First Sega Game Gear Released

Is That a Game Gear In Your Pocket Or Have You Had Some Horrible Kind of Accident?

In 1990, if you had a hankering for some video games but you also liked to be out and about ‘doing your thing’ had hated being tied down to a home computer console, there was only one option for you: the Nintendo Gameboy. But all that changed on this day when Sega finally realised that there might be some money to be made from this whole handheld game thing and thrust the Sega Game Gear into our quivering, expectant hands (at least in Japan, it actually took two years to reach the rest of the world).A bit late to the game, Sega rushed the development and release of the system and tried to make it seem like they were the ‘cool’ option compared to the boring old Gameboy, as it had a full colour screen and was more comfortable to hold. They even insulted their rivals with an advertising strap-line that read: "If you were colour blind and had an IQ of less than 12, then you wouldn't mind which portable you had.” Ouch. Unfortunately what it didn’t have was any sort of battery life. Consumers soon tired of having to constantly buy ‘Double As’ and the console was soon discontinued.