By Rob Bricken in
Daily Lists, Video Games
Tuesday, Jan. 13 2009 @ 5:04AM
By Caleb GoellnerThere was a time before Gameboy when the novelty of a "handheld" game was so alluring that tykes were willing to accept less-than-stellar electronic offerings. LCD video game technology had its uses, after all. Depending on pre-formed darkened shapes, any game that involved simple projectiles hitting targets was a reasonable way to kill an hour if there was nothing good on TV. But there's only so much fun to be had playing electronic bowling, and thus the technology was pushed beyond its usefulness, adapted to mimic fluid, pixel-based consoles to the point of embarrassment in the name of cashing in on popular entertainment licenses. Today these handhelds serve as a kind of video game bottom-feeder, collecting dust at garage sales in penance for crushing hopes and deflating expectations across gamedom. It's a fitting punishment, for the following games aren't merely bad; the fact that Tiger converted intellectual property gold into solid game crap is a genuine alchemical outrage.
10) Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Violence isn't an acceptable way to handle conflict in real life, but it's all well and good in the escapist world of video games. Fulfilling power fantasies by crushing monsters is a debatably healthy way to channel feelings of frustration into harmless fun. The problem is, like most all Tiger handheld games, the gameplay in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is so cumbersome that the children who experienced it probably chose to unleash their rage in a less constructive, more painful fashion. All those smashed mailboxes around the neighborhood? That's not youthful mischief. That's a young ranger's cry for help.
9) Jurassic Park
Remember how suspenseful it was to watch Jurassic Park for the first time? The earth-shaking approach of the monstrous T-Rex? Those damn velociraptors opening doors? The acid-spitting dilophosaurus wrecking Wayne Knight's complexion? This game echoes some of those events minus the tension that made them meaningful, so hopefully everyone is down for a joyless thirty minutes of running and hiding, followed by the crushing disappointment at having done so. Really, would it have killed Tiger to include some dino-destroyage (like in the far superior JP games on Sega Geneis and Super Nintendo)?
8) Batman Returns
Challenging players to master "five levels of skill," the Batman Returns game's only notable trait (other than being terrible) is that it cashed in on what was perhaps the last movie anyone saw with Michael Keeton in it. That is all.
7) Disney's Aladdin
Games based on musicals feel empty without at least some of the source materials' jazzy tunes to bolster the action. Take Disney's Aladdin. Without his tortured musings, Agrabah's lovable pickpocket is just another thief lying to get under a princess' veil. Furthermore, it's ghastly to consider a loveless romp on a magic carpet sans "A Whole New World" to explain Aladdin and Jasmine's mutual affection. It may seem obvious in retrospect, but it takes the Prince of Thieves himself to prove that Tiger's handheld games fail not only at graphics and gameplay, but also at music.
6) G.I. Joe Star Brigade
What's worse than G.I. Joe's desperate Star Brigade line? Easy. A videogame of G.I. Joe's Star Brigade. For one, all of the guns on G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero shot lasers in the first place. Secondly, Joe's colorful cast all but loses its personality when adorned in bulky space suits. Finally, since sound cannot exist in the vacuum of space, Snake Eye's trademark silence is completely spoiled when nobody can hear a thing in the first place. All kidding aside, the Star Brigade toyline was pretty cool. Unfortunately, none of the fun translated into this atrocious 2-D buzzkill.
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19 comments
Comments
CTrees said:
Heh, I had the Power Rangers one. As well as a generic caveman game, and the PR game was actually the better of the two. Good god were they aweful.
DK said:
I had the Double Dragon one.
You should do one on the current generation of these- Plug and Play games
Justin said:
I had a Double Dare game and some kind of pinball game. I remember playing the hell out of the Pinball game.
Matt said:
You should do a list of the ten best tiger games. I think I had a football game that was pretty good and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that was fun.
Pudge said:
I had so many of these as a child (including Aladdin, Power Rangers, and the Star Wars one with Darth Vader) it's almost painful to contemplate how many actual games I could have had instead. Oh well, at least I got a Game Boy Color when I was ten. I had to have Pokemon Yellow!
Mount_Prion said:
Chicken Run looks awesome.
Garyx said:
I had the Street Fighter one.
It was a painful youth. Once I was older, I got real consoles.
Now this game lies on a wooden stake in my backyard.
Dan Marek said:
When I saw this list, I immediately thought of the Sonic and Street Fighter handhelds I use to own. Glad to see they made the top of the list. I think the only real benefit to owning the Super Street Fighter 2 handheld is that it's something of a collector's item now.
Wizardofyendor said:
I had the turtles one, that was pretty fun.
Teague said:
I doubt it was a Tiger game, but the old handheld Dungeons and Dragons game was terrible. Wandering around in a maze, apparently without weapons or dungeoneering tools of any sort, trying to find the magic arrow before the dragon finds you, and hoping that you don't fall into one of the many pit-traps before you find the magic rope. Great.
Jeremy said:
Nice to see Power Rangers represented even if it is as a crappy game. I had the Sonic one. It was pretty horrible. Like you said, a game about speed shouldn't be that slow.
Here's my question about Street Fighter. Why is Cammy screaming, "Cannon Jew?"
ZeroCorpse said:
I still have a Dungeons & Dragons LCD game from the early 80s. I haven't put a battery in it since about a decade ago, but I'm sure it still works.
It was very, very dull.
Now, the Super Scramble LCD game I had was awesome. It was rather large, and had a joystick and several buttons. It ran on D batteries!
LCD games had their place. We didn't have gameboy back in the day, and the LCD games were a great distraction during long car rides.
iROB said:
I got a lot of these growing up from various relatives as gifts, mainly because they knew I loved video games, but they also didn't want to drop $50 on an actual Genesis or SNES game, and they assumed these were just as good.
Aside from Power Rangers, Batman Returns, and few others, I also had a lot of the more gimmicky Tiger handhelds, like a "3-D" Ninja game, and that weird one that wrapped around your head and rested by your right eye, but it would give you a headache after five minutes because you had to close your left eye and strain the hell out of your right one in order to see the tiny screen properly. I can't remember what that Tiger product was called, but it was essentially their version of the Virtual Boy, both in concept and in terms of its inability to provide you with a halfway descent gaming experience.
Monkey said:
I don't know about you guys but I never made it past level two of any of those Tiger Games. Not that they were so bad I couldn't make myself them any longer but that no matter how hard I tried and after years of suffering I couldn't get to level three on of any of those games if my life depended on it.
Friginator said:
Wait.. there were Tiger handheld games that DIDN'T suck?
Kid Nicky said:
LMAO I had the Street Fighter one! For those who have never played it,who you played as determined what side of the screen you stood on. Plus,it actually had all the special moves. That's right,to throw Ryu's fireball,you press down,down forward,forward,punch. On a Tiger handheld. It worked maybe once out of every five times.
AJ said:
My brothers had the Ninja Turtle one. I had the Gargoyles one. I used to love that show and the game was cool, too. Or at least, I remember it as cool.
Snoodle said:
Lol I had so many of these. One in particular that always made me angry (I don't even know if it was Tiger) was a Goosebumps one where you had to fight mummies...I could never win D:
the beast said:
Tiger Electronics games were great.
Of course, there were games that were worse than others, but I really enjoyed playing them.
