The toy company Hasbro is also going to join the retro trend that is so fashionable lately in the video game business. The firm has announced that it plans to recover the mythical Tiger ‘little machines’, which were so successful in the nineties.
For those who do not remember, the Tigers were a kind of primitive consoles with LCD screen and a single game per device . Its manufacturer was the American company Tiger Electronics , also called Tiger simply or Tiger Toys. This was acquired by Hasbro in 1998, hence the brand can recover and relaunch the product.
The toy company intends to release these four titles for its devices next fall : The Little Mermaid, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Transformers: Generation 2 and X-Men Project X.
Obviously, each Tiger microconsole will include a single game and a different design, with images from each franchise. Its price will be only $ 14.99 per unit .
The new devices will have certain reminiscences to the originals, although they will have renewed characteristics. One of the novelties, for example, will be that they will include a rechargeable battery instead of carrying two AA batteries. At the moment no more details have been revealed about these portable consoles, although the images that have transpired show that they will keep the LCD system and their controls will remain analog.
Consoles that worked like a digital clock
Tiger was established in 1978 and its boom came with its Tiger ‘little machines’ . These included games of characters well known through the acquisition of licenses . Its direct competitor in this product segment would be the Japanese firm Nintendo, with its Game & Watch devices, of which almost 60 titles were launched between 1980 and 1991.
After the purchase of the Texas Instruments toy division in 1995 Tiger Electronics began to manufacture and sell electronic toys for Sega and also for Hasbro , an agreement that would mark its future 3 years later.
Each Tiger microconsole contained a printed still image that could be viewed through the screen. The static images were illuminated individually against the background that represented different characters and objects , similar to the numbers on a digital clock.
At the beginning of the 90s Tiger had also put on sale the Talkboy, a device that had been seen in the movie Home Alone 2 and that allowed to record and put different voices. But this would not have been the only milestone for the company. Already with the support of Hasbro in 1998 he began to develop the Furby , that talkative stuffed animal that has had thousands of versions and has been ‘hacked’ in multiple ways.
Will the Tiger machines triumph among the new generations or will they be a claim for the gamers of past generations ? The low price can help them succeed among the nostalgic, although the youngest may not be very attracted to consoles that in addition to being ‘monochrome’ do not have a touch screen to play.
