I looked up Epidermits because I didn't really understand what it was and found out its not really a toy. It was created as a "concept toy" meant to showcase what happens when product development gets offtrack by not taking into account human interaction. The toy was never meant to be marketed and I don't believe it was ever sold. Based on the article I read it looks as if they may only have produced a single Epidermits to take the show and prove that it was possible to create it.

It sort of makes me wonder how valid all of the other entries are on this list, but I don't have time to look everything up, so yeah I'd like sources too.

I don't really care about historical accounts or this critical data of which you speak, but toys are something I take seriously.

Except for, you know, the fact that in ancient Greek they determined that pure democracy was not a preferable form of government, which is why are current form of government, although imperfect, is a step forward. Particularly read the works on government by Plato and Aristotle (the founders of modern political science). Plato's account of the trail of Socrates (both of them Athenians) is pretty much a first hand account of Democracy not working.

Case in point, one of the huge problems with democracies is that although it allows rulership by majority opinion, it's very poor at protecting minority rights. One of the things they noted about democracies, even back in ancient Greece, is they tended to levy heavy taxes on the upper class, and even outright take property from them, for the sole purpose of redistributing it to the lower class which had a higher population base.

You also have the problem of people being ill-informed and even stupid. I don't feel as if I have enough training or knowledge to make good decisions on things like the domestic economic policy and foreign military aid. Then there are a lot of people in this country I've spoken to who I absolutely don't want to have any say in the matter.

And finally, as Aristotle noted, even though you don't have politicians in a pure democracy, you still have individuals who wield massive amounts of power. These are charismatic people who are able to sway the opinions of large amounts of people in order to sway the vote. Just look at the celebrities who are politically active, the televangelists, and the political commentators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to see who would be wielding large amounts of political power.

Gameworks was where I saw it too. I haven't been down there in a couple of years, but I think it was still there the last time I went in.

Sales and Market Share. The N64s lifetime world sales are nearly a third of its biggest competitor, the PSX. Likewise I remember the market share a while after it's release worked out to Sony 80%, Nintendo 15% and Sega 5% in the US, and Sony 80%, Nintendo 5%, and Sega 15% in Japan. Comparatively Nintendo never had less than a 48% market share in the previous generation (and usually held more than 50% after the SNES release) and nearly 100% market share in the US and Japan during the reign of the NES.

Some Points:

1. Alkabeth was released in 1980 and featured 3-D dungeons (although the overworld map was 2-D).

2. Although marketed as a 16 bit system, the Turbo Grafix-16 is technically an 8 bit system with a 16 bit Graphics Processor.

3. Having played a Virtual Boy when it was new, I'd hardly call it brilliant. In fact, I seem to remember Nintendo of America not wanting to release it at all stateside because they knew it would flop, but Nintendo forced them to in order to get rid of the hardware they were unable to sell in Japan. The system was very limited in terms of graphics and the fact that it only supported a single player without linking. I can't really think of anything that could've been done with the system that couldn't be done better on a television. And the virtual boy experience is far from what people think of when they hear virtual reality, even by 1995 standards.

4. The N64 wasn't way ahead of its time. Nintendo released its system nearly a year and a half later than Sony and Sega, which accounts for its better system specs. In every other way though Nintendo was far behind the current trends. Where as everyone else was switching to CD based systems, Nintendo decided to use the inferior and more expensive cartridge. Nintendo stayed with outdated royalty payment models and lost a lot of third party companies to Sony and Sega. Nintendo also failed to compete with current pricing trends that favored lower prices for games and current marketing trends. Ultimately the N64 wasn't a failure because it was ahead of its time, it was a failure because it was made to compete in a market era that had passed.

5. There were arcade games that used motion sensing cameras prior to the Eye Toy. In particular I remember a version of Tekken (not sure if it was an official Namco add-on) where the character punched and kicked according to player motion. Unless Natal is a huge success though, I don't really see this being a relevant first, and right now the press is saying Natal isn't looking so hot. Plus it's going to be a hard sell since peripherals generally don't sell too well and it's difficult to convince third parties to develop for their limited owner base.