Anyone have an Apple Pippin?

[jmjustin6]

Does anyone have an Appla Pippin? I was thinking of adding it to the collection, but wanted to know if it was worth the price it seems to be valued at? Is it more of a game system or computer? Best games? I've heard mixed reviews on it. I just sold a Macintosh performa 200 to someone in my area and he showed me pics of his pippin. Hes both a video game and apple collector. Said it's a fun machine/computer. But I'm just not too sure. 

[Justin]

I had a Pippin. It was charcoal black. On the controller it said "@world" where it says "atmark" in the photo above. I don't know what the difference is. I bought it in 2000 and I think I sold it in 2011. I thought of it as being just as much of a Bandai console as Apple. If it had an Apple logo on it I probably would still have it, if only for an interesting piece of history. It never really fit in alongside my Newton or 20th Anniversary Macintosh. This was just before Apple became "cool" again. Pippin was one of those Gil Amelio things that Steve Jobs saw when he came back and probably thought was stupid and shook his head at. Had Apple introduced a dedicated video game system during the age of iPod and sold it in Apple stores it would've been a big deal. Pippin never benefited from any of that, it was just a little too early.

I only played it a few times, I found it to be quite bland. The best way I can describe it is to say that I had WebTV at the time (remember that!) and Pippin felt exactly like trying to play computer games on WebTV and then go "hey look I'm playing video games now!" Pippin felt very much like one of those late '90s attempts to merge home computers and the internet with television. Imagine a world where you could answer an email on your TV screen, connect with friends, watch Seinfeld and explore the world of Multimedia! I only had 3 games, one was a racing game called "Racing Days". I absolutely love racing games. From the jewel case "Racing Days" looked pretty lame, and it was. Think of "Need for Speed" on 3DO, with the awful frame rate of Redline Racing on Jaguar. I wanted to like it, but it felt like a bland computer game and I'd much rather play Ridge Racer, Sega Rally Championship or Crusin' USA. That was the only game I really played at all. Then there was a game that was kind of like Myst and actually seemed very cool and mysterious. I forget the name of it, but it was like you were finding your way around and unravelling a mystery. My third game was a Power Rangers game which I had no interest in whatsoever. I bought the unit used and it came with all three games.

My suggestion is if you're an Apple or Bandai fanatic and you have the opportunity to add something really unique to your collection, do it. Otherwise don't dive down that rabbit hole. It's not like TurboGrafx-16 or Lynx or Neo-Geo where there are some really great games to play and enjoy that seem to get better with time. This is more like WebTV.

[Justin]

Apple's original web page for Pippin: https://web.archive.org/web/19970414095621/http://www.pippin.apple.com/

[jmjustin6]

Wow thanks for the response. Yea the guy was also trying to tell me the same about going down the rabbit hole and unless I'm a huge apple fan then wait until I find this one at a steal of a deal.

But k figured there had to be 1 hidden gem on this thing as far as games. I think that almost every system does (even the bad ones) 

Well I guess I'm gonna hold off on it. Hell for the price they are going for on ebay I think I'd be better off spending that much on a vectrex or something else.