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Games are rated relative to other games for the same system.

Tiger Game.com Reviews I-R

Indy 500
Grade: D
Publisher: Tiger (1997)
Posted: 2013/5/30
Rating: Kids to Adults


screenshotAt first glance Indy 500 looks positively kick-ass! Your racing car is huge and well defined on the bottom of the screen. It looks like it was drawn by an artist with a pencil. The road is bright and wide open. Then you hit the accelerator and the cold, hard reality sets in.

First you find yourself slamming into walls you can't see coming. The trick here is to keep an eye out for arrows that appear in the upper right corner of the screen. Hold left when they appear, go easy on the gas, and you'll probably make the turn.

When jockeying for position the collision detection is highly suspect. Sometimes it appears you're overlapping another car, and often your car spins out for no apparent reason. When you hit a puddle, the impact is like hitting a brick wall!

The flashing word "damage" means you need to pull into the pit stop. This presents you with a separate view of ghostly men who appear around your car before vanishing into thin air.

Once you get the hang of turning and pitting, you might be able to hold your own against the 33-car field. The race is initially set for eight minutes, but periodically you get a "time extended" message. No thanks!! Indy 500 is only marginally playable, and it tends to drag on forever. © Copyright 2013 The Video Game Critic.

1 player 

Jeopardy
Grade: F
Publisher: Tiger (1998)
Posted: 2014/9/9
Rating: Kids to Adults

screenshotIt's the worst game show video game I've ever played. [Buzz!] What is Jeopardy? What a disappointment! After Wheel of Fortune (Tiger, 1997) turned out so well, I expected Jeopardy to be a slam-dunk! After all, it's a better game show right? Not on this system it's not!

This poorly-designed title is bogged down by endless waiting and a tedious interface. You and two CPU contestants select from a grid of topics like famous poets, US Presidents, and ambiguous categories like "a stone's throw". When a question is displayed you "buzz in" if you know the answer. Beat your virtual opponents to the punch and you're prompted to enter an answer via a miniature keyboard interface.

Knowing the answer isn't good enough; you need to spell the thing correctly! That's kind of a big deal considering topics deal with historical figures and ancient civilizations. The questions are extremely hard and if nobody "buzzes in" you'll need to wait an eternity before the question finally "times out".

Host Alex Trebek isn't much of a presence and the digitized voice sounds nothing like him. I can't stand playing this game - it's torture. Instead of testing your knowledge, Jeopardy tests your threshold for pain and misery. © Copyright 2014 The Video Game Critic.

1 player 

Lights Out
Grade: F
Publisher: Tiger (1997)
Posted: 2018/3/18

screenshotI've finally reached the bottom of the barrel when it comes to Game.com titles - or at least one would hope! I have to say, it's getting really hard to stomach. When you turn on Lights Out the intro music sounds like a squeaking wheel of a grocery store cart. So annoying.

The playfield consists of a 6x6 grid of black and white tiles. You touch one and it "flips" the color of the four around it. You "win" by filling the whole board with black squares. The regular mode offers a predefined series of puzzles, and the first dozen or so were so painfully obvious I had to quit out of it. You'd expect the random mode to be more interesting, but the game is just flat-out mind numbing.

While tapping on the screen I felt like one of those zombie housewives playing Candy Crush on their smartphones. The difference is, I wasn't having a good time. Lights Out is a throw-away title that might have been justifiable as a built-in game. As it stands, this cartridge should only appeal to completists, if that. © Copyright 2018 The Video Game Critic.

1 player 

Lost World: Jurassic Park, The
Grade: F
Publisher: Tiger (1997)
Posted: 2024/5/26
Rating: Kids to Adults

screenshot
vehicle stage This movie adaptation is visually impressive. The level of detail is pretty amazing, and I like how they use shading to separate the layers. Check out the stegosaurus herd trudging through the background. If only you could tell what was happening in the foreground, this could have been great.

The Lost World begins with a driving stage that lets you weave around dinosaurs stampeding through a savannah. You get a wide selection of vehicles including a Humvee, bus, and motorcycle. You view the action from behind and there's a decent sense of speed.

Unfortunately it's hard to tell where you're supposed to go with so many dinosaurs, bushes, and other hazards cropping up all over the place. When your car blinks it's taking damage, and it blinks all the time. In my experience the only strategy is to watch for a dinosaur approaching from behind, and get the [expletive] out of its way.

The second stage is a typical side-scrolling platformer boasting lush jungle foliage and lumbering dinosaurs in the background. These graphics are unlike anything I've seen; it looks like they're drawn with a pencil and you're flipping through the pages of a book!

Unfortunately the dinosaurs blend into the scenery, and when you finally spot one unresponsive controls make it hard to react in time. Even if you manage to shoot a dinosaur with your tranquilizer gun, the effect wears off in about ten seconds.

Stiff controls make jumping between tree branches very difficult. It seems like most branches are just barely out of your jumping range, sending you into a free fall. Pterodactyls continuously swoop in, and when touched you instantly collapse and let out an effeminate scream. Wait a minute - I'm a chick? Oh wait - my character is actually Sarah Harding from the film. I would have never guessed.

There are plenty of digitized dinosaur noises but the grunts make it sound like they're constipated. The title screen music sounds strangely like the Halloween theme, but the gameplay music sounds more like a toddler banging away on a Casio keyboard. This could have been a showcase title for the Game.com, but between fighting with the controls and squinting at the screen, it's not so much Lost World as it is Lost Cause. © Copyright 2024 The Video Game Critic.

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Our high score: 4100
Save mechanism: password
1 player 

Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Grade: F
Publisher: Tiger (1997)
Posted: 2013/5/30
Rating: Teen 13+ (animated violence)

screenshotThis Game.com version of Mortal Kombat is so bad, even Scorpion and Sub Zero refused to have anything to do with it! Only characters desperate for work showed up for this one, like Night Wolf, Ermac, Jade, Rain, Cyrax, Sector, and Noob Saibot. The fighters look small and shadowy, and the busy stages make it hard to tell what's happening in the foreground.

The bright street stage isn't so bad, but in the dungeon stage the characters blend into the rock walls. The four buttons let you execute high punches, high kicks, blocks, and low kicks. The fighting is very shallow, and the bizarre physics makes for some unnatural looking jumps. It's easy to get the fighters mixed up, and it's generally hard to tell who's hurting who.

A lot of sound effects are missing, and the matches tend to be quiet aside from the hit and yelp effects. The blood is hard to make out, and looks more like splotches of black ink. This edition of Mortal Kombat Trilogy is so bad it makes me not want to rip out somebody's spine. Now that's bad! © Copyright 2013 The Video Game Critic.

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1 player 

Quiz Wiz: Cyber Trivia
Grade: C
Publisher: Tiger (1997)
Posted: 2024/5/26

screenshotThis is the kind of no-frills experience you'd expect on the Game.com. Quiz Wiz: Cyber Trivia presents you with a series of timed, multiple-choice trivia questions. The buttons on the front of the system are tailor-made for a game like this, conveniently labeled A through D.

The title screen features guitar music that sounds very tinny emanating from the weak Game.com speaker. It's accompanied by a wacky animation of some trendy kid who thinks he's Edward Furlong ("Yo - I'm a wise guy!"). He appears through the game, letting you know if your answers are right or wrong.

You begin by selecting between 1 to 3 players. I assume you just pass the system around and it keeps track of each score. Then you select from five categories: sports, famous people, film and TV, potpourri, and general knowledge.

I actually liked the questions. They don't feel outdated at all, especially if you were alive during the 1990's. What number did Shaq wear with the Lakers? This is right in my wheelhouse. I found some questions quite informative, like which star is closest to the Earth (the sun) and what country was the ukulele invented (Portugal). Who knew??

The interface for selecting an answer is a bit obtuse. You'd think pressing the button corresponding to the answer would be enough, but no - you then need to press "enter" on the touch screen. Why? Did they assume the player would be changing his answer a lot?

You're then presented with an animation indicating if your answer was right or wrong, like fireworks or a rocket crashing. But more often it's just the kid proclaiming "we have a winner!" or "what were you thinking?" Some of his reactions are ambiguous. Is "no brainer" good or bad? How about him blowing a whistle?

An options menu allows you to tweak aspects of the game like the timer, animations, or number of questions. The timer is 15 seconds by default. The game would have been far more interesting if you earned more points by answering quicker. But you just get one point for each correct answer.

I'm not sure why Quiz Wiz is even called Cyber Trivia. Maybe because it's computerized? The instruction booklet claims "over 1,500 questions" yet the title screen says 1001 questions. Oh well, I guess this cartridge serves its purpose and is better-suited to the Game.com than most action games. © Copyright 2024 The Video Game Critic.

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1 to 3 player 

Resident Evil 2
Grade: B
Publisher: Tiger (1998)
Posted: 2013/7/7
Rating: Teen (animated violence)

screenshotA 3D survival horror title is a tall order for the Game.com, but this turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a simple side-scroller, but this is a full-blown 3D adventure. It turns out that Resident Evil's slow, deliberate pace is a perfect match for a system that tends to run games at a slow, deliberate pace. You begin on a city street with a few staggering zombies nearby.

Unlike the console versions, the camera is fixed and usually provides a side angle. The characters scale nicely and the depth perception isn't bad. Walking around is slow going (especially when you're injured) but the locations are reasonably small. One thing I do hate is when you walk onto a new screen and discover you're standing right next to a zombie! You don't have time to react and usually take some mandatory damage.

The status screen comes complete with inventory controls, a map, and a health meter. Switching weapons is confusing but I got the hang of it. The map is critical because the scenery tends to be very faint. This makes the characters stand out, but makes it hard to locate doors in the background.

The monsters look sharp and digitized sound effects feature realistic groans and voice samples. And yes, the game includes a save function. I can't imagine sticking this one out to the bitter end, but it's interesting to see how Resident Evil 2 was effectively revamped to fit this system. © Copyright 2013 The Video Game Critic.

1 player 


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Screen shots courtesy of Games Database, IGN.com, UVL Video Games