Sega Game Gear

Sega developed the Game Gear under the codename Project Mercury to compete with the Game Boy. CEO Hayao Nakayama made the decision, and the name was picked by Michael Katz, the newly appointed head of Sega of America. To reach stores quickly, Sega based it on Master System hardware, with an 8-bit Z80 and a palette expanded to 4,096 colours. Its wide shape follows the Genesis controller and was meant to be more comfortable to hold than the Game Boy.

It launched in Japan on October 6, 1990 for ¥19,800, in North America and Europe in April 1991 and in Australia in 1992; Spain got it in July 1991. Columns was the pack-in game. Its backlit colour screen outclassed the Game Boy's, but six AA batteries lasted only three to five hours. Outside Japan, Sega pitched it as the more grown-up choice, with ads mocking Game Boy players that drew criticism from Nintendo.

More than 300 games were released, six of them at launch, including Sonic the Hedgehog, The GG Shinobi and Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. Many were Master System ports, easy to convert thanks to the shared hardware, and the Master Gear adapter ran that console's cartridges directly. A notable accessory was a TV tuner that slotted into the cartridge port. It outsold the Atari Lynx and TurboExpress but fell far behind the Game Boy.

Sega prioritised its home consoles, cancelled a 16-bit handheld successor and released the Nomad in 1995 as a companion system. It ended Game Gear support in 1996 in Japan and in 1997 worldwide. Majesco re-released it under licence from Sega in 2000 as a budget system. Its games returned on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console from 2011, and in 2020 Sega released the Game Gear Micro for its 60th anniversary.