Officially Unofficial Tiger Game.com Official Thread

[Video]

I personally liked the Game.com (dodges flying rotten fruit) The console itself was well built, had decent weight to it, and was relatively tough, even though it looked fairly flimsy. The pack ins even suggested that the thing was headed for great places.

 

Solitare is the best example, with it's touch screen ease of use, it is even superior to most even modern versions of the game. Someone mentioned Palm Pilot...of course, THAT would have cost you several hundered as opposed to $50 at the time.

 

Lights out was a great game too, that was never on any other console (still not to my knowledge) and it was great, even compared to the standalone handheld.

 

But, most the games sucked. They were for the most part, to slow of refresh, or hard to controll, or a little of both. Sonic, with it's glorious 2 Frames per second animation, Jurassic park, with it's one button, or one direction at a time. Both proved the other could be done, but neither used both.

 

Then there's some good games, but most people ignore them, due to the bad games, and their experiance with them.

 

Resedent evil, it's a little short, but it was surprisingly well done. It's a small version of the PSX game for sure.

 

Duke Nukem, it did at least try a first person perspective, and pulled it off rather well, considering the game.com was in NO way capable of doing that. I think it's one of the better games, even if it's not a true 3D game, it's a good first person perspective game none the less.

 

Any of the puzzle and game show games rocked. The only problems I had with any of them, was they werre rather short. But what game like that wasn't back in the day. Wheel of fortune is soo good, it even earned a sequel, the only game on the game.com to do that I might add.

 

Had the thing lasted another year, and the great games come out, and not been lumps of dog shit. Game like Command and conker, and Castle vania, then it may have very well stuck around for a good long time.

 

The console even had a backlight, plans for a rumble pack, and a touch screen some of which were YEARS ahead of Nintendo, but nobody gives it credit.

 

I also think they should have had a full blown PDA cart, with a battery back up. The thing showed what it could do with it's built in software.

 

Anyhow, that's in the past now, but to think of what could have been.

 

As far as the people making games suck, I think Tiger made them all, didn't they? I don't think Sega actually had anything to do with Sonic for example, other than whoring it out to Tiger.

[EricDeLee]

You know jbanes this sounds almost like the Nintendo DS vs the PSP.Everyone thought the PSP was going to rule(internet,movies,games,ect)but the Nintendo DS proved them wrong.The DS took off like wildfire and PSP while has just kind of putted along.As powerful as the PSP is people perfer the DS.

 

 

They do??? Not from what I've seen. All I've seen is DS owners trying to emulate what the PSP can do. Yet never reaching status quo...

 

 

I know I don't perfer the DS. It is too kid based in many ways. Not all things are wrong... trust me I've spent enough time with it... but I spent enough time with both systems to know that the PSP is the superior system hands down

[jbanes]

They were also very used to LCD game hardware design.

The Game.com's LCD is the most obscure design you'll ever see in a handheld game, achieving its bizarre 5-shade display by rapidly displaying multiple 1-bpp images. This really explains why the blur was so bad.

Wow. That's just... weird. It sounds like a clever hack to keep the price down, but that must have made for some rather interesting framerate restrictions.

 

Not only that, but the CPU was vastly crippled

Any idea what the speed rating of the CPU was? I've heard everything from 10 - 32 MHz. 10MHz appears to be the closest to the truth. Still, that leaves it with a bit more horsepower than the Gameboy.

 

there's a total lack of any graphic acceleration, and the sound hardware had to be completely driven in software by the (already) stressed CPU.

It used a framebuffer, didn't it? No wonder the framerates were so low. You can't reasonably expect a 10MHz processor to fill a framebuffer with any semblence of speed! Even for the Game.com's small 192x160x4 screen, that's still 15,360 bytes per screenful. Translate that to operations per second (especially when you're duplicating effort by first clearing, then drawing two to three layers of background, then drawing the sprites) and you've got a recipe for slowness. I imagine the games probably didn't manage more than 10-15 FPS.

 

The GameBoy was miles above the Game.com hardware-wise, all the Commie has going for was its high resolution and massive obscurity. I have no idea why I find the device intriguing and constantly battle with the awful titles, but perhaps its just my assumption that if I don't play it, the hardware will go bad. Albeit like an old piece of fruit.

I don't know about that. Tiger was focused on a different set of tradeoffs than Nintendo was. They wanted to target a more mature market, and the hardware reflects that. i.e. Focus on high-resolution graphics, digital speech, pen-based interaction, etc. Tiger simply failed to capitalize on those advantages by then trying to make Gameboy-like games for the system.

 

You have to remember what part of the gaming industry Tiger had started with and had been a big part of... the LCD gaming market. Their programmers were use to programming for LCD games, that was one of the issues with the games, they got it right when RE2 came out but it was too late by then.

Is that true? If the games were done entirely in-house, it would certainly explain a lot. Especially why the games seem to be designed around the idea that you'll only push one button at a time.

 

Well the touch screen wasn't very responsive because it has a rather small area of sensitivity, I'd assume a larger grid touchscreen would have jacked the price up.

Am I the only one who doesn't fault the Game.com for it's low touch sensitivity? Despite only being a 12x10 grid, it's enough to play most games. Why should Tiger have wasted money on expensive high-res sensors when none of the games were going to use it? I mean, they could have made a "Where's Waldo?" game if it had higher sensistivity, but I sincerely doubt that you would have been able to see Waldo.

 

FWIW, I played the Williams Classics quite a bit this weekend. I have to say, they can be somewhat fun if you stop trying to play them like the originals. (I wonder. Is training yourself how to play your favorite game poorly a good thing?) Despite its underwater responsiveness, annoyingly bad AI, and lack of authenticity in regards to game elements (the pterodactyl is only supposed to come when you take too long!) it still manages to provide an experience reminicient of the original. Sort of like the 2600 Joust, I suppose.

 

As it turned out, Robotron's flaws ended up not mattering. No matter how much you shoot, you can't harm the last family. So just shoot everything and collect what the lasers pass through. I guarantee that you'll end up getting bored with it before you run out of extra lives.

 

On to Sinistar. I found that if you're persistent enough, you can collect crystals by sheer accident rather than skill. I'm not sure if it makes the game any more fun, but at least your gaming session is a bit longer.

 

Defender is still quite impossible. There's nothing quite like having baddies spawn right above or below you to make your life difficult.

 

All in all, I am extracting some enjoyment from the system. I'll see how I like Duke 3D and Sonic Jam when they arrive in the mail.

[Video]

 

 

there's a total lack of any graphic acceleration, and the sound hardware had to be completely driven in software by the (already) stressed CPU.

It used a framebuffer, didn't it? No wonder the framerates were so low. You can't reasonably expect a 10MHz processor to fill a framebuffer with any semblence of speed! Even for the Game.com's small 192x160x4 screen, that's still 15,360 bytes per screenful. Translate that to operations per second (especially when you're duplicating effort by first clearing, then drawing two to three layers of background, then drawing the sprites) and you've got a recipe for slowness. I imagine the games probably didn't manage more than 10-15 FPS.

 

The GameBoy was miles above the Game.com hardware-wise, all the Commie has going for was its high resolution and massive obscurity. I have no idea why I find the device intriguing and constantly battle with the awful titles, but perhaps its just my assumption that if I don't play it, the hardware will go bad. Albeit like an old piece of fruit.

I don't know about that. Tiger was focused on a different set of tradeoffs than Nintendo was. They wanted to target a more mature market, and the hardware reflects that. i.e. Focus on high-resolution graphics, digital speech, pen-based interaction, etc. Tiger simply failed to capitalize on those advantages by then trying to make Gameboy-like games for the system.

 

 

 

Well the touch screen wasn't very responsive because it has a rather small area of sensitivity, I'd assume a larger grid touchscreen would have jacked the price up.

Am I the only one who doesn't fault the Game.com for it's low touch sensitivity? Despite only being a 12x10 grid, it's enough to play most games. Why should Tiger have wasted money on expensive high-res sensors when none of the games were going to use it? I mean, they could have made a "Where's Waldo?" game if it had higher sensistivity, but I sincerely doubt that you would have been able to see Waldo.

 

 

 

 

Actually, a lot of the action games would have been tolerable if they DID get 10-15 FPS. The problem is (and I'm NOT kidding) many of them got 2-4 FPS I don't know if it could have done faster (I'm betting it could) but it didn't. And that ruined a lot, well, almost all of the action games.

 

As for the screen not being responsive. I find it perfectly responsive, and mine's, what? ten years old now? The thing is, this doesn't have a pixel per pixel touch screen like the DS, it in fact only has a touch resolution of about 10H by 12W. Your not going to wright your name on it, but it's perfectly suitable to use the onscreen keyboard, and works just fine in the instances it's asked to be used. People may think it sucks without the 1-1 ration of the DS, but you got to realize, that in the PDA's of the time, the EXPENSE of the system, was the touch screen. Tiger found a way to get touch screens in their systems very cheaply, and still be useful. And I personally think that they should have been praised instead of ridiculed for it.

 

And yes, I"m fairly certain all the games were written in house by Tiger. Had it been open to developers, who knows? it might have been the Atari of handhelds. You know, the 2600 had hit it's peak, untill third parties started developing for it and found neat tricks to make it run better.

 

Personally, I'd love to see a new game.com come out, but that won't happen. Even if Tiger used their past experiances, there are to many people who wouldn't give it a chance. But there's probably a lot of people out there like me, that bought it on clearance, and would probably not wait that long next time around.

[jbanes]

Actually, a lot of the action games would have been tolerable if they DID get 10-15 FPS. The problem is (and I'm NOT kidding) many of them got 2-4 FPS

That's just sad.

 

As for the screen not being responsive. I find it perfectly responsive, and mine's, what? ten years old now? The thing is, this doesn't have a pixel per pixel touch screen like the DS, it in fact only has a touch resolution of about 10H by 12W. Your not going to wright your name on it, but it's perfectly suitable to use the onscreen keyboard, and works just fine in the instances it's asked to be used. People may think it sucks without the 1-1 ration of the DS, but you got to realize, that in the PDA's of the time, the EXPENSE of the system, was the touch screen. Tiger found a way to get touch screens in their systems very cheaply, and still be useful. And I personally think that they should have been praised instead of ridiculed for it.

Um, that's what I said?

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't fault them for using low touchscreen sensitivity.

[TailChao]

They were also very used to LCD game hardware design.

The Game.com's LCD is the most obscure design you'll ever see in a handheld game, achieving its bizarre 5-shade display by rapidly displaying multiple 1-bpp images. This really explains why the blur was so bad.

Wow. That's just... weird. It sounds like a clever hack to keep the price down, but that must have made for some rather interesting framerate restrictions.

 

Definitely to keep the price down, the LCD is really a compromise. A very sad thing because it's such an important element of a handheld console. You could probably get some decent framerates, but this is more of a restriction of the CPU, and less from the LCD (although the visibility is questionable. Interestingly enough, alot of Lynx programmers seemed to use low framerates in order to give sharper visuals on the LCD. I prefer smoothness, but that's just me)

 

Not only that, but the CPU was vastly crippled

Any idea what the speed rating of the CPU was? I've heard everything from 10 - 32 MHz. 10MHz appears to be the closest to the truth. Still, that leaves it with a bit more horsepower than the Gameboy.

The CPU was a Sharp SM85 embedded in the Sharp SM8521 SoC. As far as the official Sharp documentation is concerned, it's running at 10Mhz. It's a decently flexible CPU, and really does have more "oomph" than the Z80 derivative in the GB (Although that had some nice features of its own to compensate). However, it takes several clock cycles for very simple tasks, which tends to weigh down the system. Personally I'd take a 6502 over either.

 

 

there's a total lack of any graphic acceleration, and the sound hardware had to be completely driven in software by the (already) stressed CPU.

It used a framebuffer, didn't it? No wonder the framerates were so low. You can't reasonably expect a 10MHz processor to fill a framebuffer with any semblence of speed! Even for the Game.com's small 192x160x4 screen, that's still 15,360 bytes per screenful. Translate that to operations per second (especially when you're duplicating effort by first clearing, then drawing two to three layers of background, then drawing the sprites) and you've got a recipe for slowness. I imagine the games probably didn't manage more than 10-15 FPS.

 

There is a primitive DMA mode that can be used to copy data to the VRAM framebuffer. However, it is very limited and most programmers seemed to neglect it (after all, this IS Tiger). What is odd though is that you can get some decent framerates with software rendering on low end systems, just look at some of the titles for the Supervision. It's quite sad to think there were better programmers at Sachem than Tiger, but apparently it's true

 

The sound hardware could play some decent small sample and noise based music by itself (I believe it was composed of two sample channels and one noise), but for some reason most programmers at Tiger decided to use it to stream massive PCM voice and sound effects, really puts a strain on things.

 

The GameBoy was miles above the Game.com hardware-wise, all the Commie has going for was its high resolution and massive obscurity. I have no idea why I find the device intriguing and constantly battle with the awful titles, but perhaps its just my assumption that if I don't play it, the hardware will go bad. Albeit like an old piece of fruit.

I don't know about that. Tiger was focused on a different set of tradeoffs than Nintendo was. They wanted to target a more mature market, and the hardware reflects that. i.e. Focus on high-resolution graphics, digital speech, pen-based interaction, etc. Tiger simply failed to capitalize on those advantages by then trying to make Gameboy-like games for the system.

 

I view the original DMG Gameboy (Not this color and advance crap ) as one of the most balanced hardware designs ever, so I'm a bit tainted. Tiger was definitely trying to appeal to the leftovers from the crowd Sega targeted in the early 90s, and like you said, it is unfortunate that they decided to publish the games that they did. Not to mentoin that their promotion of the unit was terrible.

 

All in all, I am extracting some enjoyment from the system. I'll see how I like Duke 3D and Sonic Jam when they arrive in the mail.

 

Duke 3D was actually pretty well done, I enjoyed it. The framerate is low, but it doesn't inhibit playability. I've wasted many hours on the game, so you might get some fun out of it.

Sonic Jam is an abomination of a game. You will have purchased it purely for humor value as the Game.com lags as you collect rings and it's forced to play crappy PCM samples of every sound effect. Lovely job, Tiger.

 

On a side note, I'd like to see more of Game.Commies pursuit of pulling apart the hardware and making a dev kit. I'd love to work with it, it's just too bizarre to pass up.

Edited December 19, 2006 by TailChao

[Atarifever]

You know jbanes this sounds almost like the Nintendo DS vs the PSP.Everyone thought the PSP was going to rule(internet,movies,games,ect)but the Nintendo DS proved them wrong.The DS took off like wildfire and PSP while has just kind of putted along.As powerful as the PSP is people perfer the DS.

 

 

They do??? Not from what I've seen. All I've seen is DS owners trying to emulate what the PSP can do. Yet never reaching status quo...

 

 

I know I don't perfer the DS. It is too kid based in many ways. Not all things are wrong... trust me I've spent enough time with it... but I spent enough time with both systems to know that the PSP is the superior system hands down

I can't believe people are still having this arguement. It was old a year ago before the outcome was already decided; at this point it's beating a dead horse with another dead horse.

[EricDeLee]

Not much of an outcome if people still claim the DS to be superior. It is a great system. No bones about that. But not superior.

[Video]

Well, I got a couple of questinos about the game.com, that some of the people on the more technicle side might know, and might answer a few of my questions.

 

1, does any of the games actually save for the game.com? I noticed a few, like Resedent evil, will have Contine, or Load game, and yet, I've never seen one that offered a way to save the games. Is this a left over from a part of the program that was just never removed when the function was dropped? Or is there a way to actually save these games?

 

and, to go with one, if the games saved, could they save on the Game.com's built in memory, or on the cart itself?

 

And my second question. I notice the game.com, takes 4 AA batteries (or 2 for the pocket pro) but the power input for the ac addaptor, is rated at 9v. The only reason to change voltage, is to save battery power on the go, and the only real way to do that, is to cripple the hardware (useually processor, in the case of notebook computers) So is it possible that the game.com would get a slightly better clockspeed or something by plugging it into a wall, or an external 6 cell battery pack?

 

Those are two questions that have been naging me for years. Thanks for any responces.

[jbanes]

And my second question. I notice the game.com, takes 4 AA batteries (or 2 for the pocket pro) but the power input for the ac addaptor, is rated at 9v.

I'd have to pop it open to be sure, but I'm guessing that the voltage is adjusted before being transfered to the main bus of the Game.com. The 9v pack was most likely used because it's standard and cheap to come by. Alternatively, it's possible that the voltage is stepped up from the batteries before use. (LCD screens tend to be pretty high voltage despite their low wattage requirements.)

 

I sincerely doubt that the CPU is performance stepped in any way, shape, or form. That stuff was pretty advanced technology in 1997, and was something you weren't likely to find in an embedded platform.

 

Of course, that's just my guess. I could be wrong.

[Ze_ro]

and, to go with one, if the games saved, could they save on the Game.com's built in memory, or on the cart itself?

I might be wrong here, but I think it actually does save to the Game.com itself. Games definitely save their high scores into system memory (you can even view them all from the main menu if you want), so it's not that big a step to save your progress there too. I have no idea how much memory the Game.com has for this purpose though. I can't imagine it'd be more than 1 or 2K.

 

--Zero

[Video]

Yeah, Changing the voltage of one, or the other would make scense. But really, if your going to change the voltage of the battery anyways, just put a 6V power supply through it, and let that be jumped up too. Or if it is turning the voltage of the power supply, get rid of the voltage doohickey, and just use a 6V supply. Either way, id oubt they would have truely saved money, considering the consumer had to buy the power supply seperately anyways

 

Yeah, I kind of figure you could save on the game.com. I doubt it has much internal memory as you do. Mainly cause, it will only save the high score of the last 12 games you play, wich plays heck if your like me and have more games than that you actually play. And rally considering some games, like Sonic, will take up three slots. But as I said, while I've seen some games, like RE have a load game option on the start up menue, and some games like Duke Nukem give you a password on the level you die on, but no place to input it. I just found it kind of weird. Of course, both those games were later games, so it may be a case of "we're canning the com, but these games are so close to finished, we'll push them out the door anyways."

[Video]

Well, I answered one of my questions. I looked it up and found out how to save on RE. I forgot the stupid ass save method on the PSX version, whihc is the same Idea. I guess it sort of plays in the game to make it more difficult or something, but anyhow, not the point.

 

Yeah, the game saves. And it saves on the hardware, not the game cart. I got to game.com's and tried this out.

 

Anyhow...