Years ago I inherited my wife’s family’s Game Gear. After a recap, and replacing the backlight, I started tracking down games to play on it. It’s been great exploring a whole library of games that I skipped out on as a kid! (I was a Nintendo kid) Now I have a nice little library of carts to play on this beast of a 90’s handheld.
The Lion King crushed my dreams as a child. Game Gear, SNES, didn’t matter my little brain was done after the first level.
I made it past the first level once or twice as a kid, but that game was un-fun hard.
I was at a party a year or two ago and my friend booted it up on her Genesis. She smashed through every level with zero trouble (even the part with the monkeys tossing you, that always fucked me up!)
She got to the final stage, began giving Scar and…
The game froze. She’s like “motherfucker…” but it took but an hour for her to get there. She has like… memorized it. Restarted her Genesis and… nothing. Tried another game… nope.
Her fucking Genesis died. AT SCAR.
I blame Scar.
[Scar shoves Genesis off a cliff]
🎶Be prepared!🎶
[Illidan Stormrage crosses his arms and shakes his head disapprovingly.]
LONG LIVE THE FINAL BOSS OF THIS GAME BECAUSE NOW YOU NEED A NEW CONSOLE
Are you challenging me?
Temper, temper… I wouldn’t dream of letting you finish this fight.
Because it gets stupid hard real fast. Even if you somehow make out the monkey puzzle on the 2nd level, the pinpoint jump, double jump situation at the end crushes whatever excitement you have. That level is harder than the final boss.
I kept hearing it was a “hidden gem”, but was honestly kind of disappointed with it. The music is great and the game is okay, but I think every other Disney licensed game I’ve tracked down so far for the Game Gear is better than the Lion King.
Aladdin is a better game. I think the difficulty spike on Lion King makes it a gem for a lot of people. I just can’t wait to be king was life changing and one the most satisfying things to beat.
Agreed. Aladdin was a lot of fun to get through!
I made it through a decent amount of Lion King, but I’ve never beaten it.
I’ve beaten it 1 time. I got super dedicated , was determined to beat it and did. This conversation is making me want to revisit it and give it another run.
Is Aladdin for game gear the same as for Genesis? I just got my game gear adapter for my Pocket and I’m looking for good games to get, and that one is pretty cheap locally. I loved the genesis version but have long since lost my genesis, so it would be cool to play it again if so!
Not the same as the Genesis version (IIRC), but I believe the Master System’s game is the same as this Game Gear version.
Still a fun little platformer if you are seeing it for cheap somewhere.
Sonic Spinball
Oh god, I’m so fucking sorry. Do you have like a donation page for your therapy bills or something.
It’s not a bad game, it’s just that it’s full of insta-death, has no pause or save features, and there is no Continue screen should you fail. If we stopped because we were being called to dinner, it meant having to play…the whole…game…again…all the way from the start. Proudly, we did eventually beat it, but mother of fuck
🤣
It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever played, but yeah… Sonic Spinball is a mess! Lol
Not something I’ll ever actually try to beat, but interesting to mess with when I have some time to kill.
Fortunately the Genesis version doesn’t have any of those issues (aside from the first stage, ironically enough, there’s only one insta-death place in each of the other stages), though it is weird that the portable version doesn’t have a pause or save function.
Sonic 2 was STUPID difficult compared to the other Game Gear Sanic games.
Dynamite Headdy was stellar for its time, too.
Glad to know it wasn’t just me. The extremely tight screen space did not help things
The first boss with the balls was like HOW ARE YOU LIKE WHY STOP
I think it’s the 4th zone, the 3rd area involves a bunch of spring jumps into the void just to get to the boss. No clue why I spent the time to memorize that level, but I did.
Dynamite Heady has been on my list, still need to track down a copy!
Gaaaah!
👏
That is a beautiful collection. High rec for the Gamegear Shining Force games. seems you have one of them already.
Thanks!
Shining force seemed to come up on every internet list, so I had to track it down. It’s definitely a solid game that I probably would have spent HOURS on as a kid.
Hoping that at some point I have enough time on my hands to spend hours on it as an adult 😏
If it wasn’t for the non-existent battery life the Game Gear could really have competed pretty strongly with the Game Boy, at least in the early '90s (nothing could stop the juggernaut that was Pokemon, though). The game library was decent, it had a backlight and color, and you basically had a portable Master System when it came to power. I was a Genesis kid who had a Game Boy, but still always wanted the Game Gear to play the franchises I had on the Genesis on the go.
Thank goodness for modern electronics!
With a LED backlight, the battery life of this almost triples! And rechargeable batteries are way better than what they were in the 90s.
I didn’t have any Sega System as a kid, so all the Sega franchises have been brand new to me the last few years - there’s some really great stuff in there!
NBA Jam is the stuff! I played the heck out of it on SNES. He’s on fire! From downtown!
If you had to pick one, which would you highlight and why?
😬 Wasn’t prepared for that question, not sure I can pick only one.
I can say that lately I’ve been focused on Woody Pop. Slowly but surely getting the hang of that one. It’s a pretty interesting breakout/arkanoid where you are fighting your way through a toy shop. Every time you clear a room, you get a choice of which door to go through (and therefore) which room to tackle next.
There are power ups to collect, each room’s bricks seem to depict a different toy, and there’s unlimited continues. It’s a pretty simple but solid game.
Hmm that does sound pretty awesome, great choice!! I think I’m gonna see if I can find that one, you’ve intrigued me!
Mighty morphin power rangers was the first video game I ever beat, I was so proud of myself!
They’re surprisingly good games on here!
Sonic Triple Trouble is absolute gold.
It’s great! So is Chaos.
Weirdly though, my favorite is still the first one.
Sonic 2 on the GG is absolute garbage.
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Yoooo primal rage tho love that one
My favorite game for Game Gear is Batman Returns and I never hear it talked about! It’s gorgeous, it has grappling hook based action gameplay. Every stage has two options to play through so you don’t get bored playing the same stages every time you power in on. And its very challenging but still beatable. I recommend it!
Yes yes yes and the big rubber duck boss!!
