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The Sega Game Gear is a handheld game console which was Sega's response to Nintendo's Game Boy. It was the third commercially available color handheld console, after the Atari Lynx and the Turbo Express. more...

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Work began on the console in 1989 under the codename "Project Mercury", following Sega's policy at the time of codenaming their systems after planets. The system was released in Japan on October 6, 1990, North America, Europe and Brazil in 1991, and Australia in 1992. The launch price was US$150. Sega dropped support for the Game Gear in early 1997.

Features

Design

The Game Gear was basically a portable Master System with a lower resolution screen, but allowed for a larger color palette. In addition, it could also produce stereo sound (through headphones) as opposed to the Master System's monaural output, though very few games made use of the stereo capabilities. Unlike the original Game Boy, the system was held in a "landscape" position, with the controls at the sides, making it less cramped to hold.

Because of the similarities between the Master System and the Game Gear, it was fairly easy for Master System games to be ported to Game Gear cartridges.

Variations

The blue Game Gear sports edition, identical to the standard Game Gear, except in body color, was released in 1993, with the game World Series Baseball. Another specialty edition was a red Coca-Cola-themed Game Gear unit, released to the Japanese market in 1994, which came with a game entitled Coca-Cola Kid. Another limited edition released in Japan only was the white Game Gear, with only 10,000 units sold. Sega also introduced Kids Gear, a packaging of the Game Gear system in a different color case. Software advertised for Kids Gear focused more on children's game titles. Kids Gear was also only released in Japan.

Games

See also: List of Game Gear games

300 titles were released for the Game Gear, although at the time of the console's launch there were only six software titles available. Sega made sure that a wide variety of video game genres were represented on the system, in order to give it a broad appeal. Prices for game cartridges initially ranged from $24.99 to $29.99 each. They were molded black plastic with a rounded front for convenient removal. The original Game Gear pack-in title was Columns. It was similar to the Tetris cartridge that Nintendo had included when it launched the Game Boy.

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