Chittagong
Gold Member
That's right. I thought it was dead. As did pretty much anyone else. Imagine the shock of walking down the hotel stairs to Develop awards in London and seeing the drink reception sponsored by Infinium, celebrating the "European premier unveiling" of the Phantom 'console'.
There it was, two Phantom boxes, similar to E3 2004 - or maybe E3 2003... well, whichever - the show with the styrofoam fruit which had an hilarious symbolism with the mockup console.
The other device on display was showing a boring presentation touting "500 games" and "direct distribution". The other device could be used to play one of two craptacular games - Thief and some Turtles game.
Both games looked like some PC game from five years ago, which I guess they were. Awful textures and low polygon counts.
This time they had a joypad available, and it actually looked like the six button Megadrive pad back in the day. No analog controls or such, it was bare bones. The prototype had some big loose weight inside the joypad. Can't imagine what it was.
The device itself is as enormous as it was a few years ago. The top lid was loose, so I got to peek inside and there in fact was some electronic components there. The finish of the gear is very nice, with a high quality white gloss.
Phantom was received with much laughter, echoing the embarrasingly loud and shameless laughs after the Gizmondo nominees announcements in the gala. Pretty much everybody had forgotten that the Phantom existed and were stunned to see that they are still alive. Some developers thought it was an elaborate internet joke back in the day and were shocked to see that it was an actual product. The product is as horrid as I remembered, and I can't think of a person who would be tempted to buy one.
Seeing Phantom in flesh, I was happy to get a go with it, since I think this was the last time we ever meet. Oh dear.
