Manufacturer: Bandai
Designer: Apple Computers, Inc.
Generation: Fifth Generation
Bits: 8 bit and 16 bit support
Year Released: 1996
Units sold: 42,000
Media: CD-ROM
Summary: A mid 90's system made with the idea or creating affordable home computer that is aimed at playing CD based games and multimedia. It had moderate to low success due to the hostility of the market at the time and lack of games as a whole.
The Pippin was designed and developed by Apple Computers Inc., though they never intended on manufacturing it themselves. Instead they were hoping to find a third party to purchase the license for the console. This fell in place when Bandai made it known that they wanted to enter the then flourishing market of consoles and decided to use Apples Pippin as their platform. Katz media also dabbled in the idea of using the Pippin for a low cost PC, a system only received in parts of Europe. Upon its release in 1996 (1995 in Japan) the Pippin was set for failure for a multitude of failure. To begin with, the system released with minimal software titles, most being produced from Bandai itself. The console market at the time was also being dominated by systems like Nintendo 64, PC, Sega Saturn, and PlayStation. This heavy saturation of successful systems left little room for the Pippin to gain a prevalence or fan base. Its final fatal quality was its misinterpreted identity, and its cost. The Pippin was meant to be a computer that played games, not just a console. This in turn would make its $599 cost seem reasonable compared to other home computers at the time. Where the Pippin suffered is that it was never seen as a home computer but solely as a console, and $599 dollars was a steep price for a console in the mid 90's.
While only around 42,000 Pippins were sold, Bandai produced about 100,000. It is even rumored that at one point more accessories to the system existed then the Pippin itself due mostly to a lack of production. While the system was suppose to meld the console and computer systems into one, it just fell short. It required a specific internet navigator that cost $25 a month and could not run Netscape 2.0, the popular browser at the time. Bandai also did not take into fact the concept that almost 50% of Americans at the time were considered functionally illiterate. This led to the misunderstanding of the Pippin as a console or computer and cut the market in half for "gamers" that would want to surf the internet due to a common lack in desire to browse and read. It now has been tainted as a bust and failure in console history, being noted by "PC World Magazine" and "Screwattack.com" as one of the top worst tech bust of all time.
Article on the Pippin
The Bandai Pippin @World
E3 and Other Adventures in Electronic Entertainment
This column first appeared in the May 21, 1996 issue of PC Graphics Report
"Unfortunately, all Nintendo fed at the press conference was cheese and crackers, but I was determined to save my appetite for the Bandai Pippin @World announcement, being held that evening at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I wasn't disappointed by the spread, but I was somewhat disappointed by the Pippin, hailed by its manufacturers and designers as being the ultimate "Television Appliance" for surfing the Internet. Sheryl Crow performing live for a small group of us (1000 people) did make up for it (although I did lose out on a Sheryl Crow CD when I accidentally gave someone a free drink ticket which later turned out to actually be a CD redemption ticket).
The Pippin is an Apple developed technology, so it's no surprise that the guts of the Pippin are remarkably similar to those of a Macintosh. But not similar enough to allow straight Mac software to run as-is. After all, the Pippin (I call it a "MacJr") folks need to find a way to charge title developers a royalty to justify the low cost ($599) of the product, and they do this by licensing a custom Pippin API. So, the next question is why is Bandai introducing the Pippin, and not Apple. The answer appears to be two part:
Bandai's parent company's claim to fame is ownership of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and as such, the company has extensive experience with channels alternate to those of traditiona computing devices.
Bandai's Bandai Digital Entertainment group, which is marketing the Pippin, has received quite a chunk of funding to launch the Pippin, and my guess is that Apple is going to let them test the waters before shipping its own Pippin unit (which Apple committed to at its conference last week).
There are some features on the Pippin I think are good, like the fact it actually does enable consumer Web access via a television, has dual VGA and video output (NTSC or PAL), its keyboard/digitzer combo is pretty cool (the digitizer pad is above the keyboard, and the whole thing folds to make a thin black box), the "banana" controller appears pretty useful, they have some neat tools and games available for the unit, and they've kicked off a decent ad campaign in USA Today. For the latter, the first ad I saw had this simple message "Introducing a revolutionary new way to get at the Internet... It's called the television." With ads like this, they are helping promote the entire consumer Network Computer (NC) concept and not just their own device, which is a good thing for the industry, and probably not so good for Bandai.
Let's take a look at everything I don't like about the Bandai Pippin @World.
First, because it uses a "lite" MacOS core, people will have great expectations of what the Pippin should be able to do since it's really a mini-PC. The Bandai folks have agreed that changing this mind set is a real challenge.
Second, the Pippin's TV output, while surprisingly reasonable for Web pages, does a lousy job on regular OS text and Web browser menus because of the small fonts used there.
Third, the price point of $599 for a fall shipment is too high. Especially when you consider the game console Internet connections.
Fourth, the keyboard and controller currently require cables - no IR or RF cordless input devices are going to ship with Bandai's Pippin.
Fifth, Pippin forces people to use a specific Internet provider, PSInet, for at least 6 months, with a $25/month minimum service fee, which forces consumers who are already net literate to have multiple ISPs, probably shutting them out entirely of wanting to buy a Pippin with that constraint. That obviously leaves the remaining unwashed masses as potential Pippin purchasers, still a large number.
Sixth, the machine is currently incapable (due to not enough RAM) of running Netscape 2.0 or something comparable with Java and VRML support, putting its capabilities well behind the state of the art when it will ship in September.
Seventh, the name for the device ("Pippin @World") is silly. Many non-computer literate people don't know what an "@" is.
Eighth, (and most importantly) Bandai has not studied the extent to which Americans are functionally illiterate. According to a 1993 study by the U.S. Department of Education, approximately 46-51% of the adults resident in the U.S. are considered functionally illiterate. Astounding but true. What this all means is that while a Pippin could be used as an ultra-expensive (in relative terms) game console device by these folks, they aren't about to do any serious Internet surfing. When I brought this up to a Japanese executive with Bandai, he just could not understand that Americans might not be able to read. Talk about a cultural gap."
Hardware
66MHz PowerPC 603 RISC Microprocessor
Superscaler, 3 instructions per clock cycle
8 kByte data and 8 kByte instruction caches
IEEE standard Single & Double Precision Floating Point Unit
6 MB combined System & Video Memory, advanced architecture
Easy memory expansion cards in 2, 4, 8, and 16MB increments.
128K Flash Memory accessible storage space.
4X CDROM drive
64 kbyte SRAM Store/Restore Backup
Two high-speed serial ports, one of which is GeoPort ready, the other is LocalTalk
PCI-compatible expansion slot
Two “AppleJack” ruggedized ADB inputs
Supports up to four simultaneous players over Apple Desktop Bus (ADB)
Supports standard ADB keyboards and mice with mechanical adapters
Video
8 bit and 16 bit video support
Dual Frame Buffers for superior frame to frame animation
Support for NTSC & PAL composite, S-Video and VGA (640x480) monitors
Up to 16.7M colors
Horizontal and vertical video convolution
Audio
Stereo 16 bit 44 kHz sampled output
Stereo 16 bit 44 kHz sampled input
Headphone output jack with individual volume control
Audio CD player compatibility
Telephony
GeoPort ready
Controllers
Supports up to 4 simultaneous players over Apple Desktop Bus (ADB)
Will support standard ADB keyboards and mice with connector adapters
Consisted of a D-Pad, a track ball, four action buttons etc. in a boomerang shape
Data I/O
1 standard Serial Communications port
Aftermarket Expansion
"PCI like" expansion for adding floppy drive, hard disk drive, graphics accelerators, codecs, etc. (Not available at introduction!)
ROMs
68k emulator
Macintosh Tool Box intact
Localized bit mapped fonts
Reduced Macintosh System ROM footprint
CD Formats Supported
Standard audio CD
Other formats in market studies
Software
Run time environment derived from MacOS
Integrates QuickTime 2.0 and PPC native version of QuickDraw
Reduced system memory footprint - (computer specific features removed)
Disk resident system stamped on CD with title
System boots off CD
Pippin system software upgrades released through CD-ROM stamping operations
Developers free to choose from menu of system software upgrades
AppleJack controller
AppleJack Wireless (IR) controller
Pippin keyboard with drawing tablet
Pippin Modems (14.4, 28.8, 33.6kbit/s)
Pippin memory (2, 4, 8, 16MB)
Pippin Floppy Dock
Pippin MO 256MB optical disk
Pippin ADB adapter (for connecting Macintosh devices to Pippin)
AppleJack to Macintosh (ADB) adapter (for connecting Pippin devices to Macintosh)
When the Pippin was first released it included an external floppy, keyboard, mouse, external ink jet printer and a GeoPort telecom adapter for analog phone lines. The base Pippin units shipped with an accessory kit that included a single input controller device. You could also purchase hard disks, PCMCIA slots, and MPEG2 codecs separately. Many of the Pippins external hardware and accessories were sold and created by third parties.
The fact that the Pippin ran as a computer processor was unique for consoles of the time. This allowed the user to both browse the internet via browser and run computer programing on the same system that they played their games on. None the less, this feature was never seen to its full potential, along side the fact that the Pippins computer processor paled in comparison to some of the other computers ( running on a run time environment which is fundamentally more limited than macintosh) on the maker at the time. The Pippin could also be hooked into an Apple printer along side a keyboard, mouse, and drawing tablet. The Pippin could also play DOS / Windows games but required a lot of technical recompilations and modifications to do so.
The system upon release sold two different consoles, the ATMARK which was white and sold in Japan, and the @WORLD which was black and sold in the U.S. A few black systems were sold as ATMARK and are considered very rare. The two systems are exactly the same, marketing was the only difference. The Pippin was also considered to be one of the most expandable devices in its category, allowing the user to add system memory easily using plastic DRAM memory cards, mass storage devices, graphics accelerators, compression decoders etc. This allows the user to "retain their investment". A fun fact to know too is that the name Pippin derived from a type of apple, smaller than the McIntosh. The follows in line with Apple Computer Inc.'s trends in name.
Game Title Publisher Country Released In
Only 18 titles total were ever released for the Pippin in the United States, with a handful more released in Japan. The list above sums up almost the total of all the Pippin games released in America. Take note that almost half of the games are released by Bandai themselves. All Pippin titles could be used on Macintosh computers, although you could not use any Macintosh software on the Pippin without certain modifications (as mentioned above). The Pippin could also play DOS / Windows games with heavy modifications.
This list above all shows the dismal state the Pippin was in during its short lived days. With a list of only 18 titles in the
U.S., most very obscure, the system was doomed for failure. The titles above also show the limitations and abilities of the system. They games attempted to be innovative in both game play and graphically, but all together fell short in both. The systems limited 16 bit graphics kept games from the brilliance of systems like the Nintendo 64, while the software itself became stale because of lack of third party and over production from Bandai itself. The games, novel in today's standard, were abysmal upon release. This couldn't be a more blatant example of the poor quality of system they were produced on.
Original Archived Pippin Site - An archived version of Pippins 1997 site
Pippin Q&A - Question and Answer for the Pippin System
Pippin Manuals - A collection of the manuals for the Pippin
" apple pippin: the most obscure video game system of the 90s | overtime comedy." overtime comedy. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://www.overtimecomedy.com/2007/02/19/apple-pippin-the-most-obscure-video-game-system-of-the-90s/>.
" Pippin (video game platform) - Giant Bomb ." GiantBomb.com ~ Video Game Reviews, News, Videos & Forums - Giant Bomb . N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://www.giantbomb.com/pippin/60-102/>.
"Good Deal Games - Classic Videogame Games Apple Pippin Release List." Good Deal Games - Classic Videogame SuperSite. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://www.gooddealgames.com/Release_Lists/RL_Pippin.html>.
"Bandai Pippin Museum & Archive." The World According to the Mac Geek. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://www.macgeek.org/museum/pippin/>.
Japan, the time the Apple Bandai Pippin was released (1995 in. "Apple Bandai Pippin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin#Hardware>.