Open Menu
AllLocalCommunitiesAbout
lotide
AllLocalCommunitiesAbout
Login

TIL there was a TV tuner attachment for the Game Gear!

⁨378⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨The_Picard_Maneuver@piefed.world⁩ to ⁨retrogaming@lemmy.world⁩

https://media.piefed.world/posts/r6/2I/r62Ic6MYh0fhLQE.jpg

source

Comments

Sort:hotnewtop
  • CaliforniaSober@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    It wasn’t that good. The system already drained AA batteries like virgin sacrifices but imagine fm radio dials to sync for tv channels…

    source
  • InFerNo@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    I have this. It’s been on my wishlist ever since I was little and now that i have some disposable income I bought it. Unfortunately the analog signal has been disabled for years, but there’s a jack on the tuner that allows you to connect composite video (with a special cable to go from the yellow, red and white to a single 3.5mm jack).

    I played some Xbox on it, for the novelty. The screen is small, the resolution is low, the lcd isn’t very clear in some cases, … I love it.

    There are special kits to replace the screen with a modern crisp led screen, but they are not compatible with the tuner, something to keep in mind.

    source
  • froggycar360@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    I wish I didn’t lose my gamegear

    source
    • Aunt_Iffa@lemmy.ml ⁨26⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Still have mine and a few precious games! Mine has the giant battery attachment!

      source
  • Laser@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    I saw this once or twice. Taxi driver had it mounted on how panel to watch something on break. Somewhat solved the power draw problem with a car adapter…

    source
  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨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.

    source
    • zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨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.

      source
      • kautau@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The GG could only go about five, if you were lucky, on six AA

        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.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨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.

        source
    • anomnom@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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.

      source
    • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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

      source
      • ThePantser@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        How bad is it? You would be amazed how salvageable they are with the right chemical soak and reflow.

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • HeyJoe@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        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!

        source
        • -> View More Comments
      • yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Bit of rubbing alcohol and a toothbrush usually solves those “damp air fucked my electronics” issues.

        source
    • rozodru@pie.andmc.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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.

      source
    • bitjunkie@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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…

      source
      • monkeyman69@lemmynsfw.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Ahem… (coughs in Atari Lynx)

        source
    • EvilBit@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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.

      source
  • Hadriscus@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This is the handsomest piece of analog gear I have ever seen. Absolute peak max sexiness, holy shite

    source
    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Bubble-economy Japan led the way for an insane amount of features, aesthetics, and innovation for personal electronics. Most of it was dead-sexy stuff.

      One of my favorite examples, the Sony MSX HitBit F1XB:

      Image Image

      source
      • Hadriscus@jlai.lu ⁨47⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

        Is this a computer in a keyboard ? magnificient arrow keys

        source
  • InvalidName2@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Several of those old portables had tv tuners. None of them work anymore, at least not the USA.

    There is a project out there that transmits video on UHF or VHF over short distances, basically a work around for old analog tuners. Basically hook up a video source and it will encode and transmit so you can watch stuff on gadgets with these old tuners.

    Also, I don’t recall if they all have the a/v in functionality like this one, but that provided another option for using the thing as a monitor for other things.

    source
  • Valon_Blue@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    There was one for the Gameboy Advance too! Loved that thing.

    source
  • fancy-straw-simple@piefed.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I never saw a game gear last 5 hours. The one guy I knew who owned one seemed to have it run out of battery everyday on the school bus which was only like a 45 minute ride.

    source
    • InFerNo@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I have several game gears so have some first hand experience.

      90s batteries didn’t last long. Regular batteries are 1.5V, rechargeable are 1.2V. When freshly charged they can be around 1.4V, but the game gear will quickly “detect” the voltage dropping and start indicating low battery.

      Older batteries didn’t hold as much charge as modern batteries do. You can go hours now with rechargeable batteries, but it used to be different.

      As a kid, I had a game gear fanny pack that held the device, some games and all the batteries I could cram in there, which was a lot.

      source
    • DannyMac@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I got one for xmas one year, probably it’s last year when Sega was clearing inventory, because I didn’t ask for it. All I ever had was the pack-in Sonic title. I wish I kept it so that I could modernize it, but who would have seen that coming? I remember playing it and then seeing the battery light flash and I was like, “I wonder what that means, that can’t mean a low battery since I’ve not been playing it all that long!” Yep, it was a low battery :(

      It probably wouldn’t have been a big deal IF Sega bundled a damn AC adapter with it instead of charging separately for it. It was hard to convince my parents to get me video game stuff as a kid.

      source
    • rothaine@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      He should’ve bought the official Game Gear AA battery bandolier

      source
  • bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That was one of the reasons I wanted to have one.

    source
    • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      One kid on my bus had it, we were all SUPER jealous and kicked his seat

      source
      • bran_buckler@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The whole union of kobolds kicked his seat!? That must have been miserable for him!

        source
        • -> View More Comments
    • zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I did too, but my Dad ended up buying me one of those tiny handheld TVs with a 1" screen instead. It was more a novelty that anything, it sucked down batteries faster than an actual Game Gear.

      source
  • xyzzy@lemmy.today ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think it was pretty rare, at least after the first year or so. I had a Game Gear maybe a year after it launched, and I desperately wanted this as a kid so I could watch TV in my bedroom or on car trips. I searched everywhere, called stores, etc. but never did find one.

    source
    • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I got a GameGear from a garage sale that had a bunch of accessories including this… It was definitely rad for car trips, but it would chew through 6 AAs in about 2.5-3 hours, and my parents shut that down pretty fast.

      source
  • PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I had that thing! It was really cool to watch a football match while camping!

    And I gave it to my father when he was in the hospital… Eurocup was at the time.

    source
  • DannyMac@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yes! I remember wanting one and envying the kid on the bus with his!

    source
  • IronpigsWizard@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yep!

    An every time I was in Toy r Us, Babbage’s, Children’s Palace or looking througu the JC Penny’s Christmas catalog, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world and oh so desperately wanted it…despite not owning a Game Gear…😅

    source
  • realitista@lemmus.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That would have been so baller back in the day.

    source
  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I wonder whether it digitised the video signal and sent digital RGB data over the connector, or whether there were analogue video channels provided for such a device.

    Also, in any case, whether any hobbyist hackers have built adapters to use their Game Gear as a monitor for anything else through the same mechanism. (A HDMI in adapter would be cool, if slightly ridiculous.)

    source
    • _NetNomad@fedia.io ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      it's fascinating, the game gear itself actually has a "TV Mode" that's activated by holding down a certain signal on the cartridge bus which bypasses the z80 and VDP and chucks a
      digital RGB signal and some kind of custom timing information straight to the screen

      https://www.smspower.org/Development/TVTunerAdaptor

      source
  • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I gotta get my gamegear fixed. It’s too bad we switched over to digital OTA signal because I would love to mess around with this tuner.

    source
  • AshMan85@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    TIL

    source
  • korendian@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That is amazing

    source
  • homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I understand why they think they needed to do it, but killing analog OTA television was seriously the stupidest decision I’d ever seen prior to 2009.

    After that it kinda started to happen a lot. Which, uh, must be coincidence.

    source
  • Kalon@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Back in the day I had the portible TurboGFX with TV tunner. Seemed so cool but rarely got that much use.

    source