Tiger Electronics handheld games

"You thought LJN was the grand champion, the almighty shitty game factory? Tiger put LJN to shame! Yeah, LJN laid down turd after turd after turd, but Tiger was like a machine gun ass, shitting out turturturturturturturtu-t-turd!"

- The Angry Video Game Nerd

Tiger Electronics was well known for producing a large amount of handheld standalone games, which were based on existing franchises from gaming, TV series, movies, etc. These games work very similarly to a Game & Watch. It has a segmented LCD, which has multiple printed static images behind a clear screen. These light up individually to simulate movement during gameplay.

Why They Aged Like Milk

 * 1) Quantity over Quality: Rather than making one functional game at the time, Tiger Electronics mass-produced a lot of games, basically oversaturating the handheld market.
 * 2) There's almost no grasp of the source material that each game is based on. Mainly because of how each game doesn't follow the concepts of any form of media they're based on since these handheld devices were so basic, they couldn't do something you'd see on the Gameboy or Game Gear for example.
 * 3) Because of how simplistic these devices are, there is no backlight feature, which makes playing difficult during night or dark places.
 * 4) The packaging for the games was always hard to open. This ranges from the handheld games themselves, to the Tiger wristwatch games.
 * 5) It barely shows any gameplay, mainly because of the sheer simplicity these devices had. This is carried to the point where the replay value is almost non-existent.
 * 6) Most games play nearly the same, no matter how different it is.
 * 7) The devices produce no sound except for static beeps. That means that not only are there little to no sound effects, but the music are nothing but static beeps.
 * 8) The screen is difficult to look at. And adding WTALM#3, it becomes even more difficult to play when you're in the shade as well.
 * 9) Awkward button layouts, often counter-intuitive to what one would expect from a handheld game.
 * 10) Poor durability, which causes any game to cease functioning because they simply don't age well.
 * 11) Once again, there is very primitive technology that was used to make the games, which consists of TTL processors, which may have been innovative in the late 70s to early 80s, but obsolete by the time the Game Boy was released in the late 80s. Especially when the Game Gear was released in the 90s.
 * 12) Referring back to WTALM#6 again, the primitive aspect about the technology for these games are better shown where there are limited and simplistic sound effects or how the music in every game is either badly compressed, bland, or ear grating to listen to.
 * 13) * Even better, on the wristwatch games, there are NO sound effects nor music! (At least there isn't anymore annoying, irritatingly bland soundtrack or lackluster sound effects to insult the ears anymore, that's for sure!)
 * 14) Though they are much cheaper than the Game Boy, most of them are extremely low-quality adaptions from films, TV shows, and even home console games. James Rolfe (as the AVGN) called them "The Poverty Version" of the Game Boy as a result. Both pointers WTALM#2 and WTALM#5 explain how that's the case.
 * 15) They also produced multiple devices that range from shoddy (Game.com) to a smaller and less playable version (the wrist games), and even to a headache and eye strain-inducing version (the R-Zone).

Videos
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Reception
On the Angry Video Game Nerd ' s Darkwing Duck episode, these are on the orange level "Severe Zone" of the Shit Scale. ("STAY AWAY. Don't even think about it!")

Trivia

 * The Internet Archive has multiple emulated LCD handhelds manufactured by Tiger Electronics and other companies, such as Coleco, Tomy, and Konami, available to play online. The emulation process was handled by MAME developers, in which the reverse engineering process involves disassembling the handhelds to scan, vectorize, and trace the graphical components.
 * In 2020, Hasbro has announced the reproduction of Tiger Handheld consoles as collectible items, each sold for $14.99.