Talk:HeartBeat Corporation

To do

• References needed: 1000 unit run.
• Lansing stuff.
• Really get something in these summaries about how the company confused the eff between their two products, to the point where they had to put "Personal Trainer and Catalyst" on the Joey box. And them treating the Catalyst like it both needed the Trainer, and at times that it WAS the trainer. This is a company that spelled a single game name FOUR different ways on the same package, so hey, not the best with consistency. And so inconsistent that literally the crux of their whole system, the Catalyst, was practically forgotten about. And how both were treated as the same platform. AND how certain system marketing implies you need the Trainer to use the Catalyst. Despite them literally selling and advertising the Catalyst by itself. Also, they spell workout as "work-out", like as a noun. gross.
• HeartBeat Corporation was an official licensee of Electronic Arts.
• Stores HeartBeat products were sold in/distributed through: NordicTrack (which sold the Personal Trainer at $350 in January 94)
• Per a warning card shipped with the system, plugging two "microprocessors" into the Mega Drive could cause it damage. I'm assuming they mean two Catalyst adapters. (Edit: They do.)
• An "updated version" of Outback Joey was supposedly due in early January 1994, per a letter which shipped with the system from the company president. It's contextualized as "We're proud to show this Sega seal of quality, and to insure that quality, we're shipping an updated version etc". Reading between the lines, are they saying "Hey uhh, there's a significant enough bug or issue with Outback Joey that we're going out of way to let you know, HEY, we've got another revision coming so don't worry." Maybe not, but dang. Now that it's been dumped, someone needs to give it a few look-overs to see what might be up. (EDIT: Looks like it was actually released, and legitimately in early January 1994 too, right on the dot. Check the Joey page.)
• Link HeartBeat's (unused?) company slogan was "It's Serious Fun".

CartridgeCulture (talk) 01:30, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

Can anyone find this critical Outworld 2375 AD Nintendo Age thread?

• Unseen64 references a Nintendo Age thread where a collector posts an image of promotional screenshot films for Outworld 2375 AD, and later another collector (notably from Lansing) states he owns a prototype. While Unseen64 claims they're linking to the Nintendo Age thread, its instead a dead link to some website called GoCollect? It's also unarchived, and I'm not able to locate the original thread. However, I'm pretty unfamiliar with Nintendo Age. Is anyone able to somehow find the original thread, or at least a cached copy of it/some information/the text/anything?

CartridgeCulture (talk) 02:02, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

Staff

• Adam Benjamin (Product Manager)
• Justin Hall-Tipping (President)
• Scott Goodpaster (?)
• Patricia Males Evanko (?)
• Jeffrey Smith (?)

Links

• Justia trademark databse for HB Corp
• Bloomberg article (behind paywall)
• Article about company investor
• Investigatory thread (newspaper ads)
• Investigatory thread (barcodes)
• Wikipedia article: Get the refs and source them independently, both for additional information and actual refs.
• Unseen64 entry: Gather any basic information not already on the article, and again source any additional refs. ALSO, there's a reference to the original Nintendo Age thread (with a dead and unarchived link, and apparently unable to be easily searched) where a collector found those promotional screenshot films and posted the original photograph of them, AND later in the thread is another collector who stated he owns a prototype (AAAAND hes from LANSING). There's a lot going on here.
• Investigatory thread (brochure)
• Rough brochure photographs

CartridgeCulture (talk) 01:29, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

Company timeline

Adam Benjamin's LinkedIn says he worked at HeartBeat from 91-94. Now he was one of the main guys. And the angel investor article says there was a date when the company stopped production, but was still legally in business. Even if they weren't doing any business other than just receiving orders/technical support/etc. Which lines up with the information we already know. PPLUUUUSSS, a bigger tipoff is the fact that PGA Tour's manual says it was made in 94, but the game itself was released in 95.

So, sometime in late 1994, the company stopped production, published one final game (with the help of Polar Technology?) in early 1995, and that was pretty much it. Probably. We're learning every day here ;)

• CartridgeCulture (talk) 04:37, 7 October 2021 (EDT)