Game Gear

The Game Gear is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console created by Sega in 1990 primarily to compete with Nintendo's Game Boy, the Atari Lynx, and NEC's TurboExpress. The console shares much of its hardware with the Master System and can play Master System games via an adapter. With it's full color back-lit screen in landscape format, Sega advertised the Game Gear as a technologically superior handheld console compared to the Game Boy. However, due to the Game Gear's short battery life, lack of original games for the system, and overall weak support from Sega, the console was unable to surpass the Game Boy and was ultimately discontinued in 1997.