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Honestly the brief run that Majesco had with the game gear in the states cc. 2001 has captivated me, but information seems hard to concretely date, for those unaware let me give out the basics.

in 1997 SEGA discontinued first party support for the game gear worldwide with the last game from this time being Lost World: Jurassic Park in the same year, but according to a few magazines like gamepro and the UK Dreamcast magazine in 2001 Majesco gained the rights to manufacture new systems and reprint old games such as Aladdin, Sonic Chaos, Caesars Palace, Pac-Man ETC (you can find the full list online, easiest way to identify a 2000's majesco reprint from the box is the "modern" black lettered ESRB rating on the front of the box)

The new game gear was neither a full revision, nor the same as a Sega Game Gear, people say the screen and battery life are nicer than on the SEGA models which does sound nice but the TV tuner doesnt work and apparently some master system adapters have trouble, its also slightly different cosmetically, featuring a purple start button and the logos around the screen arent in color but instead are all white, the case is also noticeably a darker shade of black than a SEGA model, and it is apparently much more reliable of a system because it might have much more reliable caps.

it's reported to be a Toys-R-Us/Amazon exclusive (as the Toys-R-Us website was a part of amazon dot com at the time) but i've seen games and boxed systems with stickers for the soon to be defunct department store "Ames", the system was priced at 30$ (about 53-54$ today) and the games were priced at 15$ each (about 26$ today) while it seems odd to release the same year as the GBA, it seems that the original plan was to re-release the system, reprint released titles and possibly even publish new titles around Early 1999 and even in 2001 it was sold as a budget option as the GBA would retail in late 2001 in NA for 100$ (or about 174$ today) and likely it was meant to compete more with the Game Boy Color during the tail-end of its lifespan likely with its backlit screen and value to be a big seller against both, but mainly the GBC.

As for "New Games" it mainly seems like the idea was to mainly release previously unreleased titles like Frogger, but only 1 title released (Super Battletank) which is listen on this site as released in 1994, and while i believe development on the title finished in 1994 there doesn't seem to be any evidence that it actually hit store shelves in the 90's there are magazine ads for this version but nothing like a retail listing as far as i'm concerned, the only copies i can find (like the one i own) are majesco prints, and while the date on those is uncertain (some websites like amazon claim it to be 2000 and magazines at the time reported it was 2001) its certain Super Battletank is the last official north american game gear game by release date, being released sometime around 2000/2001, But info about this seems to stop with the reprints/release of super battletank and the revised game gear because i'm not sure when exactly it was discontinued, wikipedia says 2000 but again its not even certain that it was released in 2001, as for the wayback machine the oldest version of the page for the system i could find is from 2001, and some claim online that they were able to pick up the system for less than half price as late as 2003 so its possible it was discontinued around that time, and nowadays they're a bit hard to find. Talk about an investment, although the games are generally very easy to find! For example the majesco printing of the jungle book [new/sealed] can be around 13-20$ online!

i'm hoping to get my hands on a majesco system myself to see the differences myself, perhaps anyone who has experience with the Majesco Game Gear system and games or has info on them can post them on this thread. I'd love to see more about this.

but again... it was a 30$ games console! How awesome was that?

GameGear_Majesco.jpg (9.53 KB)

Kinda quick but its kinda because i left this tab up for a few days without posting the actual thread to the forum (Whoops!) but i finally got my majesco system in as well as a copy of "Super Battletank" and i tried a few other games with it too, and i'll say (first time being able to play game gear) it's a very nice experience, beefy little thing, and i did see a lot of differences in person, maybe once my Sega GG is recapped i can see it side by side. but so far i'm loving this.

imgonline-com-ua-twotoone-XkGn1CV7o4NCve.jpg (3.77 MB)

Author	Message
Maztr_0n Joined: 02 Mar 2024 Posts: 21 Location: Dullsville	2001 North American/Majesco Game Gear & 2000's Reprints Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 5:37 pm
	Honestly the brief run that Majesco had with the game gear in the states cc. 2001 has captivated me, but information seems hard to concretely date, for those unaware let me give out the basics. in 1997 SEGA discontinued first party support for the game gear worldwide with the last game from this time being Lost World: Jurassic Park in the same year, but according to a few magazines like gamepro and the UK Dreamcast magazine in 2001 Majesco gained the rights to manufacture new systems and reprint old games such as Aladdin, Sonic Chaos, Caesars Palace, Pac-Man ETC (you can find the full list online, easiest way to identify a 2000's majesco reprint from the box is the "modern" black lettered ESRB rating on the front of the box) The new game gear was neither a full revision, nor the same as a Sega Game Gear, people say the screen and battery life are nicer than on the SEGA models which does sound nice but the TV tuner doesnt work and apparently some master system adapters have trouble, its also slightly different cosmetically, featuring a purple start button and the logos around the screen arent in color but instead are all white, the case is also noticeably a darker shade of black than a SEGA model, and it is apparently much more reliable of a system because it might have much more reliable caps. it's reported to be a Toys-R-Us/Amazon exclusive (as the Toys-R-Us website was a part of amazon dot com at the time) but i've seen games and boxed systems with stickers for the soon to be defunct department store "Ames", the system was priced at 30$ (about 53-54$ today) and the games were priced at 15$ each (about 26$ today) while it seems odd to release the same year as the GBA, it seems that the original plan was to re-release the system, reprint released titles and possibly even publish new titles around Early 1999 and even in 2001 it was sold as a budget option as the GBA would retail in late 2001 in NA for 100$ (or about 174$ today) and likely it was meant to compete more with the Game Boy Color during the tail-end of its lifespan likely with its backlit screen and value to be a big seller against both, but mainly the GBC. As for "New Games" it mainly seems like the idea was to mainly release previously unreleased titles like Frogger, but only 1 title released (Super Battletank) which is listen on this site as released in 1994, and while i believe development on the title finished in 1994 there doesn't seem to be any evidence that it actually hit store shelves in the 90's there are magazine ads for this version but nothing like a retail listing as far as i'm concerned, the only copies i can find (like the one i own) are majesco prints, and while the date on those is uncertain (some websites like amazon claim it to be 2000 and magazines at the time reported it was 2001) its certain Super Battletank is the last official north american game gear game by release date, being released sometime around 2000/2001, But info about this seems to stop with the reprints/release of super battletank and the revised game gear because i'm not sure when exactly it was discontinued, wikipedia says 2000 but again its not even certain that it was released in 2001, as for the wayback machine the oldest version of the page for the system i could find is from 2001, and some claim online that they were able to pick up the system for less than half price as late as 2003 so its possible it was discontinued around that time, and nowadays they're a bit hard to find. Talk about an investment, although the games are generally very easy to find! For example the majesco printing of the jungle book [new/sealed] can be around 13-20$ online! i'm hoping to get my hands on a majesco system myself to see the differences myself, perhaps anyone who has experience with the Majesco Game Gear system and games or has info on them can post them on this thread. I'd love to see more about this. but again... it was a 30$ games console! How awesome was that? GameGear_Majesco.jpg (9.53 KB)

Maztr_0n Joined: 02 Mar 2024 Posts: 21 Location: Dullsville	Update Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 5:43 pm
	Kinda quick but its kinda because i left this tab up for a few days without posting the actual thread to the forum (Whoops!) but i finally got my majesco system in as well as a copy of "Super Battletank" and i tried a few other games with it too, and i'll say (first time being able to play game gear) it's a very nice experience, beefy little thing, and i did see a lot of differences in person, maybe once my Sega GG is recapped i can see it side by side. but so far i'm loving this. imgonline-com-ua-twotoone-XkGn1CV7o4NCve.jpg (3.77 MB)

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