Gizmondo

The Gizmondo is remembered less as a game system than as a crime story. Released in 2005 by Tiger Telematics — no relation to the toy-maker Tiger Electronics — it was a Windows-based handheld crammed with ambitious features: GPS navigation, a camera, GPRS mobile connectivity, and even a cheaper "Smart Adds" model subsidized by advertising pushed to the device. On paper it wanted to be a do-everything pocket computer that happened to play games.

In practice it was a disaster on nearly every front. It launched at a punishing price, its game library was tiny and forgettable, and its features felt half-baked next to the momentum building behind the Nintendo DS and PSP. It sold a pitiful number of units — by most accounts only a few thousand — making it one of the worst-selling handhelds in history and a fixture on worst-console lists.

But the hardware's failure was eclipsed by what was happening behind the company. Executives connected to Gizmondo were revealed to have ties to a Swedish criminal network, and the venture became notorious for lavish spending — extravagant launch parties, sports cars, huge salaries — funded while the business hemorrhaged money. The saga reached tabloid infamy when a company executive crashed a rare Ferrari Enzo at extraordinary speed on a California highway, a spectacular wreck that drew global attention and pulled the threads of financial impropriety into public view.

The parent company collapsed into bankruptcy in 2006, barely a year after launch, amid allegations of fraud and misappropriated funds. Periodic attempts to revive the brand went nowhere. The Gizmondo endures as gaming's definitive cautionary tale about hype, mismanagement, and outright criminality — a device whose technical shortcomings were almost a footnote to the astonishing real-life drama of the people who made it.