What is the pixel res I wonder…
Oh dear. I bought a big pack of AAA batteries to counter the lack of lithium ion battery, but this one is definitely making me less excited about receiving my consoles 
It seems to me that the games do not run native (block puzzler is definitely scaled and “animal head” blocks shows pixel shimmer as they fall down)
But the UI seems to run at native resolution for the screen, with pixel perfect scrolling.
confirmed: https://soniconline.fr/news/1274-la-game-gear-micro-pour-les-60-ans-de-sega
corrected:
240x180
- 6x8 fixed width font
- cols: 40
- rows: 22.5
- aspect ratio: 4:3
GG was 160 × 144 pixel (10:9 aspect) so that makes this screen a different aspect!
- W x 1.5
- H x 1.25
Sigh. Not my idea of fun.
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I wonder how large pixel perfect Game Gear games appeared on the original 3DS’s 3.5" screen? Wish I still had mine to do comparison shots when my Micros arrive!
Forgot to reply to this - wanted to say thanks for the teardown section in particular.
Looks like it’s using an Allwinner F1C200s, which has a 600Mhz ARM9 core and doesn’t seem to have a dedicated GPU:
64MB DDR / 600MHz ARM9
That might explain the missing emulation options that M2 previously programmed in for 3DS Virtual Console - stuff like motion blur would have been hardware accelerated off the GPU. The Game Gear Micro CPU is, at the crudest level of comparisons, a souped up the DS, which had an ARM9 core for its CPU.
Thanks for the analysis. When we see what really goes into these machines it really speaks volumes about how things have changed. Before, dedicated handhelds were a big enough market to justify the mass production of bespoke parts. Now it seems these mini consoles are being put together using parts designed for different use cases - as you mentioned elsewhere the screen probably was for a ‘smart’ watch. And the SoC definitely wasn’t made for this use case. I’m still stunned this product only came in at 1000 yen cheaper than the Famicom Mini now that we know what’s in it.
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Any chance this will come out in Europe? It’s stupid as hell but I want one, badly.
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They’re here!
Packaging shots:
And for the hardware itself:
Pretty cool how the faux-cartridge label lists the individual games.
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To see the effect having a screen with non-native resolution would bring to the visual output, I took some macro photos of games running on both Game Gear 3DS Virtual Console and the Game Gear Micro.
What should be the sharpest Game Gear image thanks to its small size becomes a small, blurry one instead:
GG Shinobi (highway)
Nazo Puyo 3 (battle)
Nazo Puyo 3 (overworld)
Suspend menu
There is one exception - the front-end is indeed native resolution and looks very nice and crisp. But that’s not where you’re going to be spending most of your time. But savour the crispness!
The worst affected games are those with simple sprites - it does Shining Force no favours.
As for early hardware impressions, @Yakumo covered it well in his video.
To reiterate from my end, from my short time with it it’s big on novelty but small on practicality, but that was always going to be the case from what we’ve seen so far.
Display quibbles aside, the other disappointment I have is the buttons and D-Pad just aren’t very good at all, which is a surprise considering they are similar in size to the Game Boy Micro’s. The buttons barely have 1mm of travel, and are extremely wobbly, while the D-Pad is extremely stiff - you can rock it about slightly but all the directions aren’t equal. Left is particularly tricky to pull off with ease on all four of my units. But again, I’ll wait until I play something demanding at length - like GG Shinobi - before declaring any final judgement about it.
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Hard to know what they could have done about that native resolution. I mean, I have to imagine if they could have put an exact match on there they would have. Maybe it just can’t be made these days.
I was half expecting it to be massively over specced like the analogue pocket, but really the price probably prevented that. It is a worry what the Master System games (256x192?) will look like on the Aleste version though.
Yeah, given the short time they had and the internal low sales expectations before the reveal they probably were forced to make it entirely from off the shelf parts, which is par for the course with these micro consoles but this is the first time one has had a display. I’m not expecting any better from the Game & Watch 35th anniversary piece either.
Despite the flaws I can’t deny I’m having a lot of fun with my Micros, and that’s the important thing. I did get major eye strain from both Puyo Puyo titles though - the Big Window Micro suddenly becomes a necessity there.
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Man, wasted opportunity from Sega again. I love tiny electronics, they look fun to me, and if they were ~ $20 I would have considered importing. But $50+ is just too much for a novelty item that I probably wouldn’t use a lot.
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The games lineup seems like a wasted opportunity as well, I love RPGs as much as the next person but the text size is just too small and low fidelity that playing one for more than ten minutes is agonising, even with the big window accessory. The Game Boy Micro didn’t suffer from this problem due to its bigger and higher resolution screen - for the most part text would be crisp and easy to read. I wish they released those two Atlus RPGs on 3DS Virtual Console as well.
I can see why they included a good half dozen RPGs in the lineup, since they were significant Game Gear releases and they are the easiest to play with the underwhelming D-Pad and buttons, but that does say a lot about how impractical these devices can be. If you’re a big sucker for novelty like I am you probably won’t care and still play the thing, but on the whole it is indeed a case of What Sega Could Have Done Instead.
The eyestrain is real though! And I’ve been playing Game Boy Micro here and there for the best part of fifteen years!
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Smaller screen than a VMU. Cute.
A non native resolution screen doesn’t have to result in a blurry image if nearest neighbour scaling is used, those in game images look like they could be filtered.
Yes they are
Yeah there’s definitely filtering - looks similar to playing DS games on 3DS. It’s not ideal filtering either though, you can see pixel crawl when things scroll vertically. It’s most obvious on scrolling text
Game Gear VC on 3DS had nearest neighbour filtering when set to Normal and fill modes, personally I wouldn’t consider anything crisp on a dot matrix display unless it’s native resolution to the pixel grid, nearest neighbour still produces a fuzzy appearance since many dot points’ colour information bleeds into neighbouring dot points. It’s messy.
That depends on the resolution of the screen, if it’s high enough or an integer of the original content then you wouldn’t be able to tell if an image is native or not.
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You’re absolutely right, I was just so fixated on this particular scenario with the Game Gear Micro, which reminds me a lot of playing DS games on 3DS with default settings.
I wonder if I’d still be complaining if it was a higher resolution screen at a slimmer aspect ratio and integer scale, since pixel doubling messes with the proportions of pixels to pixel grid spaces, and I’ve never really liked the results that much on stuff like the Vita, which made PSP games appear overly-sharp and blocky. Yes my definition of ‘crisp’ is very specific…
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Been playing Game Gear Micro every evening and it’s still a compelling little device to enjoy games on.
In fact, the Game Gear version of Puyo Puyo 2, played on the Micro, is the first time I’ve ever cleared Puyo Puyo 2, despite owning it on several systems, including portably via the 3D Classics release!
Normally I can call it quits if I’ve met my match and get a game over, with no potential for a new high score, but perhaps there’s something about the tiny little display that draws you in as your eyes focus intently at the action. I just couldn’t stop myself from bashing continue (I used, um, 26 continues) with every loss and kept powering though until I beat the last stage. On 3DS there’s always the temptation to hit the home button and play something else.
Same deal with Out Run - the requirement to focus at the screen more intently makes it strangely compelling despite it being far from the best version of the game (but still interesting in its own right).
Also - I’m shocked by the quality and unique level designs and ideas in Sonic 1. They should have rebranded it, Ancient did a good job. Sonic 2 is a mess though and seems like it was made for another system first, then awkwardly chopped down for Game Gear.
On a related note, the Big Window Micro is pretty cool, since it enhances the software filter used to hide the resolution mismatch between the screen and Game Gear output resolution. You’re left with a softer image that’s less distracting since you can’t really sense the pixel grid anymore.
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