Game Gear
Six AA batteries kept the Game Gear's screen lit and in colour for three to five hours. The Game Boy had no light and no colour, and was rated for up to thirty on four.
In October 1990, Sega released a handheld that made the Game Boy look primitive. The Game Gear had a 3.2-inch screen showing 32 colours at once, lit from behind so the picture stayed bright in any room. Nintendo's machine was grey on grey, unlit, and needed daylight to read.
The backlight was a cold cathode tube, and it never turned off while the console ran. Inside the case, the Game Gear stepped its own six AA batteries up past 100 volts just to keep that tube glowing. Six batteries bought three to five hours of play. Four batteries, in the plainer machine, were rated for up to thirty.
Sega's console was not rejected. About 14 million of them left the factory before production ended in 1997 — more than Atari's Lynx sold, more than NEC's TurboExpress sold. People carried it onto trains and into backyards, and it worked in Japan, Europe and North America alike, with no region lock to stop them.
It simply could not keep the light on for as long as people wanted to keep playing.
Game Gear — at a glance
- Released
- October 6, 1990 (Japan) · April 1991 (North America) · 1991 (UK) · 1992 (Australia)
- Launch price
- ¥19,800 · $149.99 · £99.99
- Display
- 3.2-inch backlit LCD, 32 colours on screen from a palette of 4,096
- Power
- Six AA batteries — or a mains adapter
- Battery life
- Three to five hours
- Units sold
- About 14 million worldwide
- Region
- Region-free — Japanese, North American and European cartridges all play in any Game Gear
- Discontinued
- April 1997
What actually happened
Sega launched the Game Gear in Japan on October 6, 1990 for ¥19,800, reaching North America the following April at $149.99, the UK later that year at £99.99, and Australia in 1992. It was built as a portable version of Sega's Master System, sharing enough of that machine's design that Master System cartridges could be played on it through an adapter.
The screen was the headline: a 3.2-inch backlit LCD showing 32 colours at once from a palette of 4,096, at a time when the Game Boy showed only shades of grey and carried no light at all. The screen won the comparison on paper. The plainer machine dominated the decade.
The Game Gear stayed in production until April 1997, closing at roughly 14 million units worldwide — more than 10 million of them shipped by March 1996, with 1.78 million of the total sold in Japan.
The idea behind the machine
Sega's bet was that a handheld should not ask you to give anything up: that it should look like the games you already loved on the television. It was the more generous machine. Generosity, it turned out, had a running cost.
Things worth knowing about the Game Gear
- Six AA batteries powered the Game Gear for three to five hours. The Game Boy's four were rated for up to thirty.
- The backlight was a cold cathode tube. To keep it lit, the console stepped its own nine volts of battery power up past 100 volts inside the case.
- The Game Gear is region-free: Japanese, North American and European cartridges all play in any Game Gear. Some Japan-only titles even switch themselves into English when they detect overseas hardware.
- An adapter let the Game Gear play Master System cartridges — a reflection of how closely the handheld was built on that console.
- Most dead Game Gears today share a single cause: leaking capacitors on the main, power and sound boards. It is a soldering job, not a battery swap.
Where this leads
Thinking of buying one? What to check before you do →