Blast from the Past: Tiger Electronics’ Mega Man 2 Handheld Commercial

Lately, we’ve been checking out some old episodes of Video Power, complete with commercials. And among those commercials were some we had forgotten existed: Tiger Electronics handheld games. There were several different ones, most of which were made around a similar template, and one was for the Tiger handheld version of Mega Man 2, which we now present here for your viewing pleasure:

For those too young to remember, the Tiger Electronics handheld games would typically cost around $20 (perhaps more for special versions, such as the talking Snake’s Revenge or the two-in-one Bo Jackson baseball/football combo) and were basically Game & Watch-like LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) games based on a number of licensed titles, including Ninja Gaiden, Simon’s Quest, Shinobi, and both Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3 (which we can’t find a commercial for), among others.

Konami eventually got into it themselves, creating their own LCD handhelds, each based on a different property they owned or licensed.

As you can see in the commercial, the character design for Mega Man was something of an amalgamation of his box art and in-game self, wielding a handheld pistol instead of his signature Mega Buster. As the Mega Man 3 handheld followed that game’s box art for inspiration, it featured Mega Man utilizing an arm cannon instead.

The Robot Masters, on the other hand? Your guess is as good as ours.

For more information on these two now-collectible antiquities, including better looks at the backgrounds and “sprite sheets” (if the term really applies here), check out these pages at The Mechanical Maniacs, as well as Joey’s Mega Man Corner.

LanceHeart