Vintage gaming community.
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I lusted after these when I was a kid, and eventually blew all my saved up Christmas/Birthday money on one.
The battery thing really sucked, but still had a lot of fun with it. Must of played that first level of Sonic 2 a thousand times.
My white whale was the TV tuner, I thought the idea was so cool as a kid.
I had a friend who brought their Game Gear with the TV tuner to the playground in elementary school, and it was a moment of absolute future shock. It didn’t matter that we could barely tell what was happening on the screen, because I couldn’t believe that it was even possible!
I saw a kid hook up the TV tuner in the back of the bus and was insanely jealous.
the boss levels on sonic 2 game gear were SAVAGE, my god
Platonic mostly
I owned Sonic 2 and Columns and... not much else.
As far as a retro systems and emulation is concerned, I mostly ignore it on favor of the Genesis, which has mostly the same games just better versions of them.
I'm sure there's some game gear only banger I'm unaware of.
I had a friend who had one in college my freshman year. He brought it to show off and until that point I had no idea they even existed. Mind you, this was about 2013, so it was already "retro" at the time, but me, my roommate, and a few others present thought it was awesome and were going to try to find our own on EBay...right up until it died half an hour later and he had to replace ALL SIX of its AA batteries.
I had one as a kid. That thing went through batteries so fast, I messed mine up because of it. I had a battery pack for an RC car, and it looked like a bunch of AA batteries in series, so I took it apart. It worked in my game gear for a little bit until I smelled burning plastic. It melted a part of the battery compartment and my game gear wouldn't take batteries after that, only running off AC power.
My first RPG was on game gear, Dragon Crystal. That was the one where you have a dragon egg following behind you and you had to push your body against the trees to reveal the maze-like path. I don't know if there was an end to that game, but I barely made it to hatching the dragon.
I loved the Sonic games, Castle of Illusion, Columns, the Streets of Rage series.
I had the adapter so I could play my master system games.
I put sooo many hours into "Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble" on road trips as a kid, I had to use the cigarette lighter power cord adapter because it demolished the batteries of the 90s.
The Game Gear I have now lasts longer because batteries have gotten a bit more efficient though. I was able to find a copy of Triple Trouble at a local retro game trader and honestly that's all I wanted from childhood so I stopped looking for Game Gear games. A trip down memory lane every once in a while and I'm good.
There's a 16bit fan remake of Triple Trouble out there that I would heavily recommend you try out! Just finished playing through it recently and loved it.
Mine still works. I still play Sonic and Simpsons every once in a while.
Shinobi 2 for Game Gear was a childhood favourite even if I didn’t have any batteries and just had to hang out near an outlet to play it. I booted it up on my Analogue Pocket recently, and it’s still super fun! I enjoyed a bunch of games on the system, but that’s the one that feels like an all-time classic to me.
Yes. Absolutely. Shinobi 2 for Sega Game Gear is an all time classic.
It's a shame more people don't encounter it when exploring retrogames. It's so easy to assume the Genesis versions of each title will be better, and skip trying the GameGear version.
Love and hate, for sure.
As a kid it was the coolest thing ever, but the thing was a battery eating machine, so it was always a struggle to get my parents to buy a new set. Eventually they got me an A/C adapter which was... somewhat compatible. It fit, but shake it a little too much and POP, game reset. And of course that always happened after beating a tough boss. 20 years later I'm still annoyed.
I hope I can find mine tucked in some old drawer at my grandma's and give it a well-deserved overhaul.
I was envious of anyone who had one when I was a kid, but now I don't know if there's any games on it that make buying this system worthwhile.
Bought mine in the 90's from a high school friend. Got the car adapter and it was a lifesaver for the family road trips which we did a lot of back then. I kept it even though it stopped working years ago. Then learned how to recap it during the pandemic and got hooked to console modding. That was a slippery slope. I've since bought, fixed, and customized 6 game gears with custom-painted shells and installed the different variations of screen and power upgrades. Now I find broken consoles and fix/upgrade them as a hobby. There's something so satisfying about bringing life back to gaming hardware that people have given up on.
I relate to the game gear during long car rides (Mortal Kombat II!!!). Awesome that you're restoring them now!!
Thank you for doing this. It's so cool to bring new life to old systems.
Had one, mostly played it plugged into the wall. I was a big fan of Defenders of the Oasis and the Streets of Rage 2 conversion (it's not great, but good enough for 9 year old me). The Ristar port was pretty solid if memory serves me well.
They mod well these days and have replacement screens that have the correct ratio, which wasn't always the case. If you put a good screen into one of these things, they really pop.
A relative had one in the 90s, I would occasionally play it. They had Sonic and a few other side scrollers. I thought the colour graphics were cool compared to my Game Boy. But the Game Gear was always had to be plugged in due to the battery drain so it seemed a bit pointless as a handheld, especially when the same relative also had a Mega Drive. 🤷
It’s a handheld I’d like to revisit some day if I come across one cheap.
I've emulated some of the games, but I don't have the money to buy one at the moment. I would like to get one, though.
My cousin had one. I had a GameBoy. I was jealous at first, but I realized I had Zelda and the batteries would last an entire car trip. Being into retrogames, I'd love one, but I feel like as a Kid I got the better deal TBH.
It's a shame that such good pice of hardware does not have software at the same level.
I had a friend who had one and it looked amazing! Just like a real console attached to a TV, and indeed it was basically a portable Sega Master System in design. I only had a gray-scale GameBoy so the display on the Game Gear was incredible by comparison.
I do remember my joy, when finding out that instead of feeding it with batteries, I could even use the power adapter of the master system to play with the Gamegear. 😄
It was the handheld version of showing blood in mortal kombat. My super NES only showed sweat ☹️ I was very jealous of my friend for that, but enjoyed playing it.
I had one as a kid. Only had Sonic 2 and Lion King game. I dunno why I never got another game for it. I ended up playing my GameBoy a lot more than this. My family had a Sega Genesis, never a NES or SNES, so the parents must have gotten this since I was a fan of Sega and Sonic.
I am one of the people that never got past the first boss of the Sonic game, that damn crab thing in the ground. I should emulate it and see if I can do any better as an adult. Likely not!
I grew up with it and only had 3 games for it. Adventures of batman and robin, Sonic 2 and X-Men. I played X-Men the most and it's a really fun game with nice music. Years later I discovered the rest of it's library though emulation
That X-Men game was a solid metroidvania for the time. I tried to revisit it recently and I didn't have the patience, but back when it came out I had a great time for a lot of hours with it.
Older cousin had one, loved it, but also I was like 4. I wish I owned one though anyway.
Wished I had one as a kid, as an adult with emulators it honestly just isn't a big part of my gaming. Columns is great though.
I had one growing up and I actually just got it back the other day! I'm building a Sanni card reader sometime next week and I'm gonna dump all my games (if the saves still exist...which I doubt.)
There was demonstration one in our local Kmart in the electronics section. It had sonic the hedgehog on it. Everytime my mom would take us to the mall, I would beeline for the Game Gear and Gameboy they had and play until she got me.
My cousin had one, but due to the battery drain, could only play it plugged into the wall. He only had one or two games for it, and we eventually would play with the ac adapter more than the game gear itself. It was a "universal" ac adaptor that had a lot of different plugs on it, and we would touch stuff together to make sparks fly. In retrospect this was all probably incredibly dangerous, but we were just dumb kids.
The ‘rich’ kid I knew had one. It seemed ridiculously cool to me at the time, although I didn’t understand why on the long trip we were on he’d only use it for about 5minutes at a time because he was worried about batteries.
Wished they weren't so prone to failing. I've got one that will not power on, sitting in it's box on my couch. Haven't made it around to opening it up.
The sooner, the better. Failed caps can leak and cause much more severe damage.
Played it. Decided to get an Atari Lynx.
Nice! I haven't gotten the chance to play a Lynx, how was that??
It was lonely. Lynx is a neat system, but I only ever met one other person that had one, and we didn't own a single game in common to play together.
There's some Lynx games in the Atari 50th Anniversary Collection, and some recently released for Evercade, if anyone wants to check out some of the Lynx library.
Never knew anyone with one, but I always wanted one when I was a kid. Magazine coverage made them look awesome. Now I'm old and still want one! But it seems they're a bit high maintenance...
I've got a one that has long since died due to the leaky capacitors. Tried to resurrect it but no luck so far. May look to salvage the chips for a full mainboard replacement at some point.
I was walking home from school one day, and I saw that my neighbors had thrown out a box for a game gear with their recycling. In retrospect, I probably should've grabbed it for the sake of collecting video game memorabilia, especially since the box was in pretty good condition.
Oh, and I unlocked the Game Gear Sonic the Hedgehog in Sonic Adventure DX Director's Cut on the Game Cube
Quick edit: I saw it in their recycling in like 2007
Good stuff, especially sonic triple trouble. Working on a recap now
It was my first console, played a lot on it. After a few years I traded it with a friend for Warhammer stuff. I still regret it!
Saw a classmate with one once and it looked hilariously massive to me. Would be cool to explore the library someday.