Tiger has turned out a multitude of portable games with the similarity in concept and gameplay reminiscent of the "Game & Watch" variety. But this was the first time that they ventured into the mainstream cartridge based portable market. The story of the game.com can be told as simply as, great innovation and concept that was badly and poorly implemented. Who would have ever thought that Nintendo would get the touch screen concept right some years later? I am thinking that this is the last portable that you was able to grip and hold in your hands, everything after this has been made smaller and miniaturized to the point that you are actually holding it in your fingers. Turning the unit on will find you at the menu screen. You have the choice of loading a game, phone book, calculator, high scores, calendar, or playing solitaire. The phone book, calendar, and high score are the only items that use the save feature of the system. PDA like functions in a portable gaming system sounds awesome until you find that they are very limited. The system feels a little weighty, but balanced. It is a nice comfortable size. I like the overall package and design of the system. There were a lot of good ideas and concepts going on here. The system seems well built, solid, and sturdy.

     This is bad, as there seems to be around twenty games for the system. For a portable that was on the market for three years and have only a few games is sad. The choices are very limited. This lack of support alone is enough to kill any kind of gaming system. The only games that excel on the system, in my opinion, are the games that have no fast action on screen. That leaves you with things like Wheel of Fortune, Henry, and Lights Out type games which makes use of the stylus and touch screen. That doesn't mean that there are no other games that are not good, they are just difficult and frustrating to play. There is so much blurring and ghosting problems with the screen that even slight animation of anything is blurry. The Batman game is a good side scrolling "Final Fight" type game, I like it even though it is only average. There are even some "retro games" for this "retro system." Available are Frogger, Centipede, and Williams Arcade Classics, which includes Defender, Defender 2, Sinistar, Robotron, and Joust. If I try I can maybe collect them all, as I have only 15 out of the 20 known games for the system, plus the Internet pak. I did not get this system during it's hey day. I only acquired it after I decided to collect portables and have had it for close to two years. So I do not know how well the Internet feature worked as the service was canceled after the system was dropped from the market by Tiger. I think that a modem, made by Tiger, was required to take advantage of this feature.
     There are two game cart slots for game pak insertion. I do not know why this was done, but it is a nice feature to have two games loaded up with a choice, using the on screen menu, of which one to play. You don't have to carry anything else around. Some magazine reviews, that I have read, felt that it was a useless feature. I keep Wheel of Fortune 1 & 2 loaded up at all times. Solitaire is built in, so that means that I am carrying around three games at one time. Nothing loose, everythings plugged in, I like this idea and feature. A lot of the games have relative "OK" sound, with an occasional actual voice that suits the situation, but the prerecorded sound bites seem to sound like they are in a can. In game music mostly consist of several notes looped rather than any actual game background music. The few looping notes for Sonic just does not work for me! The resolution is nice and sharp with highly detailed graphics. Sonic looks really good. The characters in the fighters are highly detailed. I would say that the detailed graphics were way above average for an 8 bit portable for that time period! I am thinking that the lack of 1st and 3rd party support was just another reason this system failed. Only twenty games for a three year period and most of those came out the first year.
     There were more games that was canceled for this system than actually came out for it. Late in the system's life Tiger managed to put out a smaller version with a backlight and slightly better screen, used only two AA batteries, and had one less cart slot called a "game.com Pocket Pro." But this was too little too late for a system with such a shallow game library.

What you can't see is the clouds floating by.

Controls:
     You have the typical disc shaped direction button that was found on a lot of game controllers back then. There is the A, B, C, D, menu, sound, pause, and on/off buttons. The sound button is merely a mute button, you have an analog volume control on the left side of the unit. The on/off button is recessed to prevent an accidental shutting off of the system while playing. When griping the system in your hands the button layout puts everything within reach of your thumbs comfortability. It has a headphone jack at the bottom. There is a reset button on the back that is very recessed and one would need something to poke into the hole to reach it to activate. There is a port for a cable link used for two player games between two units.
 
 Power:
      The system is powered by 4 AA batteries and one CR2032 button cell. The button cell is for high score and other memory save functions and all that information is lost when it dies. That makes it hard to convince that buddy of yours that you really did have that high of a score. The battery door for the AA is hinged and opens like a door, seems fragile. I would caution anyone when changing batteries. There is an auto off, after a few moments of inactivity, to conserve batteries. There is an AC Adapter jack located at the top of the unit for an external power supply.

 
Additional titles cancelled over the lifetime of the device include
A Bug's Life
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Command and Conquer: Red Alert
Deer Hunter
Furbyland
GigaPets Deluxe
Godzilla
Holyfield Boxing
Madden Football '99
Metal Gear Solid
Mulligan's Golf Challenge
Mutoids
Name That Tune
NASCAR Racing
NBA Hangtime
NBA Live '99
Rugrats
Small Soldiers
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter
WCW Wresting
The X-Files
I am thinking that these titles are stored away somewhere either finished or half finished. Some look interesting and makes me want to try them, if only I could. I have seen screen shots of a few of these games.