Sega Game Gear Review

The Game Gear wins the specification argument and loses everything else. It has a lit color screen while Nintendo is still selling four shades of green, it runs Master System hardware so conversions are quick and look good, and the arcade lineage means Sonic, Shinobi, Columns and a long run of Sega's own back catalog play well on it.

Held next to a Game Boy in a shop it is an obvious upgrade, and it sold on exactly that impression. Then you take it outside. Six AA batteries buy roughly three to five hours against thirty on a Game Boy running four, so an owner is either near a wall socket or buying cells by the box, and neither is what a handheld is for. The unit is wide enough that it does not go in a pocket, the screen smears badly on fast motion, and the backlight is uneven across it.

Sega also starved the thing: the catalog leans on Master System conversions and shrunken versions of console games rather than software written for a portable, and the best of it arrived after the market had already chosen. As a small television you hold, it is fine. As the handheld it was sold as, the battery decides the argument and it never recovers.