The Game.com (pronounced in TV commercials as "game com", not "game dot com" and not capitalized in marketing material)
was a handheld game console released by Tiger
Electronics in September 1997. It featured many new ideas for handheld consoles and was aimed at an older target audience, sporting PDA-style features and
functions such as a touch screen and stylus. However, Tiger
hoped it would also challenge Nintendo's Game Boy and gain a
following among younger gamers too. Unlike other handheld game consoles, the first game.com consoles included two slots for game
cartridges and could be connected to a 14.4 kbit/s modem. Later models reverted to a single cartridge slot.
History
Titles released at game.com's launch included Indy 500, Duke Nukem 3D and Mortal Kombat Trilogy, along
with Lights Out which came packaged with the system. Tiger also produced
equivalents to many Game Boy peripherals, such as the compete.com serial cable allowing
players to connect their consoles to play multiplayer games or exchange high scores. Branded items
such as an AC adapter, earphones, and a carry-case were
also made available.
Many of the game.com's extra features had only limited functionality compared to modern portable devices. The touch screen had
a fairly low sensor resolution along with no backlight, so it lacked precision and made it hard to see the on-screen controls.
Entering phone numbers, addresses or the like was cumbersome. As with most portable devices from the 1990s, data storage was
entirely dependent on a button battery, and failure of this backup battery would
erase any high scores or information stored on the console.
The Lights Out cart which came bundled with the console
Tiger failed to sell the game.com to an older audience. While they were able to obtain more mature-themed game licences like
Mortal Kombat, Duke Nukem, and Resident Evil, few of these portable adaptations were developed by their original creators, or kept to the
spirit of the original games. For example, the FPS Duke Nukem was presented in the
first person, and while shooting does happen, the manner in which it is handled is far from that of the typical First Person
Shooter: the player shifts around a room one tile at a time, always facing squarely north, and presses the fire button if an
enemy happens to obstruct his gun. Turning, strafing, jumping, and the finer subtleties of aiming are thus rendered non-existent,
making the game completely unsuited to an older gamer in search of a more complex gaming experience. [citation needed]
Most game development, even on licensed games, was done in-house. As such, SDKs were not known to be widely available, and the third party development that has always
been crucial to the survival of any gaming platform was absent.
At the time, the platform was almost completely ignored by the gaming press. Tiger used provocative and potentially insulting
marketing, including controversial slogans such as, "It plays more games than you idiots have brain cells.", which may have lost
it supporters instead of gaining them.
In an effort to revitalize their low sales, Tiger would later release the
game.com Pocket Pro. This was a smaller version of the game.com which had the same specifications as the original except
that it had a single cartridge slot and required only two AA batteries. The
initial version of the Pocket Pro featured a frontlit screen (advertised as backlit, but technically it's not) and is
distinguished by its rough-textured black case. A subsequent re-release omitted the frontlight and came in four translucent
colors (green, blue, pink, and purple).
This re-release enjoyed very limited success, and the console would be cancelled in 2000, along with its exclusive internet
service. Most of the console's problems were due to a small lineup (only 20 games), poor quality of games, lack of third party
support, poor distribution, and poor marketing. Moreover, its display, like the original Game Boy's, suffered from very slow
screen updates (known as "ghosting"), which makes fast moving objects blur and particularly hurt the fast-moving games Tiger
sought licenses for. The game.com Pocket Pro had a slightly better display than the first model — on par with the
Game Boy Pocket's one — with less of a ghosting problem.
While the game.com was a failure, it is notable that similar features were later used with great success by Nintendo in their
DS handheld console. The game.com was the first console to use a touchscreen, the first to include basic PDA-functions, the first
to allow two game carts to be inserted at once and the first to allow internet access. It is arguable that the basic concept of
the game.com was a strong one, but the actual implementation of those concepts was completely botched by Tiger Electronics, and
severely limited by the technology of the mid-1990s. When Nintendo implemented the same basic ideas on the DS in 2004, the result
was extremely successful both commercially and critically.
Internet features
game.com modem and internet cartridges
Using the game.com with the modem was cumbersome. The user had to insert the game.com modem
into one of the unit's game cartridge slots, connect the game.com to a phone jack, and dial into the game.com-exclusive (and
fairly expensive) ISP. From there, the user could upload saved high scores, or
check e-mail and view the web if they had the Internet
cartridge (sold separately from the modem). This process would end up being a matter of trial-and-error; both Tiger's now-defunct
website and the included manual gave incorrect instructions for setting up a game.com for internet access.
Web access was text-only, and the later, single-cartridge versions of the game.com could not access the web or send e-mail at
all. No games had actual online play with other people, only high score uploads. The monthly fee, two extra peripherals, and
exceedingly confusing setup required meant that only a small percentage of the admittedly few game.com owners had a subscription
to the game.com internet service, which would barely survive until the cancellation of the handheld itself.
Technical specifications
| System Size (LxWxD) |
Original: 190 x 108 x 19 mm / Pocket Pro: 140 x 86 x 28 mm |
| Processor Chip |
Sharp sm8521 8-Bit CPU |
| Screen Specs |
192 x 160 resolution, 12 x 10 grid based touch screen, 3.5 in. diameter (Original) / 2,8 in. diameter (Pocket Pro) |
| Color System |
Black and White, with 4 gray levels |
| Sound/Music |
Mono, FM-synthesis, 8-bit, PCM, single speaker, located in the upper left corner |
| Power Source |
4 AA Batteries (2 AA batteries in Pocket and Pocket Pro) or AC Adapter |
| Ports |
Serial Comm Port for the Compete.com cable, internet cable and weblink cable;
3.5 mm Audio In Jack for headphones; DC9 V in (AC Adapter); 2 Cartridge Slots (1 on the Pocket and Pocket Pro)
|
| Buttons |
Power (On/Off);
Action (A, B, C, D); 3 Function (Menu, Sound, Pause); 1 Eight-way Directional Pad; Volume; Contrast;
Reset (On system’s underside) |
Games
Released
Internet connection accessories for the game.com were also released, including "game.com
Internet" and "Tiger Web Link" carts.
Canceled titles
An unnamed (and unannounced) RPG title can be seen in one of the game.com
television commercials. It was later discovered that this was to be a game.com version of the PlayStation RPG Shadow
Madness.
Notably, some of these canceled titles (including GigaPets, Madden, and the NBA titles) were to have a
battery backup built into the cartridge to allow for persistent
saved game states. It was also rumored that the boxing title would have a built-in
force feedback device, similar to the Nintendo 64
Rumble Pak. However, none of these specially equipped cartridges were ever released to the
public.
Furbyland and Mutoids were widely assumed to be Tiger-developed role-playing games as a response to Nintendo's wildly popular Pokémon franchise, but little information beyond their intended release was ever made public.
According to the website The Castlevania Dungeon (http://castlevania.classicgaming.gamespy.com/dungeon.html) there was plans of releasing a
version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night onto the Game.com system. Taken from the site it reads:
"Even more curious, Tiger actually planned to make Symphony of the Night for its ill-fated portable system, the Game.com.
According to Tiger representatives, it was about halfway done until the system was canned, and the game thus cancelled. All that
remains are the screenshots, which actually don't look half bad."
Photos can be seen on the website: http://castlevania.classicgaming.gamespy.com/Features/tiger.html
Community
A game.com enthusiast with Usenet access created the newsgroup alt.games.video.tiger.game-com (Google Groups link below) shortly after the handheld's release in 1997. This group
served as a focus point for game.com owners, with often-heated discussion about the handheld's future and merits relative to
other systems; as well as reviews of existing games and speculation about future releases. Tiger representatives sometimes posted
using the now-defunct America Online account "TigerGcom." At one point, a gameplay video of the
never-released Metal Gear Solid was distributed among group members. Most of the information about unreleased games herein was
gleaned from postings to alt.games.video.tiger.game-com.
Hacking and homebrew development
In early 2005, a group called game.commies was
formed with hopes of hacking the game.com hardware and creating new homebrew video
games.
In 2006 they announced a working game.com emulator was in their possession, but denied a public
release of it was forthcoming. This emulator was originally distributed to game.com developers, in the same vein as
Ensata.
A preliminary driver for the game.com hardware was added to the MESS emulator
in 2006.
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
