Apple Made a Games Console Called Pippin in 1996

2017-06-30T17:49:03.000Z

Way back in 1996, Apple thought it could make a game console.

Ten months before Steve Jobs came back to Apple, the company collaborated with Japanese toy and video game company Bandai to make the Pippin game machine. It turned out to be a tremendous flop. Apple sold only 42,000 units between when it released the Pippin in 1996 and when it discontinued the device the next year.

By comparison, when it launched its N64 game console in 1996, Nintendo sold between 350,000 and 500,000 units in just the first three days, according to the Nintendo 64 Wikipedia entry, which cites a 1996 Newsweek article.

Check out Apple's Pippin game console:

The look of Apple's Pippin game console screams 1990s. Launched around the same time period, Sony's original PlayStation and Nintendo's N64 also look dated by today's standards, but their designs have aged better than the Pippin's.

apple pippin game console — Apple's Pippin console YouTube/Snazzy Labs

The Pippin cost $600 when it was launched. By contrast, the original PlayStation cost $300 and the N64 cost $200.

The Pippin's controller was called the "Apple Jack," and it had a mouse trackball in the middle.

You had to use the Apple Jack's trackball in game menus, because games were direct ports from the versions that ran on Apple's Mac computers, and the Mac versions relied on a trackball or mouse for navigation.

Apple offered a wireless version of the controller, which was advanced for its time. The controller used infrared technology to connect to the console.

The Pippin didn't have any built-in storage for games or even its own operating system. It did, however, have 128 kilobytes of storage for saving settings and in-game progress.

Everything it needed, including its operating system, was contained in game CDs.

This was actually a good thing, according to Snazzy Labs' Quinn Nelson, because it meant developers didn't have to worry about optimizing their games for a specific version of the operating system the Pippin was running.

The Pippin ran on Mac OS 7, the operating system underlying Apple's Mac computers, and was generally based on the Mac computers of the time. You could briefly see Mac OS 7 running before Pippin started a game.

YouTube/The Obsolete Geek

One of the ways the Pippin stood out from its competitors was that its game discs weren't region specific. You could buy a game in Japan and play it on your Pippin in the US, which was a big deal at the time.

Indeed, when I was growing up in England, I had an N64, and I was very upset that my family in the US couldn't send me game cartridges from the US, some of which were released before their European counterparts. They just wouldn't work on my European N64 model.

The Pippin was also compatible with both the PAL and NTSC television standards, which meant you could connect it to pretty much any TV in the world. It even had a VGA port if you wanted to plug it into a computer monitor.

The Pippin's awful performance, poor controls, and bad games helped lead to its downfall. It also didn't help that few games were made for it.

YouTube/The Obsolete Geek

Notice the choppy performance and the back of the car occasionally flickering in and out. The controls were apparently terrible, too.

Snazzy Lab's Nelson believes the Pippin was too underpowered to properly play games with complex graphics.

Compare the Pippin's "Racing Days" game with the PlayStation's "Gran Turismo."

YouTube/Lord Karnage

You could change the graphics settings so that games looked better or played more smoothly. But certain games were terrible either way.

YouTube/Snazzy Labs

When the Pippin was set to play games with the highest graphics settings possible, some of them, like "Marathon" would play at "10 to 15 frames per second," according to Nelson. That basically made them "unplayable," he said. You could set the console to display lower resolution images to get smoother gameplay, but the graphics became so bad that "you get completely lost, because you can't see anything," Nelson said.

Coincidentally, "Marathon" was made by Bungie, which was the game development company that created the popular "Halo" game series.

One of the Pippin's more "popular" games was "Power Rangers Zeo."

YouTube/Snazzy Labs

"Power Rangers Zeo" was the Pippin's "system seller" title, but according to Nelson, it was terrible.

Ultimately, the Pippin was a dramatic failure, faring even worse than Nintendo's Virtual Boy, a notorious flop.

The Virtual Boy was considered to be a massive failure. But Nintendo sold 1.25 million units Virtual Boys, while Apple only sold 42,000 Pippins, according to Nelson.

Apple made a game console back in 1996, and it was terrible

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Apple made a game console back in 1996, and it was terrible

The look of Apple's Pippin game console screams 1990s. Launched around the same time period, Sony's original PlayStation and Nintendo's N64 also look dated by today's standards, but their designs have aged better than the Pippin's.

The Pippin cost $600 when it was launched. By contrast, the original PlayStation cost $300 and the N64 cost $200.

The Pippin's controller was called the "Apple Jack," and it had a mouse trackball in the middle.

The Pippin didn't have any built-in storage for games or even its own operating system. It did, however, have 128 kilobytes of storage for saving settings and in-game progress.

Everything it needed, including its operating system, was contained in game CDs.

The Pippin ran on Mac OS 7, the operating system underlying Apple's Mac computers, and was generally based on the Mac computers of the time. You could briefly see Mac OS 7 running before Pippin started a game.

One of the ways the Pippin stood out from its competitors was that its game discs weren't region specific. You could buy a game in Japan and play it on your Pippin in the US, which was a big deal at the time.

The Pippin's awful performance, poor controls, and bad games helped lead to its downfall. It also didn't help that few games were made for it.

Compare the Pippin's "Racing Days" game with the PlayStation's "Gran Turismo."

You could change the graphics settings so that games looked better or played more smoothly. But certain games were terrible either way.

One of the Pippin's more "popular" games was "Power Rangers Zeo."

Ultimately, the Pippin was a dramatic failure, faring even worse than Nintendo's Virtual Boy, a notorious flop.

Check out Nelson's YouTube video for a closer look at Apple's Pippin console.

YouTuber "The Obsolete Geek" also has a good video showcasing the Pippin.

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

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Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know