The Tiger Gamecom was an unusual handheld. It launched in 1997, right in the middle of the handheld war, a war featuring Nintendo GAME BOY, SEGA Game Gear, ATARI Lynx and even the Neo Geo Pocket. It was an awesome time to be a kid, that's for sure.
During this time, the Tiger Gamecom was ahead of its competition when it came to technology; it had a touchscreen, a stylus, internet connectivity and two cartridge slots- yes, two! Though it was not a success, if anything, it flopped- likely because it had just 20 games, was pretty cumbersome to use because of the poor touchscreen display, and at the time of launch, the GAME BOY was well known, and the SEGA Game Gear was just around the corner with a coloured, backlit display.
Because of its competition, there were some games in development that never made it out into the public; one game, recently discovered by YouTuber Nostalgic Aubrey, is Turok Dinosaur Hunter, a game aimed to release in late 1997 but was put on hold in July of 1998, likely after seeing the handhelds sales decline, or the developers wanted to focus on other more appealing consoles like the GAME BOY Color that released in late 1998.
This information was officially announced and confirmed by the Director of Web Marketing at Tiger Electronics between 1997 and 2002, known as Brian Rubash. The footage revealed shows a first-person shooter, which goes against all of the 2D Turok games that were released on GB and GBC in the coming years, which makes this find even more interesting.
One of the only first-person shooters on the Gamecom is Dukem Nukem, and according to Nostalgic Aubrey, that didn't run very well at all, making it likely that the game developers were not happy with how it ran on the hardware and pulled their foot off the accelerator a little bit before officially pausing production in mid-1998.
This footage shows an array of gameplay that was broadcast on the Cybernet TV Show back in 1997, alongside screenshots from magazines such as Issue 111 of GamePro Magazine with the text "Turok is preparing to rock on the Gamecom". A remarkable find, and one we hope eventually comes to fruition if the old developers still have some code lying around!
