Talk:HeartBeat Corporation

To do

• Rewrite all the HeartBeat-related summaries. They're accurate and not badly worded, but they're a bit on the chunky side, and could probably use a split into two paragraphs and some further clarification.
• Brainstorm how to most clearly approach the issue of the Trainer+Catalyst originally being sold together as the "Personal Trainer" (and the Catalyst not having a proper name), and then when sales were poor, removing the systems from the bundles, chopping $100 bucks off the price, and selling it as the Catalyst. Probably just either the summary or the first section of the Personal Trainer article needs a nice clear explanation of this, and probably a MainArticle to the-- Catalyst? You'll figure it out.
• Search YouTube for better images of HeartBeat products.
• Find the source for the 1000 unit production run claim.
• Personal Trainer price was dropped $100 (to $199.99) by April 95 (was the Catalyst also dropped to $99.99?)
• Also verify pricing. I believe HeartBeat stuff was priced $XXX.95 each, but verify that.
• Lansing, Michigan stuff.
• Brand confusion stuff, both from company and its legacy.
• HeartBeat Corporation was an official licensee of Electronic Arts.
• HeartBeat's (unused?) company slogan was "It's Serious Fun".
• Determine who developed Outworld 2375 AD.
• Determine who developed the hockey/golf games. Was it the original games' developers? Was it Western Technologies? Maybe HeartBeat Corporation themselves?
• Bloomberg article (behind paywall)
• New York Times 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.
• Investigatory thread (brochure)
• Rough brochure photographs
• Justia trademark databse for HB Corp

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

List of company staff

• Adam Benjamin (Product Manager)
• Justin Hall-Tipping (President)
• Nick Burton (Director of Business Development?)
• Jon Paul (Chief Financial Officer, interim)
• Scott Goodpaster (?)
• Patricia Males Evanko (?)
• Jeffrey Smith (?)

List of retailers/vendors/stores

• NordicTrack (selling the Personal Trainer at $350 in January 1994) (unsure if mail-order or in-store) (probably selling from release)
• Target (Lansing, Michigan, April 1995) (in-store) (probably selling from post-sister company merger, late 1994/early 1995)
• Target (Okemos, Michigan, April 1995) (in-store) (probably selling from post-sister company merger, late 1994/early 1995)
• Target (Jackson, Michigan, April 1995) (in-store) (probably selling from post-sister company merger, late 1994/early 1995)

Production run sizes

• Personal Trainer set - 1000 (Personal Trainer systems - 500; Catalyst peripherals - 500) (the 1000 count needs citation, but whatever the total run happens to be, it very likely split down the middle; unless they re-manufactured more, and given how these sold and their financial history, that's very unlikely)
• Outback Joey (original) - 1000 (one cartridge included with purchase of either Personal Trainer/Catalyst. again needs citation, but appears to have been manufactured in an equal production run size as the Personal Trainer set.
• Outback Joey (Rev. 1) - ??? (Objectively less than 1000, likely less than 500? I think this could have been around 500 given it was produced only a couple months after the company went to market. Probably wasn't super low, as if it was manufactured in response to a critical bug in the original (as some evidence appears to indicate), they'd want to make enough to cover possibly having to replace a bunch of original cartridges, and for future sales of the system (in case business turned around). However, two or three months is a long enough time to see that maybe business wasn't as easy as they'd hoped and even though they should be good and probably do another 1000 cartridges to match each manufactured system, "...ehh sales are starting to look rough, maybe just make half and we'll probably be okay.")
• NHLPA Hockey - ??? (Like 500 or less, or around that number. Received a lot of promotion, and was one of the more commonly-known HeartBeat titles in the press at the time (and by modern collectors). And from the only known photograph of the box, it appears slightly .... not as shitty as the PGA Tour Golf II box, so I'm seeing either A) Had the same run size as PGA Tour Golf II or B) A slightly-larger run size than Golf. But again, with Golf, some outside company was involved (Polar Technology), so who knows.
• PGA Tour Golf II (Catalyst) - ??? (Likely 500 or less, maybe closer to 200-100 given it's the last release and the company had all but hollowed itself out as a mail-order company at that point. Appears slightly more than NHLPA Hockey for some reason, but is less commonly known. But given it's the only HeartBeat game we know of with another company on the box (Polar Technology) means this one's up in the air. If Polar was a manufacturer, it might have been higher than 100-200, but I'm wandering into the speculative deep end now)
• Outworld 2375 AD - ??? (Likely 500 or less, probably closer to 200-100, with logical speculation that it's around 100. This one's a mystery; was probably released around the same time as Hockey, but appears to have been developed alongside Joey. This is the single-rarest; so much so that it was believed to be unreleased, which might be the reason why it's flown under the radar. No one's looking for it. And the very few people who have stumbled across a copy, all from the same city (Lansing, MI), haven't felt any compulsion to document or preserve any of this because of how little awareness there is. So it was probably super dang low, very likely 200 or less, but most of these numbers are purely estimates .)

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)

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?

"1000 units"

So I've been thinking about this. The claim "production run of 1,000 units" has been associated with the HeartBeat Personal Trainer for some time. But, it's also a very old claim, one from back when the larger gaming community wasn't aware of the Catalyst, or the fact that the Personal Trainer doesn't contain any special hardware, or most importantly: that the Personal Trainer and Catalyst were sold separately.

The reason this is important is because a lot hinges on what this number is referring to. And honestly, I don't doubt the number's legitimacy. But is that 1000 Personal Trainers retail packages (which each include a Catalyst), or 1000 individual Personal Trainer systems, or 500 Personal Trainers and 500 Catalysts?

To phrase it differently, here's some conjecture: what if HeartBeat originally sold only the Personal Trainer set (w/ Catalyst in the box), and when that was selling poorly, they took the Mega Drive system out and dropped the price $100... I don't know, I'll have to look into when the term Catalyst first appeared, early marketing, etc. They likely both coexisted, but- in case they really did only sell the entire set as the "Personal Trainer" first, then- dang, there's a LOT of page moves I've gotta do. Maybe. If the sensor hardware didnt have a separate name originally, but was later named Catalyst, then the pages can stay. I'll look into this. (EDIT: Looks like this is likely the possibility. Again, no page moves, but this needs to be written into the summaries of both articles and everywhere else relevant, and just do a run-through of all these. Also, now we've likely got a "pulling systems out of complete packages" situation too. So, maybe 500/500 each?)

• CartridgeCulture (talk) 07:30, 7 October 2021 (EDT)