"Not the best of the Game Boy killers"

Tiger's game.com handheld is remembered, when it's remembered at all, as one of the many systems that attempted to outdo Nintendo's Game Boy for control of the handheld gaming market. Tiger, unlike Sega, NEC, Atari, SNK, Bandai, Nokia, Tapwave, and now Sony, had the idea that they could undercut Nintendo from the low end, by pricing their console cheap enough that anyone could buy it on a whim, much like Tiger's well-known dedicated LCD handheld games. Something obviously went terribly wrong with this plan.

Before we go too far, you should know a few things. I own many handhelds, from the original Game Boy, the Nomad, the Game Gear, to the DS and the PSP. I like portable systems because the games tend to be simpler, more focused on game play, and don't take up too much space in my tiny New York apartment. I bought the game.com, well after its demise, on eBay with several games, largely because it was cheap and I enjoy collecting games and systems. When the game.com was still alive, I wasn't even aware of its existence; in fact I had fallen out of gaming altogether. So keep in mind that I've only had the game.com for two years or so (it being 2005 as I write this), and that I wasn't there during (what passes for) its heyday. That said, let's get on with the review.

On paper, the game.com looks like a serious system, especially for 1997. It featured a touch screen, included stylus, two cartridge ports (all of which appeared in the Nintendo DS in 2004, proving the old adage that everything old is new again), basic address book and calendar features, a calculator, and built in memory for saving game scores. The game.com also took sound seriously, being capable of fully digitized speech. The system actually spoke when you turned it on! And if you couldn't tell by the name, the game.com was going to be the first system to take the Internet by storm. It actually had basic Internet functionality via a special Internet cart and modem, which allowed you to dial up via SLIP and use very basic Internet functions through the game.com's terminal emulation. If you don't know what that means, it boils down to the fact that the game.com allowed extremely primitive net access that is totally obsolete today. The game.com also had a Web Link cartridge which allowed you to post your high scores to the now-defunct www.game.com web site. Consider that even today, neither the DS nor the PSP have any sort of PDA functionality, and that Internet integration is rare for games on the current crop of consoles and you'll understand just how advanced and forward-thinking the game.com seemed to be.

The problem was that Tiger took every one of their great, futuristic ideas and turned it into garbage in order to make the system affordable and feasible for the mid-90's. The Internet and Web Link carts were barely functional, and essentially useless – if you had a dial-up account, you presumably had a PC which made for a much nicer experience than the game.com. Tiger stopped supporting the Web Link shortly after (possibly before) it was released, making it a totally useless purchase. The address book could only hold a few entries, and the calendar could not handle appointments. The much-hyped touch screen was split up into large blocks, which were visible on screen. Modern gamers used to the high resolution touch screen of the DS, in which every pixel can be touched independently, would be horrified at the fact that the game.com's touch screen, in which each touch screen “pixel” took up a large number of graphic pixels. The non-gaming aspects of the game.com were way oversold, which in turn hurt the game.com's sales. The game.com's speech and graphics capabilities became apparent when you first turned the system on. When powering on, it announced “game.com active” in a fuzzy, unintelligible voice and had a startup, “3D” Tiger graphic which was choppy and featured audio that skipped. If Tiger couldn't get something as simple and important as a startup animation and sound which came on every time you started the system, how great could the rest of the game.com be?

But what about the game themselves, the lifeblood of a gaming system? The game.com boasted a library full of games drawn from the greatest hits of the era: Resident Evil 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Mortal Kombat, Sonic Jam, and Fighters Megamix. For the more cerebral types, the game.com had arcade titles like Frogger and Williams Arcade Classics, as well as puzzle and board games like Monopoly, Wheel of Fortune, Scrabble, Jeopardy!, and Lights Out. Add to that hot licensed games like Jurassic Park and Batman and Robin. How could a system with such great games fail?

As it turns out, porting games from the advanced consoles of the day, like the Saturn and PlayStation, was not so easy. Resident Evil 2, Fighters Megamix, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and Sonic Jam all suffered greatly getting cut down to fit on the game.com. Sonic especially went from speed demon to snail, with poor frame rates, blurry graphics, and sluggish controls. Fighters Megamix, originally a Saturn game, featuring characters from Sega's hit fighting games Fighting Vipers and Virtua Figher 2, became a repetitive low-kickathon. Mortal Kombat is a low-res nightmare, and only RE2 managed passably, becoming one of the few worthwhile games on the system. Duke Nukem 3D was turned from a smooth scrolling 3D game to a tile-based “3D” game not unlike Phantasy Star 1, the Eye of the Beholder series, or early Ultima titles. In the game, you move Duke around in block-at-a-time motion that kills the whole point of a 3D game, namely the sense of immersion in a different world. Other action games, like Batman and Robin, or Jurassic Park, were less ambitious, not being ports from systems with true 3D capabilities. They are best compared to early Game Boy beat-em-ups, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Sega fans were no doubt disappointed that in the wake of the Game Gear, Sega chose to support a system that was such a step down from the eight year old Game Gear, not to mention the Nomad. Sonic Jam, the first Sonic game to appear on a non-Sega system, is an unplayable disaster, featuring four-color grayscale graphics and atrocious blurring years after Sonic on the Game Gear was released in full color and relative (for a Game Gear game) lack of blurring. Fighters Megamix was less of an outright nightmare and more of a step back in time, sort of like Virtua Fighter 2 for the Genesis. Indy 500 is atrocious and one of the worst game.com games ever.

The redeeming point for the game.com was its selection of puzzle games, in which the blurry graphics of the game.com screen could be ignored, and the touch screen could be used to full advantage. The game.com actually came with a Solitaire game built in, which used the touch screen very well. Wheel of Fortune was similar, not requiring amazing animation, but using the touch screen well. Other puzzle games were similar, and in fact, the game.com came with Lights Out for a while. If you come into possession of a game.com, and want a game that isn't terrible, check out the puzzle games first.

Graphics: 5/10

Just looking at screen shots will give you an over-optimistic impression of the game.com. It could do much better graphics than the original, black-and-white Game Boy of its era, but whenever motion was involved, it looked awful. Games without any fast-paced graphics, like puzzle games, look great, where as action games like Sonic Jam are simply unplayable. I give it a 5 out of 10 for trying, and looking great one frame at a time, but failing miserably at real-life conditions.

Sound: 6/10

The game.com was supposed to feature amazing, fully-digital speech and music, and to an extent, it succeeded. In many ways, the game.com's sound is like its graphics: Tiger tried to bite off more than it could chew, and ended up with a mess. Sure, the game.com can technically handle realistic speech, but the limitations of cartridge storage and CPU power made that unrealistic. Unlike graphics however, poor sound doesn't completely ruin a game, so even with the game.com the so-bad-it's-bad sound effects don't cause any serious gaming trauma.

Control: 7/10

The game.com featured four face buttons, a large number for its time, and very useful for its fighting games. I actually liked the 8-way directional pad, which was sort of like a joystick with a big button on the top. I guess it was cheap to make, but somehow it worked for me better than the stiff D pad of the Game Boy.

Games: 3/10

The game.com's library is only 20 or so games, most of which are dismal. I've already stated that action games that need fast screen drawing (like Sonic or fighting games) turn out terribly on the ‘com, and that only puzzle games have a chance of succeeding. Even then, there are no great exclusive games, probably because of the way Tiger sought success by licensing well known titles.

Innovation: 8/10

Well, it took until 2004 for the game.com's features to catch on with the rest of the world. The Nintendo DS now features a touch screen (way better than the game.com's mind you) and two cartridge ports. In addition, the game.com had features like advanced gameplay features like animation and digitized sound and speech. They might not have worked well, but they were there, and no one could fault Tiger for being short of ideas.

Replayability: 2/10

You will probably not play these games too often. The action games are either unplayable or very easy, and only the puzzle games and Resident Evil 2 offer much in the way of extended gaming. The game.com is more of a collector's piece: something you own in order to own.

Final Score: 3/10

For all the graphical and sound advances over the Game Boy, the game.com couldn't sustain a decent frame rate if it tried. Tiger was simply too ambitious – there is no way that the Game Boy could've handled Sonic or Fighters Megamix either, but Nintendo was smart enough not to try, but rather to stick to what was possible with current technology. The final ending is well known, the game.com is totally obscure, and without even the cult fanbase that sustains systems like the Lynx or even the Game Gear. Tiger simply attempted to build a system with too many features for too little money, and the whole venture flopped. The game.com is definitely a specialist collector's system these days, without even a worthwhile exclusive title to sustain it. Would I recommend buying one? If you collect handhelds as a collector, then yes; if you care about quality and fun then definitely not.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 04/25/05