 I'm Tom Merritt from Daily Tech News Show. Here are the five wildest game consoles ever made. Video game consoles are great. I mean, you can play video games on them, of course, or give your thumbs a rest and watch movies and TV shows, maybe listen to a little music and a whole bunch of other things. But it wasn't always that way. It took game consoles multiple tries to get it right. And along the way, there were some pretty unusual, dare I say absolutely, bonkers game console designs in the process. So here are the top five game console oddballs. Up to number five, Hyperscan. The Hyperscan was Mattel's attempt at cashing in on the popularity of collectible card gaming in 2006. For every Hyperscan CD game, Mattel sold booster packs of RFID enabled cards. You could scan in a boost card to get special power-ups and abilities for your in-game characters. Now, doesn't sound bad, right? It's like an early version of Amiibos. But the console suffered from poor quality games, underpowered hardware, and a temperamental RFID reader. Also, long load times. But to its credit, the Hyperscan was the first game console to offer RFID functionality, so it had that going for it. Number four, Virtual Boy. It's fair to say Nintendo has made bold choices when it comes to hardware over the years. But none were quite as bizarre as the Virtual Boy. The 1995 console was pitched as the first game system with stereoscopic 3D graphics. It resembled a VR headset on thin metal legs that needed to be placed on a table or desk. And then to play, you put your head against the console's eyepiece where you would see red monochrome graphics. While with a high price tag and a thin lineup of games, the system came with reports of dizziness, nausea, and headaches. How fun! Nintendo discontinued the system a year after its release. Coming in at number three, Telstar Arcade. Coleco's first console was not ColecoVision. It was Telstar, a series of game consoles that played Pong-style games. The most advanced of the series was the Telstar Arcade released in 1977. It was a triangle. Each side of the triangle featured a unique integrated controller, a steering wheel with throttle level, a light gun shaped like a revolver, and a pair of Pong paddles. Cartridges were triangular. The idea of an integrated steering wheel with a game console did not return until the development of the cancelled Koenig's multi-system a decade later. The triangular game console has never really returned. Sliding in at number two, Casio Lupi. Undaunted by the flop of their mid-80s console, the PV-1000 Casio came back in 1995 with the Lupi. Lupi, aka MySeal Computer Model SV100, featured a built-in thermal printer that let you print images like stickers so you could use your game's dress-up elements to make stickers. Accessories included a mouse and an AV capture device to grab images from a video device like your VCR and add text to it for printing. Casio stopped production of the Lupi in 1998. At number one, it's a tie. The Action Max and the ViewMaster Interactive Vision both used VHS tapes in your VCR to play its games. You hooked up the Action Max to your VCR and played the tape, then played the game with a light gun. The console registered and displayed your hit scores. And that's it. There were five games. ViewMaster's Interactive Vision was a bit more sophisticated. It actually generated its own graphics synced to the video and had an actual game controller. Games featured Sesame Street, Muppets, or Disney characters. These video game console oddballs are simultaneously charming for their inventiveness, but also a bit of an object lesson and being too clever for your own good. What video game consoles would you put on this list? Let us know. And if you want more great tech news and info, head on over to our channel. If you're not there already, youtube.com slash daily tech news show, click that subscribe button, get the podcast in your ears at DailyTechNewsShow.com. And if you get some value out of what we do, please support us on Patreon. Patreon.com slash DTNS. I'll see you there.