Every so often I run into a piece of console hardware that forces a double take.

[atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org]

Every so often I run into a piece of console hardware that forces a double take.

Enter the digiBLAST.

Yes, BLAST in all caps. It earns it.

You’ve likely never heard of it because it came from a Dutch company and launched only in Europe, where it immediately face-planted. You can still find spare units in Italy, though, if you look hard enough.

The problem was the hardware. It aimed for GBA territory but didn’t reach it. Then it made things worse by launching in 2005, right as the PSP and Nintendo DS reset expectations for what a handheld should be.

Even so, it showed up with built-in Atari titles like Asteroids and Centipede. You could slot in Rayman, Tony Hawk, and Sonic carts. It even joined the mid-2000s “your handheld is also a TV” trend, complete with officially released Yu-Gi-Oh episodes.

But the real shock is the industrial design. It’s loud. It’s excessive. It has that weird 2000s confidence where everything looked like a prop from a cable sci-fi show. Nothing today has this energy—the digiBLAST simply can't exist now.

Nikko, the company behind it, shut down in 2008—three years after launch. Yet they still managed to manufacture about 100,000 units.