The biggest issue with the console was that the specs were clearly and severely antiquated in relation to its rivals (2006, during the transition between the outgoing 6th-generation consoles and the incoming 7th-generation consoles):
- For starters, it had a questionable CPU and GPU (an off-brand SoC from Sunplus, a notoriously shady semiconductor company, with an equally obscure architecture called S+Core
note ). Whereas other consoles had been supporting full 3D graphics for two generations, this one was purely 2D, which games hid under Digitized Sprites. This left it severely underpowered and at a disadvantage - which was the very same problem that plagued the Intellivision.
- The SoC was paired with a paltry 16MB of RAM split between the GPU and CPU, while competing consoles of the era shipped with at least three times as much memory and had separate video and system RAM.
- The console had a slow CD-ROM drive and lacked memory for caching and a read-ahead buffer, which caused Loads and Loads of Loading that frustrated users, whereas all other consoles used DVD (or in the PS3's case, Blu-ray).
- The games themselves were very poorly programmed. This isn't help by the fact that only one of them (Interstellar Wrestling League) is an original title, as most of them were based on Marvel properties and one of them based on Ben 10.
However, the HyperScan does have some firsts to its name: It pioneered near-field communication (NFC) as a gameplay mechanic five years before Activision spawned the Toys-To-Life Game genre by successfully bringing the same mechanic into the mainstream with the Skylanders series, and it was the first console with a NFC reader built in six years before Nintendo's Wii U and corresponding amiibo line.
Manufacturing and support for the console was discontinued just one year after launch, with Mattel once again leaving the console market in 2007.
Specifications:
Processors
Memory
- 16 MB
Display
- 640×480 native resolution
- 65,535 colors
Games:
- X-Men
- Ben 10
- Interstellar Wrestling League
- Marvel Heroes
- Spider-Man
This console and its games contain examples of:
- Awesome, but Impractical: The card-scanning gimmick was definitely unique for its time, and as noted above other companies would later try a similar idea to greater success, but on this console it was only a hindrance. The card scanner was inconsistent at best, often failing to read cards even when games had timed card scanning events, and rather than having cards interact with games in unique and creative waysnote , most of the time it was just used to gate access to data that was already in the game, making it a physical precursor to the widely loathed "on-disk DLC." Needless to say, the sheer greed and annoyance of locking key game mechanics behind randomly obtainable, easily lost cards was one of the biggest factors in this console getting pulled from shelves.
- Dummied Out:
- The console has a USB port that is not used by any of the games or controllers.
- The console was shelved before all of the character cards for X-Men were released, leaving about half of the roster unplayable, albeit still technically in the game.
- Loads and Loads of Loading: None of the games load swiftly.
- Loot Boxes: The card booster packs for the games act like this.
- Revenue-Enhancing Devices: The games only came with a few cards, so boosters were sold with the rest of the cards.
