Sega Game Gear

Sega Game Gear

Nintendo's first main competitor to its Game Boy came from the same company that challenged its Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). The Sega Game Gear offered players the opportunity to take their favorite blue hedgehog with them on the go, on a full-color landscape screen. While under development, it was codenamed "Project Mercury". The Game Gear hit Japanese stores on October 6, 1990, with the North American and European launch coming the following year.

Gearing Up: The Design and the Specs

The Game Gear had a landscape orientation, much like the current PSP, with a directional pad on the left and the gaming buttons right. Gameplay was kept relatively simple on this black portable gaming machine, as there were only two buttons. The Game Gear was a bulkier portable than the Game Boy, and it was based on the Sega Master System. However, it carried a larger color palette, and as such, had the potential for better graphics than Sega's first home console. Other technical specifications include a Zilog Z80 (8 bit) processor, a 3.2-inch screen that ran at 160 x 144 pixels, 24 KB of RAM, and a 4 channel tone generator for sound. There was even a TV Tuner available at one time, until lawsuits led to its removal.

No Puke Green Monochrome Here

The single biggest selling point, and advantage that the Game Gear had over the incredibly popular Game Boy, was the fact that Sega's handheld played in full color. No puke green monochrome here. Instead, gamers were treated to a 4096 color palette, with up to 32 colors being displayed at any given time. Playing titles like Sonic the Hedgehog and The Jungle Book were that much better. However, the Sega Game Gear was not the first portable gaming system to feature full color. That honor is reserved for the relatively unknown Atari Lynx.

Unfortunately, if you had a friend peering over your shoulder or sitting beside you, they were likely not able to watch your game with you, because the Game Gear suffered from a rather poor viewing angle range. That said, the nature of a portable game system is that it is designed to be a single-player experience, so this wasn't too much of an issue.

Keep the Power Going

Having full color and a backlit screen necessarily took a fair amount of juice, and obviously more than what would have been necessary to run the non-backlit, non-color Nintendo Game Boy. The Game Gear required 6 AA batteries (compared to the 4 needed by the Game Boy), and could only be used for 5 hours on a single set of batteries. Later on, external rechargeable battery packs became available.

Games In Living Color

In the end, despite a fairly powerful processor, and full color capabilities, the Game Gear was far outsold by the giant Nintendo Game Boy, mostly because the latter had far more third-party support, and as a result, had a wider range of titles available to it. That said, the Game Gear still had a reasonably healthy library, and there are a number of gems available for it. Among the more popular titles found on the Game Gear are:

• Asterix and the Great Rescue
• Columns

• Fatal Fury Special
• Lemmings
• Puzzle Bobble
• Prince of Persia
• Samurai Shodown
• Sonic Spinball
• Streets of Rage
• Zoop

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