GameGear

"Game Gear Analysis"

Firstly, I must say that most of the other reviews here hardly do justice with this excellent handheld system.

That first thing you like when you see the GG (Game Gear) is its looks. It looks just so much better than any of its competitors, and especially the very old fashioned Gameboy.

The GG came 4 years after the GB (Gameboy), in 1991.
It is much more advanced, in practically every way, shape or form.

Graphics: The GG has a large 3'' color screen with pretty high resolution - better than the GB or the Lynx, by far.
The colors are strong, and although the screen is a Passive Matrix one, what you see on it is miles better than the GB, and even the Gameboy Color. The graphics adaptor supports up to 32 simultaneous colors and a palette of 8000 or so colors, totally. The most important factor is the simultaneous colors: 32 sounds pretty little, but in fact you won't notice it, and anyhow its better than GB's monochrome screen.
8.5/10

Sound: The sound here is being criticized badly. The speaker is perhaps a bit poor, but again: miles better than the GB one. If you plug in some headphones you'll easily see the difference. It supports 4 channels of sound (MIDI).
7/10

Processor: The speed is not so great, but it’s used very efficiently, and anyhow for 1991 it is excellent! Most likely this is the Sega Mastersystem processor, and it does a fine job. Up until 1994 all games ran extremely smooth on it. Then there appeared some more demanding games such as MK2, which pushed the Motorola Z80 processor to its limits. Even though it still performs well, and there is nothing like a loading time, in any game.
8.5/10

Controls: The directional 8-way keypad on the left is excellent. On the other side there are only 3 buttons (A, B and pause). On some games this is not enough, as the Pause is not used for pausing (actually its called 'start'). But the grip of the unit and pressing the controls is a joy, and on most games the amount of buttons is just enough.
9/10

Games: Come on people.. There were 250 titles for the GG!!!
And most of them were good. Perhaps there were not too many RPG titles, but who looks for RPG games on a handheld?
On the contrary, the action games were great, the sport games were fun, and there were even some blasting logic games (Columns, Junction, Chessmaster). And best of all.. all the Sega Mastersystem games were truly compatible with a 20$ adaptor, so add to that hundreds of other titles.
Nobody can complain here.
9/10

Portability: The unit is a little big and heavy with the batteries, but nothing serious. The big problem is the battery life - but if you buy the rechargeable pack, or an alternative battery recharger, it's all taken care of.
6-8 hours at a 0$ cost is not that bad after all.
7.5/10

Gameplay: There is no better feeling then sitting in the boring airplane with the GG in your hands, and people looking at you with envy in their eyes. Its not only fun to play it, but as long as people look at you with it in the streets or anywhere else, it adds value to the gameplay, seriously! Besides that, the games were fun and almost anyone was excited about the flowing colors and decent sounds of this nifty unit.
10/10

To sum it all up, this unit is outdated now - just like the Gameboy or the Lynx. But its still fun to play around with it. If you don't have it - don't buy it now, its useless.
In its days in the happy early 90's everyone liked it and enjoyed it. Now I would say go for the Sega Nomad, which didn't go too well. It'll cost you around 50$ and uses the excellent Genesis games, which are selling for silly prices.
It’s got everything the GG has and much more!

Overall GG score: 9/10
(to compensate for the injustice caused by the other reviews, otherwise 8/10)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/13/01, Updated 10/13/01