Quote Originally Posted by HTRegz
I'll probably be the only one who disagrees with a decent amount of this list.

The Barcode Battler just came up for discussion the other day around the office and a couple of us were talking about what a cool concept it was. I had one for years... I loved it... I think the problem with the comments (and the video review) is that they are wrong... The Barcode Battler wasn't meant to compete with Gameboy and Game Gear. If I remember correctly my Gameboy was well over $100 and my Barcode Battler was like $30.

It was cool for the same reason that people like RISK or D&D. It was a turn based dice game in electronic form. Something that interested a lot of people... especially people with a geek background... (since generally those are the people that turn based dice games appeal to). There was no need for fancy graphics, or anything else... you just had fun with it.

The example in the video was pretty pathetic and my bet is that he removed the instructions simple to attempt to make a humorous video. As for most barcodes not working... I saved them off everything... I would say that 95% of my collected barcodes worked in one way, shape or form... The first barcode that he had an issue with may not have been a hero barcode, it could have been a bad guy or even a special item.


Other issues:

Vista is not a terrible tech product... and it is only the uninformed and generally those lacking knowledge that feel it is. It took 6 years because there was a lot of rewriting and in that time a new initiative was introduced so a lot of code had to be revisited. As for UAC... as someone with a Vista PC, a Mac Mini and a Ubuntu Laptop... I don't get how people whine about UAC in Vista... I'm guessing most people that complain have never used Ubuntu or OS X. Does it have it's problems... sure... every new product does... It's still a massive improvement over most of what Microsoft has released in the past. Is there a campaign around saving XP.. yep... but I remember people fighting to keep Windows 98... and Windows 2000 and I remember massive hysteria about how bad XP was when it was released... The net is much more common now, everyone is using it and online media is huge... that's the only reason the Save XP compaign exists. The goal of the campaign is to have XP sales continued past (june|july)(whichever it is)... I doubt anyone on that petition plans on buying a copy of Windows XP at this point.

The sony rootkit... as marketing disaster?? Yep... a technological mistake... yep... One of the top 10 terrible "tech products" of all time??? Not even close...

This is a prime example of the media picking things that people will immediately latch onto and feel familiarity with (which previous posts in this thread have demonstrated)... They aren't items that belong on the list.. Other examples are the Atari Jaguar (it was poorly marketed... but not necessarily a bad tech product) and tamagotchi... as they mentioned it made mad money and was extremely popular... adding it to the list on the basis of being annoying... purely adding a product that they figure readers will be familiar with.

Even an MP3 player doesn't belong up there, regardless of quality... it's an appeal to the mass market... and it's a shame every time it occurs in "journalism"


If they wanted true tech flops... There were plenty to chose from:
-- TV Tuner for the Game Gear (most people don't even realize they existed)
-- "Ghetto Blasters"/Boomboxes with built in 3" BW TVs
-- R.O.B. for NES
-- The Mini Disc Walkman
-- Teddy Ruxpin (there was good and bad here... but the 2nd version Teddy was awful)
-- Logitech Harmony Remote (Any remote that costs over $100 is bad enough, but when you can get over $400 theres' a real problem)
i have to disagree about r.o.b i had one that came with my n.e.s and had allot of fun with it and it worked well into the 90s
teddy ruxpin was bad but had alot of fun playing my misfits and samhain tapes till the mouth broke