A similar kind of trap was the Game.com, Tiger Electronics’ bid to compete with the Game Boy. It made a kind of sense, sure. Nintendo got into portable gaming with the Game & Watch series, from there spreading into a more flexible system with replaceable cartridges. Tiger made Game & Watch-style LCD games too, so why couldn’t they do the same thing?

Thing is, Tiger was doing this through most of the 1990s! They kept their costs and prices down and managed to make them profitable by just putting out the most barest games possible, Game & Watch-like LCD games in the era of the Sony Playstation. (Ernie Smith at the excellent blog Tedium wondered at their success too.)

Tiger released their Game Boy competitor, Game.com, in September 1997. It was absurdly cheap at $30, but at that time a Game Boy Pocket was only a little more expensive at $55. I think it’s safe to say the only people who were buying up Game.com devices were extremely low information buyers. But they found 300,000 such buyers. I expect a majority of them were grandparents.

So, what were those lucky enough to get a Game.com in for? The system got a total of 21 games. One of its games was Sonic Jam. The website Bad Game Hall of Fame had a look at it, and it was quite the thing. I call it a thing because it barely qualifies as a game.

It was named after a Saturn release of the Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog games, and claimed to have Sonics 2, 3 and “and Knuckles,” but not only were all the games strained through the Game.com’s small monochrome screen, they all were drastically cut down. Each has only one level! And it’s barely playable at that!

Bad Game Hall of Fame did a general retrospective on the Game.com. I personally love terrible janky systems like this, but it’s not because I think they’re secretly good, it’s because, like the mockbuster output of The Asylum, I think they’re hilarious. But I’m not laughing at the kids who were expecting a Game Boy but ended up with this instead.

These days Tiger Electronics exists, as many other game companies from past decades like Milton-Bradley, Parker Brothers, Avalon Hill and Wizards of the Coast, as merely one organ out of the many that comprise the grotesque Frankenstein’s Monster of Hasbro, Inc. Hasbro paid $335 million dollars for them, possibly because they saw something in their then-new Furby product. Nowadays I don’t think Tiger’s name is being applied to any current products, and that’s probably for the best.

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One of the things about Monopoly I know is that its artwork has changed a fair bit over the years. The board mostly looks the same, but the characters are different. The character that Hasbro now calls by the generic “Mr. Monopoly,” and used to be called Rich Uncle Pennybags, was not the original mascot for the game, which was a character with a big 50s ad art-styled head. I don’t have pictures of it, just vague memories from seeing it back during the Monopoly anniversary that happened decades ago now. Google is of no help. The search continues.

Another thing that I know about Monopoly, as the rest of the developed world by now, is that Hasbro was, for a while, extremely active in pimping out the Monopoly property for making custom versions. There are several hundred of then, probably thousands by now, and they keep making more.

There have been multiple Nintendo Monopoly boards. Mario obscurites site Supper Mario Broth found one, and in one of the few examples of something I’ve found interesting about one of those damn Monopoly variants, there are drawings of Mario and Luigi on the cards done in the style of Rich Uncle Pennybags!

Most of them are pretty sad attempts to wallpaper over Monopoly game elements with a Mario pattern. In the game, houses are “power-ups,” and a hotel is an “invincibility.” But the artwork shows much more care in melding the two properties than do the rules!

Mario Parties require you pay at the door. They’re probably BYOB too.

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“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Welcome shlorbs and foobs to our mostly-weekly text-based internet news program! I hope you enjoyed our techno/bicycle horn fusion theme song! It’s the number one chart-topper on my homeworld, but admittedly my species doesn’t have ears. Images includes in this post are ultimately from Mobygames.

Emily Olson at NPR (swanky!): Google’s shares dropped by $100… (holds paper in front of eyes, reads twice to make sure I see it right)… billion after a disastrous AI demonstration. As a wise cartoon butler once said, “You people have too much money!” I guess we see where everyone’s looking for the next unsupportable tech bubble now that crypto’s in what I understand humans call “the crapper!” I never understood that saying personally. It isn’t the thing that craps!

Liam Doolan at Nintendo Life tells us that the game lineup on the Japanese version of the new Game Boy game collection on Nintendo Switch Online is different than the Western lineup. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare replaces video mahjongg player Yakuman. Interestingly the article tells us that Japan-only classic For The Frog The Bell Tolls is coming eventually, although it doesn’t say if it’ll see U.S. release, let alone if it’ll come out on my planet, drebnar!

Also, Andrew Webster of The Verge says that the addition of the Game Boy games make Nintendo Switch Online the ultimate retro subscription. I mean it’s pretty good, but how was it that Gameboy titles were what pushed it over the line?

Matt Bassil of Wargamer brings us the surprising news that Bank of America thinks that Hasbro is harming its business by over-monetizing Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. When a bank thinks you’re too money-grubbing you might want to sit down with some hot tea and reflect on your life.

Kotaku. Luke Plunkett. Sony claims before court that Microsoft’s request for documentation goes so far that it’s “obvious” harassment. I mean I am at a point in my blobular life that I don’t see anyone representing a corporation as saying a single syllable that isn’t mathematically calculated to four decimal places to improve their balance sheet, so who the hell knows if it’s true. Maybe it is? I am staying neutral in this fight. Acids and bases hurt my cell wall.

Oli Welsh of Polygon really likes the HD remake of Metroid Prime that Nintendo put on sale a few days ago, noting that it includes the pointing interface improvements introduced with the Wii rerelease.

Will Shanklin of Engadget tells us that a “Minecraft mad scientist” has recreated The Legend of Zelda in Minecraft, and in true mad scientist fashion is holding the work hostage, refusing to release it unless a video demonstrating it hits 5,000 Youtube likes. The article said it was at 500 likes; at our own press time it was up to 4.5K, so by the time you read this it should have enough. I will pass it along to Editorial as possible blog fodder (“blodder”) for Set Side B!

Ron Amadeo brings us the news that with the switch to monthly updates of Android 14, Google will begin just blocking apps on it made for versions of Android before 6. The reason given is security, but bah to that, old software and its preservation simply isn’t a priority for megacompanies like Google. Does anyone remember the days when it seemed like they might be a different kind of tech company? Me neither.

Nicole Clark at Polygon says Okami is the best Zelda-like. Sal Romano at Gematsu reveals that M2 is planning a collection of Toaplan shooters, including the infamous Zero Wing, the game whose U.S. translation brought us the “All Your Base” meme a 100 billion years ago. And Justin Carter at Game Developer reveals that Double Fine has made a documentary about the making of Psychonauts 2. Drebs out!

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