Game Gear Micro review: peak Sega

Filed under:A ridiculous, glorious revival of a not-quite-classic systemThe Game Gear Micro is portable console as performance art.Coming off the back of the excellent Genesis Mini, Sega had two choices when it came to reviving the Game Gear, its contemporaneous 8-bit handheld system. If you’re the kind of person who bought non-functioning plastic 32X and Sega CD add-ons for your Genesis Mini, you will love the Game Gear Micro. It’s very bright, and contrast and viewing angles are also more than solid, not that it’d really be practical for more than one person to see the screen at once.Games aren’t unplayable on the tiny display — I actually found it a lot easier than I expected to see what was going on — but it’s still more comfortable with Sega’s micro-sized resurrection of its old Game Gear clip-on magnification accessory, the Big Window. It’s unfortunate that Sega isn’t selling the Big Window Micro separately, but the company views it as more of a bonus than an essential accessory.Would I have preferred a mini Game Gear with a bigger screen and all 16 games preloaded on one unit? And what could be more Sega-like than a lavishly undersized re-creation of a failed handheld system that was better known for eating batteries than playing good games?The Game Gear Micro is peak Sega.