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…
Saw a classmate with one once and it looked hilariously massive to me. Would be cool to explore the library someday.
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.)
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 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.
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!
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’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.
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.
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.
Good stuff, especially sonic triple trouble. Working on a recap now
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.
Thank you for doing this. It’s so cool to bring new life to old systems.
