News/Happy Halloween 2022! Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the Tiger Game.com

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Game.com Prototype)
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Hello everyone! Remember us? It's been a while, hasn't it? We've been fast asleep in our casket, locked away in some dank basement next to some dusty prototypes. What's that? Deluge? Never heard of it... 
Today we'd like to present to you a little treat, courtesy of an anonymous donor and diskman.com. Presenting, a prototype of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night...for Tiger Game.com! BOO SCARY!
	
	
	
		
 
Prototypes are hard enough to come by, especially these days since everyone has been in on the fun. However, buried deep within the darkest catacombs long forgotten from history, there exists a darkness that forever dwells within the confines of the video game industry. One video game system has yet to be disturbed in the hunt for prototypes. This video game system is so notorious that only a few brave souls have managed to find anything, and live to tell the tale. That system?
		
Tiger Electronic's Game.com! How terrifying!
Released in late 1997 in both the United States and the United Kingdom, Game.com was Tiger Electronics' new game console to serve as a direct competitor to Nintendo's Game Boy. The Game.com was sort of a "grown-ups" version of the Game Boy, having additional functionality that basically allowed it to function like a PDA. Game.com had a phone directory, a calculator, and a calendar, and could even access the web and allow its users to check emails by connecting the console directly to a phone outlet. Oh, and it could even play video games too! Surprisingly for a newcomer in the video game console market, Tiger was able to negotiate rights to release ports of various successful IPs from established companies, such as Sega, Capcom, Konami, Midway, and even 3D Realms. By the end of the console's life cycle near the end of 1999, the console would support 21 games, games such as Sonic Jam, Duke Nukem 3D, Resident Evil 2, and even Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Despite the number of companies initially supporting the console, Game.com failed and hardly broke into the video game industry. It came almost as quickly as it went. 
You might have realized at some point that, indeed, there aren't any prototypes of any Game.com game in existence. Despite what you might be thinking, Tiger did seriously try and push Game.com as a serious contender in the video game console market, even going as far as to advertise the system and allow magazine reviewers access to samples of games before release. But, where are they? 
In case you haven't noticed by now, we probably have prototypes of every single Sonic game ever released. From the Sega Mega Drive to the Sega Pico, if it had Sonic on it chances are we came across it once or twice. You might wonder, "Does Hidden Palace have a prototype of Sonic Jam for Game.com? Surely they can't?". Well, actually, as it turns out... 
	
	
Behold! A prototype of Sonic Jam for Game.com. Bet you've never seen this before, have you?
 
Yeah, we actually have a Game.com prototype of this too, as much as it pains us to admit. Game.com prototypes are very rare to come by, so this is probably one of the only images of what a Game.com prototype cartridge actually looks like. Just a normal-looking PCB with a decent-sized flash chip placed on it. 
The cart actually sat undumped for a long time. Until recently, we didn’t have a way of dumping Game.com prototypes. That has now changed thanks to the wonderful MrTalida, who made a Game.com dumping adapter for us! Unfortunately, this prototype ended up matching the final retail release, but the upside is that we can dump Game.com carts now! Plus, it sure makes for an interesting set piece for discussion around the dinner table, huh? 
But you're probably wondering if there are other prototypes floating around out there, especially for games that went unreleased. Since Game.com had the backing from a lot of big third-party companies, there were a lot of games in development that were swiftly canceled when the prospects for Game.com's success weren't looking too good. Rumored canceled games include Metal Gear Solid, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, and even Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. However, among the games rumored to have been developed, there was one that was surprisingly very far into development despite receiving little to no media coverage whatsoever besides a couple of screenshots floating around that were distributed by Tiger themselves. 
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Castlevania: Symphony of the Night! (video by diskman.com)
Yes, that's not a homebrew mod that you're looking at. This is actually Castlevania: Symphony of the Night running on Game.com. 
Development on this port is unknown. It is presumed to have been done by Tiger themselves like most other Game.com games with a release date sometime in 1999. The game was announced around the time the system was set for launch. This prototype in particular is fairly far along with most of the story text implemented. How much of the game has been implemented is unknown, but the game is fairly playable...for a Game.com game. 
In all seriousness, thank you for sticking with the site for this long. Thankfully, many site contributors have helped out since our last release constantly providing new content that is being discovered by other groups. We know we haven't been very active for almost a year, but the Hidden Palace team is constantly working on things behind the scenes and we still have many things in the pipeline. But, we do have lives to live (or what's left of them anyway!), so our hobby has been put on the back burner for a little while. We do have many things in the pipeline, however, we have been diversifying to do things other than releasing prototypes. So be sure to stay tuned! 
Until then, chill out with a skellyman and have a happy Halloween!