Sega Game Gear

Info

The Sega Game Gear was the company’s first attempt at competing with Nintendo’s hugely popular GameBoy
handheld gaming device. Development on the handheld began in early 1989, and was released in Japan in the
fall of the next year. Its North American release was in 1991. The initial price was set at $150 in America, which
was almost twice as much as the more successful GameBoy. The games were cartridge based. The major
counterpoint to the competition, its full color display, was not enough to offset the high price, poor battery life, and
lack of third party software support, and the Game Gear sold a modest amount of units compared to Nintendo’s
handheld.

Hardware

The Game Gear featured a full color display (4,096 colors) with a resolution of 160 x 144 pixels on a 3.2 inch
screen. Internally, the handheld had an 8-bit processor (3.58 MHZ), a mono speaker with stereo sound available
via headphone jack, and 8kb of RAM. The dimensions were 209mm wide, 111mm high, and 37mm deep.
Without an external battery back attached, it weighed about 400g.

Accessories for the Game Gear included a TV Tuner peripheral, a converter to play Genesis cartridges (similar to
the Sega Nomad handheld), a rechargeable battery pack, the Super Wide Gear screen magnifier, a car charger
adaptor, and a Gear-to-Gear cable for multiplayer gaming.

Facts

The biggest gripe that gamers had with the Game Gear was its poor battery life. The Game Gear could be
powered by either 6 AA batteries or an external battery. Either option allowed for only 5 hours of life, compared to
the GameBoy’s 10+ hours.

The system launched with 6 titles, and by the end of its lifespan, there were a total of 390 games released. The
standard price for a new game was $30. Games were not region locked so they could be played on any regional
version of the handheld.

The handheld was no longer supported after April 1997. Sega’s other handheld, the Genesis-cartridge playing
Nomad, was released two year prior, and offered a more modern handheld gaming experience than the outdated
Game Gear.

The Best selling game for the handheld was Sonic the Hedgehog 2, released on November 17 th, 1992.

The Game Gear sold 15 million units over its lifespan, compared to the Nintendo GameBoy’s 119 million over the
same time period.

Successor

Sega did not release a true follow up after discontinuing the Game Gear in 1997. Their other handheld device,
the Nomad, was more of a portable Sega Genesis than a standalone gaming device, and was released 2 years
prior to discontinuing support for the Game Gear.