6.  Sega VR

Of interest purely because it’s a Sega product, details on the VR are sketchy at best.  If you’re familiar with Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, the VR was essentially Sega’s stab at the exact same sort of technology only a few years prior.  The headset included LCD screens in the visor as well as a motion sensor that tracked the movements of the user’s head and caused the unit to react appropriately.  Legend has it that a total of 4 games were developed for the VR and came in the form of 16MB cartridges that were to be packaged with the system.

The Sega VR was announced as early as 1991 and prototypes of the device appeared at gaming expos and electronics shows into 1993, but by 1994 the VR had disappeared from Sega’s release schedule.  According to some, the project was abandoned because advisers to Sega deemed the unit “too realistic” and claimed that the user may injure themselves while moving around.  This allegation seems unfounded however due to the hardware limitations of the time.  In actuality, it’s probable that the VR suffered from the same problems that would later plague the Virtual Boy including headaches and motion sickness.

I can still clearly remember the days when “virtual reality” was all the rage and I was occasionally lucky enough to go to a birthday party at one of those places with the big helmets and wired gloves.  It looks like Sega may have been well on their way to putting this sort of system in living rooms across the world, but alas, all we have now is the Virtual Boy to remember those exciting but short-lived times by.  Hell, I’d buy one of these even today.

 Written by The Cubist

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