Design

The Game Gear was a portable version of the Master System with a lower resolution screen, but allowed for a larger color palette. In addition, it could also produce stereo sound (through headphones) as opposed to the Master System's monaural output, though very few games made use of the stereo capabilities. Unlike the original Game Boy, the system was held in a "landscape" position, with the controls at the sides, making it less cramped to hold.

Because of the similarities between the Master System and the Game Gear, it was fairly easy for Master System games to be ported to Game Gear cartridges. Alternately, the Master Gear Converter was released during the system's lifetime which allowed original Master System games to be played on the Game Gear.

Variations

The blue Game Gear sports edition, identical to the standard Game Gear, except in body color, was released in 1993, with the game World Series Baseball. Another specialty edition was a red Coca-Cola themed Game Gear unit, released to the Japanese market in 1994, which came with a game entitled Coca-Cola Kid. Another limited edition released in Japan only was the white Game Gear, with only 10,000 units sold. Sega also introduced Kids Gear, a packaging of the Game Gear system in a different color case. Another limited edition Game Gear was the red Magic Knight Rayearth and light blue Ninku Blue version, featuring the game and a small miniature of one of the game's characters. Software advertised for Kids Gear focused more on children's game titles. Kids Gear was also only released in Japan. Majesco released thier own version as a budget model in a jet black shell.

Games

300 titles were released for the Game Gear, although at the time of the console's launch there were only six software titles available (seven with the pack-in game, Columns). Sega made sure that a wide variety of video game genres were represented on the system, in order to give it a broad appeal. Prices for game cartridges initially ranged from $24.99 to $29.99 each. They were molded black plastic with a rounded front for convenient removal. The original Game Gear pack-in title was Columns, which was similar to the Tetris cartridge that Nintendo had included when it launched the Game Boy.

Popular titles included Sega's own series, notably Sonic the Hedgehog; Disney movie extensions, such as The Lion King; and 3rd-party developer games like Mortal Kombat.

In an unusual step for Sega (but also practiced by rival Nintendo on their Game Boy handhelds), Sega decided not to region encode Game Gear cartridges, meaning that any system could play any games regardless of the country they were released in. This practice helped to make the console popular among import gamers.