 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 What handheld systems didn't make the grade? We count down the ill-fated ones. By GameSpy Staff | January 26, 2004 
2004 is going to be a fascinating year for handheld gaming. Sony is entering into the handheld space with its PSP and Nintendo aims to double its dominance with the Nintendo DS. It's great to see new products enter a market that has been dominated by one system: Nintendo's Game Boy. The forthcoming entries into mobile gaming have made us reminisce about all the systems that tried to grab a piece of the action, but failed. Some of these devices were really cool and ahead of their time, while others were ill-conceived units that never had a chance in hell. You might not remember all these systems, so we're presenting you with ten handheld systems that never made it. Enjoy!
10. Tiger Game.com 
When Hasbro announced its intentions to get into the handheld gaming industry, it was rather unexpected. The company's Tiger division, best known for releasing licensed, limited LCD-based handheld games in the style popularized by Nintendo's Game & Watch, was in charge of the product. Game.com was something altogether more ambitious, however. The system was designed to go online and function as a PDA with limited e-mail capability (through a separately-sold kit) and came complete with a stylus for choosing options on its built-in screen. However, its black and white games were of less interest; while it had many big-name titles, the games themselves were sluggish and limited. Released in 1997, it came at a lull in the Game Boy's career -- Pokémon didn't revitalize sales of the unit until 1998 -- but still failed to make an impact. The system eventually racked up a library of twenty games. Sega licensed out popular Saturn-era titles to the unit: Sonic Jam and Fighters Megamix were distant cousins of the full-fledged titles in herky-jerky black and white. Conversions of popular quiz shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune also appeared, and Duke Nukem 3D and Resident Evil 2 were made. Of course, these games were transformed into entirely new 2D titles. In all, the system had only 20 games. In 1999, the system was reborn as the "Game.com Pocket Pro" in a much smaller unit with a much cheaper price of $29.95, down from a launch price of $69.95. This failed to spark much interest in the system, however, and it was discontinued before the system's most promising game, a version of Konami's PlayStation classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, could appear.
Next: Is that a phone in your pocket? » |
Previous Top 10
Most Popular
Video Games
Powered By PriceGrabber
|
|||||
Why It Didn't Work: For one, the system's games mostly flat-out sucked. Most looked awful and ran really badly -- slow and stuttering on the underpowered, black and white system. While it had several big-name titles the original developers had nothing to do with converting them. Tiger had no idea how to market a real game system, of course, and mainly got it into the same toy stores that carried its dedicated games. I remember playing at several E3s in a row -- it got to be a joke, seeing how crap Game.com was this year. The PDA feature was interesting but expensive and underpowered, and the Toys 'R Us audience obviously didn't care.
