Hasbro is bringing back the classic Tiger Electronics line of handheld game systems.
Hearkening back to a time when you could buy a handheld gaming device that only ran a single game, the new systems are coming this fall in four flavors, all of which are up for pre-order from GameStop:
Each is priced at $14.99… batteries not included. You’ll have to supply your own set of AA batteries.
The new Tiger Electronics systems are inspired by a classic line of handheld game systems released in the 1990s, each with a small monochrome LCD display and a handful of game control buttons including Jump, Move, up, down, left and right keys.
And… that’s about it.
Odds are you’ve already got a smartphone capable of playing games that are much more interesting than these titles… and which aren’t single-purpose gadgets that will collect dust or take up space in a landfill once you inevitably get bored of playing the game. But at $15 each, these are… still kind of hard to justify.
Then again, the $25 Oregon Trail handheld that came out a few years ago was surprisingly popular.
Who is this product for you ask? Me.
If they release any of the 3 Double Dragon games, either of the Gauntlets or Street Fighter…….I’ll play the f out of them.
These games can NOT be accurately emulated on any current tech Ive ever seen, the LCD screen and how the refresh of the collision detection works allows these handhelds to be played unlike anything else, if youre old enough to have played several of these back in the day, you know exactly what im talking about. Are these great games with layers and layers of depth, no, are they really worth $15, prolly not, but Id play them, just like I played the Oregon Trail hand held, to completion, several times, with several variations on the trails.
This seems to be more for collectors rather than entertainment.
Also, the time seems to be right for Nokia to bring back the N-gage and a kickstarter funded Gizmodo that will go up in flames just like the original. If everyone wants that we can just agree as the human race to turn back the tides of time and after 2020 the next year will be 1991. Dallas-reboot on Netflix?
I wonder if they will also bring back the Tiger R-Zone. I had one of those. It was kind of like a fake VR version of this. Not really so much VR, as just a reflective plastic lens that reflected the picture to your eye, like a Google Glass.
Probably a tough sell.
Who is actually interested in these? There’d be a certain nostalgia factor for all of five minutes before you remember just how crappy these games were.
lol these are garbage before they are even built.
I’m interested… and I remember how crappy they were. Obviously the nostalgia factor is the driver for these. It’s the same reason why I bought the Mattel handheld football, baseball, and basketball repros.
I had a zelda watch back in the day that was in this category. Really basic, but I played it until the LCD glitched out.
But doing that now is absurd. $15 for a handheld that played all 4 is still pushing it. Trying to quadruple dip here on games where none are can’t miss classics is a special kind of terrible. I’m sure they’ll make some impulse sales especially with the sonic movie apparently raking in some money, but that’s no excuse. I hope the people behind this get a mild itch they can never quite scratch.
These appear to be for children. You might rather give a child a $15 toy than a $150 smartphone.
Considering you can get a smartphone with okayish specs for $8-$20 then who are these for? I think what they should have done is made an emulator type system that can play these games.
Bingo. Something like the AtGames Genesis handheld’s hardware, in the classic Tiger form factor, that shows a static color screen with moving black sprites. They could have sold it as a 40-in-1 for $60 and moved a ton of them.
I just found an iPhone 4 on eBay for $9 shipped. There’s a ridiculous amount of options for entertainment on that.
No one is playing these, except maybe a handful of nostalgia Youtubers. These are basically just so you can further display your nerd bonafides in your cubicle. It’ll get placed next to a Star Wars Funkopop or two, a metal Thundercats lunchbox (never once used to carry a lunch), some superhero Pez dispensers, and a coffee mug that says “I aim to misbehave”. For that, $15 is probably about the right price.
You’re missing the real appeal to stuff like this. It doesn’t matter that nobody is going to “play” these. They are going to sell regardless. Companies like Hasbro know that these will sell to collectors, or just nerds that want to keep it in the box on their bookshelf. Hasbro also knows that people will buy these as gifts. Stores like Gamestop are only alive thanks to this exact nerd-gift-store business model. If you need to buy a gift for that nerdy friend in your life, you go there and buy stuff like this. At $15 it will sell even with zero appeal to actually play them.
Nah, he’s spot on.
This is just following the current trend of generating eWaste.
Starting to feel fairly privileged remembering I had one of these growing up. Anyone remember how much it must have set my parents/grandparents back?
Nowhere near as much as the Game Boy I actually wanted. 😉
I got really lucky as a child, my dad found the gray brick Game Boy on the beach with a dozen games. This was back when they were a small fortune
That’s cool. I also ended up with a Game Boy that was lost and it was never claimed. It only had one game, but I was happy to have Mario Land instead of Tetris.
You don’t want to go down that road, because eventually you’re going to realize you have to adjust for inflation and that’s going to depress you for all kinds of reasons.