Sega game gear

The game Gear was created by Sega to deal with the Nintendo game Boy. Sega's strategy was to launch a laptop far superior technically to its great rival, the game Boy, and with a large catalog of games, as the conversions of Master System to the game Gear were very easy to perform.

Its design was modern and attractive, although its size was quite superior to the Nintendo Game Boy. Its screen was in color and backlit, which was a milestone, which he shared with the Atari Lynx and the Turbo Express. One of the most famous peripherals was the TV tuner, which was connected to the socket of the cartridges and allowed to watch TV on the console screen.

The Game Gear was not very popular in Japan, due largely to various manufacturing problems in its first remittances. Another big problem was its autonomy, with 5 hours maximum due largely to its backlit screen, and far away from its competitor Game Boy (which had monochrome screen without backlight). To try to alleviate this problem was sold separately a pack of 6 rechargeable batteries of the type Ni-Cd, but its high price and the need to unload them completely to reload them did not make it very popular.

Despite its ergonomic design and superb display for the time, the Game Gear failed to snatch Nintendo a significant market share. It reached 10.7% of the market share. And although it was clearly defeated by Game Boy, this console was profitable for Sega, and had about six years of life, normal in most consoles. Its price went from €130 in 1990 to €90 in 1996.