https://venturebeat.com/2009/09/12/the-best-dreamcast-vmu-ga...
For games where it was useful, you got cool things like picking football plays on a private screen, or having a private screen to see your items, hidden from the other players in the room, or inventory/status information. Etc
I didn't use any of the VMU contained games though, coin cells are too expensive.
Also kind of jarring how this is the first bit of "retro" tech that I have seen a reverse engineering post on that I actually used when it was new..
I also like trying to guess what these unused features were originally meant for.
My guess is that the "directly giving an item", "directly giving a pokemon", "special map", and "special route" were meant to be used in real-life events sponsored by the game developer. For instance, all attendees to a convention who own that device could receive an item or a pokemon as a bonus; the convention booth would have a custom device which knows how to send the necessary commands.
The "direct memory write" was probably to allow the DS game a limited ability to "patch" the device in case a bug was found later, or a new feature had to be added.
> Curiously, at the time it came out, a study deemed the PokéWalker one of the best pedometers available at the time.
I still remember the "Duck hunt gun" on the Super Nintendo which was widely interesting.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/26875/how-did-duck-hunt-...
(couldn't find the original source of that information though)
The Duck Hunt zapper was for the original Nintendo, but the Super Nintendo had the Super Scope. :)
https://theoldschoolgamevault.com/blog/articles/1007-super-n...
Chances are this was subcontracted.
Flip side: you are going to be techincally correct. Nintendo has deep relationships with local companies even when those local companies are not fully Nintendo owned. Deepest example might be Intelligent Systems which programmed and manufactured Nintendo's devkits up until the Switch era.
Game Freak in theory is independent. They used Sega to publish their pet project platformer game. Yet somehow Nintendo just a few months ago moved them to an amalgamated office tower along with all other 100% Nintendo owned Tokyo studios. The message being that Nintendo keeps strong control through their project managers.
Source: my uncle works at Nintendo. /s
