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Handy Gear - lovablechevy's ultimate Game Gear - finished!
Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 2:11 pm Last edited by lovablechevy on Thu Jun 30, 2011 1:16 am; edited 2 times in total |
i thought ya'll might find this interesting. :)
after about 3 months work, spread out over about 3 years... this is finally done! woot! the handy gear is the ultimate game gear. 5" screen, internal rechargeable batteries, recased, master gear converter hard wired on, many things removed to make the game gear able to run off 7.4v (and also save tremendously on battery life). i wanted it to look as much like an actual game gear as possible. placement of everything is based off of the game gear itself. anyway, enough chattering, on to some videos and pics! youtube videos: detailed description quick description level 1 of sonic specs: system - game gear batteries - 2 3.7v li-ion 5700 mAh (6 hours - video gets wobbly at 5.5 hours - power led flashes and the video colors invert a few mins before batteries die) case - frankencased zn-40, game gear case, and master gear converter housing screen - psone screen modded with 6 leds controller - original game gear buttons and pads, random controller cut up for the board random tidbits - power led changed from red to pink; case has custom made decals/sticker; has a master gear converter hard wired on to allow for sms playability if you are interested, here is the partial build thread (that i was making during a contest on another forum back in the day) and the link to all the pics i took. a few measurements of the system: weight of system (by itself/with gg game/with sms game) - 2 lbs 1.7 oz/2 lbs 2.8 oz/2 lbs 3.8 oz thickness - 2 5/8" height - 5 1/4" height with sms game - 6 3/4" length - 9 1/8" compared to a game gear: weight of system (by itself/with gg game/with sms game) - 13.4 oz/14.4 oz/ 1 lb 4.1 oz weight of system with 6 aas (by itself/with gg game/with sms game) - 1 lb 2.3 oz/1 lb 3.3 oz/1 lb 9 oz thickness - 1 1/2" thickness with master gear converter - 2 5/8" height - 4 3/8" height with sms game - 5 1/16" length - 8 1/4" it is just a bit larger than the game gear itself. considering it has a 5" screen, internal batteries, and the master gear converter hard wired on, that’s pretty fricken awesome! not to mention it looks fricken awesome! tee hee! :) original post |
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 3:43 pm Last edited by English Invader on Sun Jun 26, 2011 4:16 pm; edited 3 times in total |
Nice work. One of the problems with trying to play SMS games with a MasterGear is that the screen is too small and your console addresses that issue very well. | |
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 3:44 pm |
Whoa... This figuratively made my jaw drop to the floor. And even further down when I watched some of the videos and the narration was a female. There's really not many - if any - female technicians that I know of. And you made a vast improvement on that handheld!
Say, will it someday be for sale, or is it gonna be a one-of-a-kind for you to have so we'll all be jealous of you? :P |
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 5:11 pm |
Incredible work :)
How does it feel to hold the system? I can see it must be pretty exciting to play on a large nicer screen on what feels like a Game Gear (compared to say, using a emulator). |
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 5:39 pm |
Looks great, seems like it is really heavy in comparison? Can you still hold it to play for extended periods of time or do you need to put it down like you did playing sonic on YouTube?
Also any plans to make more of these for sale? |
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 6:13 pm |
thanks, guys!
to answer some questions: i don't currently have any plans to make any more of these. the casing was a real pain in the butt to get worked out. adding in the master gear converter really just made things that much more difficult, esp when it came to making the case. i also don't plan on selling this one. but... who knows, if the right figure was thrown at me, i just may consider making more. now that i know what all to do, it would be a lot easier. it feels very similar to a game gear itself. it is heavier and a bit wider. but the grip area really isn't much thicker. so it really does feel basically like holding the game gear. in comparison to the game gear, yeah, it's really heavy. it's lighter (i believe) than my last portable. and by "heavy" i mean maybe 2 lbs. so it's not really all that heavy. easy to play holding it. i simply set it on the table for the video so that i knew i was capturing the screen properly. :) |
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 8:05 pm |
Awesome!!!
Here is the list of GG games that run in SMS mode: Castle of Illusion (I see you have this one, would be good for a game play video) Excellent Dizzy Collection, The Fantastic Dizzy Jang Pung II Olympic Gold Out Run Europa Predator 2 Prince of Persia R.C. Grand Prix Rastan Saga Super Kick Off Taito Chase H.Q. WWF Wrestlemania Steel Cage Challenge |
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Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 9:16 pm |
This is a really amazing piece of tech! I'm curious bout the battery life. Now give it a TV-Out and you have the ultimate 8-Bit Sega System | |
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Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 2:25 am |
I can't believe it's even bigger than the original GG! But the fact that it has a working GG slot and Master Converter melted in makes it awesome!
Here's my usual GG-TV setup for comparison: |
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Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 2:36 am |
considering it has a larger screen, the master gear converter hard wired on, and 2 3.7v 5700 mAh internal rechargable batteries... of course it's gonna be bigger. but it's not all that much bigger. esp when you consider the size of the game gear with the master gear converter in place. and, it wouldn't really be possible to keep it teh same size as the game gear since the converter displays in teh center half. simply putting a 3" screen in a game gear would produce a much smaller picture... |
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Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 11:44 am |
Nice work!
I geuss its kind of like a GG XL (in the same was as DSi XL). |
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Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 1:16 pm |
first post edited to include weights of the system. | |
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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 2:34 pm |
I am impressed. Lovely looking machine! | |
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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 4:44 pm |
For those of us not using the American weight system :) it's 1015g with an SMS cart compared to 710g for a GG + batteries + Master Gear + SMS cart.
It's also worth noting that in GG mode, the screen has a large border as it's a GG-TV signal for a regular screen. Making it "fullscreen" would require a scaler. Does it show borders in SMS mode too? On all sides? How about in extended-height video mode (e.g. Micro Machines)? |
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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 7:07 pm |
In the detailed description video it shows the GG version of Castle of Illusion, which uses the whole screen as it runs in SMS mode. Looks great (would be good for a game play video, hint hint) | |
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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 7:58 pm |
thanks for doing that conversion for me. i didn't even think about converting to grams till just a bit ago. lol! sms games do not have a boarder. they display in full screen: and... i don't have any extended-height video mode games... so i'm not sure... i imagine they would show the same as they do on a tv when using this board. and the gg games that display in sms mode do also take up the full screen: i'll look into doing a playing video using an sms game and also castle of illusion. i've just never actually played castle of illusion, so it could make for a very humorous video! :) |
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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 8:39 pm |
I just thought it's worth reinforcing that regular GG games don't fill the screen; Castle of Illusion might confuse matters.
In SMS mode there is indeed the usual borders as you'd get on a TV with not much overscan - top and bottom, a little bit on the right and typically more on the left. Presumably it's also not 1:1 pixel-wise. |
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Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2011 6:20 pm |
You'll have to get some practice in then lol :) |
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Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2011 7:04 pm |
lol! yeah, i guess so. currently trying to get an accurate count on battery life (just over 4 hours right now and still going strong). as soon as i'm done with that, i'll take some video of an sms game and of castle of illusion. :) |
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Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2011 1:19 am |
first post edited with battery life | |
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Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 1:12 pm |
well, i tried getting some video last night of castle of illusion & golden axe warrior. but my camera was not cooperating at all. the picture was way too dark. and i'm not exactly sure how to fix that. everything i did didn't seem to help... but as soon as i figure out how to get a better video up, i'll get those videos done. |
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Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 3:28 pm |
I wonder what a console through the TV-Tuners AV-in would look like on this screen | |
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Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 4:15 pm |
That doesn't work. The TV Tuner works by letting the tuner drive the GG's LCD directly, with the GG chips doing nothing. The screen here is tapping the output of the GG's video chip, which won't be doing anything, so most likely you'll get a blank screen. | |
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2011 11:03 am |
Too bad. At least I learned something ^^' | |