The obscure Tiger Tabletop 'Arcade Games'

[Tartfox]

Couldn't find a place to discuss non-console handheld games, so figured I'd ask my questions here. If the mods feel this is better suited for the 'Classic Gaming General' forum, then feel free to move it there-

 

In the year 2000, Tiger Electronics released a series of Pixel LCD games under the brand 'Arcade Games', which all resembled arcade cabinets. They were small enough to play in the hand or serve as a tabletop device. The tops of each game could close down for easy storage and portability. Each of their 'Arcade Games' had a detachable joystick, A-D labelled buttons and additional buttons to pause the game, reset the game, toggle the sound and toggle the games on/off.

5 titles were released under the 'Arcade Games' brand which just so happened to be games that all appeared on the Sega Dreamcast- Q-Bert, NFL Blitz 2000, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, Hydro Thunder and Sonic Adventure, essentially making these Dreamcast handheld ports. Thanks to the display (which was similar to Tiger's Game.com tech), all the games were capable of displaying various animations, multiple stages, enemies, etc. They even had genuine sound effects taken straight from the original Dreamcast Games!

I wanted to know if anyone here owns these unique Tiger games and if so, what do you think of them- are they still enjoyable games despite their limitations? How much content from the original games were they able to port over to these devices? What is their replay value? And, if you do own any are you willing to share photos and/or post videos of them in action?

Research on Google pulls up very little information on these titles besides what I could find on Sonic Adventure (video link to see it in action is at the bottom of this post). These games are hard to come by and as such I think they're unique and rare enough to warrant the interest.


Here's some photos of what the various ones look like-

 

Ready 2 Rumble Boxing





Sonic Adventure






Hydro Thunder





As promised, here's a YouTube video on the Sonic Adventure Tiger Game. For a Tiger Handheld, it's not a bad novelty piece!

[7800fan]

Vaguely remember seeing those in the past, never saw em anywhere since then. I didn't really catch on to the earlier Tiger handhelds or watch games because for some games, it becomes stupidly easy once you figure out the pattern. In Bowling for example, it is possible to score 300 every single fucking time. Never tried the R zone or other Tiger games since oh about 1995.

 

The only "simple" LCD game I still play now and then is my ancient 1979 Gin. No one had made decent game that doesn't have overly predictable AI or annoying full screen ads demanding I buy 274 other games to get rid of the annoying ads. (Game Gear version was OK but it only lasts about 4 hours on AA batteries while Mattel version can last a few days)

[Tartfox]

These tabletop games from Tiger are in fact more advanced than their usual LCD handhelds- their sound and graphical capabilities noticeably trump their lower end LCD handheld games. These tabletops interest me because they have similar tech to Tiger's Game.com console and should provide more replay value thanks to their advancements. The Q-Bert one for example not only provides the classic original arcade mode but also an adventure mode with new levels. And because Tiger's usual LCD handheld game tech would not be able to include all the features from a Q*bert game due to being limited by the amount of fixed static images on a single screen, the tabletops have a dot-matrix screen that allows a wide variety of backgrounds and different gameplay elements for a single game. The tabletops are in fact, dedicated consoles.

 

There's really not much of anything about them online, not even Tiger Electronics' Wikipedia page mentions them but that page funny enough mentions their 99x Game Series which are also obscure.

 

Here's a pic of the Q*Bert one. I would've added this to my original post but I can't seem to edit it. So who here has played or owned these games? What can you say about them?

Edited March 27, 2016 by Tartfox

[goldenegg]

Those look great. I'd love to add a couple to my collection. None on eBay at the moment though.

[Punisher5.0]

Very cool. I'd love to see the Hydro Thunder one in action.

[Terorr78]

Hey, that is my Hydro Thunder (picture) shown in this post...While it's no Dreamcast its animation plays much more like a video game than Tiger's earlier LCDs. The sound is also much better than most handheld games.

 

Note: the game play is more dynamic than what is shown in the attached video, just couldn't record and play at same time.

[Osgeld]

the engineering on these things is astounding. you have a full matrix LCD like a gameboy, probally 10x the cpu power, more ram etc, and somehow they made them into slow lcd segment games anyway

 

bravo tiger

[Terorr78]

Nevermind my video won't upload...may try another avenue later.

Edited December 27, 2017 by Terorr78

[Tanooki]

Damn I've wanted to see the Hydro Thunder one in action for a few years now. It rarely ever pops up. There's just some Tiger things that are scarce much like their two Williams pinball wannabes of not so much Pinbot but definitely Mars Attacks.

[Terorr78]

I did put a short video on youtube.

- excuse the gameplay, couldnt record and play at the same time.

[derFunkenstein]

Man those are cool. When I was a kid I had the Head to Head Talking Baseball and Football games and I thought they were amazing...until I got an NES (which wasn't until 1990). I never circled back around to check this stuff out, and that's too bad. They're pretty cool looking.

[Tanooki]

Wow that's as impressive as I thought it might be. The Q-bert one is pretty plain but that one and Sonic Adventure impress me for a LCD game from Tiger of all things.

[Video]

Without one to compare in person I can't be sure, but it looks like the same LCD used in Dreamcast vmu's.

 

Cool things though, I vaguely remember seeing them in the day, but like many single function tiger handhelds they were WAY to expensive.

[reallybrett]

I want these now.

[Tartfox]

I did put a short video on youtube.

- excuse the gameplay, couldnt record and play at the same time.

 

Thanks for sharing this video. The sound effects are impressive.

 

Since posting I managed to acquire three of these games - Q-Bert, NFL Blitz 2000 and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing. Would love to see more video footage of game play for Hydro Thunder if you can provide it.

Edited December 31, 2017 by Tartfox

[Terorr78]

Here is another short video,