History Platform / GameGear

* The Sega TV Adaptor is a very unique peripheral that allowed the Game Gear to function as an analog TV via its antenna. This accessory is useless nowadays outside of being a collector's item, though it also gives AV inputs to the Game Gear for potentially interesting applications.[[note]]As a portable TV it was kind of useless since it drained the Game Gear's batteries even faster than playing games on it, plus no matter what you hook up to it it's still on a 160x140 screen (analog TV in North America was 486x440) so it's not gonna look very good. But if you were a kid in a house with only 1 TV it was good enough.[[/note]]

** ''Cheese Cat-Astrophe Starring WesternAnimation/SpeedyGonzales''

* ''Manga/YuYuHakusho''

** ''Nazo Puyo''

* ''Bishoujo Senshi Franchise/SailorMoon S''

** ''Desert Speedtrap Starring [[WesternAnimation/WileECoyoteAndTheRoadRunner Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote]]''

* ''Comicbook/ChakanTheForeverMan''

* ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers''

* ''MightyMorphinPowerRangers''

** ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyoTsu''

* The Sega TV Adaptor is a very unique peripheral that allowed the Game Gear to function as an analog TV via its antenna. This accessory is useless nowadays outside of being a collector's item, though it also gives AV inputs to the Game Gear for potentially interesting applications.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1280px_game_gear_handheld.jpg]]

** ''VideoGame/TailsSkyPatrol'' ([[NoExportForYou Japan exclusive)]]

** ''VideoGame/MortalKombat2''

* ''Defenders of Oasis''

* ''VideoGame/VirtuaFighter Animation''

** ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' (different from the Genesis version)

* ''VideoGame/PacAttack''

* ''[[VideoGame/BubbleBobble Puzzle Bobble]]''

!!Notable Games/Series:

** ''VideoGame/SonicDrift'' ([[NoExportForYou A Japan-only release]])

** ''VideoGame/TailsSkyPatrol'' ([[NoExportForYou Another Japan only release)]]

The Game Gear released on October 6, 1990 in Japan, with North America and Europe receiving it in April of 1991. It was bundled with ''VideoGame/{{Columns}}'', a puzzle game similar to ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' that was clearly meant to replicate the latter game's explosive success as the console's KillerApp. The marketing for the system in America was similar in approach to the Genesis, with Sega playing to the teenage crowd and positioning the Game Gear as the handheld for cool kids. While insulting Nintendo was very much in line for Sega, they went a bit further and insulted their customers to sell the Game Gear; an advertisement famously claimed that Game Boy owners had [=IQs=] less than 12.

Despite Sega's best efforts, they were unable to recreate the success they had in the home console space and the Game Gear failed to claim any significant slice of the handheld market. Not that it was a flop, mind you -- the system lasted until 1997 and sold 10 million units. That might not be as impressive as the Game Boy's 118 million units, but it was way better than the Lynx's 3 million and the [=TurboExpress=]'s 1.5 million. Sega's brand recognition at the time is likely the reason the Game Gear ended up a modest hit instead of an outright flop like the other handhelds. It was actually the most successful handheld to go against Nintendo until Sony released the UsefulNotes/PlayStationPortable in 2004.

The issue is that the Game Gear ultimately fell into the same traps that the other non-Nintendo handhelds had found themselves caught in. The first problem was battery life. Even if the chips didn't consume a lot of power on their own, the screen's backlight did. And you couldn't turn it off or adjust the brightness level to converse power. The Game Gear was infamously a battery hog as a result; it took '''six''' AA batteries, and those batteries only lasted a measly 2-5 hours thanks to the inefficient power usage. The original model Game Boy might have lacked a backlight, but it only needed four AA batteries and could potentially last up to 30 hours. The Game Gear's battery issues could be alleviated by a rechargeable battery pack or circumvented entirely by plugging it in with an AC adapter, though these solutions heavily compromised the portability of the system. Not that the portability was amazing in the first place, as the system's form factor made it much larger than the Game Boy and meant it couldn't be slipped into pockets as easily. Additionally, the first production runs of the system were faulty, and that along with the battery life caused the audience in Japan to largely ignore it. This contributed to the minor support from third parties.

* [[/index]]''Franchise/ShiningSeries'':[[index]]

** ''Legend of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse''