Game Gear Micro | Unboxing and Quick Look Review.

So it looks like the Game Gear micro came in today which was pretty fast, it was only released like a day or so ago. The box is kinda big but uh, it’s pretty small on the inside. So I got theblack one, uh, as you can see, yeah from the box it’s pretty small, there’s nothing terribly distinct about it, just goes over all the games and stuff, it’s pretty uh, pretty bare bones, but it’s still fun to be able to actually get hardware from Sega, which is really the reason I bought this, let’s see if I can get this open.

Take a look at the actual unit. Hah! It’s got instructions too, I’ll put those off to the side. But as you can see it’s pretty small. Let me give you a good size comparison. So I’ve got it next to a quarter, 1 euro and 2 canadian dollars, and you can see, it’s really tiny.

The screen is about the same size as an american quarter, so it’s gonna be pretty tough to read anything off of it. And in case you were wondering, this is what the isntruction manual looks like. Nothing too uh, too crazy, just black and white which is a little dissapointing, but that’s alright.

After playing around with it for a while, I realized that the Game Gear micro doesn’t actually have a rechargeable battery. It’s got a micro USB in so you can plug it into a wall if you want and then it takes AAA batteries in the back, if you don’t want to be tethered to the wall.

They jut out ever so slightly, so getting the unit closed again is a little bit tricky to actually pull off, but after some effort, you can get it closed again. I can’t say I’m too impressed with the audio quality coming out of the speakers . The headphone jack is definitely better, but even just right off the bat, you can tell this machine doesn’t have nearly the same quality control as the Genesis or Megadrive mini.

Now I’ve never actually used a real Game Gear micro, but to me, these buttons feel just a bit mushy and unresponsive. On the top of the system we’ve got our volume slider, headphone jack, micro USB in and the power switch. So how do the games play? Pretty much just as you’d expect.

Capturing footage of gameplay is nightmare with this thing. The black unit I have came with four games. Now I’m not going to go in depth on all of these games. They play pretty much exactly how you’d expect them too. The Sonic game isn’t a port of the Genesis version, but rather its own take on the sonic formula.

Outrun plays like outrun should. I’m actually surprised how playable an 8-bit handheld version of Outrun is, though the controls were giving me a bit of trouble. My button presses weren’t always being detected, and I’d just stop moving while I thought I had the gas button pressed.

Puyo Puyo plays pretty well, though it can be a bit tricky to see exactly where you’re lining up, so you’ve gotta be careful when you drop your mean beans. And the last game, Royal Stone is a Strategy RPG. I’ll have to save this one for later since my Japanese isn’t quite up to par for an adventure like this, but from what I played the gameplay is pretty neat and it’s something I would like to return to someday.

There were of course three other variants of the Game Gear Micro as well coming in Blue, Red and Yellow. I was pretty close to getting the Yellow one because of all of the Shining Force games on it, but I realized that I probably wasn’t going to be putting in too many hours on that tiny screen, and went with the variety version instead.

None of the game selections were incredible by any means, but then again, these aren’t really designed to be played on for hours and hours. However if you weren’t aware, there’s another version available with ports of games from the Aleste series. It’s releasing alongside the Aleste Collection for Switch and PS4.

I wouldn’t really want to play a space shooter on a screen this size, but maybe that’s just me. If you’re looking for something with utility, the game gear micro is not the console you want. The intent of this machine is not to be able to relieve the glory days of playing Game Gear, it’s just a fun novelty toy.

If you’re legitimately upset about the Game Gear Micro, and you don’t live in Japan, just realize that it wasn’t released outside of Japan for a reason. These kind of gimmicky novelty toys sell well in Japan, but not so much over here. Again the Game Gear Micro isn’t meant to be what the Genesis Mini was, it’s just a cute, shrunken down fun thing for collectors to mess around with.

They don’t come a bunch of games, because while they are working systems, they’re not meant to really be played like this. And if you’re still upset, just don’t buy it, it’s fine. The only reason I got it was because I thought it was cute idea, and I wanted to make a video about it.