In 1990, Sega made a handheld system to compete with Nintendo’s Game Boy called the Game Gear. The thing is though, the Game Gear is kind of awful. Sure it has a color screen, but the screen itself is blurry and cannot handle motion well. It ate batteries, and was too big to be portable in a practical sense. The Game Boy has a huge legacy, as each successor became better and were backwards compatible. The Game Gear had none of this; if you want to play Game Gear games you need to find a working Game Gear.
The Game Gear is unpopular in retrogaming communities, and I believe it’s because of how inaccessible it is. That’s why I wanted to complete this project. Consolizing a Game Gear fixes every problem that I mentioned earlier...and it’s a neat trophy piece.
Unfortunately, I did not keep a journal while I was building this. I wanted to focus on getting it done instead of worrying about writing every detail down. So instead I’m just going to dump a bunch of links that I found while I was doing research.
Tim Worthington’s Game Gear TV Board Instructions + Purchase
Console5 (Cap replacement kits, useful components, and Game Gear Schematics)
[Forum Thread] Let's consolize and old dirty broken Game Gear found in the trash. (This is a goldmine of info)
Japanese Game Gear consolization development blog
Master System joystick pinout (good site for pinouts of every kind)
[Video] Replacing Game Gear capacitors
[Video] Installing GGTV Board
[Video] Installing controller port
I’m sure there are other useful links, but these are the major ones. Overall, this was a fun project to do with a really cool end result. It requires a lot of time and a bit of money, but I can’t see a better use for all of the unused Game Gears sitting on ebay.
