Electronic Product Design: Gamer Classics

Electronic Product Design: Gamer Classics

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Over the last few decades electronic product design has become something that, whether we're aware of it or not, is in evidence all around us. Many of us will have been brought up surrounded by hugely entertaining electronic devices and toys of all descriptions. A lot of the most memorable were games machines.

The Commodore 64 blessed the Earth with its presence in the summer of 1982. Ok, it wasn't the most beautiful machine ever invented - in fact it looked more like something a Dalek might see floating in the toilet on a Sunday morning. But despite its ploppy brown/grey colouring it provided many of us with a huge amount of fun. Chuckie Egg, the Dizzy series, Outrun - just a few of the fantastic cassette loaded games to which we were treated. It was an extremely fun piece of electronic product design.

Another ground breaking piece of electronic product design was the Atari Lynx, which started thrilling the world in the Autumn of 1989. It holds the accolade for being the first handheld games system with a colour LCD screen. It was ergonomically designed - and really looked like nothing that had come before. But the Lynx suffered from a lack of developers - the development kit was expensive and only worked on the Commodore Amiga platform; Atari's own ST computer, rather ridiculously, could not be used.

Despite the Lynx's pseudo 3D game play (which was world leading at the time) it couldn't beat the Nintendo Gameboy, which was also released in 1989 but had a green screen. While the green screen wasn't as exciting as the Lynx's coloured one, the platform had more developers, good games - and a more reasonable price tag. The Gameboy was much smaller and represented the start of a golden age in electronic product design for Nintendo.

The Commodore Amiga 500 represented a step up from the admittedly fun Commodore 64 platform. Sporting an eye popping 512K ram compared to the C64's 64K (yes, there was a clue in the name) it was what everyone wanted in their stocking in the Christmas of 1987. It was big piece of kit by today's standards, but proved very popular - especially among Europeans.

The electronic product design of the A500 was improved and the boffins at Commodore came up with the cheaper A600, the 'next generation' Amiga 1200. These later models did not achieve the same success as A500 which at its time was used primarily as a games machine - notable titles were The Secret of Monkey Island, SWIV and Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge.

In modern times, electronic product design in the realm of games machines has been somewhat lead by Nintendo, while SEGA has lost ground over the years. But the big boys are now Microsoft and Sony, with their XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3 games systems. These consoles have truly revolutionised the gaming experience for millions of people around the globe. They look pretty, they play pretty - in fact, one wonders how on earth those electronic product design people can possibly better these giants of home entertainment.

About the Author:
Anna Stenning knows a lot about electronic product design having written on the subject for many years.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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