If you are my age, you remember the old Tiger handheld “games”.
How can I best describe them?
Crap.
Each game ran on its own individual battery-powered device. The screen consisted of a static background with an illusion of motion coming through by lighting up the different parts of the screen. There were a TON of these that were released and, against our better judgement, we bought them. HERE is a pretty good visual representation of what we went through.
It was 1995 and Tiger wanted to make the jump from crappy handheld games to a crappy system you could strap to your head and play while supposedly going about your normal business – all while looking really cool and also giving you to worst eye strain you’ve ever had in your life. I’ll say this much, it certainly accomplished that. I present…the Tiger R-Zone!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_v-YTnuGlY
I think the scream at the end is appropriate.
Let’s take games people play, remove all color and graphics (except red, of course), strap it to kids’ heads and give them a lifetime of headaches. (I can only imagine that’s how the product pitch went at Tiger).
The games came in the form of small cartridges you put into the main device, it is then projected onto a screen that’s smaller than a cell phone while you use a controller with around 10 more buttons than it needed.
Every game for the Tiger R-Zone was “virtually” (pun intended) the same. They all controlled the same and the only difference was the packaging. There were games from big franchises as well, including: Men In Black, Batman, Mortal Kombat, Jurassic Park, etc.
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| Why are there 10 buttons when there are only 4 directions? |
Different variations of the Tiger R-Zone were released. The Super Screen brought in (gasp) color…..kinda! It amounted to a special lens you could use to get a non animating background with the gameplay being black, essentially making this a big “Tiger Handheld” (technically it was too big to be considered a handheld but you get the point). The Super Screen required four “C” batteries (who uses those anymore?) as opposed to the usual AA or AAA batteries of its earlier versions. The X.P.G. (Xtreme Pocket Game) was released in 1997 and was a complete handheld version and was your more prototypical unit, with the screen protruding out of the main unit as opposed to being strapped on your head.
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| The gamer version of the “Rorshach test”. What do YOU see here? |
It was said that the Tiger R-Zone was developed to be a competitor to Nintendo’s pseudo VR unit which also launched in 1995, the Virtual Boy. If the competition was to see which one was worse, I am going to say the Tiger R-Zone BARELY won that one, so there you go.
Even against handhelds like the Game Boy and the Game Gear, the Tiger R-Zone lacked many key features. Players could not save their games, link up to other idiots who bought a Tiger R-Zone, could not adjust the volume level (so everyone had to suffer…bwah ha ha) and there was no way to connect any accessories to the unit.
Needless to say, the Tiger R-Zone did not stick around long.
The idea of “Virtual Reality” is still very much alive, however, now that we have the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Playstation VR. These are already faring MUCH better in the market since they aren’t really their own consoles, but rather extensions of current platforms and a different way to experience your games. Plus, that whole color thing seems to be all the rage, I hear.
But hey, Tiger will not go quietly into that good night. I am sure they will get it right the next time around….right?
