Celebrating their 60th Anniversary, Sega has chosen something very unique to kick off the festivities. The company is reaching back to the early 1990s and is reintroducing its old portable system the Sega Game Gear, but with an interesting twist. Sega has officially announced the Game Gear Micro, an unbelievably small version of the formerly massive system. Sega will also be releasing this tiny iteration of the console in four different colors, each with four different games, and they’ll be launching on October 6th in Japan, with no western region launch confirmed at this time.
As stated in the tweet above, the Game Gear Micro will also be releasing with an accessory, called the Big Window, that magnifies the actual screen on the Mico. This will definitely come in handy since, at a glance, it looks to be extremely hard to see. The Game Gear Micro can be played and charged via USB cable or with two AA batteries, thankfully not six of them like the original. We also mentioned that Sega is going to have four Game Gear Micro’s, each with different colors and each with four exclusive titles. All of them have been labeled as their designated colors, Black, Blue, Yellow, and Red. Each one will be priced at 4,980 Yen ($50) but if you want, you can get all four and the screen accessory in one bundle for 27,255 yen ($250).
For those who don’t know, the Sega Game Gear was the company’s answer to Nintendo’s Game Boy. Originally launching in 1990 in Japan, then in 1991 in North America, the console received a bit of a mixed reception. On one hand, it had full-blown color and a screen with a backlight, something that the Game Boy could not boast at the time. On the other hand, it was also considered too massive for a handheld, and as we mentioned earlier, it utilized so much hardware that it required six AA batteries for power. It also didn’t help that the batteries were often drained very quickly due to the strain of running such power on a handheld.
The simplicity and having overall better games on the Game Boy was what eventually spelled the end of the Game Gear, and Sega focused on home consoles soon after, at least until they bowed out of that as well in 2000. Despite this, the Game Gear was more than likely ahead of its time, as the majority of games on the system looked stunning in comparison to the Game Boy. Being able to play games on a brightly lit screen in full color outside of your home was a novelty at the time, and Nintendo themselves would implement this in the later Game Boy line, specifically the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS.
The Game Gear Micro is set to release on October 6 in Japan. As we mentioned before, there is no planned western release at this time, but hopefully, we’ll find out soon if Sega is going to bring this tiny retro system to the States as well.