The Hall of Shame 08.01.07: Game.Com
Posted by Vincent Chiucchi on 08.01.2007
This induction's got more words then you idiots have brain cells!
I've been making fun of Sony's marketing of the PS3 for a while now, but could you really blame me? I mean when they make ads featuring crying baby dolls, exploding Rubix Cubes, and men masturbating to soccer games, how can you possibly look at that and go "Wow! I really want to buy a PS3!" I remember when PS2 was about to come out, the commercials featured a PS9 coming out in the year 2078 with a message in the end saying "the beginning", as if to say the future of gaming would begin with the PS2. So what exactly does a man masturbating to a soccer game have to say about the PS3? Thankfully for Sony however, the PS3 isn't just some 3rd rate piece of crap console with about only a dozen or so games available, so it will still sell well at some point. In fact recently sales have been going up since the $100 price drop, and with titles like Metal Gear Solid 4 coming, Sony won't leave the console race early.
The system I'm about to talk about, however, is a different story. It was a handheld that like many others attempted to find someway to finally beat the Game Boy but failed. Failed miserably.
Game.Com: Technologically behind or just way ahead of it's time?
The Game.Com (by the way, it's pronounced "Game Com", not "Game Dot Com". Don't worry, it took me a while before I started calling it right) was introduced in 1997 by Tiger Electronics, famously known for their toys such as the LCD handheld games and Furby. Game.Com would try beating the Game Boy by trying to target an older audience by also doubling as an organizer with a calender, calculator, address book, and Solitaire. Game.Com also had internet features, having two cartridge slots for games, and having the main screen double as a touch screen. When you look at it that way, it almost seems like the prototype for the Nintendo DS! Compared to the Game Boy, Game.Com also had way better sound and the graphics were pretty good for a black and white handheld. Debuting at a price of $60 with Lights Out included and games being $20 to $30, the Game.Com actually doesn't seem so bad.
But if it only SEEMED not so bad, I wouldn't be inducting it. Here's what went wrong with the console.
That whole "connect gamers to the internet" feature? Didn't exactly work out so well. First off there was two entirely separate cartridges: WebLink and Internet. The WebLink cartridge was for uploading your high scores and the Internet cartridge was for text-based web surfing and e-mail. Hooking up the Game.Com to the internet was a pain in itself due to the confusing setup that led to many errors. I don't know about you, but having to go through a trial-and-error process to upload high scores and paying monthly fees (if you used Game.Com's ISP to connect it) doesn't exactly sound like an exciting feature. Eventually when Tiger released an updated versions of the Game.Com, a smaller version called "Game.Com pocket" and then a color version called "Game.Com pocket-pro", it got rid of the web-access feature. Overall, the ".Com" portion of this system sucked.
As for the "Game" portion, that didn't work out so well either. During it's entire lifespan, the Game.Com only had 20 games in total, and 6 of them were minor games like Wheel of Fortune and Tiger Casino. The system did have some big third party games such as Fighters Megamix, Mortal Kombat, Sonic Jam, and Resident Evil 2, but the problem was that these games didn't come from the third parties themselves, but rather these games were done in-house by Tiger. A majority of these games would wind up being terrible, mostly because of the Game.Com's limited power. No backlight made games hard to see (but to be fair, Game Boy didn't have one either) and fast games like Sonic Jam would cause "ghosting" images. So overall, the "Game" portion of this system wound up sucking too.
With the Game.Com showing little to no success, eventually Tiger stopped caring about the Game.Com and put major focus on the Furby, basically killing the system.
But by now you're probably asking "So the Game.Com was just another bad handheld! What makes it so bad you had to write a whole column ranting about it?" See, the Game.Com's marketing was really, REALLY bad. Even though one reason was because it was not put in the video game aisle in toy stores, the biggest reason was because they had what are quite possibly the WORST video game commercials in history.
Here now for your displeasure, a look at these commercials (with recaps in case they get pulled down).
This one has a midget in an orange jumpsuit making his way through the crowd and about to announce something big to the crowd at hand. This crowd, by the way, pisses me off just looking at them, because it's full of people with that damn "open-mouth stare-into-space" stereotypical look of a gamer that is hated so much. You know how black people really hate it when other people use the "Blackface" look with the giant red lips and such? It's just about the same thing with gamers and THAT look. In fact, from now on I'm going to call it "Gamerface."
But then again, maybe they're just in sheer awe about the midget's spiky blue hair.
As Strong Bad would say, "you gotta have blue hair!"
After the midget gets their attention, he announces that there is a new video game system for, and this is the actual quote, "all the slackers who have nothing better to do then play games and surf the net all day." You know, I don't ever recall Sony or Nintendo making those kinds of announcements, but then again I guess they weren't trying to market to the "slacker" crowd.
Anyways, the Gamerfaces are amazed at how the Game.Com can hook up to the internet, "talks" to you, has a touch sensor , and according to this midget with the bad haircut, "it plays more games then you idiots have brain cells!" (and with perfect timing cuts to the worst looking Gamerface in the bunch). Now let's think about this for a second. Someone, somewhere thought the best way to sell a console in a market dominated for years by Nintendo was to call the gamers idiots? Worse, someone actually thought it was a good idea and put it in a commercial?! I just can't imagine any sort of scenario where calling someone an idiot is going to convince them to buy what your selling. Seriously, I really can't get enough of that quote. So much so in fact that I decided to see if there really were more Game.Com games then the number of brain cells in a human brain.
Total number of games released for the Game.Com: 20
Average number of neurons in the brain: 100 billion
Needless to say, 20 is a far less number then 100 billion. Or maybe that's really how many brain cells the gamers featured in this commercial really did have, which would explain why the sales of Game.Com bombed in that they were too stupid to buy one. Suddenly, the PS3's commercials don't seem that bad.
*thinks back to the masturbating soccer player*
Okay maybe they're still bad, but Game.Com's is truly far worse. It ends with the Gamerfaces trying to ask questions, and the guy just ignores them and calls them morons. The Gamerfaces rush the stage and throw the midget into the crowd. So now only did he call them idiots, he didn't even bother answering important questions. I dare say that this commercial shows that Game.Com has the worst PR in history. If anybody can find someone worse, please, feel free to e-mail me.
Moving on, this commercial isn't as insulting or bad as the previous one, but in some sort of ironic way actually points out just how hated the Game.Com is. Two angels are in heaven (like where else would they be? Anaheim? TNA?) who are bored out of their minds. If heaven is really like that, I'll be glad to go to hell. Or change my religion.
Anyway, one angel has sneaked down to Earth and brought the Game.Com, and the angels get excited to play games such as Wheel of Fortune, Lights Out, and Tiger Casino. Yep, this was definitely meant for either the older crowd or the very young crowd. Even though the angels are loving it, they have to be real quiet so God doesn't find out what they're doing, which he almost does at the end in an angry tone. Now let's also think about this. God is apparently going to punish these angels for playing the Game.Com. That's right ladies and gentlemen: The handheld is so bad that GOD HIMSELF thinks it's an abomination! So either God has a good taste for video games or really hates everything relating to them, and ever since the release of Bible Adventures, I wouldn't blame him for hating games for the rest of his eternity.
Amazingly, despite just how bad the Game.Com was in everything, it lasted for about two to three years (mostly thanks to the redesigns that were launched) before the plug was pulled. Many titles including Shadow Madness and, no doubt the most promising, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night were canceled. It was a handheld that had many good ideas but did not execute them well. Or maybe gamers really were idiots and because of their low IQ could not the appreciate the advanced technologies the Game.Com offered.
