The game gear had two major issues:

-It was too far ahead of its time (something SEGA unfortunately did multiple times, cfr Dreamcast's online gaming capabilities)

-Battery life sucked major donkey cock

It was also somewhat pricey, but the former point was paramount.

That was one of the reasons I wanted to have one.

I never saw a game gear last 5 hours. The one guy I knew who owned one seemed to have it run out of battery everyday on the school bus which was only like a 45 minute ride.

I had that thing! It was really cool to watch a football match while camping!

And I gave it to my father when he was in the hospital... Eurocup was at the time.

That was great to watch TV for exactly 8 minutes.

Yep!

An every time I was in Toy r Us, Babbage's, Children's Palace or looking througu the JC Penny's Christmas catalog, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world and oh so desperately wanted it....despite not owning a Game Gear...😅

It wasn’t that good. The system already drained AA batteries like virgin sacrifices but imagine fm radio dials to sync for tv channels… That being said.. chefs kiss…

they really did have it all on uhf

I have this. It's been on my wishlist ever since I was little and now that i have some disposable income I bought it. Unfortunately the analog signal has been disabled for years, but there's a jack on the tuner that allows you to connect composite video (with a special cable to go from the yellow, red and white to a single 3.5mm jack).

I played some Xbox on it, for the novelty. The screen is small, the resolution is low, the lcd isn't very clear in some cases, ... I love it.

There are special kits to replace the screen with a modern crisp led screen, but they are not compatible with the tuner, something to keep in mind.

That would have been so baller back in the day.

I gotta get my gamegear fixed. It’s too bad we switched over to digital OTA signal because I would love to mess around with this tuner.

Yes! I remember wanting one and envying the kid on the bus with his!

TIL

I wonder whether it digitised the video signal and sent digital RGB data over the connector, or whether there were analogue video channels provided for such a device.

Also, in any case, whether any hobbyist hackers have built adapters to use their Game Gear as a monitor for anything else through the same mechanism. (A HDMI in adapter would be cool, if slightly ridiculous.)

I saw this once or twice. Taxi driver had it mounted on his panel to watch something on break. Somewhat solved the power draw problem with a car adapter...

There was one for the Gameboy Advance too! Loved that thing.

This is the handsomest piece of analog gear I have ever seen. Absolute peak max sexiness, holy shite

I had one. And a TV sender (totally illegal where I was) to broadcast my cable internally to the game gear. I even played my mega drive (genesis) on the small screen.

What a waste of money, but at least I have memories!

It was incredibly high tech at the time. SciFi Stuff. Unfortunately the Game gear also had incredibly bad battery life, and back then, batteries life literally meant "Battery", not "rechargeable Battery"

I wish I didn’t lose my gamegear

I had a cdx with an x32 attachment. It was not recommended but it worked