Sega Re-enters Console Wars! ...But It's Not What You Think

Talk about hitting an untapped market. First, a question for the male readers: have you ever been in a restroom, taking care of business, and bored out of your mind? You try dissolving the urinal cake, but let’s be honest – that sucker’s not going anywhere. If only the back wall changed colour when wet, or something, right?

Well, it seems Sega has decided to do something about it by developing a console it calls the Toylet, to be installed in urinals all around Tokyo. An LCD screen is installed above the urinal, and a pressure sensor into the bowl, allowing for videogame interaction the world’s not seen since the debut of the Wii.

Heh, wii.

So what can would-be gamers play on this sweet hardware? The Toylet offers four choices: In Graffiti Eraser, the aim is to aim at and remove paint from a wall. Mannekin Pis harkens back to Mortal Kombat’s classic ‘Test Your Might’ challenge by measuring the strength of your pee. The third game, The Northern Wind, The Sun and Me, is perhaps the most politically incorrect, as gameplay consists essentially of an attempt to blow a woman’s clothes off, but then again, there are arguably worse games.

Lastly, nothing – but nothing – has prepared you for the fourth game, the fantastically-titled Battle! Milk From Nose. The only multiplayer game of the lot, Battle! pits you against the last patron of the urinal, comparing the strength of your pee in an all-out deathmatch to the finish – via streams of milk that erupt from your character’s nose. If your stream is strongest, you are crowned champion of the urinal, and the saved ghost of your performance will haughtily await the next challenger.

When your business is complete, the Toylet allows you to insert a USB stick to save your scores and such, and displays some parting advertising material for your reading pleasure.

So where’s Call of Duty: Black Ops? What about the big titles? Considering Sega’s last few forays into hardware – with such commercial failures like the Saturn under Sega’s belt – it’s no wonder third-party support is shakey. But just you wait: urinal-ready Mass Effect 3 is just around the corner.