Diablo Tiger (old review)

New review

I bet the idea of a remote-controlled Zoid appeals to most fans of the models-it certainly did me. So, I was rather intrigued by the whole Cyberdrive Zoids concept-oooh, infared remote control Zoids! But wait...5980 yen? Ow...

But, as my luck would have it, HLJ had them on sale. For 60% off, at that-certainly cheap enough to get me to buy one. So, I ordered one, and waited. Finally, it showed up, in a nice shiny box...and a different sort of box, too. It has a flap on the front with all sorts of stuff showing what the Zoid can do, and underneath is the Tiger, covered by a sheet of clear plastic, with holes in the box showing the various already assembled pieces. Yes, it comes partially assembled...presumably because of the wires and such involved. You get a gun (assembled, other than sticking on two pieces), a controller (completely assembled, and takes three button cell batteries-you might want to go find them first, since they're a bit less common than the AAAs the motor takes), and a poor headless and armorless Tiger, waiting for you to finish building it.

Thankfully, the armor and head and such are all on sprues like traditional Zoids. It does suffer from a lack of caps (the horror!), instead having screws where they would be. Nothing is all that tricky-it's mostly sticking armor on. One thing to note, though, are the pieces that the back leg armor is on. Put the leg armor on the piece and *then* hook it onto the leg. I did the reverse with one leg, and it was so annoying trying to line up the leg armor I ended up taking it back off. The head took a bit of fiddling to get lined up perfectly with the cockpit, but once it clicked, it stayed that way.

You may wonder why the back leg armor is like that-it's so when you're battling a pair of them, you can aim for that piece. If you notice, there's a peg on it...that peg, when pushed inward, 'freezes' the Tiger. More on that later...but suffice it to say, don't pick it up around that armor when it's on, unless you want to have to reset it.

Together, Diablo Tiger is pretty small-it's smaller than most of its battery-powered feline cousins other than Lightning Saix. Those two are pretty close in size, although the Tiger is bulkier. In fact, it has a really low-slung motor case thing, leading to it looking a good deal more plump than it does in the games, which look like they just leave it off. Ignoring that, it looks pretty nice and sleek. The purple used for the armor is slightly shiny, and the darker purple matches it well...although the lighter of the two is a much warmer color than it looks on the box. Maybe it photographs oddly.

Okay, okay. I'll get to the fun part, already.

The controller and the Tiger both have switches that go 1, off, 2...much like Fluffy Bunny. But these aren't to switch modes-you need to set both to either 1 or 2. That way, if you want to battle two of the things, you set them to different numbers, so they don't get confused.

When the Tiger is turned on, its eyes blink red-green-red-green until it gets a signal from the controller. If you're punching buttons and it's still doing that, something isn't right. Once it's got a signal and is moving, its eyes blink green until it's frozen, turned off, or is firing.

If the Tiger takes a hit to the back leg armor like I mentioned before, it'll freeze. It's just as you'd expect-it won't respond until you reset it by picking it up and turning it off (and then back on again, if you want). Until you do so, its eyes will blink red.

In firing mode, the Tiger's eyes glow bright red (no blinking, it's angry now!). If you've put some of the 30 included plastic BBs in the cannon, it'll start shooting them out every few seconds with a reasonable amount of force. If not, it'll settle for making ominous clicking noises. The little plastic BBs are as easy to lose as you'd think, so it'd probably be a good idea to count how many it fires so you know how many you have to crawl around on the floor looking for :p.

As for how the Tiger handles...well, it responds promptly and walks with a surprisingly quick stride, probably close in speed to Liger Zero X or the like, although I haven't tested it. It walks in both forward and reverse on command. Turning isn't what you'd expect-it doesn't directly turn right or left. Instead, you hit a button and its front half swivels from side to side. If you time it right, it works okay, although it's got such a wide turning circle, I ended up turning the opposite way and backing up before going forward again to get it to turn corners. And if you hold down the swivel button, you get a dancing Zoid, which is kind of funny...but not when you're trying to turn and it won't go the right way.

Okay, so it's not perfect...but it's a remote-control Zoid! I don't think I'd pay full price for one, but if you can grab one cheap, I'd say it's worth it.

Pics:

Boring Generic Shot
Top view ...with crystal frog.
Top view, shield on
Front view, shield on
Profile Closeup of the head.
Side view, blades out (partway, they can go farther to its sides)
Top view, blades out With controller.
Diablo Tiger and Minty Kitty For scale. Diablo Tiger's pretty small.