A few days ago, we came back to the official PSOne LCD screen, an ambitious screen launched by Sony in the early 2000s. Ten years earlier, SEGA made its little revolution, by marketing its first mobile console: the Game Gear. Before the transition to the year of grace 1990, and while Nintendo’s Game Boy was already in many hands, SEGA prepared the offensive. Already at war on the home console market, SEGA and Nintendo are preparing the battle for the portable console, with nevertheless a double argument of choice on the side of SEGA: backlighting (via neon)… and color!
Because we haven’t always had a 4K screen in front of our eyes, an OLED HDR smartphone in our hand and wireless controllers on our knees, PasTech offers you a refreshing little return to the past, à la (re) discovery of certain emblematic products that have made (or not) the history of tech. So we say 5, 4, 3, 0, and then boom, PasTech!
The Game Gear takes on the Game Boy!
Marketed in Europe in June 1991 (and from October 1990 in Japan), the Game Gear is SEGA’s response to Nintendo, which has been boasting for two years on the mobile game market with its Game Boy (launched in April 1989 in Japan). A console with relative power, equipped with a monochrome screen without any lighting, but displayed at a very attractive price, and which obviously benefited from strong licenses from Big N such as Super Mario, Kirby, Tetris, Zelda… On the side from SEGA, we prepare the offensive from 1989, with the firm will to design the ultimate portable console, halfway between the Game Boy, and another nomadic machine of the time, the Lynx.
Moreover, on the design side, SEGA will draw more on the side of the Lynx than the Game Boy, with a Game Gear with a horizontal tendency. If the vertical format (Game Boy style) was considered, it was a horizontal form that was quickly preferred, with a console rather sparing in terms of buttons, since in addition to a directional cross, there is simply a Start button, and two keys 1 and 2.
But what should allow the Game Gear from SEGA to simply crush the Nintendo Game Boy is obviously its screen. Exit the monochrome screen of the plebs, place here a color screen with a beginning of backlighting intended for the elite (and so much the worse for autonomy…). It’s simple, the Game Gear was intended to be everything the Game Boy was not.
Color and neon (and batteries too, lots of batteries…)
Indeed, THE great quality of this Game Gear when it was launched in June 1991 (in France), was obviously a color screen, which promised to rediscover the sensations of a game “living room” on a portable console. A color screen far from new, however, since already available on the Lynx or the PC Engine GT, but many were unaware of the very existence of these machines. Displayed at a price of 990 Francs at launch, the Game Gear is built around a 3.2” screen, with 32 colors that can be displayed simultaneously on a palette of 4096 colors, not to mention an 8-bit processor.
© Stéphane Ficca for Presse-Citron.net
At its launch, it was accompanied by Columns, Super Monaco GP and the always popular Wonder Boy. In short, a nomadic console beast, able to instantly transform our dear Game Boy into a console from another era.
However, as “revolutionary” it was, the Game Gear also had major flaws, already pointed out at the time by certain specialized journalists, who were not blinded by the neon integrated into the machine. Thus, not content to suffer from a fairly large size (and a weight of 570 grams), the Game Gear also required a total of 6 AA batteries to operate… around 3 hours. A disastrous autonomy, so many people remember SEGA’s nomadic console, not for its colors, not for its look or even its games, but for its (mega) energy-guzzling side.
© Stéphane Ficca for Presse-Citron.net
For the little anecdote, thanks to the efforts of SEGA France at the time (in particular via very hard-hitting advertisements in JV magazines), the Game Gear had an all-in-all very decent success in our country, selling around 800,000 copies.
One of the many dilemmas for gamers at the time… The Game Gear for Christmas? Or the Game Boy? © Stéphane Ficca for Presse-Citron.net
Admittedly, the ratio vis-à-vis the Game Boy was very clearly in favor of the latter (regarding 1 to 6), but many people have owned a Game Gear at the time, or have experienced this friend, neighbor or cousin who was seduced by the color screen of this luxury Game Boy ” made in SEGA ».
We all have a friend who had the Game Gear…
On a purely personal basis, the young Game Boy owner that I was obviously able to get my hands on this Game Gear (thank you Vincent!), with hours spent on a certain… Joe Montana Football. So certainly, the color screen caused a side ” wow “undeniable, however, it must be admitted that this joy was relatively ephemeral, the fault of a screen that is difficult to read in reality, but also (and above all) of a rather unpleasant handling overall it must be said.
It’s the early 90s, it’s almost Christmas ????… We offer the child you are to choose between a Game Boy and 3 games, or a Game Gear and 3 games ????????
What do you choose? ????#Retrogaming #GameBoy #GameGear pic.twitter.com/5sOQmCAI6V
– Stephane Ficca (@StephaneFicca) November 9, 2021
For many, the Game Gear was a real curiosity, but the Game Boy remained THE portable console of the moment, for its part ” portable on the one hand, but also for its very (very) impressive catalog of games. It’s simple, we all knew this friend who had the Game Gear (and another who had the Neo-Geo and/or the Mega CD), and we were all more than happy to be able to take the very desirable console from SEGA in hand.
© Stephane Ficca / Presse-citron.net
The thing is, once the session was over, we were actually just as happy to know that the Game Boy was waiting for us at home, with Super Mario Land, Zelda Link’s Awakening and/or Kirby’s Dreamlandand that we finally had well done “not to succumb to the technical one-upmanship of SEGA.
Too expensive, too energy-intensive… not “general public” enough the Game Gear?
Assuming that the Game Gear should technically surpass the Game Boy, SEGA developed a very advanced console for its time, but this was reflected in the selling price (990 Francs, almost double the price of the Game Boy), but also on autonomy. If the Game Boy managed to hold a big twenty hours via four AA batteries, the SEGA console imposed a total of six batteries, for two to three hours of autonomy. Suffice to say that for parents at the time, in the video game department at Continent or at Mammoth, the choice was quickly made when it came to buying a portable console for the youngest Christmas.
Not enough batteries my son… © Stéphane Ficca for Presse-Citron.net
As for the rolls of portable consoles of the time, namely the PC Engine GT, the latter was launched in France at the improbable price of 2490 Francs in January 1991, before going to 1490 Francs in November the following year. Suffice to say that Nintendo had a real boulevard, which the firm has largely exploited with its Game Boy, which is nevertheless so poor from a strictly technical point of view.
Despite an altogether limited line-up, the SEGA Game Gear has been able, over the months, to have a catalog of quality games, with adaptations of highly appreciated licenses such as Sonic, but also Ninja Gaiden, the timeless Shinobi , the always superb Streets of Rage, OutRun, Shining Force or the excellent Ristar. In total, the Game Gear has just over 360 games in its toy library ( once morest nearly 2,000 games for the Game Boy). At the end of 2020, SEGA has launched several “micro” versions of its Game Gear.
In 2020, SEGA launched several “micro” versions of its Game Gear, with four integrated games and several colors
A Game Gear that we still take as much pleasure to turn on more than thirty years later, for the “nostalgia” side and this irrepressible desire to redo one or two levels of Sonic the Hedgehog or Streets of Rage, even if that pushes us (still today) to better appreciate its main rival, which can undoubtedly be considered THE reference in terms of portable console, despite a lower power than all its competitors of the time. Like what, mastery, power, all that…
NB: The Game Gear that illustrates this article has benefited from a complete restoration, with a custom white shell and a new backlit LCD screen (which therefore restores an image of much better quality than that of the original screen) .
