Handheld Classics: Sega Game Gear

Throughout the course of our Handheld Classics series we’ve seen how ineffectual the attempts of Atari, SNK and Bandai had been in halting the Game Boy’s dominance of the portable gaming market.

Despite offering more technically advanced hardware, none of these companies was able to dent the daunting supremacy of Nintendo’s monochrome console.

However, it could be argued that this trio of rivals lacked the know-how to truly compete with the Big N. Back in the early ‘90s there was only one corporation that could really be considered a legitimate challenger, and that was Sega.

Having enjoyed tremendous success in the west with the likes of the 8-bit Master System and 16-bit Mega Drive, this Japanese veteran took note of the Game Boy’s rampant success and swiftly put into motion plans to produce its own portable system.

Based on the proven technology found inside the Master System, the Game Gear would take a similar approach to Atari’s Lynx by employing a full-colour backlit display. Clearly, Nintendo’s competitors viewed the Game Boy’s black and white screen as a significant drawback, which was ironic when you consider that it was actually one of the most important factors in the machine’s astonishing success.

But hindsight is a wonderful thing. Back when the opening salvos of the portable gaming war were being made, Sega clearly believed that creating a more powerful machine would ensure victory - a not too outlandish assumption, when you really think about it.

Boasting an 8-bit Zilog Z80 processor running at 3.58MHz, the machine could handle pretty much any title that had previously been seen on the Master System. Indeed, many of the early games were merely lazy ports of existing Master System titles that had been tinkered with so that they ran acceptably on the console’s reduced 160x144 pixel display.

Such was the synergy between the Game Gear and its home console forebear that it was possible to run Master System games on the machine thanks to a converter which interfaced with the cartridge port.

Putting aside this cross-platform compatibility for a moment, the Game Gear eventually possessed a library that spanned some 300 games. Despite the ease with which developers could transfer existing Master System code to the device, the Game Gear enjoyed a relatively healthy stream of exclusives, many which remain incredibly popular with collectors today.

Titles such as GG Shinobi, Shining Force II: Sword of Hajya, Defenders of Oasis and Phantasy Star Gaiden helped Sega steal away some of Nintendo’s loyal customers (the console eventually sold around 11 million units - that’s twenty times more than the Lynx managed).

Another cool feature which was sure to leave Nintendo fans green with envy was the TV Tuner peripheral. Plugging this into the Game Gear turned it into a portable television - and this was an era when such devices were still prohibitively expensive.

Bearing all this in mind, it was clear that from a technical viewpoint that the Game Gear trounced the Game Boy in pretty much every regard - except cost.

Sadly, just as was the case with the Lynx, such raw power created a hungry beast that effortlessly ate through batteries.

Although the Game Gear was less demanding than Atari’s machine (six AA batteries would give you about 5 hours of gameplay compared to the four offered by the Lynx) such reliance on a steady flow of power cells resulted in a console that was never far away from a plug socket - and therefore the very antithesis of ‘portable’.

Despite this, the Game Gear remains one of the few machines to actually survive in the same market as the Game Boy. While the Lynx died a swift death, Sega’s challenger held on until 1997 and was even given a new lease of life in 2000 when Majesco started to produce its own version under licence from Sega.

It can’t be easy to remain buoyant when you’re up against a console that sells over 100 million units. The Game Boy was the portable gaming platform of choice for the entirety of the 1990s so any rival format was always going to struggle to carve out a niche. However, the Game Gear arguably did that and managed to hang on for seven years before the plug was pulled.

With an installed base of 11 millions units the Game Gear was the most popular handheld to not bear the Nintendo name - until Sony released the PSP in 2005, at least.

Still, such modest success is testament to the power of the Sega brand and likeability of the Game Gear as an entertainment device.

The battle between Sega and Atari might have been akin to two bald men fighting over a comb but the Game Gear ultimately won the right to play second fiddle to the Game Boy. In this weird and unpredictable industry, that at least counts for something.

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Specifications:
CPU: 8-bit Z80 (3.58MHz)
RAM: 8KB, 16KB Video RAM
Colours: 4096 (32 on screen)
Sprites: 64
Sprite Size: 8x8 pixels
Resolution: 160x144 pixels
Screen: 3.2" backlit LCD
Sound: 4 channel stereo
Storage: Cartridge
Power: AC adaptor or batteries (six AA, with 5 hours lifespan)

Release date:
1991