Reception of the Game Gear was mixed, with praise for its full-color backlit screen and processing power for its time, criticisms over its large size and short battery life, and questions over the quality of its game library. It was re-released as a budget system by Majesco Entertainment in 2000, under license from Sega. However, due to its short battery life, lack of original games, and weak support from Sega, the Game Gear was unable to surpass the Game Boy, selling 10.62 million units by March 1996.

Though the Game Gear was rushed to market, its unique game library and price point gave it an edge over the Atari Lynx and TurboExpress. Sega positioned the Game Gear, which had a full-color backlit screen with a landscape format, as a technologically superior handheld to the Game Boy. Download ROMs for GBA, SNES, N64, PSX, NES and SEGA for FREE. It shares much of its hardware with the Master System, and can play Master System games by the use of an adapter. Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator games on PC or phone using emulators such as MAME4Droid. The Game Gear primarily competed with Nintendo's Game Boy, the Atari Lynx, and NEC's TurboExpress. The Game Gear is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console released by Sega on Octoin Japan, in April 1991 throughout North America and Europe, and during 1992 in Australia.

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