Following the success of the Genesis/Mega Drive Mini, SEGA has announced that they are working on a Game Gear Micro handheld. The news came as part of SEGA’s 60th anniversary, in an interview between CEO Haruki Satomi and the new SEGA of Japan mascot Sega Shiro. The revealing interview, which is worth a read even with Google Translate, touches on fans speculating that the SEGA Saturn will somehow be revived (perhaps as a Mini plug-and-play console) but instead the plan is to release a Game Gear Micro!
No additional details are given, aside from a landing page, and according to Famitsu more details are coming at 13:00 Tokyo time today (so just in a couple of hours). Pre-orders will open soon after the reveal.
UPDATE: Twitter user NintenDaan discovered the teaser site’s featured image reveals the release date of October 6, 2020, a price of 4,980 Yen ($46 USD) and four color options for the console. So basically, hardcore SEGA fans are dropping $200.
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Com certeza vou compra um
Heh this is why I love Sega, this is Sega basically trolling us with the Game Gear micro and who knows what else eventually, it’s Sega being Sega basically, this is what they do.
Nobody ever saw this coming for miles, it would take somebody like Sega to be this unpredictable and brave enough to bring out a Game Gear micro on top of their other big moves not announced yet.
Com certeza vou compra
Também vou compraR.
Reading the interview :
“Other products that SEGA has launched, such as “UFO Catcher” and “Print Club” co-developed with Atlus, have transformed the arcade into a place where women and families can play. ”
Yeah, indeed. It’s all becoming norm s now.
Hmm, this is definitely cool and I’ll get …er… at least one 😀 …but is this really the announcement that will “rile up the industry”?
Also, are you sure that 10/6 isn’t June 10th?
Month and date are reversed in Japan
Okay, good to know. Thanks!
This can also be just an appetizer because it’s not june 4th yet. Maybe they’ll announce something extra. Either way it’s some good news. Also Sega of japan just dropped a new video called Sega group video.
Hardcore Sega fan not dropping $200, not even $50 for this. A dreamcast or Saturn mini, yes but game gear was too niche, not much fun and doesn’t bring much nostalgia to people. And a micro screen and controls is NOT fun. The famicom mini controllers were already to small and it affected the fun. And hopefully this isn’t the famitsu story or that is weak. It is like saying the My Arcade Mini Bubble Bobble device will rile the industry.
Speak for yourself
Who owned a game gear? No one. The battery life was horrible. Even Nintendo won’t make a Gameboy mini, it’s just not in demand. The only thing memorable about game gear were some of the tunes in Sonic.
It sold 11 million, bud… it was quite successful, the number 2 handheld in every market in the world.
Did it sell that many? How many of those people want a mini recreation ? Wouldn’t be close to as much as the Genesis mini.
The number two handheld? HDDVD was also the number two high definition disc player 13 years ago.
I had one as a kid and yes, I was hoping for a Game Gear mini.
You can brag about being the only one to own one just like 30 years ago. But no one will care.
I can see both sides of it.
Personally, I love the Game Gear. Battery life aside, it’s actually got a very robust library, especially once you start digging into the imports. It didn’t have a Tetris or Pokemon style killer app unfortunately, but it essentially did portable WarioWare (Puzzle & Action) and Nintendogs (Pet Club) a decade before Nintendo and had the most impressive library of handheld RPGs and fighting games at the time.
Notable ports aside, Tails Adventure, GG Shinobi, Fantasy Zone Gear, Sylvan Tale, Shining Force Gaiden, Royal Stone, Triple Trouble, and Nazo Puyo are all classics. All of which are gonna be on these… the thing that irks me is that they’re all separated among the colors. The overall lineup is quite good albeit small. It needs more games to begin with, but it should at least be an all-in-one at the very least.
Before I read the reports, I had a hunch that they were going to use this as their Master System Mini playform as well. 25 Game Gear games and 25 Master System games or something similar. Now that I know it’s just four Game Gear games per $50 handheld, I don’t understand what they’re thinking.
It had a chance pulling in the European/Brazilian markets as a portable Master System Mini Plus, but this is just an overpriced toy as far as I can tell. If they were gonna do this, they should be way less expensive per unit. With a different distribution method this might’ve been able to overcome the Game Gear’s relative obscurity, but I think this one’s dead in the water.
Shame, I wanted to see Game Gear get its due.
*correction, doesn’t have Triple Trouble; has Sonic Chaos.
Ugh, I was actually excited for this until I saw how they were handling it. I’ve been wanting a yellow Game Gear. They could’ve had me on a drunken impulse buy, but that one has the least variety of them all.
Just awful. And this is coming from a huge Sega and Game Gear fan.
Yeah, it’s got a library of nearly 400 games (plus it could play the 300+ games for the Master System), is it unbelievable it has a fanbase? Actually both the GG and the SMS each outsold the Dreamcast. And they both definitely trounced HD-DVD in sales. 😉
The Master System was Sega’s second best selling system globally at the time, it had double the sales that the Saturn and Game Gear and even the Dreamcast got at over 20 million and is probably now the largest selling Sega system ever to date, even more than the Mega Drive which got over 40 million sales originally, because they still get manufactured today by Sega official licenced TecToy, so combining everything, the MASTER System would technically be the most successful Sega hardware ever on record so far.
Most Sega systems selling at least 10 million for the time was quite good, but by the time the Saturn generation was midway, the industry as a whole greatly increased and numbers like 10 million didnt mean what they used to, because as the industry grew, 10 million was now a smaller slice of the pie, so that’s why by 1997, Isao Okawa wanted Sega to focus more on software development more than hardware development but was still wanting to see the Dreamcast arrive because he liked the internet capabilities of it.
They should have just done mega drive mini 2 based off the 2nd model. There are still many great games that are missing from mega drive mini.
This is the kind of blunder that took down Sega in the 90s. How’s that for nostalgia?
Who even asked for this?
It’s a bit of fun, if you can remember back to a time when video games were something fun rather than something that drove you into fits of impotent rage…
It is not aimed at you DVD player mini ffs.
It is more a collectable novelty which does really well in other territories.
Stop looking at everything from an American perspective, just because westerners like you didnt ask for it, it doesn’t mean no one else did either.
This is awesome! although I wish it was a little bigger, around 2/3 scale of the original Game Gear would be great. But I look forward to seeing what games will be on them!
I’m hoping for:
Tails Sky Patrol, Gunstar Heroes, Ax Battler, Shinobi, Tempo Jr., Panzer Dragoon Mini, and Streets of Rage
this is sooo sega being sega…i love it! 😀
although a saturn mini would have been nicer^^
Oof, what a let down.
What a rubbish announcement. Small screen? 4 games on each color and 45$. what a ripoff.
NES classic offered more games at that same price tag.
I’d buy one if it had a keychain loop, but that’s about it. SEGA could do a 2/3 size version of the GG with at least 40 games and make this huge… but don’t bank on it. It’s disappointing, MOST disappointing.
Eh… well it’s definitely something else… if it’s easy to sideload roms on it then I’ll consider it, right now it’s terrible value for the price and only has worth as a collector’s item. Probably costs them like 2 dollars to make one, considering the size of the device, screen and that it only comes with 4 roms.
I’ll probably order one just to own one more piece of Sega history, but they really could’ve banked hard on this idea rather than make tiny gachapon toy sized replicas and sell them at this high of a price.
You can just install the missing Mega Drive titles easily without any dodgy soldering necessary by using Project Lunar, you can even install Mega/Sega CD and 32X games to run on it natively.
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://modmyclassic.com/project-lunar/&ved=2ahUKEwjEu9LdxOXpAhVJi1wKHV1pChQQtwIwAHoECAIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2Odzei5wUykTAyOyIapupv&cshid=1591183593986
Better than anything Xbox has to offer.
SOLD!
If Sega of America wants to be cool, they could include the fan translation of Sylvan Tale; maybe drum up interest in a forgotten game and get a sequel started.
Trials of Mana was an official translation of Seiken Densetsu 3, which used to be fan translated up to that point. Why not follow that with Japanese only Sega RPGs? Those are always successful. Speaking of which, I hear we are finally getting Mother 3. It could just be a rumor though. Sega should translate the rest of the Saturn Shining Force 3 scenarios.