A Look At The Sega Game Gear (1991)

For those of us that grew up in the late 80's and early 90's playing games on the go was very different then it is now. Now your basic Mobile phone can play any number of high quality games in just about every genre as well as call your mate, schedule your doctors appointment and take a photo of every dog that you walk past in the street!

But back in the day you had to have a bespoke Game console to play for those long family trips to avoid the endless games of Eye Spy. Nintendo's Monochrome Tetris Machine the Gameboy was the clear undisputed "Winner" of this battle but there were alternatives. The Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket Colour and, the subject of this blog, The Sega Game Gear.

The Game Gear was a handheld from the Master System and Mega Drive magicians at Sega that came out in the UK in 1991. It sported a COLOUR BACKLIT screen which was crazy at the time compared to that dark green and black crap the Gameboy used. It had roughly the same power as the Master System and could even play Master System games with a cheap adaptor!

It had a TV Tuner too which was heavily pushed here in the UK which i can imagine was even cooler at the time but is sadly worthless now in this digital age.

My earliest memories of the Game Gear was playing one at a friends house and being blown away by the quality of the graphics for a handheld compared to my Gameboy. As someone who had a Master System when they were little seeing Sonic The Hedgehog and Fantasy Zone looking this good on the go was frankly crazy. I eventually got my own one much later in life and for a few years i fell in love with the beastly unit with its 6 AA Batteries tha gave me 4 glorious hours of escapism.

Sonic 1 and 2, Fantasy Zone Gear, Micky: Castle of Illusion and Streets of Rage 2 were some of the games that i remember playing to death at the time. Sega were known at the time for the quality arcade style games that they produced and i feel the Game Gear had a version of most of these at the time that was certainly passable for a handheld.

Sadly the Game Gear just couldn't compete with the Game boys battery life in its early life and as soon as Pokemon arrived in Japan SEGA quickly discontinued the system and focused its efforts on its home consoles.

I have recently got a newly recapped Game Gear so i may review a few of the games i've been playing on it soon so if this little look interests you then keep you eyes open for more!