Introduction
The Tiger Game.com handheld video game system tops the list as one of the worst ideas in the history of video game systems. It's not all bad, as many of the ideas behind it were in fact quite good, some even ahead of their time. However, Tiger made the typical handful of minor mistakes which added up to a major flop.
It was 1997, and Tiger, maker of those cheap LCD games cluttering up drug store shelves, decided to make a Game Boy of their own, with a real LCD (well, sort of). It's great features included a screen, much larger than that of the Game Boy at the time. Long before the N-Gage, it had the ability to double as a PDA, with internet capabilities, and all the typical organization tools to go along with it. It featured a touch screen as well as a stylus, long before the Nintendo DS. It contained two cartridge slots, so multiple games could be played without swapping cartridges, long before the GBA accessory (though the second model included only one). And finally, to top it off, Tiger was able to get licenses to a significant amount of hit games.
With all of that, how could it have gone all wrong? Well, it did.
Tiger's Game.com did have potential.. many games based on hit franchises, a large touch screen, more buttons, and internet capabilities. However, as we see time and time again, a LCD can be significant factor in making or breaking a handheld's success. It's the one thing you CAN'T skimp out on! Of course, it's all about the games, and to be successful it must have them as well. However, there was potential for great games. With such hits as Sonic the Hedgehog, Duke Nukem 3D, Resident Evil, Batman, Madden, William's Arcade Classics, Sega Fighters Megamix (Virtua Fighter), Jurassic Park, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and more, it definitely had potential. Sure, most of the games didn't work out too well, but in the case of Sonic for example, that's entirely the screen's fault. Batman was a terrible game, but many first gen games for all systems are, for any system (or many platformers in general). A screen can't entirely make a system, but it definitely can break it.
With their initial choice of LCD, it never stood a chance for success. Sonic, a game about speed, was completely unplayable! People complained about the Game Gear's screen back in the day, but they wouldn't have if they had compared it to the Game.com's screen. The refresh rate is so poor, you'd have to walk through Sonic to attempt to play it.
As for the touch screen and PDA capabilities, they're not entirely bad, but not particularly useful either. The touch screen is only a low res 13x10 one, thus doesn't doesn't give much control over anything. It wouldn't even be too useful for most puzzle games, unless they were very simple. It also impairs the already poor screen with an awful grid.
Well, on to the reverse engineering!
Well, enough about the system and it's history, now to the tech! With all it's flaws, why on earth would I want to reverse engineer the Tiger Game.com? For one, it definitely can be considered a classic case of, "it's so bad, it's good"! As well, it's been years, and it's come to the point, where if I don't, who will? After so much software disassembly, I find hardware reverse engineering to be much more fun, and there's nothing more fun than doing it for something which hasn't been previously done. Well, on to it!
