I still have the box for mine that advertises the TV tuner. I always wondered if there were other attachments too.
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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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"
My Dad took 16 rechargeable AAs and ran a small circuit board to them with an adapter cable coming out. The zipper cases they made for GGs had a large cavity behind the storage area that was perfect for hiding them. I could play for an extra 16 hours with those things. Had to recharge them with a huge wall wort but it was the best gift my Dad ever made for me. I loved that damn system.
Oh wow, if back then was like today, he could have made a successfull kickstarter out of that.
World best dad award
Seriously all I got was crippling alcoholism but some people's dads were cool as shit
I got alcoholism, physical abuse AND a Game Gear! Yayy! 🥲
Time to get 4 double As, gonna play Sonic for 15 minutes
Nope. Six AAs.
I thought it was 8 when I said that and thought, no, that's absurd and under shot.
I don't remember ever picking that thing up and not needing a LOT of batteries
My parents were smart enough to find an AC adapter and a car charger for it. There's no way they'd buy that many batteries for us to keep it alive.
I remember the Italian TV commercial for that.
they really did have it all on uhf
You get to drink from the fire hose!
Open wide!
One of my favourite movies of all time. I love the spoof type movies this was up there. Probably not as good as say Mel Brooks but hard to beat his movies and always enjoyed Wierd Al.
i still love emo phillips face mocking weird al when he says "table saw"
and rip trinidad silva; fuck drunk drivers
Haha I think of that look more often than is probably needed, like an elementary school kid mocking someone. Which for the movie was great and at the time fit well for that time. Nowadays who'd ever to think of doing similar on tv? Except maybe someone without shame.
I don't know Emo Philips at all but him just willing to do that bit and the good Christian joke flood bit that I've read and made me think he was cool. Like what God cares if we do one tiny bit differently? Mean maybe murder but that's not up for debate...well a few examples stick out unless he's a real hardass about it. Hah I'd love to defend that line if there were a pearly gates.
That was great to watch TV for exactly 8 minutes.
Conveniently carry around 20 or so AA batteries and you could probably get through an episode of Benson and the intro to TNG.
It's times like this I wish I had a bigger house. There's so much of this old tech I just want, or at least I want to see and hold them. Basically I want a hands-on retro gaming museum.
It doesn't take up that much space. You sound like my wife lol
It does when you're collecting multiple retro consoles, all their cables, any adapters you need for modern TVs. I've had to make do with a Series S in dev mode running Retroarch for my retro gaming needs, and even then I can't get it to use anything other than an Xbox controller.
There's a free to the public pinball museum near me, not quite the same thing but I could see the possibility of one for retro games, but they would probably have to charge a fee to prevent people ruining or stealing stuff unfortunately.
I used to have a room dedicated to retro games and tech, but since having kids, it's all been crammed into closets. Once they're old enough to not break stuff, I plan to get the "museum" out again in some form so that they can enjoy it.
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.
The battery life was hilariously bad, it was almost the defining trait. It was made especially prominent since it was being compared to the OG Game Boy which could go 20 hours on four AA batteries. The GG could only go about five, if you were lucky, on six AA. Mine basically lived plugged into the wall with a long extension code so I could use it from anywhere in my bedroom.
The GG could only go about five, if you were lucky, on six AA
Which, while of course requiring exponentially more power, the Switch 2 only goes for about 6 hours on less demanding games, funny how battery life hasn't really changed much for advanced handhelds.
If you tried to run the switch on AAs, you'd need a separate suitcase to house them.
Sure but the switch 2 has a rechargeable battery unlike the game gear which had to be supplied with new batteries every time which cost money.
I’m not sure if rechargeable AA were common in those days.
Rechargeable batteries were common, but in my experience they tended to not hold up as long as normal batteries and took 6-8 hours to recharge. At that time they also degraded quickly, were expensive, and overall just a massive hassle to try and manage.
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Game Gear "services" are quite common now - you can get them recapped to solve the infamously troublesome sound dropouts, and most will change the screen to a far more power efficient LCD display as well to let you play at night.
It still eats batteries, but at a much slower rate.
I'm just gutted I left mine in the garage in storage where the damp air fucked it for good
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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!
I had a cdx with an x32 attachment. It was not recommended but it worked
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…
I had the AC adapter when I got mine as a kid, which helped a ton with that. It was definitely hungry.
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 got one for xmas one year, probably it's last year when Sega was clearing inventory, because I didn't ask for it. All I ever had was the pack-in Sonic title. I wish I kept it so that I could modernize it, but who would have seen that coming? I remember playing it and then seeing the battery light flash and I was like, "I wonder what that means, that can't mean a low battery since I've not been playing it all that long!" Yep, it was a low battery :(
It probably wouldn't have been a big deal IF Sega bundled a damn AC adapter with it instead of charging separately for it. It was hard to convince my parents to get me video game stuff as a kid.
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That was one of the reasons I wanted to have one.
One kid on my bus had it, we were all SUPER jealous and kicked his seat
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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.
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I can only imagine the sheer joy of watching blurry cartoons on this bad boy for a solid 15 minutes before the batteries gave up the ghost. truly living the dream.
Pssh we all carried the wall wart with it, just like we do with Steam Deck today.
I think it was pretty rare, at least after the first year or so. I had a Game Gear maybe a year after it launched, and I desperately wanted this as a kid so I could watch TV in my bedroom or on car trips. I searched everywhere, called stores, etc. but never did find one.
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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.
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