4Stack #4 — answers & breakdown
Friday, July 17, 2026
Hardware. The blue group is where this one turns: every console in it sold badly, and one of them is from a company that otherwise appears in the yellow group.
The sixteen cards in this puzzle were: SNES, N64, GameCube, Switch, Genesis, Dreamcast, Saturn, 32X, Virtual Boy, Wii U, Ouya, Stadia, Game Boy, PSP, Vita, Steam Deck.
The four stacks
Nintendo home consoles
SNES, N64, GameCube, Switch
Four generations of Nintendo living-room hardware. Deliberately no handhelds here, which matters once you reach purple.
Sega hardware
Genesis, Dreamcast, Saturn, 32X
Sega's console line, ending with the Dreamcast in 1999 — after which Sega left the hardware business entirely and became a third-party publisher.
Commercial flops
Virtual Boy, Wii U, Ouya, Stadia
Commercial failures across four different eras and companies. The Virtual Boy lasted under a year, the Ouya was a Kickstarter darling that collapsed, and Stadia was shut down by Google in 2023 with refunds issued.
Handhelds
Game Boy, PSP, Vita, Steam Deck
Portables, and the reason no handhelds appear in yellow. The Steam Deck is the modern entry, and arguably the device that made handheld PC gaming a real category.
Want to try it yourself? Play puzzle #4 — archive plays don't affect your streak. Or jump into today's puzzle.