Comment on TIL there was a TV tuner attachment for the Game Gear!
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
The game gear had two major issues:
-It was too far ahead of its time (something SEGA unfortunately did multiple times, cfr Dreamcast’s online gaming capabilities)
-Battery life sucked major donkey cock
It was also somewhat pricey, but the former point was paramount.
Game Gear “services” are quite common now - you can get them recapped to solve the infamously troublesome sound dropouts, and most will change the screen to a far more power efficient LCD display as well to let you play at night.
It still eats batteries, but at a much slower rate.
I’m just gutted I left mine in the garage in storage where the damp air fucked it for good
How bad is it? You would be amazed how salvageable they are with the right chemical soak and reflow.
Honestly I never opened it. I have a Master System II and in fairness, the difference in game ports are negligible for the most part, so I never really looked at repairing it.
Speaking more broadly, I wouldn’t mind learning how to solder - my skills have mostly been in software rather than hardware. Things like fucking about with a Raspberry Pi and their expansion boards sounds like a right laugh.
Soldering is super easy, don’t let it intimidate you. You can be going in no time after dropping just a few bucks.
The best mod would be changing it from batteries to a cell phone style rechargeable battery. At least then I wouldn’t care as much of how quick it dies since im not replacing a ton of batteries every day. Even rechargeable ones, you still gotta take them out and put them back, which is annoying as well.
I miss mine as well. I remember as a kid our grandmother got me and a few cousins it for Xmas one year. I also remember breaking it the following year during a parent kid picnic at school where it got crushed. I still remember it, which says a lot because I have very few memories from way back then!
I had a rechargable battery for mine back in the 90s.
Bit of rubbing alcohol and a toothbrush usually solves those “damp air fucked my electronics” issues.
So many batteries. Car trips more than an hour (when we really wanted games) took a while pack of batteries. And the little brothers really got screwed because they would be stuck with the second turn, and about to die batteries.
yeah the battery life was horrible. it would eat 6 AA batteries like they were candy. I only ever used mine when it was either plugged into the wall or plugged in the cars cigarette lighter which my dad hated cause he smoked.
Being too ahead of its time was kind of Sega’s thing when it came to hardware. They beat Nintendo to market with 16-bit graphics by like 2 years, Sony to 3D GPU and CD-ROM by a year, the Game Gear absolutely blew every other portable out of the water for as long as it was on the market…
Ahem… (coughs in Atari Lynx)
Hear hear. The Game Gear was basically a portable Sega Master System only better. Can you imagine Nintendo putting out a whole-ass portable NES? They didn’t have the balls.
To this day, one of my favorite gifts I ever received, way back in Christmas of checks notes 360 B.C.
zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
The battery life was hilariously bad, it was almost the defining trait. It was made especially prominent since it was being compared to the OG Game Boy which could go 20 hours on four AA batteries. The GG could only go about five, if you were lucky, on six AA. Mine basically lived plugged into the wall with a long extension code so I could use it from anywhere in my bedroom.
kautau@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Which, while of course requiring exponentially more power, the Switch 2 only goes for about 6 hours on less demanding games, funny how battery life hasn’t really changed much for advanced handhelds.
Link@rentadrunk.org 8 hours ago
Sure but the switch 2 has a rechargeable battery unlike the game gear which had to be supplied with new batteries every time.
I’m not sure if rechargeable AA were common in those days.
snooggums@piefed.world 8 hours ago
Rechargeable batteries were common, but in my experience they tended to not hold up as long as normal batteries and took 6-8 hours to recharge. At that time they also degraded quickly, were expensive, and overall just a massive hassle to try and manage.
fancy-straw-simple@piefed.ca 8 hours ago
The biggest problem with rechargeable dry cells is that each one supports 1.2 volts, while alkaline are 1.5. Some devices wouldn’t even run, most run more poorly and run out of battery even faster.
zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
This is also why I have never considered the Switch a portable system. It was a hybrid that was never quite a “real” console or a handheld, and thus made compromises on both ends. I personally never used the Switch undocked, I’d have rather they sold a fixed model with no screen or joycons that just plugged in.
The real reason that Game Gear was so power hungry is that it was just a Sega Master System crammed into a handheld. This is why it felt wildly better and more advanced then the Game Boy. Sega did the same thing years later with the Sega Nomad aka a Genesis crammed into a handheld.
InFerNo@lemmy.ml 3 hours ago
The biggest culprit is probably the CCFL tube backlight.
Oha@lemmy.ohaa.xyz 8 hours ago
You dont have to replace your switches batteries every time they run out tho
yucandu@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
It was more like 30 minutes with the Super Heavy Duty AA’s my dad could afford.
But that’s okay, he hand soldered me a DC adapter that only threw sparks sometimes.