Before Gameboy hit the market, there weren’t many options in the portable gaming world. Tiger Electronics pretty much had a monopoly after cornering the market with their 2-bit graphics and 2-button consoles. They were slightly better than nothing, and surely saved most of us from tearing up countless waiting rooms out of boredom. Here’s a list of the best ones they ever made:
| #1 Karnov Easy question: What’s more awesome than a fire-breathing Russian chasing down and fighting dinosaurs? Obviously, nothing. Well, maybe if he was a fire-breathing Russian pirate, but that’s impossible. |
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| #2 Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest Even better than the NES version, this handheld gem made whipping bats feel as real as possible, not to mention having the best final boss graphics in history. |
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| #3 Pitfighter Considered the grandfather of the currently popular Mixed Martial Arts fighting movement, this brutal game set the tone for Mortal Kombat with its blood-soaked effects and moves like the “Spleen-Thrower” and “Jugular Jump Rope”. |
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| #4 Dinosaurs! At some point or another, everyone wants to be a dinosaur. Here, you could be a triceratops and hunt brontosauri or peck T-Rex’s eyes out all day as a pterodactyl, rendering its dainty little arms useless. |
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| #5 Shaq Attaq: Monster Jam Let’s face it, most people watch basketball for one reason: dunking. Using the special Shaq Attaq combo in this game would allow you to rock the rim so hard that the LCD would shatter. Sick. |
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I had Castlevania 2!
The fun thing about these were that if you pressed down the LCD screen hard enough all the elements would show up and you could see all the graphics for everything in the game all layered on top of each other. Trippy.
Comment by die young — September 15, 2008 @ 3:17 pm