Sega Game Gear Appreciation Thread: Separating The Men From The Boys

The Gunstar port on GG is pretty damn good all things considered! M2 did a wonderful job.

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Wow, M2 did that port? Had no idea, must have been one of their first? I bought a mint boxed copy of GG Gunstar Heroes cheap back in 2000 off eBay, really expensive now. Will post a pic when I can.

I grabbed a free, busted, GG that’s im going to turn into a consolized GG when I get the time. I’m pretty excited about that!

Took me years to get my own one. For me it was killer to have Wonder Boy on a handheld (and Alex Kidd via converter, and Sonic later). I got to borrow my friend’s one back in the day, I literally could not afford to play it due to the battery usage. I didn’t use rechargeable because they were still fairly expensive back then, and also the manual said not to use Nickel Cadmium batteries and I obeyed lol.

Stretching it a bit there IMO, maybe Shining Force is best in breed? Game Boy had pretty much every top Japanese developer releasing great games, and the PC Engine GT played the entire PCE card catalogue.

I wasn’t comparing with the PC Engine GT/Turbo Express or Nomad. The portables that originated as consoles have stronger line ups but it’s not really fair to compare with them.

Game Boy had the largest quantity of developers but I don’t think it had the very best game for each type. I’m curious what action-platformer on Game Boy or Lynx you think would beat Shinobi II. Bionic Commando is probably the closest for me but not as good. Unlike the GG Shinobis which differ quite a bit from console games in the series, it feels a bit of a rehash of a previous game.

Gotta repost this here in case anyone has a Game Gear Everdrive:

Regarding that genre, depends on your definition of ‘action platformer’? Any platformer with a forward attack? Belmont’s Revenge and Operation C, Turtles 1 and 2, Kid Dracula, the Rockman games, Batman ROTJ, Wario Land.

When it comes down to individual game preferences will it will always be hard to agree on any single game being ‘top of the generation’ (apart from some obvious Game Boy knockouts like Link’s Awakening), but Game Boy just has the breadth in all genres. It’s the PS2 of that war.

Indeed, it is one of their first next to Gauntlet IV on Genesis. How much did that copy cost ya back then if you don’t mind me asking?

Finally did up the step-by-step video tutorials for the mcwill modern LCD + TVout mod

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoq5qTjjqQw

and the GG Light Gun mod (my quest to have the ultimate GG)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JT7TXZPfm0

Awesome thanks for posting. This is something I definitely want to get done, but I’m not sure it’s something I can pull off. I’ll watxh it tomorrow after work.

That’s an awesome video, I skimmed through it this morning. Will watch in more detail, along with the GG Light Gun video later today.

How much trickier would you say the McWill mod is vs a recap for the GG? I’ve recapped my Game Gear, and felt pretty confident in that task, but would love to know if the McWill mod is particularly harder than that operation.

Thanks for watching. Glad that videos benefit fellow enthusiasts.

On a scale of 1 to 10, the mcwill mod has a difficulty of 10/10 if the recap surgery is rated 6/10. The hardest part is removing the SMD resistors, FETs and capacitors, without ruining the PCB copper trace because they are so tiny. Daylight is highly recommended to aid visibility. Among the 10 to 15 tasks that could fail the mcwill mod, there is a particularly-daunting step which requires removing an SMD resistor and re-using that to replace another tiny component. If the copper trace under that component to be replaced, got curled up due to excessive heat from desoldering it, the entire “surgery” would fail irreversibly.

However, if you take your time and do it carefully(take short breaks after each step), it is definitely do-able. Also, if you have a 7$-40watts soldering iron like mine, keep the mains switch closeby … you will need to turn off the power supply every 4 to 5mins just before the tip gets too hot.

The light gun mod on the other hand is a "walk in the park " as compared to the mcwill which is “getting up to Mt Everest’s peak”.

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Great post, which also gives me major clues about one thing I’m wondering how wise is to do: buying a collector’s conditions Game Gear (the pre-modded ones usually come loose and quite scruffy) and then send it to a modder, in order to get it recapped and McWill-ized. It does indeed look like a huge risk, doesn’t it?

Correct, there is a high risk involved for the mcwill mod. Thus, a McWil-lized black GG unit goes around 400usd on eBay. There are mod service which costs about 150 to 200usd. Usually the modder would have at least one unit that is Mcwill-lized and tested stable, he would simply swap the main board in your GG with that of his stable modded unit. This way, any failure does not impact the deliverables as he is held accountable for the GG that is sent to him. Before the swap, he would also check that the main board of the GG he received, is in good working order. For example, if the main board does not output a steady regulated supply > 4.9v < 5.45v, it could not be McWil-lized later. He would then quote additional charge as “repair fee” which actually covers for his loss of a GG stock for McWil-lizing.

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Ha, that’s interesting! Thank again dude, very helpful.
And the fun part is that I’d love to get one not even for the LCD alone, but for that nifty VGA out, so I can connect the system to the OSSC and play it on my 27" monitor. That’s what I’m interested in the most.

After a few weeks of obsession with my new Neo Geo Mini, I found myself picking up my GameGear again, playing the GG shinobi. Following that, I got into the modding mood once again, and this time I built a GG Satellite (yes, I named after the NES Satellite)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tet8X-Sodg

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But what is it?

It is a very small analog TV broadcaster, sends the video of my GameGear to any old school television or modern HD TV that has an analog tuner. This is also a convenient way to get video to some vintage TV sets that only support coaxial (no SCART /composite video inputs)

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Wow… where’d you get the yellow box for it? Looks like not a home-made thing.

This is super cool, awesome job!