Why didn’t Sega try a Game Gear 2? In the mid 90s the Gameboy was slowing down and wouldn’t pick up until Pokemon launched. So why not strike while the iron is hot and have something more powerful but not stupidly expensive and clunky like the Nomad.
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SEGA only did expensive high performance parts combined with off the shelf licensed stuff. The nomad is exactly what a GG2 would have been no matter how you slice it. Nintendo had one-sided relationships with sharp and ricoh that let them get super cheap custom hardware that solved problems SEGA had no idea how to solve.
SEGA repeated this mistake constantly. Every piece of hardware they made required them to cut a check to some 3rd party because of licensing fees. Nintendo used lesser quality hardware that they owned outright.
What would they add? It was already in color and even had some other features like a Master System converter and a TV tuner.
Basically this. Nomad is the Game Gear 2. Either that or you get a VMU
>Nintendo had one-sided relationships with sharp and ricoh that let them get super cheap custom hardware that solved problems SEGA had no idea how to solve.
This tbdesu. Nintendo went to Sharp or Ricoh and said "ayo biatch, gimme yo' homework", and they did, because Nintendo tended to order a million or so chips per batch (and multiple batches) from them.
The downside was Nintendo had problems getting hardware to work out of the gate as the launch Famicom and SFC were lemons with major reliability issues that had to be fixed because they were cheap and moronic. Sega never had that issue.
Generally true but the VSP chip fiasco was definitely up there.
>get conned by Samsung into buying a huge pile of faulty 3D chips
Probably why Japanese companies never want to deal with Korean companies like Samsung again.
>get conned by Samsung into buying a huge pile of faulty 3D chips
Ah, yes, that one was a genuinely moronic stunt on the part of SoJ, and one of the reasons why I immediately dismiss any accounts of SoJ being the "good guys" in the Sega saga (uhuhu). And it had even wider implications than just a dud run of hardware.
>for what it was, the battery life was excellent.
Game Gear had worse hardware capabilities and battery life than the Lynx released nearly 2 years prior.
>The downside was Nintendo had problems getting hardware to work out of the gate as the launch Famicom and SFC were lemons with major reliability issues that had to be fixed because they were cheap and moronic.
qrd?
The launch Famicom in '83 had a lot of issues the biggest being an overheating PPU and they recalled it. The launch SNES had issues with self-destructing CPUs--the exact cause of that has not been substantiated but it took a couple hardware revisions to fix it.
>The nomad is exactly what a GG2 would have been no matter how you slice it
and its so packed with features, it boggles the mind they didn't run with it as the replacement for the GG and tried to keep both around.
seriously, wth happened?
Why didn't someone at sega realise all the remaining Genesis developers could continue working on serious titles for the Genesis and it would pivot to mobile with their skills?
And that helps with the software gap that SOJ made SOA so afraid of until the Saturn was due?
Behind the scenes, Sega had a bad reputation for ruining deals and disappointing developers.
CEO Tom Kalinske tried to make good deals happen with Sony, SGI graphics, and a few other game studios. But Sega of Japan ALWAYS shut down any deal Tom made during the later half of his career at Sega. Sega of Japan took away a lot of Sega of America's freedom.
It's part of the reason why Tom left. Sega of Japan wasn't listening to the West. Which is ironic given how much the West saved Sega.
>Tom Kalinske tried to make good deals happen with Sony, SGI graphics, and
He rejected SGI because they had a half-baked prototype of a 3D chipset that was not ready for mass production.
Tom Kalinske didn't kill the Silicon Graphics deal. Sega of Japan killed the deal. Probably because of their secret deal with Hitachi.
You might like the TurboExpress. It's a portable TG-16, so more powerful than the Game Gear, but not as powerful as the Nomad. Not made by SEGA obviously, but still a neat little machine. I've also heard good things about the Atari Lynx but never actually played it
I can only imagine the battery life on these.
Sorry, anon. The human brain is unable to perceive such brief intervals of time.
if any console sega made was a failure, it was the game gear
Game Gear and not 32X?
32x had multiple awesome games, the gg is basically unplayable and the library is dogshit
Jurassic Park on GG is great.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
>Game Gear and not 32X?
Sega 32x isn't even a console. It's a cheaper add-on.
Shitcast was worse
Yet it was very successful for what it was.
Yeah, that's what I meant by
32X has some great games but there are only forty of them
it was quite popular in japan
explain where they'd get the funding
The Nomad was basically that and it flopped.
To be fair, it wasn't marketed as being a GG successor and was only for the US market. They should have taken some late release Genesis title in the works and slapped it in with the system and claimed it a "Nomad exclusive" to get the idea across it was the successor to the GG in addition to a portable MD.
Yeah, the leaked Sega documents even had them mention how retailers would see the Nomad as Sega moving on from the Game Gear, and the company would need to emphasize to them that they weren't intending to do that.
Hilarious when that's exactly what they should have done. Maybe they knew the power requirements were too bad to bother seeing it as a replacement.
I don't remember the Game Gear being very portable since that ate batteries for lunch so I don't see it being that tbh.
for what it was, the battery life was excellent.
but compared to the gameboy, it was 1/8 the life on a set of 4 fresh bats
Game Gear was a repurposed Master System. They were just trying to extend the life of old hardware.
>They were just trying to extend the life of old hardware.
Paradoxically, as much as people shit on SoA for attempting to drag out the Genesis era, SoJ were equally moronic in trying to squeeze blood out of the Master System turnip (which negatively impacted their next system).
SoA was right. Nintendo waited until 1996 to introduce Nintendo 64, and didn't make any SNES add-ons. SoA should have done the same. History had proven SoA right.
SOA didn’t want to wait until 96 but 98. Would that have been too long? Plus they also wanted the 32X pushed and that was a bad idea even at the time
Former CEO Tom Kalinske says he wanted 1996 for a Saturn launch so the software and games could be more mature for the system. He also didn't want any add-ons for Genesis. That he just wanted to support Genesis with solid 16 bit games until Saturn could launch in 1996. He is 100% right. Nintendo did exactly that with Nintendo 64 and they beat Sega. There is no arguing this.
Both Nintendo and Sega would've lost even harder to Sony had both of them done this.
No one was beating PS1. But Nintendo sold 40 million Nintendo 64 units. So Sega could learn from Nintendo.
>Former CEO Tom Kalinske says he wanted 1996 for a Saturn launch so the software and games could be more mature for the system
Nintendo kind of beefed it with the SNES launch because it came out in North America when it still had few games and the teething issues with the hardware weren't resolved yet. They might have waited until '92 but they were being left in the dust by Sega.
hmm well the Mega Drive launched in North America in August '89 which was only ten months after it came out in Japan and there weren't exactly a lot of games at that point
The Master System was such dud that they wanted to move on from it as fast as possible. Also it's true that the Mega Drive was slow to take off and didn't become a success until its third year.
It didn't sell well in Japan either at first because it was expensive, games were few, and the hardware had problems. There had been less than 60 SNES games released as 1991 ended and it was only in '92 that the trickle turned into a flood.
They both kind of blew it with the N64 and Saturn imo. They were both missing major important titles from their predecessors that made them great to begin with. Still not terrible consoles but not as good as they should've been considering the SNES and Genesis
The Mega Drive was two years older than the SNES and looking dated by 1994, that was the issue.
the only people who wanted a GG2 were shareholders at Duracell and Energizer.
Game Gear? More like Game QUEER.
I always thought the Nomad was the GameGear2. I don't think there was anything Sega could do to take the portable market until the screen technology advanced enough, and they definitely lacked the brand recognition of games that would appeal to a crowd as large as those with a Gameboy. The Nomad is still great to me, since I like the games, but I'm not a portable gamer so the titles were likely not the kind those who want to play on the go were interested in.
Nomad was a handheld Genesis they made for airplanes, then they just slapped a screen and some batteries on it and sold it in stores. Since 90% of the R&D was already done and they had a tiny Genesis on their hands, I guess they just figured "why not".
you're thinking of the Mega Jet
Did you plug this in to the airplane screen? Did they have 15khz crt's on planes or was it lcd's?
>Did you plug this in to the airplane screen?
Yes. Back in the day, business class and first class had access to CRT screens above your head. Those planes have been all retired now. Last one retired like 4 years ago.
there was just no reason to enter the handheld market post-pokemon
> No 32x
> 32x tech used for Game Gear
Probably one of the most incoherant posts ever made. The very essence of the 32x "tech" was an adon to graft onto the genesis. If the 32x never existed, then there is no 32x tech, and a new stand alone machine would not even remotely resemble the 32x.
EVERY company that EVER tried a portable except for Nintendo has taken a bath on it. For whatever reason, only Nintendo has ever been able to make any real money in portable dedicated gaming hardware.
Because almost every other company tried to make expensive handhelds and try to market the powerful portable hardware.
Nintendo learned a long time ago that the key is to focus on good games, and to use inexpensive hardware so the battery last longer. Make the hardware just "good enough" to play the games but nothing more. The original Gameboy was a perfect example this. No color screen. No back light. Not even the fastest hardware. But the battery life was great and was good enough to play games.
Gameboy titles mostly play like complete dogshit. The Game Gear library holds up far better. For that matter, the GBA and NDS are filled with shovelware.
yeah, the games library of all three of those were so bad that each one was a smashing success and had countless classic titles worth playing.
let's look at the game gear's amazing library of sonic games not even sonic fans remember outside of being collection filler and... uh...
No the Gameboy does not have countless classics worth playing. It's literally maybe just a handful. The ratio of playable titles on the Game Gear compared to the Gameboy is much higher. It's stupid to say Nintendo had a focus on "good games" while allowing endless shovelware on their handhelds. Nintendo fans just don't know shit about video games.
By virtue of having more titles, the shittiest games on the GB will be shittier than the shittiest games on the GG. However, that also applies in reverse. The best GB games are above the best GG titles.
Sega was trying to repurpose old hardware as a side hustle, Sony was trying to make console games portable, Nintendo was making a true handheld device.
>Sega was trying to repurpose old hardware as a side hustle
Something also attempted by NEC.
>Sony was trying to make console games portable
And they weren't even the first; Atari tried that before them.
The WonderSwan and PSP did well.
The wonderswan only did well in Japan
PSP could have done better if Sony wasnt obsessed with pushing UMD discs which made the PSP more expensive than it should have been.
The PSP sold 80 million
Like I said, PSP could have sold much better. It was much more expensive that it should have been because of Sony pushing UMD discs. Which drove the cost of the PSP up.
Nintendo sold 160 million and crushed the PSP.
PSP successor, the PS vita, sold pathetically. Only like 15 million.
Nintendo reigns Supreme.
The DS was a much weaker system with smaller games. PSP games would not have been able to fit on solid state storage.
Nintendo = Great handhelds
SEGA and Sony = Great consoles
So many people complain about N64 while forgetting Nintendo was also doing Game Boy Color at the same time which had plenty of great platformes, shmups, RPG's etc. Even if the N64 didn't have as many games as PS1 or Saturn, they still had the GBC. Handhelds have always pretty much been their strength.
The PSP is easily on the top 5 of best handhelds.
I was speaking more in regards to the 90's. Even throughout the sixth gen though Ninendo was basically carried by the GBA, sort of. PSP didn't happen until early seventh gen though
>Nintendo was also doing Game Boy Color at the same time which had plenty of great platformes, shmups
Game Boy has very few shmup titles because they don't work well on the hardware. It's designed for tile based games and has a very strict sprite limit, you need a lot of free moving sprites for a shmup.
um no...it doesn't have them because there'd be no way to support a turbo controller
N64 doesnt have a gameboy player equivalent
>The wonderswan only did well in Japan
I wonder why.
The Game Gear was a failure. They never could fix the battery life problem and it had no smash hit games besides sonic.
Because Sega missed the point. It wasn't PORTABLE. It died after 3 or 4 hours max of gameplay. The Game Gear gobbled up batteries. Kids can't take it on a long road trip. Want to visit your friends house? Oops too bad! Battery died.
The could have done a reviced game gear 2, make it smaller, better screen, the option turn off and off backlight, use less batteries, etc.
Sega Nomad WAS the Game Gear 2 for all intents and purposes.
>the game gear 3
The Gameboy didn't have to have that shitty passive matrix LCD but Sharp basically pushed it on Nintendo as part of a package deal for the chipset.
its non-existant power demand is part of the contribution to the GB success.
I agree Tom Kalinski was kind of a dumbass to think they could make the Mega Drive last into 1996. The magic six year mark usually holds for consoles at which point they're outdated and the Mega Drive turned six in '94.
If they had quality games, that wouldn't have mattered. They didn't. I remember playing Sonic 3d Blast at Toys R Us back then. The graphics weren't the problem, it looked great.
The last year for the SNES in North America was '96 and it was still getting major AAA titles but the stuff coming out at the tail end of the Mega Drive's run was mostly shovelware and B-tier games.
that will have been because SOJ were adamant about terminating Mega Drive support which meant that most late games were mediocre Western shovelware
Sega was about innovation and pushing boundaries back then. I can't imagine anyone at the company at the time wanted to make export only games for an unfamiliar foreign market for a 1980s console. It really isn't their fault that Sega of America could not develop or publish good games.
>It really isn't their fault that Sega of America could not develop or publish good games.
Garfield: Caught in the Act and The Ooze were ok but they weren't going to stack up to the big SNES releases from 95-96.
naw that was just SOJ being spiteful because the Mega Drive didn't sell there
>In the mid 90s the Gameboy was slowing down
This is precisely why.
The GB was weak shit when it came out in 1989, but still sold well for years thanks to Tetris. NEC/Hudson Soft, Sega, and Atari all tried to take the (at the time) smaller handheld market away from Nintendo with superior handheld systems capable of color. They all failed for various reasons. With the winner of the war starting to die off, the handheld console market was being abandoned. Why compete when the only game in town isn't selling anymore?
>Tetris
Didn't Tramiel lose the Nintendo lawsuit due to sheer moronation? Imagine what a full-color official Tetris would do for the Lynx...
He lost the lawsuit because he was cheap. He hired the cheapest and least expensive law firm he could find. Law schools say that it should have been an easy win for him but the lawyers were terrible.
in hindsight it's obvious...after sega cd just release software and make PS1 equivalent even more powerful
What if they made a Lynx 3?
The Lynx was such a wasted potential.
My god I never see in my life a battery killer like this thing