I have no idea what to make of it. Even for the time when it was released these graphics are really not that good-looking. Overall I'm pretty sure had I got the right controller to actually play this thing I probably wouldn't have liked it. So if you are looking to buy this console and you want to play Freefall 3050 A.D. you need to find a really hard to find and obscure controller as well. Good luck on that.

So that leaves one final game. The last game unique to the Nuon that has never seen a release outside of this system. Tempest 3000. On the Atari Jaguar there was Tempest 2000 which was based off the original Tempest game that was in arcades years and years ago. This is really important because Tempest 3000 may well be the best game on the Nuon. Is it worth picking up a system for it? Maybe. This game isn't that bad. It takes a lot of the features from Tempest 2000 and gives it a more visual edge. It feels a little bit slow compared to Tempest 2000 but it does have a very addictive premise which is pretty much just Tempest. If you're a fan of the original Tempest arcade game you're probably going to dig this game and if you're a fan of Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar well this game is totally the next step in its evolution. The funny thing about this is that Tempest 2000 is one of the key titles for the Atari Jaguar. Ask anybody that owns the system they'll probably tell you that the best game that came out on the platform was Tempest 2000. So I find it hilarious that the exact same group that made that system managed to make another system and the best game that they could have on the system was a sequel to Tempest 2000. This version of the game only exists on the Nuon you will find it nowhere else. Which is amazing. It's just a simple game but it shows some kind of proof that this console was capable of doing some pretty cool things. Much like Tempest 2000 Tempest 3000 has its own soundtrack and it's pretty solid. Now while you could have a lot of fun with those other games I mentioned, torturing yourself, Tempest 3000 is the game that you will probably go back and play again and again and again. Is it better than Tempest 2000 well that's all up to perspective. Personally I prefer this version but that's just me.

There you have it the story of the Nuon. A system so epically flawed that by the time it came out no one paid attention to it and I'm pretty sure that most people out there don't even know it exists. I recommend that the next time you're going through pawnshops or anything like that you keep your eye out for one of these systems because if you can manage to find one it's a cool system to try out.

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