Sega Goes Handheld: A History of the Game Gear and Its Games

Even if overshadowed by Nintendo's Game Boy, Sega's Game Gear left an unmistakable mark on handheld gaming and the video game industry as a whole. Game Gear enjoyed one of the longest lifespans of any Sega console, dazzling gamers with its backlit, full-color display and dismaying them with its short battery life. Despite its shortcomings, the little machine produced some of the greatest portable titles of all time like Royal Stone, Sylvan Tale, and GG Aleste, while featuring new entries in beloved Sega franchises like Phantasy Star, Shinobi, and Shining Force.

Through interviews with more than 30 designers, artists, composers, and executives, as well as information from hundreds of contemporaneous interviews, articles, and reports, this book presents the first comprehensive history of Game Gear's development, launch, and release across multiple regions worldwide. It also features a dozen interviews with former Game Gear developers and producers and includes retrospectives on more than 75 games, discussing their history and why they're still worth playing. Finally, this book explores Game Gear console variations sold worldwide and the memorable accessories that no Game Gear owner could be without.

Ken Horowitz is a professor of English and has written about Sega and video games for over a decade for his website, Sega-16, as well as for numerous other websites and magazines. He lives in Puerto Rico.