Since the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, was released in 1972 there has been an influx of different brands, consoles and accessories that have been presented to the gaming fanatics among us (if you’ll pardon the pun).
However, some of the quirkiest ideas never quite made it to production. In this article we commemorate those ideas by looking at some of the most ingenious video game concepts that never quite made it into our gaming setup.
Firstly, we throw it back to 2012, when Leo Markowitz came up with the Inflatable Vehicle Simulator. Now, gaming steering wheel setups can be quite extreme, from having multiple screens showing the drivers peripheral vision to having a seat that has inbuilt suspension to simulate the different bumps and turns that the car is absorbing. However, these designs are big and bulky. Leo eradicated this issue with an inflatable driving simulator that could mimic all but the most lifelike of driving experiences. Although it seems like an intriguing concept, it was a design that never made it to the wider market andtherefore, goes into our ‘what could have been’ pile.
According to a study carried out in the city of Seattle in the United States by researchers from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention at Emory University and Andrews University, the average gamer has a BMI of 28.05 which is higher than the average non gamer’s BMI of 26.55. Anyone with a BMI of over 25 is considered overweight. This is a worrying statistic for gamers and Benjamin Karl Broderick thought he had found the answer to the problem in 2009 when he patented an all-in-one Exercise and Video Game Chair. The idea of the chair was to integrate a workout into the playing of a video game. The chair had resistance straps on each limb and torso, and these adjusted to increase/decrease the intensity of the workout to help the gamer keep active whilst immersing themselves in their favorite video game. However, this innovative idea never made it into the public eye and gamers have had to find other ways of keeping themselves fighting fit!
Finally, we have one of the simpler patents. Nevertheless, it was still an innovative thought process by Timothy M. Coffey and could quite well have been a huge success in another life. Tim, like the rest of us, was obviously fed up with playing by the rules and searching aimlessly around a made-up world for your friend, only for them to constantly find you within seconds and instead of owning up to their incessant cheating, they claimed that it was ‘luck’ or that they were just ‘good at the game’. To counter this Tim came up with an opaque screen divider which used suction cups to stick to the edges of the screen, thus, hiding your screen and your all-important location from your overly competitive friend/ sibling. Fortunately, for those that had to rely on cheating rather than skill, this simple but effective invention never quite made it to mass market.
How different the video game world could have looked… Whether you liked the sound of these innovative concepts or have found the flaws that ultimately stopped them from going to market, they certainly would have added a different twist to gaming as we know it.
To give you more inspiration for your next big Video Game accessory idea, please visit the Crucial blog
