Amstrad · 1990–1991 · ~15,000
Amstrad’s 8-bit console, launched into the teeth of the 16-bit era with a threadbare library and a cartridge-supply crisis, lasting barely six months on the market.
Released in Europe in September 1990 for £99, the GX4000 was built on Amstrad’s CPC home-computer hardware, offering improved graphics, a sleek design, custom gamepads, and RGB output uncommon among consoles of the day. But its timing was catastrophic: it arrived the same season as Sega’s 16-bit Mega Drive, making an 8-bit machine look obsolete on day one. Worse, most of its 27-odd games were simplistic ports of existing CPC titles, and a "cartridge crisis" in early 1991 — caused by Amstrad’s own slow duplication process — meant software arrived late, cancelled, or not at all. Amstrad cut the price to under £80, but with little marketing muscle against Sega and Nintendo, the console was withdrawn after roughly six months, selling on the order of 15,000 units.