Tiger Game Com

[x]

Okay, so I'm watching old Nitros right now and November 17th 1997. After Rick Rude makes his WCW debut, Glacier and Meng wrestle, I fast forward through Alex Wright/Mongo. It goes to commercial.

Quite possibly the most awesome commercial break of all time.

A commercial for "Chuck Norris: Forest Warrior". Which is a movie where Chuck Norris can turn into a bear. A Ouija board commercial, "YOU'RE MOVING IT! NO YOU ARE!" Of course we get a Slim Jim commercial.

Then all of a sudden it goes to a stage. A man is on all fours next to a microphone. A midget in an orange suit jumps on his back and begins to talk into the microphone.



He has a surprise for all the slackers who have nothing better to do than to play games and surf the net all day.



THAT'S RIGHT! THE TIGER GAME COM!

The screen behind his head begins to show what looks to be an Indy Car game, Duke Nukem and a Street Fighter game.

As he hypes it, it has a stylis and a touch screen.



Also...



Internet capabilities in 1997. WTF?

Then he hypes how many games it plays, as the screen behind him shows the indy car game. Sonic. That block game he was playing in the touch screen shot and some game with a big Dragon.

He calls everyone in the building an idiot and they precede to...murder...him?



Anyone here ever played this before? Know anything about it? Or does this not exist and my mind is playing tricks on me?

[Gopher Mod]

The system sounds like it's essentially the predecessor of the Nintendo DS, just with minimal to no support.

[Hypnotix]

I remember these commercials. I just gotta know how good that internet pr0n looked like on a black and white Game.com screen.

[Alucard]

Jan 4, 2009 23:01:39 GMT -5 Gopher Mod said:

The system sounds like it's essentially the predecessor of the Nintendo DS, just with minimal to no support.

In a way you're right.

Good idea, poor execution.

[BlackJackRobby]

In a way it was badass.

I bought one when the system was dead at a KB Toys.

20.00 for the system 5.00 for the games.

They were all pretty decent also.

Duke was the best of the bunch, and if I can remember correct they had a bunch of little free games on it.

It hit during the time that the GB sucked bad, but every kid in the world still bought it for Pokemon.

and Pokemon is the only reason handheld systems were years behind in technology.

[ani]

I have one with four games (Williams Arcade Classics, Quiz Wiz, Wheel of Fortune, and the pack in game Lights Out.) It was decent for its time but it has not aged well. It was pretty much a black and white DS with nowhere near the library of games.

Don't know how their internet capabilities are as I never got the adaptor for it.

[Bang Bang Bart]

Uh.....that Chuck Norris morphing into a bear ad sounds cool.

Why make an ad campaign that insults the consumers. No wonder GameCom failed.

[Red Lion]

Yeah, the console sucked, with Sonic on it being the worst Sonic game of all time. It was so bad that the advertised screenshots weren't actual game screenshots at all.

...and I wanted one sooooo bad back in the day.

[Paul]

Here's the commercial:



I've never seen a commercial that decides insulting the core buying audience is a good way to get the product sold.

[Gopher Mod]

Jan 5, 2009 9:40:36 GMT -5 ani said:

I have one with four games (Williams Arcade Classics, Quiz Wiz, Wheel of Fortune, and the pack in game Lights Out.) It was decent for its time but it has not aged well. It was pretty much a black and white DS with nowhere near the library of games.

Don't know how their internet capabilities are as I never got the adaptor for it.

If I remember right, the internet was a 14.4 Kbps internet via phone line, upgradable to 28.8 Kbps.

Also, BlackJack: I would beg to differ about Pokemon being any reason that the Game Boy was so far behind in technology. By the time the game came out in the Americas (September 1998), the Game Boy already had the Pocket line out in the Americas for some time, and the Color was just 2 months away from being put on American shelves.

[Deleted]

Yikes. I really don't recall the Gamecom. For whatever reason, I had zero desire to have one and I'm sure I would have seen the commercial being a TV child and all. I'll chalk it up to not having a huge "eye grabber" at launch time. I'd say I was dork-savvy enough by then to not bite simply for the Street Fighter or Duke Nukem names. I was a huge proponent of the old Tiger LCD games though. I'd say 15-20 passed through my hands at different times. The game to play when you're on the way to where your games are or something. The most memorable one had to be the M.C. Hammer game. You had to out-dance some white guy (I'm assuming unnofficially Ice) by using buttons that controlled all your limbs.

[Grendel]

Jan 5, 2009 10:43:19 GMT -5 Gopher Mod said:

Jan 5, 2009 9:40:36 GMT -5 ani said:

I have one with four games (Williams Arcade Classics, Quiz Wiz, Wheel of Fortune, and the pack in game Lights Out.) It was decent for its time but it has not aged well. It was pretty much a black and white DS with nowhere near the library of games.

Don't know how their internet capabilities are as I never got the adaptor for it.

If I remember right, the internet was a 14.4 Kbps internet via phone line, upgradable to 28.8 Kbps.

That reminds me. When I first got internet access, the only decent provider in this podunk area went through a modem pool in a nearby town. Every other dial up modem pool on the network was 56.6, and on this one you were lucky to hook up at 28.8. There were some days I logged in at 14.4.

At those speeds, if you wanted to download a decent sized file, you better be ready to be online for a good part of the day. I downloaded a driver movie off of BMW Movies, and the sixty meg file took over 8 hours. The first song I downloaded took about 45 minutes.

There were actually places you could go online and play some games like Star Trek: Armada, but you were pretty much useless at that speed.

[Methusael86]

Game Com was apparently so bad that even God himself hated it.

Observe

[silentrage]

I wanted that system, just so I could get Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Duke Nukem 3D on it.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) I was the only kid with a rich Step-Dad who wouldn't spoil (or in some cases, buy anything for) his son.

[x]

Jan 5, 2009 12:01:02 GMT -5 Methusael86 said:

Game Com was apparently so bad that even God himself hated it.

Observe

My word, they shilled the crap out of that Lights Out game. That game wasn't even buyable, yet they were still shilling it.

[ani]

Jan 5, 2009 12:33:46 GMT -5 @silentrage said:

I wanted that system, just so I could get Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Duke Nukem 3D on it.

The Mortal Kombat Trilogy Game.com port is notorious for being absolute excretory matter from what I've heard so you got lucky.

Interesting fact: Had the system not been a bomb, the Game.com would've gotten a port of Castlevania:SOTN

[Jason Todd Grisham]

Jan 5, 2009 10:34:04 GMT -5 Paul said:

Here's the commercial:



I've never seen a commercial that decides insulting the core buying audience is a good way to get the product sold.

It's like a Sega commercial gone horribly, horribly wrong.

[ani]

Jan 5, 2009 10:34:04 GMT -5 Paul said:

Here's the commercial:



I've never seen a commercial that decides insulting the core buying audience is a good way to get the product sold.

Well this is tiger we're talking about...they're not around anymore for a reason. ;D

To the person who asked why they shilled Lights Out...it's because it was really the only game that you could play exclusively with the pen. Most of the other games had the usual button controls.

[AoDfan]

Don't forget it had Resident Evil 2