Game Gear Micro: Tiny System, Massive Piece of Shit

I have very limited experience with actual Game Gear hardware but quite fond memories of the system.  I remember when I was very young, my auntie had this huge house in the Lake District that I would visit with my family from time to time.  There was some sort of gathering going on at the house one time and all the adults were standing around talking and drinking, the usual fare for that kind of thing.  I however, unable to drink at that young and age, got talking to these two slightly older kids and to pass the time we sat in a hallway, on top of my aunties large refrigerator unit playing some kind of Sonic game on the Game Gear.  I was a big fan of the Sonic games on the Mega Drive at the time so when I saw these guys that had a version of it that could be played on the go, it blew my damn mind.  Thinking back, these first experience with the Game Gear might have been my first experience with a portable console.

Anyway, childhood stories aside, Sega have recently announced a Game Gear Micro, yet another mini version of an old system that has a collection of games for you to enjoy.  I've never been a big fan of these mini systems really but I do see the appeal.  The collection of games is usually pretty good (unless its the western PS1 mini) and they sort of look nice on a shelf as a collectors piece.  Being able to play these games with the actual controllers that come packaged is cool as well.

The first problem with the Game Gear Micro is that it's, as the name would suggest, tiny.  I always hated the Game Boy Micro for being just a tad too small and I'm fairly sure that this thing is even smaller than that.  I get that it's kind of a novelty but even Sega realized that the size of this thing is fucking stupid because if you pre-order the system then you can also get a magnifying glass which may make the thing slightly playable.

The games are the other problem with this thing but not the actual titles themselves.  The selection of games is actually pretty good, a bunch of Sonic games, some RPGs, some puzzle games, the standard array of popular titles and genres you'd expect to see on a system like this.  In total there are 16 games but this is where the bullshit starts to creep in.  There are 4 color variants of the Game Gear Micro; black, blue, red and yellow.  Each one of these systems has 4 DIFFERENT games on them which means if you want to play all 16 micro versions of these Game Gear classics, you have to buy ALL of them.

Which leads us into the third problem of the price.  They are announced to be roughly 5000 yen (About $45) each, which means if you want all of the games available you have to drop a whopping 20,000 yen, which is just fucking extortionate.  If I remember correctly the SNES mini, which had about 20 games packaged in, was 8000 yen at launch.  The PlayStation mini, for all the controversy over its game list in the west at the very least was $60 for 20 games.  For what you get bundled in a single unit the asking price is INSANE.

If they were asking for $20 per system then I'd be down.  Not only would I be down but I'd probably be OK with buying all 4 of them at once but for that much it feels a bit steep.  If you're a huge fan of the Game Gear and you like the idea of having one or all of these things on a shelf to look nice in your collection, go crazy.   But if you're just looking to experience games from a system you might have not played much or maybe even at all, I'd say its probably just better to look for.....alternative methods.

The Playstation Classic Isn't THAT Bad

I never thought I'd do a post advocating in favor (sort of) of an overpriced emulator in a box but here I am.  Before I start, in case you don't know, Sony have followed Nintendo's lead of releasing mini classic systems with their own Playstation Classic.  The list of 20 games that are preloaded onto the system were announced and people are NOT happy about it.


There are some really well known titles in the lineup such as Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7 and Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey but then there's some slightly less popular/well known games such as Jumping Flash, Intelligence Qube and Mr Driller.  There's no real game on there that's really bad, despite some people telling me that Rainbow Six is dicks but I remember having fun with it (not played in a long time, mind you), so why are people so mad?

From what I can tell it seems to be that people are pissed because games like Puzzle Fighter 2 got put on the system over things like Spyro, Crash, Silent Hill or one of the other many great games in the PS1 library.  These are the 3 big titles I see popping up in every little comment but I don't understand how you can be mad about those because Crash has been remade for PS4, Spyro is about to be remade for PS4 and Silent Hill is owned by a company so inept that they nearly got sued over voice rights for their own remake of 2 and 3 so lord only knows what kind of licensing issue lies in that one.

My problem with people complaining about it in general though is that people only seem to want obvious shit on their classic systems.  For example, the SNES classic is a cool piece of kit but I'll never buy one because it only contains games that I've already played to death.  Obvious picks to keep the fanboys happy, so that people can go on social media and post stupid shit like "erh mah gerd do you remember Mario?!"  At least Sony had the balls to put on some lesser known titles like fucking Jumping Flash or Intelligence Qube, so that maybe once you've had your little nostalgia rush you can explore a few gems of the system that you may have not heard of.

I would have considered buying a SNES classic, for example, if Nintendo had made let's say, only 10 of the games safe bets like Earthbound, Metroid, Zelda, Mario and the rest as things like Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma and Ogre Battle.  Syphon Filter, Wild Arms and Super Puzzle Fighter are good games, why are you so afraid to broaden your horizons a bit?  The only "shit" game on that entire list is Revelations: Persona and that's only because the localization was a complete botch job, not that the game itself is shit.  Maybe its an updated version and then what I said about it being crap isn't even true. 

If you're THAT pissed off about it just go and emulate stuff.  The emulators for PS1 are actually pretty good so just make your own PS1 "Classic" and play the games you like.  Also the list of games in Japan is much different and contains things like Parasite Eve and G Darius.  The lineup here is so good I might even pick one up once the price tag goes down a little bit. 

Play something new, it won't kill you, you might even like that Wild Arms thing.