Never knew anyone with one, but I always wanted one when I was a kid. Magazine coverage made them look awesome. Now I'm old and still want one! But it seems they're a bit high maintenance...
I've got a one that has long since died due to the leaky capacitors. Tried to resurrect it but no luck so far. May look to salvage the chips for a full mainboard replacement at some point.
I had a friend who had one and it looked amazing! Just like a real console attached to a TV, and indeed it was basically a portable Sega Master System in design. I only had a gray-scale GameBoy so the display on the Game Gear was incredible by comparison.
I do remember my joy, when finding out that instead of feeding it with batteries, I could even use the power adapter of the master system to play with the Gamegear. 😄
I've emulated some of the games, but I don't have the money to buy one at the moment. I would like to get one, though.
There was demonstration one in our local Kmart in the electronics section. It had sonic the hedgehog on it. Everytime my mom would take us to the mall, I would beeline for the Game Gear and Gameboy they had and play until she got me.
Bought mine in the 90's from a high school friend. Got the car adapter and it was a lifesaver for the family road trips which we did a lot of back then. I kept it even though it stopped working years ago. Then learned how to recap it during the pandemic and got hooked to console modding. That was a slippery slope. I've since bought, fixed, and customized 6 game gears with custom-painted shells and installed the different variations of screen and power upgrades. Now I find broken consoles and fix/upgrade them as a hobby. There's something so satisfying about bringing life back to gaming hardware that people have given up on.
Thank you for doing this. It's so cool to bring new life to old systems.
