For Christmas in 1990, my brother and I got a a portable games console each: the Sega Game Gear. Sega was not just a publisher in the 90s but also made hardware. My brother later had a Sega Master System and Megadrive, from what I remember. The Game Gears were not only had better games in terms of graphics and gameplay but they were portable – although their size probably wouldn’t pass for portability nowadays. I remember a few boys having the (much more iconic) Nintendo Gameboy but I always felt the Game Gear had the edge – a colour screen. We got a link cable so we could connect them together and play against each other. We actually had a TV tuner to plug into one and we were able to watch TV on the go. These were the perfect accompaniment for long journeys in the back of the car when we would holiday abroad.
The games came on small robust cartridges and I can’t remember all the games we had but here’s some of my favourites.
We had a few years usage out of the Game Gears and they resided in the attic for a few years afterward. I wish I’d had the foresight about how nostalgic I (and many others) would get about these consoles; and we’d kept them.