Remakes and Emulation
Support ended in 1997, but Majesco released a core version of the Game Gear in 2001 for a reduced price. The Majesco Core Game Gear differed slightly from the original Game Gear in that it was black and had a purple start button rather than dark grey and a blue start button, the logo on the front of the unit was no longer in color, the power switch was colored black rather than the usual orange and it did not support the television tuner accessory. Its screen had shorter response time than the original model. It also had a somewhat better speaker that did not get distorted as much when played loudly. It was part of Majesco's strategy of making profits from products with margins too slim for the original manufacturer to pursue, and was accompanied by Majesco's licensed reissue of several classic Game Gear cartridges. Majesco-reissued cartridges are distinguished by having no plastic case, and a Majesco Sales logo on the label, as well as the current games ratings system, which differs slightly from the one formerly used by Sega. The Majesco logo was not prominent, and these were marketed under the Sega name.
Though its sales success as a non-Nintendo handheld has been surpassed by the PlayStation Portable (PSP), the Game Gear still stands as the longest supported handheld console not made by Nintendo. Furthermore, it was also the most successful competitor to the Game Boy, selling 11 million units.
In Japan, Game Gear games are available through the Wii's Virtual Console. Several Sega Master System games have been added to the Wii's Virtual Console, many of which are games that had also been released on the Game Gear.
On March 2, 2011, Nintendo announced that their 3DS Virtual Console service on the Nintendo eShop will feature games from Game Gear, which launched a year later on March 15, 2012.
The Sega Game Gear was prominently featured in the 1993 movie Surf Ninjas (which subsequently received its own Game Gear video game as well). It can also be spotted in the 1994 movie, Airheads, as well as the 1995 movie Man of the House, and as part of the main character's arsenal in the 1997 movie Home Alone 3.
Read more about this topic: Sega Game Gear
Famous quotes containing the words remakes and/or emulation:
“With spring the father-sky remakes the world:
The male shower has flowed into the bride,
Earth’s body; then shifted through sky and sea and land
To touch the quickening child in her deep side.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Our children will not survive our habits of thinking, our failures of the spirit, our wreck of the universe into which we bring new life as blithely as we do. Mostly, our children will resemble our own misery and spite and anger, because we give them no choice about it. In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)