Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Maybe you’re already in line for a midnight release of Metal Gear Solid 4: The So Totally Last One. If you are, then it’s too late to pack your Queue Survival Kit with one of these babies… the LCD version of 1990′s Snake’s Revenge, the NES Metal Gear sequel that nobody wanted. (As mentioned in Aeropodcast #35!)

Tiger Electronics, that classically short-sighted game company, never put a video-out on these things, so the footage here is poor. But it’s the hilarious audio you’ll want to note, because this game uses real audio samples and is constantly talking to you.

What happens is that Snake runs up a series of very long hallways. Terrorist enemies pop in and you shoot them. Every couple feet you can sidestep to the right into one of a million rooms, which will contain either a hostage, a power-up, or a terrorist (“Don’t shoot! I don’t know anything!”). At the end of each level is a Metal Gear that you must dispatch with missiles.

Here’s the synopsis from the back of the packaging, if you thought you needed some backstory:

After his iron clad plan to rule the world rusted away in Metal Gear, crazed Colonel Vermon Cataffy retired from the terrorist business. But before going on tour, Cataffy gave the secrets for Metal Gear II (an ultra-sheik nuclear attack tank) to the world’s premier bad guy – Higharolla Kockamamie. Now, you’re ordered on a mission to infiltrate Higharolla Kockamamie’s heavily guarded Fortress Fanatic and to destroy Metal Gear II.

And they say Sons of Liberty is the weird one.

Incidentally, I also have one of these talking LCD games for Ninja Gaiden.