Game.Com. PocketPro

Game reviews coming soon!

Looking at the picture, you'll notice that the Game.Com is green. Blue, black, pink and purple are other available colors. For some reason, the green one looked cool to me. It appears Tiger has looked at the color choices of the GameBoy and decided a choice of colors would help sales. The second thing you'll notice is the smaller size. Nintendo didn't really experience any sales problems with releasing the GameBoy Pocket so Tiger must have figured they need to shrink the unit down. Staying with that theme, the Game.Com Pocket Pro uses only 2 AA batteries, as opposed to the 4 AA batteries the original Game.Com used.

The picture doesn't show the stylus for use with the touch sensitive screen. Tiger has not abandoned the touch sensitive screen or the stylus, the stylus now slides into the upper left corner. Another thing that this picture doesn't show is that the Game.Com Pocket Pro only holds one cartridge. The original Game.Com held two cartridges. All Game.Com units still include the base set of software built into the main unit: phone book, a calendar and a calculator. While still clearly not a PDA, Game.Com is clearly still oriented into getting kids into the PDA market. The Game.Com Pocket Pro also includes the link port, headphone jack and an AC Adaptor port that works fine with the original Game.Com AC adaptor. While batteries are not included, the memory battery is included. This is the same scenario as the original Game.Com.

The new design is comfortable to play, at least it is comfortable to me. The smaller design is definately a plus. The choice of colors is nice, but I never see that as a necessity. Choice is good though. Not having a choice of colors would never hurt a review.

Having said what I've said, the Game.Com Pocket Pro suffers from the same drawbacks as the original Game.Com. First, it's hard to adjust the screen to get a real good picture. You want nice direct light, but not super-bright direct light. Also, the screen is slow, although it is slightly better than the original Game.Com. In defense of the screen, if you're not into games requiring super-fast action, then the screen really isn't all that bad.

If you're new to portable gaming, the Game.Com Pocket Pro is not a bad entry system. At a price of around $30 and games being generally less expensive that GameBoy titles, this is a good starter system. The lack of titles shouldn't be a major concern but it should be mentioned that the game library probably is not going to grow. The reviews of board-style games and memory/skill games have been favorable among Game.Com owners. The best part is that the prices for such titles has been very inexpensive. More demanding arcade-style games have received mixed reviews and most seem to suffer from the slow screen. Please also keep in mind that finding the system and titles may be a challence, so you might want to hit Tiger's web site and place your order online.