Sega’s Back, Baby!…In a Small Way
It is small and adorable but believe it or not it won’t be competing against the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP.
Sega was shot out of the console race ages ago, and not just because of the Saturn’s failure. Truthfully, Sega had a lot more failures than successes, console-wise. One bomb in particular was small, but its shrapnel was no less damaging to the company. It was the Game Gear.
Offhand, the Game Gear seemed like a logical bit of hardware. Nintendo’s Game Boy was a big screaming success and Sega figured, “Well, if the crowd loves a screen the colour of creamed cabbage, they’re going to love real colour!”
Sure enough the world had no objection to real colour, but nobody was hot on paying for a sixpack of batteries that would last for a couple of hours.
So ended Sega’s grand handheld experiment. Years later, it’s time for part two, but you don’t have to worry about losing your game cartridges between your couch cushions: Sega’s handheld is basically an iPod competitor. It will play music and tiny videos and even tiny flash games.
SegaNerds has a full report on the device’s magical functions:
* Portable TV tuner
* MP4 movie player
* MP3 music player
* Digital camera
* Video camera
* Games sysem
* eBooks and document reader
* Voice Recorder
The Game Gear had a (failed) TV tuner as well. My goodness, I’m drowning in memories. Our Canadian Tire catalogue would advertise the Game Gear TV tuner with this lovely copy-pasted clear picture of a dude playing football. Oh boy, talk about pics that never happened.
This handheld of Sega’s will be the size of a credit card. So no, you don’t have to watch out for your game cartridges falling in between the couch cushions, but you might want to keep an eye on the device itself.
Provided it comes to America.
