Introduction
We’re at about the mid-point
of July, the month that
PR has dedicated to the Game Gear during our Retro-Active Summer special. It
seems like a perfect time to introduce this new little feature in the article
section, one that I’ve been kicking around since the article format was first
developed. Basically, this is the first in a series which I’m dedicating to
those systems that tried to take out Nintendo’s monopoly on the portable video
game market. And what better place to start than with the first system to pose
a visible threat to Nintendo’s stranglehold on portables (not to mention the
first video game system I ever owned): Sega’s very own Game Gear.
Behold, the standard for portable
graphics...well, until the GBA came out.
Needless to say, if you’re expecting Nintendo consoles in this series, think
again. And if there are any Nintendo-related articles of this vein, don’t
consider them official entries in the series. All of Nintendo’s systems at
least got a decent tribute when discontinued (not to mention implementation
into the system’s successor). Meanwhile, the consoles that competed with
whatever Nintendo Juggernaut was on the market at the time were simply swept
under the rug and for the most part forgotten.
As I was basically a fan of these “lesser” systems (the Game Boy line never
really got me as a supporter until the Game Boy Advance, honestly), I feel that
it’s my duty to give a final salute to these handhelds, mentioning their
history, their advantages and disadvantages against the competition, a minor
look at worthwhile games in their libraries and other interesting aspects of
each handheld’s history: from creation to annihilation. So, sit back, get
comfy, and listen to an old (at least by the internet’s standards) man ramble
about them good ol’ days, when you could get new games for FIF-teen dollars,
after walking through the snow for FIF-teen miles, uphill, both ways, and we
didn’t have shoes back then either, no sirree, we had to tie rocks to our...
History
The Game Gear was first put into development back in 1989, under the codename
“Project Mercury” (here’s a fun fact, a lot of Sega consoles were known under
planet codenames when they were first put into development). On October 6th,
1990, the Game Gear debuted in Japan,
and the following year, it debuted in both the US
and Europe. Despite being thought of as the
first color handheld system, it was beaten to that punch by both Atari’s Lynx
(which debuted in 1989, the same year as the Game Boy) and NEC’s TurboExpress
(basically a portable version of their Turbo-Grafx 16 system).
While most
people call the Game Boy a portable, black-and-white (more like,
green-and-grey) NES, the Game Gear’s hardware was a perfect translation of an
earlier Sega system, the Master System. Of course, the major difference between
the two systems (aside from the difference in size) would be the fact that the
Game Gear had a much wider palette of colors to choose from. This fact allowed
the Game Gear to be backwards compatible with the Master System’s complete
library (through a special peripheral known as the Master Gear), but due to the
Game Gear’s wider palette, the same could not be said about Game Gear games
being playable on the MS.
Geez, and I thought the Game Axe's
NES converter looked clunky...
When it debuted, the Game Gear was pretty much considered the key competitor
against Nintendo’s Game Boy, usurping the position from Atari’s Lynx. While
some felt that the Game Gear was the closest thing the Game Boy had to a real
competitor, this was probably due to the fact that it took over the Lynx’s
entire base and more. Indeed, considering the mild success of the Genesis
(released back in 1989, at least in America), Sega had a much higher
amount of recognition than both the has-been Atari and the “never-was” NEC.
While the Game Gear pretty much just stayed the same in a state of near-limbo
after 1994 in the US, Japan had a
different plan. The Game Gear saw numerous other colorations of the system
(much like the Game Boy had in its Pocket form). Later, it was redubbed the
Kids’ Gear, redesigned with images from the Virtua Fighter anime and came with
Virtua Fighter Mini as a pack-in game. Of course, none of these gimmicks could
stop the Game Gear from finally being put to rest in early 1997.
