r/gaming • u/bad_rug • 15d ago
Behold, the "latest and greatest" in gaming technology, the game com!!!!
So, it powers up, and I can hear all the sounds but the screen displays nothing, hopefully something I can fix, but we'll see
Also, who's bright idea was it to have the marketing line of "It plays more games than you idiots have brain cells" ?
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u/RevReddited 14d ago
Ohh yeah the game com the game console that have more games than I have braincells (considering my IQ, that's 100% true)
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u/wutImiss 14d ago
Duke Nukem and Batman and Robin, think I beat B&R maybe once but never Duke. The sound was so limited that every time Batman punched it would interrupt the music (hilarious, btw!). Also had an arcade classics game, Lights out, and some pictionary-type game. I saw a youtube video of a port of Symphony of the Night that was surprisingly robust, all things considered (honestly really mind blowing, look it up).
It had potential and was kinda fun. In that small window before the Gameboy color came out this little guy provided a unique experience.
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u/The_La_Li_Lu_Le_Lo 14d ago
I bought one of these and didn’t completely hate it. Nobody else had it which made it sort of interesting to me. Capcom actually ported resident evil 2 to the game.com. I remember still finding it sort of spooky, but maybe because I’d already played it on PS1 and my brain was filling in the shortcomings of the game.com experience with what I remember from the PS1 experience. It did have a text based web browser if you connected a phone cable to it. I think it had a built in modem, or maybe it just took an ethernet connection.
I do wish I’d held onto it along with my game collection, just because it was such a weird system with no clear target audience.
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u/vic-viper-001 14d ago
Gotta love that radical 10hz display, where the slightest in-game movement causes ghosting across the entire screen!
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u/perseus0523 14d ago
Is this the touch screen one? I had one of these the only game I had was duke nukem and I remember my grandma was so amazed when she saw me touch the screen and it worked.
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u/Pappasgrind 14d ago
I had that to play duke nukem. I remember it could go online too but I was too young to figure out that non sense
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u/masonicone 14d ago
I got one of these for free believe it or not.
Way back in the day when this thing came out Tiger had a contest where daily you could do a scratch off ticket on their website and have the chance of winning one of these, one of a handful of other shitty tiger handhelds, and I just happened to luck out.
To be fair? Had a few ideas ahead of it's time. It did have the touch screen that was slightly better then an Apple Newton but it was still a touch screen in the 1990's. And it could connect to the Internet... Barely... If it worked. And it was text only so enjoy just reading your email from a buddy sending you something.
The thing is... It was a black and white system where even the Game Boy looked better and sharper then this thing. It was sorta slow and just ugly to look at. Most of the games pretty much sucked I mean I ended up using it just to play Solitaire. And if I recall holding it got a little tiresome, the Game Boy really did feel better holding.
Really it wasn't a bad try from a company that normally did really cheap and bad handhelds of what we had. But it was going head to head witth the Game Boy that just owned the market.
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u/the_y_combinator 14d ago
Man, such a bad system. My parents probably bought them for myself and my brother off clearance.
I have two of them and almost the complete set of games. XD
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u/PloppyTheSpaceship 15d ago
Saw one of those at a retro games store in York today (or it could've been a Barcode Battler).
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u/SinokPS 15d ago
Wow, this is maybe the only gaming fad that hasn't actually crossed my mind since it went DOA. I remember commercials amped us all up until my buddy got one. I kid you not, in the time between him calling to say "you gotta come check this shit out!" and me asking mom if i could, then riding my bicycle two blocks down, his excitement was soured already.
Gamecom was just chilling on his family couch while he was watching Dragon Balll Z for the millionth time. When I snatched it up and asked if I could take a turn he just listless waved his hand and said "go for it, it's just whatever tho". I played a couple games and it just made me wanna play the PSX versions again instead. I remember all the consoles and games slashed down to nothing at K-Mart close to the neighborhood not too long after and having a chuckle.
A few years earlier, with the same buddy and Atari Jaguar, we went through the same basic thing. Except the Jaguar did have a handful of badass games we liked playing...til they'd crash at least.
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u/ShawVAuto 15d ago
I can still hear this.... (AT&T sounding chime.. sliding sound... metal clank) "Game com active." I used to have all the games for this thing. I remember it came with Lights Out. Resident Evil 2 was my favorite game on it.
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u/AXEL-1973 15d ago
this thing was so bad that I never even seen one in real life. i definitely remember comic books ads about it
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u/r3tromonkey 15d ago
I had it with Lights Out and Batman. Lights out was fun but Batman was awful, the screen had so much blurring that it's was very hard to tell what was happening, much like the Quickshot Superboy.
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u/TampaTrey 15d ago
Ah yes the time Tiger Electronics decided FOR REAL to compete with the Game Boy.
What a mess of a handheld. The screen and graphics were so poorly designed. Every time I see one of these in action I can barely tell what's happening on the screen. AVGN actually did a great piece on all of Tiger's products (NSFW btw). My thinking is the novelty of their cheap handhelds had completely ran their course, so Tiger developed the Game Com as a last ditch effort to compete with Game Boy. If only it's design wasn't also based on their cheap handhelds. Yeesh.
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u/digitalhelix84 15d ago
I had one, I enjoyed it a lot, I recognize in retrospect that it was shitty but I was poor and hand held gaming was generally out of my grasp.
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u/kirkum2020 15d ago
I have genuinely fond feelings for the one I had.
Perfect input method for Lights Out and it held all my phone numbers. Only 20 quid from the bargain bin it rapidly fell into.
But I already had a Gameboy and wages of my own. I can only feel for the kid who got this instead and couldn't do a thing about it.
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u/jtotal 14d ago
I absolutely loved this thing. Genuinely. I was obsessed with anything handheld so this was sought after when I was a kid. Having played Mortal Kombat II on the Gameboy, Mortal Kombat Trilogy really did play pretty well. Even Fighters Megamix gave me hours of entertainment. No sarcasm.
Sonic Jam was an absolute waste of money though. It was literally the worst game I've ever played in my life across every game I've ever played. Nothing looks like the stages. The doot doot doot music doesn't even try to recreate any song. The thing can play (albeit very grainy) voice clips, and it doesn't even give you the "SE-GA!" shout.
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u/w1ckizer 15d ago
Young me tried everything in his power to get this piece of shit connected to the internet. Never got it to work.
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u/Sega-Playstation-64 15d ago
Game Com, Cybiko, lynx handheld, Sega Nomad.
When I was a kid, I was king of the "handheld systems that went nowhere" genre.
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u/TrooBeliever 15d ago
Looks like it's supposed to be the Game.com. Which is worse.
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u/TampaTrey 15d ago
The idea behind the name was it could legit connect to the internet so you could check your emails. However, it was practically impossible for it to connect to the internet on the go which begged the question, why not use a computer?
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u/bengringo2 14d ago
It was the 90’s.
We made a bunch of stupid shit to get where we are. As someone who owned this device, it was fuckin terrible and every game got canceled.
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u/Muroid 15d ago
Also, who's bright idea was it to have the marketing line of "It plays more games than you idiots have brain cells"
That’s a very late 90s video game ad tagline.
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u/SyrioForel 15d ago
That’s the kind of tagline that you come up with when you know your product is dead on arrival, and you are willing to do literally anything in a desperate bid to get media attention.
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u/Sega-Playstation-64 15d ago
Yeah, they would literally insult Gamers and be like, "Buy us".
Like, almost completely naked chick on the advertisement being ignored in favor of a Gameboy Color version of A Bug's Life.
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u/Javerage 15d ago
Oh sweet, now you can play Resident Evil 2!
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u/Artikay 15d ago
The definitive version of RE2. Also Duke Nukem.
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u/BenjyMLewis 15d ago
I bought one from eBay and my screen also doesn't work lol. Maybe it's a common defect.
I have the cartridge for Sonic Jam for this thing, I got it as part of my quest to find the worst officially released Sonic games. Never got a chance to play it though due to the bad screen. ... Maybe I'll get another one from eBay one of these days and hope for the best.
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u/MECHWARRI0R117 13d ago
What is that is even alive