The R-Zone was a series of portable
videogame cartridge systems developed by
Tiger Electronics from
1995 to
1997.
The
cartridges, which were about 2/3 the size of a
Game Boy or
Game Boy Color cart, each had a tiny
LCD screen which was projected onto larger sources of viewing described below. When activated, it would display red one-color
graphics of low
resolution, much like those you would find on their single game handheld units. The
sound effects were also very much like those handheld units, with very simplistic beeps being the only source of music and sound. Unlike the handheld units, however, low quality
digital sound bites could be played, and were used in some games such as
NASCAR Racing.
Three
versions of the R-Zone were created. The first, the
R-Zone Headgear, was worn around the head (obviously) and projected the games' visuals onto a
polycarbonate eyepiece. Apparently
Tiger pushed this as
Virtual Reality software, which is just laughable. The
controller, which was permanently attached to the
headgear, had a
directional pad with eight directions, and four action buttons. There were six smaller buttons used to power the R-Zone on/off, start the game, etc., much like the single game handheld
LCD units mentioned earlier. All three systems used the same
controller layout.
The second version, the
R-Zone Superscreen, was released in
1996 and was presumably designed for
tabletop gameplay, as it was much larger than a
Game Boy. It displayed the
graphics on a huge backlit magnifying screen. It had support for colored
overlay backgrounds, a feature which was exclusive to the Superscreen. Finally, the
R-Zone XPG (Xtreme Pocket Game), which was released in
1997, was about the size of a
Game Boy Advance, and simply used a small fold-out
mirror to display the game's backlit visuals.
Twenty seven games were released for the R-Zone units, including
Batman Forever,
Battle Arena Toshinden,
Mortal Kombat 3,
NASCAR Racing, three
Star Wars games,
Panzer Dragoon, and
Virtua Fighter.
For obvious reasons, the R-Zone was very
unsuccessful, much like the
Game.com which followed it.