Pippin Atmark

When it was initially released, I wasn't so surprised that they wanted to go into the gaming console. however, when looking into the price of the pippin, I was disappointed as I couldn't afford how overpriced it was. my auntie did decide to buy me it for my birthday, and the graphics of it was awful, hated it. :(

The Pippin Atmark/@world (different depending on whether it's a US or Jap model) was an ill conceived foray into the world of games consoles by computer behemoth Apple and toy company Bandai.

Now a byword for chic, Apple realised in the early 1990s that there was a lot of money in games and set about work on it's own games machine.

The Pippin is basically an Apple Mac in the form of a games console (a bit like the Amiga CD32 is a console version of the A1200), and was designed to bridge the gap between games and the internet. Powered by a 33Mhz RISC chip, the Pippin was at least as good as the CD32 and offered internet access out of the box, but a lack of public interest spelled doom for the system after barely a year on the shelves (circa 1995). I personally believe that there is more to this story than first meets the eye, what with the Sega/Bandai merger talks going on at the time; and Bandai's involvement with the Pippin project - maybe Sega ordered Bandai to pull the plug in order to give the Saturn one less competitor to worry about?

Whatever the true story, the Pippin is an intrigueing little console and very few actual games were released for it. The joypad looks like a boomerang with a trackerball in the centre and the whole colour scheme differed depending on whether it was an Atmark or @world (pronounced "At-world") model - one is black, the other is white.

Even stranger is the system's cosmetic similarity to the Dreamcast. Coincidence?

Just a thought - now that Apple is a major force (much more than they were in 1995), it would be interesting to see how an Apple console would perform in today's market - a G5 Pippin anyone?