HeartBeat Corporation

From Sega Retro

To do

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

List of company staff

  • Adam Benjamin (Product Manager)
  • Justin Hall-Tipping (President)
  • 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)

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 ;)

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?)

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