Game Gear

Game Gear is a 8-Bit handheld manufactured and released by Sega, and it was released in 1990 in Japan, and 1991 in North America.

It competed with the Game Boy and Atari LYNX.

History
Under the developing name "Project Mercury" it released in the fall of 1990 in Japan, and in 1991 in North America and Europe, at launch it had 6 games, one of which was a "port" of Sonic The Hedgehog, it was a superior handheld of the Game Boy, of having full colour, having a back-lighted screen, but had the problem of having a weak battery life and requiring six AA battery's, however with this, the handheld sold 40.00 units in 2 days of launch, and 90.00 units within the next month. Some of the Game Gear games were ports of Master System games, which made sense since both consoles are 8-bit, but some Game Gear games got tweaked from their Master System originals, like with making the UI smaller, or making some sprites smaller, either way over 300 games for the Game Gear from launch to it's discontinuation,compared to the Game Boys that had over 1,000 games, the handheld was discontinued in 1996 in Japan, and in 1997 World-Wide.

Over the life of the handheld, some accessories were released, this including the "TV Tuner" that allows people to tune their antenna from the cartridge slot to the TV, this allowed people to view stations over-the-air on their Game Gears. There are also others such as: Screen Magnifiers, cigarette lighters, Gear to Gear cable, an other accessories, while expensive, it made great collections to collectors.

Later Life
By the mid-90's the Game Gear was getting phased out of Sega, after Sega spending more time on the Sega Genesis, and the Sega 32X, and of the Game Gear having few third-party developers, this lead to the last first party game, Sonic Blast, to release in late 1996, and the last third-party and in general last game, The Lost World: Jurassic Park released in 1997, it was unable to beat the Game Boy, but it beated the Atari Lynx and TurboExpress.

In 2000, under license from Sega, Majesco re-launched the system, pricing it at 30$ with games at 15$.

In 2011, Nintendo announced that Game gear games would be available through their "Virtual Console" line on the 3DS.

Game Gear Micro
To honor Sega's 60th anniversary, they released a smaller version of the handheld, with games, it has only been exclusive to Japan, and so far has no plans to release world-wide.

Trivia

 * The design of the handheld was similar to the Genesis' design, as of the button placement, and the D-Pad to.
 * It has a battery life of 3 - 5 hours of gameplay.
 * Similar to the Genesis, their is a head-phone jack, and has stereo-sound.