Game.com

NOTE: This page was copy pasted from the Crappy Games Wiki on Miraheze instead of imported due to the Qualitipedia wikis being deleted.

Game.com If this console really has more games than you have brain cells, then you must have no more than 20 brain cells. Developer: Tiger Electronics Release Date: Game.com August 1997 Game.com Pocket Pro May/June 1999 Predecessor: Tiger R-Zone Competitors: Game Boy Color Generation: Fifth generation Discontinued: 2000

The Game.com (pronounced as "game-com", not "game-dot-com") was a handheld console released by Tiger Electronics (not to be confused with Tiger Telematics, developers of the Gizmondo) in 1997 and discontinued in 2000. It was the first gaming console to have a touchscreen, preceding the Nintendo DS.

A smaller version, the Game.com Pocket Pro, was released in mid-1999.

Why It Flopped

1. Absolutely horrible screen. It was monochrome and lacked a backlight screen like the Game Boy (which was released eight years before) and suffered bad "ghosting" that made it very hard to see anything. Additionally, these screens haven't withstood the test of time, and many have large amounts of dead pixels.
2. While it was one of the first gaming systems that could access the internet, it required a dial-up modem to connect to, was text-based only, and while online gaming was theoretically possible, no game released for the system ever made use of it. The main reason to use its internet features was to upload high scores or read your email. The setup was also very confusing and because the online features offered very little use, very few gamers bothered to use the feature at all. This feature was so unpopular that the next revision, the Game.com Pocket Pro removed the system's internet capabilities entirely, and the internet service was eventually discontinued.
3. The touchscreen is quite flawed.
   • It had a fairly low sensor resolution making it fairly unresponsive to the stylus.
   • All 108 of the sensors were visible on the screen.
   • The touch screen required a stylus and was single-touch only. While the Nintendo DS had a similar problem, the player can least use their finger occasionally.
4. There was next to no MIDI/MOD support and only one sound could play at a time, kinda like the PC speaker in 1980s DOS games. Games could not have decent music due to sound effects constantly interrupting it, musical notes interrupting each other, and the prohibitive amount of ROM required to store even a 30-second loop of PCM audio.
5. Only 20 cartridge games were made for the system, including ports to games that were on the PlayStation, such as Resident Evil 2 and Duke Nukem. The best-selling game for the system was Lights Out!, but only because it came packaged with the system. Besides them, the system has only one built in game: Solitaire.
6. Terrible marketing and false advertising: Tiger made a very poor attempt at a commercial in an attempt to get the system to sell. The commercial shows a person of small stature played by an unidentified actor insulting gamers while promoting the Game.com. Gamers were offended as a result, especially with the "It plays more games than you idiots have brain cells!" line, which is ridiculous because as mentioned before, only 21 games were made for it (including Solitaire), and human brains usually have around a hundred billion cells, a far cry from what said comment was. Now, the message was most likely simply intended to be an exaggeration meaning "It has a huge library of games", but that's still not true.
7. The system was noticeably bulkier than the original model of the Game Boy, and way larger than the Game Boy Pocket, which was released around the same time as the Game.com.
8. Due to the processing overhead of the operating system, many games on the handheld ran ungodly slow.
9. Technically inferior specs to even the Game Boy, a system released eight years earlier. It was quickly outclassed by the Game Boy Color released a year later, rendering the Game.com obsolete almost as soon as it came out.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The second model, the Game.com Pocket Pro, had a backlit screen.
2. It had two cartridge slots, which was a novel idea.
   • That being said, the later Game.com Pocket Pro, unfortunately, had only one cartridge slot instead of two.
3. As mentioned before, it was the first handheld console to have a touchscreen, seven years before the Nintendo DS was released.
4. Many of its features were way ahead of its time, like a phone book, the internet, the aforementioned touchscreen, and a calendar, which would be better executed and used in future mobile operating systems like Symbian OS, iOS and Android.

"What were they thinking?" The Shit Scale Games that are debatably bad High level of shit contamination The very high category The severe zone Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Major code red 👆 This game/console belongs to the "Severe Zone" category of the AVGN's Shit Scale.

Trivia

Metal Gear Solid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night were being developed for Game.com by Tiger Electronics but were cancelled due to the failure of the handheld.

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