The games console was quite literally the games system that never was, but that doesn't mean it should be entirely forgotten, ex-Infinium Labs CEO Kevin Bachus (one of the pioneers of the at Microsoft) certainly thinks so, anyway.

Bachus may no longer be with Phantom maker Infinium, but he admires their attempts to bring the console back to life, and says the device was perhaps just ahead of its time (it was earmarked as the first "broadband-only" games system).

"I wish them nothing but success," he told Gamasutra. "I think that for me, there's kind of an empty place in our heart where Phantom should be because there was tremendous skepticism about the system and a lot of joke-telling and a lot of criticism.

"In some cases, there was also some bitterness and nastiness that was directed at the product, which is unfortunate because for those who actually spent the time to get to understand what we were doing and looked at it, I think they saw something that probably was pretty cool.

"Maybe in a way, it was a little bit ahead of its time because it was attempting to make the whole process of accessing games easier and therefore more accessible to a broader audience."

By Luke Guttridge