Good ole Tiger Electronics, they were quite late to the handheld game (pun fully intended) with Nintendo well and truly taking that crown with their Game & Watch series.
Nevertheless, Tiger were prolific in releasing many classic titles on their handheld platform, with the likes of Double Dragon, Sonic The Hedgehog and Street Fighter II to name just a few, getting the Tiger Electronics handheld treatment. One key feature of Tiger games was that they were particularly frustrating and almost unplayable, but we still loved them.
When we came across Robert Penney’s (aka: Penney Pixels) reimagined Elden Ring getting the Tiger Electronics handheld treatment, we knew we had to let you all know about it! Robert’s novelty creation is part of his hobby of making fake retro game animations, with this particular creation being quite clever in capturing the Tiger Electronics look and feel.
We asked Robert to tell us more about his Elden Ring Tiger Electronics creation, especially how long it took to make, this is what he had to tell us:
“It took roughly a month to put together, but hard to say exactly. I would do bits and pieces on it in the evenings in small chunks. But the core animation was only a few weeks. I got a bit caught up in the texturing and trying to make it look as authentic as possible which took longer than it should have, but it was a labour of love so I enjoyed that aspect of it in a therapeutic way.The concept itself was based on the humour of a lot of my game animations. In this case it was aimed at Tiger Electronics ports. Those handheld games are certainly charming to look back on now, but most would agree they left a lot to be desired in comparison to the original versions. So I took that concept to the extreme by taking the highly detailed, complex and vast world of Elden Ring and crushing it down to a shell of its former self. 99% of the original game was stripped away (It’s just Limgrave and a few basic trash mob enemies while the real Elden Ring has over a hundred bosses) and I kept the RPG elements, a spirit summon and the levelling up system. Elements all far too intricate to include properly in a little LCD handheld meant for short car journeys. I also wanted to juxtapose the difficulty between the real version and my terrible fictional port. While Elden Ring is challenging in true FromSoftware spirit, this Tiger Electronic is difficult in another way. It’s hard to see what’s going on, has fiddly controls, minimal animation frames and just downright unfair.”
source: Penney Pixels
Another jaw-dropping creation by the French modder OktoRetroLab, posted by Recalbox, this time, the mod is a fusion of an old Tiger Electronics handheld and a Famicom – making a pretty cool FAMIGER!
source: Recalbox / OktoRetroLab
They may have been a bit late to the handheld LCD party (which Nintendo’s Game & Watch series were the life of that party), but Sega did manage to leverage their might by offering some of their iconic arcade games to be ported to the Pocket Arcade platform.
image source: eBay