Game.com

Lore & Background

Tiger Electronics had previously introduced its R-Zone game console in 1995 as a competitor to Nintendo's Virtual Boy, but the system was a failure. Prior to the R-Zone, Tiger had also manufactured handheld games consisting of LCD screens with imprinted graphics. By February 1997, Tiger was planning to release a new game console as a direct competitor to Nintendo's Game Boy. The Game.com was on display at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in May 1997, with sales expected to begin in July. The console was released in the United States on September 12, 1997, with a retail price of $69.95, while an Internet-access cartridge was scheduled for release in October. Lights Out was included as a pack-in game and Solitaire was built into the handheld itself. The console's release marked Tiger's largest product launch ever. The Game.com came in a black-and-white color and featured a design similar to Sega's Game Gear. The screen is larger than the Game Boy's and has higher resolution. The Game.com included a phone directory, a calculator, and a calendar, and had an older target audience with its PDA features. The device was powered by four AA batteries. One of the major peripherals was the compete.com serial cable for multiplayer games. The console includes two game cartridge slots. The Game.com's black-and-white monochrome touchscreen measures approximately one and a half inches by two inches, and is divided into square zones imprinted onto the screen. The touchscreen lacks a backlight. The Game.com was also the first handheld gaming console to have internal memory. Because of poor sales, Tiger developed an updated version known as the Game.com Pocket Pro, shown at the American International Toy Fair in February 1999. The Pocket Pro was reduced in size, featured only one cartridge slot, required two AA batteries, and lacked Internet capabilities except high score submitting. The Game.com console line was discontinued in 2000 due to poor sales.

Reader's Guide

The Game.com is notable as the first game console to feature a touchscreen and the first handheld to offer Internet connectivity, anticipating features that would later become standard in handheld gaming. Despite these innovations, the system struggled commercially due to a small game library and technical limitations. Only twenty games were ultimately released, most developed internally by Tiger. The console's Internet features required a separate Internet cartridge and a 14.4 kbit/s modem, and none of the console's games made use of the Internet feature. The Game.com Pocket Pro, a smaller redesign, lacked Internet capabilities except for high score submitting. The system sold less than 300,000 units before being discontinued in 2000. The idea of a touchscreen would later be used successfully in the Nintendo DS, released in 2004. The Game.com's commercial failure highlighted the difficulty of competing with Nintendo's Game Boy, which had hundreds of games available at the time of the Game.com's launch. The console's target audience of older users and its PDA-like features did not achieve broad market appeal.

Did You Know?

• The console's name references the .com top-level domain.
• The Game.com Pocket Pro lacked Internet capabilities except for high score submitting.