During the development of the Virtual Boy, Nintendo believed that its then-upcoming stereoscopic 3D system was so unique and innovative that no other manufacturer would be able to replicate its features. Unbeknownst to them, Tiger Electronics had taken note of the Virtual Boy’s design and functionality, clearly expecting it to be a bigger hit than it actually was.
Best known for their range of LCD handhelds, Tiger largely existed as a manufacturer of electronic toys – and that’s exactly what the R-Zone was. Sure, news of the system was covered in video game magazines, and the games themselves technically had designers, but this was something mostly sold in toy stores, using eye-catching packaging with recognisable licenses to trick parents and children into thinking it could offer a comparable experience to something like the Game Boy. Or the Virtual Boy, in this instance.
While Tiger has never confirmed in earnest that the R-Zone was intended to compete with the Virtual Boy, the signs are clear. It not only had a red display, but also a mounted head strap that resulted in the eyepiece being placed close to a player’s eye. The system itself also had a black and red colour motif, along with a controller featuring a typical button/d-pad layout. It made its debut during the American International Toy Fair in February 1995, before releasing around the same time the Virtual Boy was hitting US retailers, priced at a modest $30. Unlike the Virtual Boy, it managed to reach European shores, even gaining a couple of regional exclusive packs.
As a low-cost system, the R-Zone essentially presented a new way to play already long-outdated LCD games, only now they were available on individual cartridges – which also contained a transparent LCD screen with imprinted “sprites” – and coloured red. The headset simply mirrored the image of the game in action onto the eyepiece. Being a non-typical video game system, the R-Zone had no microprocessor or memory to speak of. A game’s logic was included within the cartridge, with the controller housing batteries and the speaker concealed in the headset.
Unsurprisingly, the games were no more complex than the standalone LCD products Tiger had released in the past, limiting actions to such things as moving left or right to avoid objects, or shooting enemies before moving out of harm’s way. If you’ve played an LCD game before, you’ll know what to expect. To their credit, Tiger was able to bag several high-profile licensed properties. The system had four Star Wars games, a take on the popular PS1 brawler Battle Arena Toshinden, two Batman tie-ins, Mortal Kombat 3, Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Primal Rage, as well as movie tie-ins The Mask of Zorro (a European exclusive), Independence Day, Men in Black, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Apollo 13, and Judge Dredd.
Then licensed from SEGA came software based on Virtua Fighter, NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon, Daytona USA, and Virtual Cop. A Sonic R game was planned but cancelled. Batman Forever was most commonly packaged with the system, although in the UK a Zorro pack was produced in limited quantities, while France saw a bundle with a generic (and now very rare) Football game.
The R-Zone wasn’t a success. Come 1995, most consumers could see beyond the colourful packaging and use of popular franchises for the antiquated product it was. Critics who went hands-on weren’t impressed, noting that the tech was dated and the headset was uncomfortable to wear.
Rather than walk away with their tail between their legs, Tiger stuck with the R-Zone for a couple of years, not just releasing new games at a steady pace, but also three more hardware variants. The R-Zone SuperScreen launched in 1996, again for $30, and closer resembled a typical handheld, albeit bulkier due to the bulb-lit rear-projected screen. True to its name, the screen was much larger. Units were commonly packaged with either Battle Arena Toshinden or Road Rash 3. The R-Zone DataZone launched the same year, adding data organiser functionality such as a phonebook and calculator on a separate dot matrix screen, and featuring a full rubber keyboard. Lastly, in 1997 there was the R-Zone XPG (Xtreme Pocket Game), a standalone handheld with a mirrored surface to project onto, like a Panaroma Screen Game & Watch, usually packaged with Star Wars: Jedi Adventure. The DataZone is the rarest of the three, while the XPG is the most comfortable way to experience the R-Zone – should that desire ever arise.
While the R-Zone was able to outlive the Virtual Boy, comparing the two is like comparing night and day – at $30, the R-Zone was clearly inexpensive for Tiger to produce, existing mostly within the toy sector, and its software likely required a fraction of development time and costs when compared to a typical video game. Most of the R-Zone’s budget was probably spent on advertising, marketing, and purchasing recognisable licenses, rather than R&D and game development.
The R-Zone paved the way for Tiger’s far more advanced touch-screen Game.com handheld in 1997, which gained a lot more coverage in gaming magazines due to being more in line with then-modern gaming devices, but ultimately also suffered from a poor quality monochrome screen and software that paled in comparison to what even the original Game Boy could offer. Licenses were once again the draw here, this time including Resident Evil 2, Sonic Jam, and Duke Nukem 3D.
Much of R-Zone’s intrigue nowadays lies within its software library, with the SEGA games in particular desirable to collectors. That’s the power of brand recognition – arguably the one thing Tiger Electronics understood well.
Images via Wikipedia.