A handheld lost to time...

[Tupin]

You may have heard of the Wonderswan, the Neo Geo Pocket Color, and the N-Gage, but only one handheld had quite the limited distribution as the infamous Tapwave Zodiac.



Released in 2003 and completely dead by late 2005, this PalmOS based handheld sought to compete with the N-Gage, and eventually the Gizmondo. It was pretty powerful for 2003, and it even had an analog stick. Despite the fact that you had thousands of Palm applications to run, only 8 games materialized before Tapwave went bankrupt. Nintendo was a force to be reckoned with, and the GBA continued its complete dominance over this and several other superior handhelds. To date it is one of the worst selling systems in history, with 50,000 units estimated in the hands of consumers, and while it's double the 25,000 the Gizmondo sold, the Zodiac suffered a similar fate.

All of the articles on the Internet about this are either long gone or limited in information, but there once was a quite lively Zodiac community, and you can download emulators and play many near perfect emulations. These sold much better in the UK, and while they aren't nearly as expensive as a Gizmondo, they are much more useful because of their multimedia functions and are decent if you can find one, which I did. I should be getting it soon, and will post about it.

[Silverhawk79]

This seems pretty neat. I never knew this existed, really.

[Tupin]

They only sold them in CompUSAs, unlike with the N-Gage where they sold them in Gamestop. Yeah, I got one from England and it should be coming soon, can't wait...

[SkyMyl]

Huh. Never heard of this before. It sounds slightly better than the Gizmondo, but it's not like I would know that.

[Tupin]

Just got it today, it's pretty cool, and it even came with the box and installation CD.   =D