Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing!
And this is the Tiger Telematics Gizmondo released in 2005 at an initial asking price
of 399 US dollars.
This infamous handheld gaming device was arguably doomed from the start due to a variety of
extenuating circumstances that we will talk about.
And it became one of the most infamous tech failures to come out of the first decade of
the 2000s.
It sold fewer than 25,000 units worldwide before its parent company underwent bankruptcy
and liquidation in February of 2006.
Yeah, less than 25,000 units.
Which means that it did even worse than one of its contemporaries, the Tapwave Zodiac,
which was also a huge flop but almost looks like a success in comparison with that selling
around 200,000 units.
So a big thank you to Adrian for lending me this complete in box example to make this
video, because Gizmondo packages like this are rare and getting harder to find and I
am excited to talk about it.
But first I do want to attempt to answer some of the questions
as to why this thing ended up how it did.
What was it about the Gizmondo that made it such a noteworthy story of failure?
Well that is quite the tale indeed, involving investment scams, ties to organized crime,
and a high-speed Ferrari crashing so hard it tore in half.
And while the entire story of what happened behind the scenes is worthy of a documentary
really, today we're mostly going to be focusing on the hardware itself.
But I cannot resist including a condensed overview of the story so let's go ahead and
start with Tiger Telematics, a company not to be confused with Tiger Electronics, that
began in the year 2000 as Eagle Eye Scandinavian.
An electronics business in Sweden founded by Mr. Carl Freer.
Now Eagle Eye mostly distributed GPS devices for their first couple years on the market
but in a rather strange turn of events in 2002 they were acquired by an American carpet
and flooring company based in Jacksonville, Florida called Floor Decor.
Now this business partnership was the brainchild of Stefan Eriksson, an old acquaintance of
Carl Freer and a fellow Swede.
And this business deal allegedly was due to wanting to make use of Floor Decor’s over-the-counter
stock listing, renaming the merged companies as Tiger Telematics.
The initial idea was to use Eagle Eye’s GPS experience to create a “child tracking
system” in the form of a portable device to let parents know where their kids are 24/7.
But due to the, uh, unsettling nature of the prospect, plus the fact that getting children
to keep a GPS tracking device with them at all times was a tough sell, Tiger decided
to shift gears in 2003.
Their new product was an expansion on the idea they called Gametrac, and the goal was
to provide the same child-tracking service but put it inside of a portable game console
instead so that kids would be more inclined to keep it with them.
Early press photos showed a small yellow device that somewhat resembled a pager in its design
accompanied by an announcement that game track would be the official sponsor of the Eddie
Jordan Grand Prix team starting in 2003.
Then in November they showed the first prototypes to the public revealing a sleek all-metal
housing with over 100 Java and Mophun games said to be ready for its launch date, all
rather promising stuff!
But by the time it finally showed up at the Microsoft booth at the 2004 Consumer Electronics
Show in Las Vegas, the design had changed somewhat.
there was no metal case anymore since it apparently interfered with the GPS connection and there
was little to no sign of the 100+ games promised the year before.
Furthermore there was a trademark dispute over the name Gametrac in the UK so a new
name was soon devised: Gizmondo.
Not to be confused with Gizmodo the tech blog.
As well as a uk-based subsidiary taking care of much of the marketing known as Gizmondo Europe.
And the UK was also the first to receive the Gizmondo
device when it finally launched on March 19 2005.
And it was not just sold online and in your expected retailers.
The company went all out with their own flagship retail store on London's Regent Street.
They even flew in performers like Busta Rhymes, Pharrell Williams, and Sting to hang out and
perform for their launch event, partying it up with hosts Tom Green and Dannii Minogue.
And in another promotion Gizmondos Stefan Eriksson entered the 2005 24 Hours of LeMans
race in his own Gizmondo-sponsored Ferrari 360 GTC.
However, for all the publicity stunts and celebrity-ridden parties, actual Gizmondo
sales were pitiful from the start.
Tiger expected to sell 4,500 units on launch day alone but
barely managed to move a thousand of them.
The problems with it were numerous but one of the biggest was the price.
The Gizmondo cost more than twice as much as the recently launched Nintendo DS with
CNN Money quoted as saying that on top of its other problems “the product carries
an insultingly high price tag.”
Then there was the lackluster consumer marketing campaign and abysmal developer support with
CNET UK reporting it as “too little, too late.
It’s lacking games support, it's uncool.”
When the Gizmondo finally released in the US in October of 2005 things weren't much
better, and actually they were arguably worse, with the device almost exclusively being sold
in small mall kiosks with very little advertising.
And the game situation did not improve much either, with only eight of the planned fourteen
games ever being released in the US and some of the promised GPS software never showing up here.
And then the lawsuits started pouring in.
Jordan Grand Prix sued them and won one and a half million dollars over not being paid
all of their promised sponsorship money.
Then advertising agency Ogilvy sued for more than four million dollars over unpaid marketing
work, followed by MTV suing over Gizmondo Europe
backing out of an agreement to sponsor several shows.
And then on top of the low sales, owing to debtors, and then making so many business
deals trading company shares in lieu of taking cash payments, Gizmondo declared bankruptcy
in January of 2006 having lost a reported 382.5 million dollars in only 45 months of existence.
And then the fascinating cherry on top is Stefan Eriksson, who'd resigned from the company
shortly before they went under.
He first really hit the news all over the place because he was involved in an epic crash
along California's Pacific Coast Highway where he was drunkenly driving a million dollar
Ferrari Enzo at what was initially thought to be around 162 miles an hour.
The wreck sheared the car in two, flung the engine out the back, and the car being only
one of around 400 manufactured someone spectacularly crashing such a rare car and surviving with
only a busted lip would have been news enough.
But this was the ex-Gizmondo executive and the circumstances around the crash were increasingly
strange, so the story gained plenty of outside media attention.
“Chris, that Ferrari Enzo was nearly obliterated in the high-speed crash along the PCH.”
“The occupants who were protected inside its Formula One style cockpit walked away.”
“But one of those men, Stefan Eriksson, isn't escaping attention.”
And this attention resulted in some truly bizarre twists coming to light, including
the Ferrari belonging to Scotland's Capital Bank and they had no idea how it got to the
US, a videotape shot inside the Ferrari revealing It was actually going 199 miles per hour before
the crash, some evidence of weaponry on the scene by finding the magazine for an automatic
Glock, and Eriksson claiming to be a part of a so-called “anti terrorism task force,”
which turned out to be a local bus company serving senior citizens.
It all culminated in articles revealing Eriksson's unsavory past with the Swedish mafia, selling
cocaine and steroids in the 80s as well as a later
criminal enterprise dealing in kidnapping, counterfeiting, and fraud.
He'd spent more than six years in prison before helping start Tiger Telematics and while at
Gizmondo he and others allegedly made some sketchy cash by layering their account records
under various confusing names, with nearly 200 million dollars remaining unaccounted
for in 2006 according to the SEC.
There were several arrests and investigations that resulted but Eriksson spent three years
behind bars for embezzlement and illegal gun possession, before being deported to Sweden
where he spent another 18 months in prison for extortion and aggravated assault after
pouring gasoline on someone who owed him money.
But hey, at least the Enzo he wrecked had a happy ending!
The car was fully repaired, painted black, and certified by Ferrari, selling at auction
in 2016 for about 1.75 million dollars.
And yeah, that's honestly just scratching the surface of the whole story behind this
thing but let's go ahead and dive into the device itself and see what four hundred dollars
bought you in 2005!
Or more like $229 in this specific version of the Gizmondo which is known as the Smart
Adds release, as you see all over this box.
The concept here was that you would buy it at a hefty discount by agreeing to be served
advertisements on the screen every so often, or being provided exclusive discounts on nearby
products by referencing your location through GPS, as you can see in this demonstration
video.
“And get two for one just by showing this barcode at your local 7-Eleven.
You current position is indicated by the flashing green dot or your GPS screen.”
But as far as I can tell Gizmondo never actually activated the Smart Adds service so my condolences
to customers that paid the full 400 dollars for one of these.
Also It's worth noting that even though the ads were to be sent using a cellular network,
the Gizmondo could not send or receive phone calls, only text messages.
To do that It has an integrated slot for a SIM card in the battery compartment and even
came with a prepaid card to get you started, from Vodafone in the case of this specific
UK release I have here.
As for the rest of the box contents you also get an AC adapter for charging the system,
along with an adapter appropriate for the region it was sold in so you can plug it into
the friggin wall.
As well as a USB cable for syncing to a PC using Microsoft ActiveSync.
A lithium ion battery pack, many of which have gone bad over the years and are bulging
outward by this point in time.
And a pair of Gizmondo earbuds that are not very comfortable at all, but that's not exactly
an uncommon thing for 2005.
I just never liked earbuds like this.
You also get this demonstration package on an SD card in the box labeled “I CAN DO
ANYTHING,” which seemed to be a kind of product catchphrase or motto of some kind
as seen in the one and only TV ad for the Gizmondo.
“According to all principles it's too heavy for its wings.
It just can't fly.
But no one has told this to the bumblebee...
So it flies and flies.
He doesn't care much about principals.
Do you?”
You also got this sleeve filled with a few extra goodies like this card letting you know
you can claim some free music if you register with the company, as well as a CD containing
the full manual in digital form.
And which oddly enough looks like a burned CD-R to my eye, as opposed to a professionally
pressed compact disc.
And then you also get this Gizmondo quick start guide which may not be as thorough as
the digital manual, but I'm glad it’s here.
I like physical documentation.
And it still covers all the basic- to moderate-level functions quite clearly with plenty of illustrations
along the way.
And you know what?
The technical specs aren't too shabby for the time and additional impressions of just
holding the system in the hands it doesn't feel too bad at first.
On the front here you get a 2.8 inch TFT LCD screen with a resolution of 320x240.
And while it's not a touchscreen like some of its competitors, it's still backlit and
has nice colors and looks pretty good for the time.
Along the top of the device you get an assortment of function keys for power, alarm, brightness,
volume, and heading to the home screen.
Above the front facing speaker on the right hand side you get four face buttons that act
as both audio-visual commands and software controls with just enough tactile feel to
provide proper buttons appropriate for gaming.
Speaking of gaming you get a circular d-pad over here that doesn't feel great, but surprisingly
has a decently satisfying separation of directions when pressed down.
And then you also get two chunky circular shoulder buttons on the top referred to as
“left shift” and “right menu.”
Along the bottom are sockets for an external power supply and a mini-USB connection, a
3.5 millimeter headphone jack, and an SD card slot for both storage and retail game releases.
And those came in these thin plastic keep cases with a manual and an SD card inside.
Sadly I do not own any of these as they are irritatingly hard to find now but yeah, this
is what they look like.
And then the back of the machine is pretty unassuming but it does feature something I
didn't realize the Gizmondo had until I got this one and that is an integrated digital
camera, something we will be testing out soon.
Lastly, I want to mention this black rubber coating that's all over it, because it's not
only rather unique to the system but anytime I bring up having a Gizmondo in my possession
I always get questions about it melting or becoming too sticky to use.
And while I know that some units do suffer that fate this one doesn't seem too bad yet.
It's just a soft rubbery texture that feels quite nice to hold.
Granted, it does attract particles like crazy and you have to be careful not to scuff it
up because it's really sensitive to scratches so yeah, your mileage may vary.
All right, so it's time to load up the battery and a SIM card and get going with the Gizmondo!
And yes you do need a SIM card to get past this error message if it's not left in flight mode.
Thankfully any old SIM card will do, it just needs to have something in the slot and then
you can turn it on and mess around with any feature
that does not require an active tri-band GSM connection.
Once it's charged up or plugged into the wall you can power it on by pressing this button
here for a second and it will begin the Gizmondo boot process.
And yes, it is a process.
Not entirely sure why but you get this loading screen, and then this loading screen for even
longer, and then when it finally seems to boot into the menu you can't actually do anything.
None of the inputs will respond.
You have to wait another minute or so, and eventually it'll let you start doing stuff.
Anyway, once it does you're greeted with the Gizmondo user interface and yes, this is built
on top of Microsoft Windows CE.
That's hidden away by this Gizmondo interface layer but what you get here are a variety
of pretty straightforward settings and applications.
We're just going to start with the settings.
[mail sound]
So you can select vibration and ringtone settings
as well as a sound for the camera shutter.
There's also an area for some delightfully mid-2000s skins.
Ah 2005, reminds me of Trillian and Winamp.
There's also a section for some very colorful, kind of obnoxious wallpaper, some language
settings for the user interface experience and this defaults to the UK English setting
because that's where the system is from.
And you can select your time zone from zones of time, or refer to the device information
section to check out the stats of the machine as it is running at the moment.
And then there are a couple areas for changing GSM and various protected settings, which
I'm not gonna bother with because that does not apply to me in this case.
While I do have a SIM card installed it is not active and doesn't really allow me to
do anything but turn this thing on.
As far as the applications, you don't actually get a whole lot, just a really basic alarm
clock, a really basic calculator, a really basic currency converter for, you know, doing that.
And a really basic assortment of Bluetooth sending and receiving options.
This is really meant to work with other Gizmondo devices first and foremost.
Not so much in receiving, but especially when sending out information.
So for instance if you wanted to send some of your files or photos from this Gizmondo
through Bluetooth, the only way it's going to let you do that is if you have another
Gizmondo device.
And the bare-bones offerings continue with the contacts list and this is one of the most
limited contacts apps I've ever used.
It only lets you input a first and last name, the Gizmondo and mobile phone number and an
email and that's it.
Then there's the built-in digital camera and its associated application.
And while it’s nice that it uses the screen as a viewfinder as you can see here, there's
a noticeable bit of lag every second or so.
There's just lag all throughout Gizmondo operating system.
We'll get back to the camera in a moment but let's also take a look real quick at the GPS
and web services, which again I can't do much with because I don't have an active SIM card
nor does this come with built-in mapping software.
But what I can show you is the GPS connecting through some satellites, or rather *not* connecting
through some satellites.
I am in a wide open area outside here and I can get perfect GPS reception on any other
GPS device that I have, but not the Gizmondo!
It connects to one and that's it.
Not only that, but are you seeing how hard it is to actually see this screen?
It's glossy, but even at the brightest settings it's also very dark.
Not a great combination for a GPS device.
Anyway, it will eventually connect to enough satellites to get a nice triangulated position.
This brought back some early/mid-2000s GPS memories, I had a Garmin system in like 2003
that worked pretty much like this.
In other words: barely.
But anyway, yeah let's go ahead and take a look, not at the messaging because I can't
do any messaging, but the music.
Yes it lets you play all sorts of stuff, MP3s and whatnot.
Yeah, here you go, check it out: music!
[Andrew Hulshult’s LGR theme remix plays]
Once again extremely simple.
You don't get much of any options: play, pause, stop, rewind, and fast-forward and that's about it.
Same goes for the movies or really just the built-in video player which allows you to
play WMV and MPEG-4 encoded movies of a certain type.
So you can re-encode your favorite videos and plop them
on here in a delightful 320x240 resolution!
[LGR review of Wheel of Fortune plays]
Lastly, before we get to the games let's take another
look at the camera and just see how it is for taking pictures and you know, camera stuff.
And as you might expect by this point it is incredibly simple.
You just point and shoot by pressing this play button.
Everything is automatic, in fact you can't even change really any settings on this camera.
But you do get a gallery to view and organize your photos, which are saved internally by
default but you can insert your own SD card and then copy them over if you please.
Speaking of which, SD cards: they have to be SD or MMC cards.
Older, lower capacity ones.
I had an 8 gig SDHC card and it did not even recognize it at all.
So yeah, that's something to keep in mind if you're -- hehe, who am I kidding, you're
not gonna keep this in mind.
But anyway let's take a look at some friggin photos!
And as you can see they're not that great [laughs] For one thing, despite many sources
online claiming that it has a 1.3 megapixel camera, it's not.
It actually shoots at 0.3 megapixels, so you get 640x480 resolution images as a result.
And again, everything is extremely simplified and totally automatic: white balance, ISO,
exposure settings, it's all taken care of for you and taken care of in not a very good way.
Pretty much everything is gonna be either over or underexposed, with the colors not
coming through very accurately whatsoever.
It made my skin even more red than it actually is and I also found it incredibly easy to
accidentally put your finger in front of the lens due to the placement of it on the front
of the device.
And also the fact that the screen was so dark I couldn't really see what I was shooting
in the viewfinder in direct sunlight.
Combine this with the very slow shutter speed and naturally no stabilization of any kind
means that you're gonna get blurry images almost no matter what.
There is no tripod mount and even if you're standing perfectly still it's just gonna be a bit blurry.
And it is also worth noting it does not have a macro mode.
It has a fixed focus of 30 centimeters to infinity, meaning that subjects closer than
about one foot will be blurry no matter what.
And then anything beyond that's probably gonna be blurry anyway because of the really slow speed.
I like to show this scene in my LGR camera overviews like this.
Got some direct sunlight going on here and it just completely blew out everything in the photo.
I mean just as a quick comparison, this is what it looked like when shot with my cell phone.
So there's an idea of what this scene is supposed to look like, but with the Gizmondo camera?
Nah, you can barely tell that guy has a face.
Oh well, that's just how it is, 2005 integrated camera like this?
Point-and-shoot digital cameras were of course way better but that's about what I expected
for this thing.
That's okay though, because we've got games!
Remember you “can do anything.”
Anything like inserting the demo card into the unit here which provides a little pop
up there to run the game or application, it’s a game in this case.
Which is a demo for the game Trailblazer, one of the few commercially released games
for the system.
Where you play a wheel thing that moves forward, avoiding obstacles, hitting speed jumps and
all that kind of stuff.
It’s a basic “move forward” kind of runner/platformer deal and you try to get
through as fast as possible, that's it!
But honestly you don't want to do a whole lot more in terms of complexity on the Gizmondo
because, surprise surprise: these controls are not suited to a lot of games that were
popular in 2005.
The system truly needed an analog stick and maybe a bit more girth to, you know, be able
to be held by hands that are an adult size.
As evident in games like Colors, which was never officially released but it was widely
distributed online back in the day, and here it is.
It's a third-person action adventure-y kind of open whatever thing.
You know GTA was popular so it had to have one of those.
It was even supposed to integrate with the GPS and do all sorts of neat GPS integration
things where you'd move around the world and it would associate with stuff in the real
world, but we never got the full thing and what we got here is not too great.
Again largely due to the controls, I mean like technically this is pretty friggin impressive I think.
And really the d-pad feels fine for the games that are suited to it, and the buttons too.
But it's just a cramped nature of everything and really the fact that games like this just
aren't designed to be played with a d-pad.
So I got some pizza and stepped out in front of a subway train and died.
[character screams] “Good.”
Moving on though and the most successful quote-unquote game on the system is one called Sticky Balls.
And this is more the kind of game that the Gizmondo is suited for.
Just considering the pacing of the game and the control method you're provided with the
system itself, things like this makes sense.
You're just matching balls together, kind of a mix of pool and peg solitaire.
It's fun enough, it's colorful, and does its job to kill a few minutes of time and that
I think is the Gizmondo’s strong suit in terms of gaming.
You certainly could play and run more involved full length console-like game experiences
on this thing.
The hardware inside is up to the job with its Nvidia GoForce GPU and 400 megahertz ARM
chipset and all that good stuff.
But really it feels best when you're playing simple puzzle games and stuff like Classic
Compendium here and enjoying a round of mahjong solitaire
or Chinese checkers or something like that.
Anything that's slow-paced and not like, real-time action games.
Like Toy Golf for instance, I quite like this one.
It's mini golf, but even more miniaturized.
You play in these real-life environments and everything's all shrunken down, like here
I'm on top of a dinner table.
It's fun enough, it's relaxing.
I could see this entertaining me in a bus or a train ride or something.
Things start to unravel a little bit when you get into the more
mainstream-y AAA type things on here.
There was a release of FIFA Soccer, or FIFA Football 2005, which Gizmondo paid something
like one and a half/two million dollars to get this thing made.
But yeah, it works okay.
Again though, the d-pad is an absolute detriment to this thing with a game like this.
It needs an analog stick and those tiny little buttons?
Not very suited to my wide thumbs and the shoulder buttons, you have to hold one of
those down to sprint it’s just -- hand cramps man, hand cramps.
Gameplay’s fine feels good, runs well.
But the physical controls on offer suck.
“Come on!”
Something else worth mentioning though of course is the fact that you can plug it into
a computer because it is built on top of Windows CE and therefore works with Microsoft ActiveSync.
It does require some basic USB drivers but other than that It works just fine and hooks
up like any other Pocket PC really.
So it will synchronize your data and whatever else you tell it to and you can browse it
as a mobile device in Windows.
However there's not a whole lot of reason to do that necessarily if you just want to
play random downloaded games, because you can just copy over the required files to an
SD card and there you go.
Kind of disappointing that you can only install one game at a time to an SD card, at least
using the default software.
You can install custom loaders to install a bunch of things at once but yeah, that's a thing.
But once that's taken care of there's a surprisingly sizeable world of homebrew software out there.
It's not just all of the unreleased games that made their way online over the years,
there's a lot of emulators and ports and all sorts of good stuff like DrMD here: a Mega
Drive and Sega Genesis emulator that actually works pretty well.
[Sonic the Hedgehog 3 plays, decently]
As is typical for these emulators of the time,
the sound reproduction is not very good.
But the gameplay?
Eh, It's pretty good stuff and the d-pad and buttons and everything actually makes sense
here, I was able to play Sonic and all that kind of stuff just fine.
Not so much with this port of Quake.
Although it is impressively full-featured, I mean, it's like the entire PC game right here.
And overall it runs all right, but again: squishy d-pad and tiny buttons in a cramped layout.
It's just not made for a first-person shooter at all, not even Quake.
And you know there's the screen.
Even on the brightest settings and the in-game camera turned all the way up I could barely
see what was going on.
There's a very narrow viewing angle and then the reflectiveness of the screen itself.
Yeah, it's just not great.
Fine for playing in the dark but that's about it [chuckles] And maybe you should cuz it's Quake.
But yeah that's pretty much it for the Gizmondo, a promising system that never really lived
up to its promises despite having, on paper, some pretty good specs.
I mean, having a gaming system with a digital camera, GPS, SMS and MMS messaging, it seems
like it should have been more desirable.
But you know there was the Nintendo DS, then you had the Sony PSP, and the fact that this
thing was four hundred dollars and also didn't really have any good advertising and nobody
cared, the game support wasn't there, and then a Ferrari crashed and the mafia and you
know like, there's all these things.
The Gizmondo is just a mess!
And it's kind of unfortunate because it would have been nice to see this get some better
support, but for that it would have had to been better managed.
That didn't stop the company from dreaming big though.
They had some plans for augmented reality gaming as well and there were several different
things put together that experimented with it.
You know, it's got the camera, it's got the hardware, the GPS.
Some interesting AR stuff but again it never really reached the full fruition of that.
And there were several other Gizmondo systems planned and even announced.
One of them being the Gizmondo Isis, aka the Girlmondo, meant to entice female customers
by offering a more shapely rounded design and a variety of colorful case options.
As well as the GizmoBet, an attempt to license out and take advantage of the world of digital
gambling and online bookmaking.
Oddly appropriate in hindsight for the company but yeah, they showed this at CES 2006 and
it never made it to market.
One that was seemingly a little closer to getting to market was the Gizmondo Widescreen,
effectively a better handheld console in like every single way.
And they announced it shortly before the original Gizmondo launched, resulting in an example
of the Osborne Effect: where you announce the successor to something before the original
even has like a foothold yet and then nobody cares because they're just like “ah, I'll
wait for the follow-up because that's gonna be the better system.”
I also find it interesting that Mr. Carl Freer in particular has been keeping the Gizmondo
dream alive over the years, announcing a new $99 Gizmondo that was set to release in 2008.
But after multiple delays those plans fell through, mot only due to things like the global
economic crisis of the time but his business partner, Mikael Ljungman, was convicted of
fraud and false accounting and sent to prison for seven years.
Yeah that puts a damper on your product release.
And while there have been other hints at bringing back Gizmondo in various forms, like an Android
device or simply releasing its games on other platforms, it kind of seems to be dead for
the time being with Mr. Freer focusing on his other various business ventures and talking
about riding the wave of blockchain, as you do.
And that brings us to the end of this retrospective on the Gizmondo!
Even though I could keep going, there's so much to talk about with this thing.
It's just such a fascinating device that never really got its chance to shine, with an almost
unbelievable story behind it that begs a closer look in more ways than one.
There are a ton of great articles and resources out there that I referenced throughout this
video so I highly recommend looking into it further if this intrigues you, but if you
enjoyed this then I appreciate it.
I hope that you will take time to check out some of my other stuff, but if not it’s all good.
Thank you very much for watching!