Oh, I Had That: Tiger Electronic Games

Handheld gaming was everywhere in the 90’s. Thanks to the Gameboy’s enormous success companies like Atari, Sega, and Tiger all jumped in for a piece of the portable gaming dollar. Video games went from being something you had to go somewhere to play to something you could play at home to something you could play a long car ride. It was quite impressive how fast they evolved.

While the Gameboy, Game Gear, and Lynx were all very expensive piece of hardware that could play multiple games, Tiger Electronics entered the market with single game handheld devices that resembled the Game and Watch games of Nintendo’s past. Using basic LCD technology (the same thing a digital clock used), these games were simple and quite primitive compared to its expensive brethren. What Tiger did well though was licensing. There were Tiger Electronic games for everything from Ren and Stimpy to Full House. And with a low price point, it seemed like every kid ended up having one of these.

I had two: Shaq Attack and Mortal Kombat. Both games were quite disappointing but that didn’t stop me from playing the heck out of them.

Thanks to nostalgia, Tiger Electronics brought back a handful of the classic LCD games a few years ago. Titles like X-Men, Sonic 3, The Little Mermaid, and Transformers graced toy shelves for $14.99. I wanted to buy one, but I just knew how disappointed I’d be and how it would just end up sitting on a shelf before making its way into a Goodwill pile. This is one of those memories better left in the past.