Williams Arcade Classics (Tiger Game.com review)

Developer: Digital Eclipse Software, Inc.
Publisher: Tiger Electronics, Inc.
Released: 1997

Williams Arcade Classics is a collection of five games from the 1980s.

+ Each game caters for all skill levels, as they allow you to customise the difficulty level, lives and bonus thresholds.

- Defender is full of random slowdown and the sound effects frequently kick-in well after you've destroyed an enemy.

- Including Defender II is a bit overkill in a five game compilation and its poor frame-rate and awful SFX ruin the experience.

- Joust requires absolute precision to line-up hits, yet the unresponsive controls make this an impossible task.

- Robotron doesn't feature auto-fire and it often struggles to even allow you to shoot when too many sprites are on-screen.

- Sinistar includes the iconic voice clips, but trying to manoeuvre with the stiff controls in an exercise in frustration.

- Overall presentation is severely lacking, as each game menu looks exactly the same and there's no extra features.

Batman & Robin (Tiger Game.com review)

Developer: Tiger Electronics
Publisher: Tiger Electronics
Released: 1997

Batman & Robin is an action game that was packaged with the console.

+ The option to choose from five weapon types prior to each stage is a terrific idea that encourages experimentation.

+ Graphics are outstanding for the console with lots of detailed backgrounds and neat shadow effects.

- Combat is entirely broken as normal punches are usually ineffective, while jump kicking can be spammed throughout.

- The LCD ghosting makes it challenging to immediately determine when an enemy is approaching from off-screen.

- Action sections are repetitive, while the first-person gallery shooting areas fail as you can't see incoming attacks.

- The handheld always feels like it's punching above its weight due to the significant slowdown and unresponsive controls.

- The primitive bleeps and bloops that are supposed to pass for music add nothing to the experience or ambience.

Duke Nukem 3D (Tiger Game.com review)

Developer: Tiger Electronics
Publisher: GT Interactive
Released: 1997

Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter that was originally released on MS-DOS in 1996.

There's three episodes (with four levels each) and your job is to destroy the aliens and foil their plans to destroy Earth. Weapons consist of a Mighty Boot, Pistol, Shotgun and RPG, and your health can be replenished by collecting Medkits and Armor. Instead of 360° movement, Duke moves on a grid where you can walk one block at a time; no turning is involved (apart from when you're approaching the end of a corridor) and instead you can only manoeuvre up, down and strafe left/right. The graphics impress with huge sprites, detailed textures and interesting locations such as a Movie Set. However, the trade-off is performance as the controls are unresponsive and the game engine struggles to keep up with the action, freezing for brief moments often. Another major issue is the repetitive gameplay; the arena sections are littered with the same four alien types and you simply have to keep strafing from left-to-right while inching forward through dark rooms to find the next door. Once you've endured that you'll enter narrow corridors where you shoot enemies and then repeatedly turn 90° to find another alien waiting for you immediately, killing any suspense; irritatingly, unless you have an RPG here (for one-shot kills) you can take unavoidable cheap hits due to your inability to strafe in these corridors. Despite all of the above, the most annoying part of the entire game is the music with its repetitive and primitive bleeps and bloops that cut out whenever you walk or shoot.

While Duke Nukem 3D is a brave and interesting curiosity, the novelty wears off quickly and it's difficult to find many good things to say about its glitchy, laggy and uninspired gameplay. In reality, it's just too ambitious for the under-powered Game.com and the end result is a forgettable title that fails to excite.

Random trivia: Various cheats are available by entering certain button combinations during the pause screen.

Sonic Jam (Tiger Game.com review)

Developer: Tiger

Publisher: Tiger

Released: 1998

Sonic Jam is a compilation of three platform games that originally appeared on the Sega Mega Drive.

You can choose to play as the blue hedgehog, Knuckles or Tails, and your mission is to stop Dr. Robotnik and his plans for world domination. The cartridge consists of four levels each from Sonic 2 (based around Emerald Hill Zone), Sonic 3 (Angel Island Zone) and Sonic & Knuckles (Mushroom Hill Zone). For a series known for its blistering speed, the action here is slow as molasses and Sonic always wants to slide back down hills! Using your Spin Dash does help but if you're spinning up a vertical wall and start to run out of momentum the game will weirdly push you along the ground! Speaking of which, it's actually possible to Spin Dash through large portions of a level, as in some instances you'll just keep rolling non-stop! Slowdown is prevalent, but the worst offender is the shocking LCD blur which reduces the game to a slideshow as it skips large amounts of frames in between. The ghosting results in unresponsive controls too, and even forces the sound effects to play well before the action is even seen on screen! The camera is another constant source of frustration as many times it will lag behind, even though you're located towards the right-hand edge of the play area. The bosses are familiar, yet require zero strategy, as spamming the jump attack will quickly defeat them. The 3D bonus areas task you with collecting black spheres while avoiding white ones, but it's seemingly impossible due to the shockingly low frame-rate and motion blur.

Sonic Jam plays like it's a day-one alpha build that was programmed by an apprentice, and it's an absolute disgrace that it was released in this kind of state. It's broken, completely unfinished (three Zones, really?!), and is easily the sorriest excuse for a videogame that I've ever had the misfortune of playing.

  

Random trivia: Sonic Jam, an unrelated compilation of the blue hedgehog's 16-bit outings, was released on the Sega Saturn in 1997.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Tiger Game.com review)

Developer: Tiger

Publisher: Tiger

Released: 1997

 

The Lost World: Jurassic Park is an action-platformer that's loosely based on the film of the same name.

 

As Sarah Harding or Roland Tembo, your mission is to navigate six stages of Site B and collect all the dinosaur eggs. The game has two play styles, the first of which are the driving areas where you dodge attacking dinosaurs while heading for the Nest area. I like that there's various vehicles to select, but the severe LCD ghosting makes it hard to see what's happening; this forces you to swerve wildly from side-to-side instead of relying on pure skill. Once completed, you reach the action-platforming areas where you must collect five eggs and locate the exit. A compass points you in the right direction, and Tranquillizer Darts, Flares and Screamers help to warn off younger dinosaurs. The graphics are impressive, but there's no real distinction between the layers, meaning everything tends to blur together, and you sometimes can't even tell where a platform starts and ends! The detailed scenery causes the frame-rate to crawl and button presses to be ignored too; in turn, you'll often fall helplessly to your death, or take damage from a dinosaur you've just tried to shoot. Despite these major issues, the platforming still demands pixel-perfect precision and to top it off many leaps of faith are required to succeed. The game's structure adds to the frustration, as the confusing, sprawling levels appear at the beginning, yet the simple horizontal ones occur later. The finale sees you climbing a cliffside to escape the island, but this fun concept suffers from input lag.

 

The Lost World: Jurassic Park shines in the graphics department, but in truth it's an ill-advised action-platformer on a system that simply can't handle fast-paced motion. Couple this with its copious amounts of technical deficiencies and poor level design and you're left with a sad excuse for a videogame that's bordering on unplayable.

 

 

 

Random trivia: Another version of the game was released on Tiger's R-Zone handheld in 1997.

Tiger Casino (Game.com review)

Developer: Tiger Electronics

Publisher: Tiger Electronics

Released: 1998

 

Tiger Casino is a compilation of four casino games and two poker games.

In Video Poker you try to gain a winning combination of five cards on two attempts; after the first hand you can choose to Hold certain cards while replacing others. It's mildly interesting but you never play against an opponent so there's no real intensity. In Video Black Jack the objective is to be the closest to 21 without going over. You play against the CPU and there's lots of nice options such as being able to Double or Split hands. It's engrossing but it has a tendency to deal high cards which results in too many Busts. In Video Hi-Low (War) you draw one card which must be greater than your opponents. It's mind-numbing as there's no skill or strategy involved. A mode where you play solo and have to decide whether subsequent cards will be higher or lower would have been better. In Roulette you bet on certain numbers and colours and hope they appear when the small ball rotates around the wheel. The board doesn't appear on one screen and instead you need to flick between three different segments which is cumbersome. There are a few interesting ways to place bets though, such as splitting a chip across two numbers. In Slots 'O Fruit you pull a reel and see if certain combinations appear in up to five lines. The action is boring, as again, all you do is tap a button and hope for the best; there aren't even any Hold buttons to add some strategy. The Leave button is also too close to the lever. T-Rex Slots is even worse as it's identical except you only have one line instead of five.

Tiger Casino is a competent, yet uninspiring collection of gambling games. It plays fine and does cater to the system's strengths (e.g. good use of the touch screen and avoiding LCD blur) but ultimately it lacks any excitement or creativity and wears out its welcome after a few minutes.

 

 

 

Random trivia: This is the only gambling game on the system, although an adaptation of Monopoly was released in 1999.

Indy 500 (Tiger Game.com review)

Developer: Tiger Electronics

Publisher: Tiger Electronics

Released: 1997

 

Indy 500 is a racing game that was first released in the Arcades by Sega in 1995.

 

Your goal is to beat 32 other drivers in order to win the prestigious race. There's three cars to choose from (that have different attributes in terms of Acceleration, Grip and Top Speed) but only one race track compared to the Arcades three. Other options include the ability to change weather conditions (Sunny or Rain) and transmission type (Automatic or Manual), but the coolest feature is the choice of a first or third-person viewpoint. To start, you must complete a Time Trial over four laps to see where you place in the main event. The steering controls are hideous and range from too sensitive to completely unresponsive. Once the main race starts and other vehicles appear it results in utter chaos. The track is wide enough to fit three cars but it feels very claustrophobic; that's mainly due to the crap collision detection that makes it tough to judge your vehicle's spatial distance in relation to walls and cars. Coupled with the shockingly low frame-rate, it's impossible to get into a flow as every few seconds you'll end up crashing, despite there being clear distance between you and the object. Enemy A.I. is also brutal and cars seem to have a habit of swerving directing into your line of sight. While I like that your car can take damage (which affects your top speed) you'll quickly tire of having to pit for repairs after so many unfair collisions. After you've completed the race (which lasts 5-10 minutes) there's literally nothing else to do; there's also no music and infrequent SFX so it's devoid of atmosphere.

 

Indy 500 is a very loose interpretation of Sega's Arcade racer without any of the fun or intensity, and it's pretty much an unplayable mess. It literally has minutes of gameplay, along with barebones content and shocking controls, and overall it's one of the worst driving games I've ever played.

 

 

 

Random trivia: The game was also ported to the Tiger R-Zone handheld in 1996.