HyperScan
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| This article was copied (instead of imported) from the now-deleted Crappy Games Wiki. |
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 "Hyper Scan… HYPER FUCKING SHIT!"
— The Angry Video Game Nerd | ||||||||||||||
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The HyperScan is a video game console that was released by Mattel on October 23, 2006, and discontinued in 2007. In an attempt to cash in on the trading card game craze (and possibly also replicate the success of the infamous Barcode Battler), Mattel sold trading cards with an RFID chip for the HyperScan to scan new characters and abilities to load into the game. Four of these games were developed by the same developer, Semi Logic Entertainments (yes, with a S), with Interstellar Wrestling League being developed by Digital Eclipse.
It is the third worst-selling console of all time (tied with the LaserActive if the latter is counted), with estimated sales of just 10,000 units, though reportedly most of them had to be returned because it was prone to failure.
Why It’s a Hyper Scam
- The idea of a console that required you to buy separate one-game parts just to make the games playable (basically, a game that requires you to buy separate parts designed to make only one specific game playable, and that applies to all other games) is fundamentally not a great idea both in concept and in execution. Many of the problems with the HyperScan were what plagued the later Skylanders and Disney Infinity games, where getting all of the parts eventually boiled to a point where consumers would need to shell out over $200 or higher on top of a $60 game just to 100% one of the games because of how many parts you needed to unlock everything. The whole concept with the HyperScan and the later "toys-to-life" trend was an example of a concept that at first seemed decent but ended up proving to be too costly to consumers in the long run.
- Incredibly long loading times (over one minute or worse, two or three minutes), rivaled only by the Commodore 64 and Neo Geo CD. The X-Men fighting game for example has multiple loading screens between matches.
- The system is neither reliable nor well-designed. Shane Luis of Rerez had to go through at least 4 systems before he had a working one for review. With how unorthodox the console's design is, it feels like something that was designed by someone who designs toys and not hardware.
- The RFID reader is unreliable, making it hard to scan cards, and you need to constantly scan cards.
- The bottom of the system does not lay flat on any surface and lacks rubber feet, making the console prone to sliding around; if the console moves while the game disc is spinning, the disc will likely get scratched.
- Like the Atari Jaguar CD, the optical drive of the HyperScan is prone to failure. In Rerez's video, the disc drive died following a burst of static noise on a loading screen.
- The A/V output cables are hardwired into the system. This is a bad design choice as it causes the system being impossible to replace the wires when they get damaged. And when they do, your console becomes nothing more than a paperweight unless you know how to solder.
- A whopping five games were released for the system, with the sixth game believed to be in limited quantities and the release of a seventh game canceled.
- This console's gimmick was not well thought out with the concept of having to use cards to play the game.
- All the games were broken, unoriginal, dated-looking, and poorly designed with awful controls, gameplay, etc. Allegedly, the main developer for four of these games, Semi Logic Entertainments was basically given less than a year to piece together four HyperScan games which were all worked on at the same time, and its very likely that when Semi Logic already had their hands tied and were unable to do a 5th game, Mattel looked to Digital Eclipse to work on a game that would mark their next new IP, Interstellar Wrestling League.
- It's an inconvenience having to scan cards during gameplay because you usually need three types of cards: one for the characters, one for the character's abilities, and one to save your progress.
- The controller's buttons were very stiff, not going down much. Also, the controllers use a 6-pin mini-DIN connector, the same connector used for 90s PC keyboards and mice, rather than USB, even though there is a USB port on the backside of the console, which is not used for anything.
- Lackluster specs compared to the main three consoles at the time (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii) or their predecessors (Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube) and only about comparable to the Game Boy Advance, which explains why the games had substandard graphics reminiscent of the original PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The HyperScan's system architecture is more similar to cheap plug-and-play systems than to mainstream consoles.
- The cards are a physical form of loot boxes and on-disc DLC.
- All of the game content is on the disc but is locked away without the appropriate card. With how short-lived the console was, many card releases were scrapped, meaning that game content was rendered inaccessible, short of reverse-engineering the console and games to bypass the in-game locks.
- While nearly every console manufacturer uses/used the razor and blades business model, losing money on consoles but making up for it in the sale of games and accessories, the HyperScan takes it to its extreme. The system and games themselves were relatively inexpensive (US$70 for the system and US$20 for games), and the 6-card booster packs at US$10 each pushed the games' effective prices to over US$100 per game at bare minimum (i.e., no duplicate cards) for a complete experience. For a little extra, you could buy two brand-new Triple-A games for a mainstream console. What makes this worse compared to RFID-based toys-to-life games like Skylanders or Disney Infinity is that, unlike those games, the packs hide what you can get, which eventually results in gambling for specific cards.
- The cards were reported to have been released on separate dates as opposed to being released all at once. Because of how quickly the HyperScan was discontinued, it led to games like X-Men being filled with unreleased cards that were most likely either destroyed or never made their way to store shelves. That meant it was impossible to 100% a whole HyperScan game due to tons of cards being entirely lost media without the use of an emulator or some way to hack the console.
The Only Redeeming Quality
- Interstellar Wrestling League, the only original IP, performs the best compared to the other games on the console, as it was developed by Digital Eclipse, unlike the other HyperScan games. Aside from some gameplay hiccups like the referee that appears out of nowhere in the middle of a fight, the loading times in that game are not as bad as the other games, clocking in an average of 45 seconds.
List of games
- X-Men (bundled with system)
- Ben 10
- Interstellar Wrestling League
- Marvel Heroes
- Spider-Man (Toys "R" Us exclusive)
- Avatar: The Last Airbender (believed to be in limited quantities[1])
- Nick Extreme Sports (cancelled)
Reception
 "What were they thinking?"
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The system was universally panned by critics for its clunky design, broken controls, poor library, long loading screens, and the unnecessary usage of cards to select characters, and was officially discontinued in 2007. It is featured as one of the ten worst systems by PC World magazine.
Trivia
- The concept of physical item collecting and video gaming would later influence concepts like Skylanders, Disney Infinity, and even Amiibo, which all died out except for Amiibo, which is still standing today, despite barely getting any new Amiibo in today's climate.
Videos
References
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