📰 New article from Retro Handhelds
Game Over: Mattel’s Hyperscan “Console”
https://retrohandhelds.gg/game-over-mattels-hyperscan-console/
Mattel’s HyperScan: The console that tried to turn video games into a trading card game… and failed spectacularly.
In 2006, while the PS3 and Wii were about to revolutionize gaming, Mattel dropped a black-and-red brick called the HyperScan—a device that required you to scan plastic cards to play. Yes, really. IntelliCards, they called them. Think Pokémon cards… if they also randomly erased your progress when placed near a speaker.
The tech was janky. Cards got wiped by magnets. Games loaded slower than dial-up. And to actually play the X-Men game? You had to buy booster packs like it was a CCG. Spoiler: the standalone TV version? No scanner. No characters. Just a sad, flat box with one button.
Only five games ever released. Retailers slashed prices to $9.99—then gave up and sent the rest to tech purgatory, next to the Barcode Battler.
Funny thing? Mattel wasn’t wrong. They just arrived 10 years too early. Skylanders, Amiibo, Disney Infinity—all proved physical-to-digital was a winner. But the HyperScan? It was less “visionary,” more “what if we made a Tamagotchi play Street Fighter?”
A cautionary tale for innovators: being ahead of your time doesn’t help if your tech can’t even read a card.