Sega Releases Micro Handheld To Celebrate Game Gear’s 30th Anniversary

Sega has announced a miniature version of the Game Gear handheld. The Japanese company is releasing the Game Gear Micro to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the original handheld game console.

The Sega Game Gear Micro will be released on October 6 in black, yellow, blue and red. Each variant contains four different games. For example, Sega supplies the black version with Sonic the hedgehog and Outrun, and the yellow handheld contains three Shining Force Gaiden games. In any case, given the included games, the Game Gear Handheld seems initially aimed at the Japanese market.

The release is in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of the Game Gear. It was released in Japan on October 6, 1990. A year later, the color screen handheld came out in Europe. The portable game console competed with Nintendo’s Game Boy and Atari’s Lynx, among others. In reviews, the color screen was mentioned as a positive feature, but the size, among other things, was assessed negatively and the Game Gear had to lose out to the Game Boy in terms of popularity.

The size of the Micro version is 40 percent of the original with dimensions of 80x43x20mm. The screen has a screen diagonal of 1.15 inches compared to 3.2 inches for the Game Gear from 1990. Sega has not announced more details yet, but the company is showing a Big Window Micro accessory that can be attached to the handheld and that displays the games enlarged. At the front is a single mono speaker, but there is also a 3.5mm audio output. The handheld can be charged via USB and can be powered with two AAA batteries.