There will eventually come a day when handheld gaming is possibly too good. Mighty devices, featuring all manner of shrunken hardware that matches up to next-gen devices in a way that is simply witchcraft in action. Press X to turn yourself into a newt and eventually get better. Until then, if you’re between the ages of ancient and old as f***, you probably remember an era where your portable gaming had games on offer, the battery life of a Mayfly 23 hours after birth and an entire colour spectrum of one shade of LCD.
I’m talking of course about ye olde Tiger Electronics, a series of licensed games that were as basic as could be and had sound effects akin to that of a fax machine having perverted sex with a 56K fax modem. They eventually went completely out of fashion when Nintendo’s Gameboy rocked up and allowed fans to not only play multiple games on one system but good ones as well, but for a time Tiger was king.
With Toy Fair 2020 around the corner, Hasbro is popping an early announcement, detailing how Tiger Electronics have been resurrected. Like the consoles of yesteryear, they’ll do what Tiger did best: Create cheap disposable gaming devices with easy controls, a decent battery life and hopefully they’ll be as durable as their predecessors, devices so rugged that not only could they survive a nuclear war but the arguably more destructive force that is a toddler whacking away at the console.
There’ll be four games on offer when they launch in the US of A for $15 a pop: Marvel’s X-Men: Project X, Disney’s Little Mermaid, Transformers Generation 2 and Sonic the Hedgehog 3. They’ll all sport new designs as well, just in case you wanted something fresh to add to the library of retro paraphernalia. Will they be available locally? I personally hope so, because come Christmas time I’ll be grinning like glee when a child unwraps a present thinking they’ve gotten a PS5 and instead wind up with one of these delightful devices.
Last Updated: February 21, 2020
Hammersteyn
February 21, 2020 at 13:51
They’ll have to make it a lot of updates though. Days of squinting while tilting the screen at the right angle while your dropping the bears of at the pool is long gone now that we have smartphones.
Pariah
February 21, 2020 at 13:56
Tamagotchis were better.
Yeah, I said it.
MaSeKind
February 21, 2020 at 14:00
I’m kinda surprised there hasn’t been a craze of having virtual pets on smartphones. I’m sure there are apps like that.
Hammersteyn
February 21, 2020 at 13:51
https://media1.giphy.com/media/ddwRVg6YALvZsg3rui/giphy.gif
Pariah
February 21, 2020 at 14:00
Yeah, how could he drop the ‘d’ from ‘wind’? Just because it’s in his name doesn’t give him the right!
The D
February 21, 2020 at 14:10
As the Word or 2 Grandmaster on SABC2, I have full ownership over all consonants!
Pariah
February 21, 2020 at 14:20
8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown is more my speed. XD