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History
At the beginning of 1995, in the aftermath of the demise of the Atari Jaguar, Richard Miller, at the time vice president of Atari Corporation, was looking back at the Atari Jaguar and wondering how its failure could have been avoided. The lack of content, the difficulty of programming for it and the initial lack of CD support were among the reasons the console failed. At the same time, the DVD was being presented as the upcoming new format, and Richard immediately understood that the DVD would be a good vehicle for launching a new game console. Based solely on this idea, Richard sold his house, quit Atari and started VM Labs in a spare bedroom.
The idea developed by Miller was simple: replace the DVD player’s video decoder with a processor capable of playing games and offering new video-processing capabilities. Given the penetration of the VHS, it was not hard to imagine that virtually every household would one day own a DVD player, and with VM Labs technology in it, his gaming system would be everywhere.
Richard was able to convince five people to invest $200,000 in VM Labs, including Nicholas Lefevre, a lawyer who helped shape the business plan. Using contacts he had made at Atari, Richard convinced Motorola to produce the chipset following VM Labs’ design. Then Richard decided to contact Toshiba because of its involvement in the creation of the DVD. Toshiba agreed to integrate the VM Labs technology in its products, provided that it worked.
Dubbed Project X, the technology was promoted by VM Labs in a crusade to various Hollywood studios and game publishers. VM Labs managed to get some major studios on board, but the gaming industry was more reluctant to get involved. A few ports of existing titles, such as Myst and Madden NFL, were announced, but the big studios were afraid to sink time and money into a console with potential to be big, when they could be working on consoles they knew were successful, and they preferred to wait for the release of Project X before committing any resources to it.
The development cycle continued for both the hardware and the software. During that time, Project X changed its name to Nuon, and a few games from small-time developers were announced, including Tempest 3000, the sequel to Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar. VM Labs also partnered with other DVD player manufacturers, such as Samsung and RCA.
Release
By May 2000, DVD players with Nuon technology started to be released. First came the Samsung Extiva DVD-N2000, then the Toshiba SD-2300. The technology was well received by the press, and it seemed that Richard’s bet would finally pay off.
Demise
But it wasn’t long before everything went south. First of all, the launch titles were late to the party. When the titles finally came out, they had difficulty generating any attention from the press. The technology was already showing signs of age, as it was capable of N64-level graphics at a time when the Dreamcast was already a reality.
Game sales were low, which in turn resulted in low profitability for VM Labs, which was desperately looking for more funding. VM Labs was licensing its technology to its hardware partners and to software creators. Toshiba and Samsung were prudent and released only a few compatible units at first to limit their exposure, and with games selling fewer than 10,000 units, the money coming from licensing fees was not enough to keep VM Labs afloat. By 2001, Richard Miller was spending 100% of his time trying to get more funding. Overall, VM Labs was able to secure $30 million when $60 million would have been required.
By the time Toshiba and Samsung had entered mass production of their respective units, VM Labs was out of money. At this point, VM Labs was months away from profitability, and in a last-ditch effort to save the company, Nicholas Lefevre put VM Labs into bankruptcy and tried, together with Richard, to purchase the assets to continue the work. Sadly, they were outbid by Genesis Microchip.
Genesis Microchip tried its best to push the Nuon technology but, after failing to bring low-cost manufacturers on board and after a failed deal with Disney in 2003, it dropped the technology completely.
Technical Specifications
| Processor | 16-bit 333 MHz quad-core VM Labs Nuon MPE |
|---|---|
| Memory | 32 MB 8-bit Fast DRAM at 33 MHz |
| Video Processor | 2× 3D Media GL MPE with 8 MB video RAM |
Model
| Company | Model | Region |
| Samsung | DVD-N501 | North America |
| Samsung | DVD-N2000 | North America |
| Samsung | DVD-N504 | Switzerland |
| Samsung | DVD N505* | UK and Germany |
| Samsung | DVD-N591* | Korea |
| Toshiba | SD-2300 | North America |
| RCA | DRC300N** | North America |
| RCA | DRC480N** | North America |
* When Samsung realized that games would probably not be released outside of the U.S., it decided to remove the joyport to avoid confusion.
** The RCA models don’t support the official Nuon games, but they do support homebrew.
Games
- Tempest 3000
- Freefall 3050 A.D.
- Merlin Racing
- Space Invaders X.L.
- Iron Soldier 3 (later recalled by VM Labs due to incompatibility with some players)
- Ballistic (only available with Samsung players)
- The Next Tetris (only available with Toshiba players)
- Crayon Shin-chan 3 (Korean-only release) (짱구는 못말려 3 –돌아온 짱구–)
Movies
- The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
- Bedazzled
- Dolittle 2
- Planet of the Apes
Controllers
- Logitech Gamepad
- HPI Stealth controller
- HPI Warrior Digital-D pad
- Samsung NUON Controller
Reference
Remembering Nuon, the gaming chip that nearly changed the world—but didn’t