At least the
Atari Lynx and the
Sega Game Gear tried. They really did, and for a moment there, it even felt as if they actually had a chance to rob
Nintendo of its glorious scepter of handheld domination. Not so with
Bit Corporation's
Gamate handheld. It was beyond hopeless.
The
Gamate, which I admittedly tried playing with once, back in the mists of time when I was 12 or 13 years old and wasn't impressed and for which the worse video gaming mag ever to grace the planet (
USER, they called it) waxed lyrical, was a travesty. It was a poor man's
Game Boy, and considering the lacklustre quality of the GB screen, well let's just say the player's imagination was put to good use.
What's more,the games, all
40 or something of them, that is, were derivative and uninspired. If I remember correctly they were horrible too, despite cartridges that looked decent enough to pass for proper games. But, really, I don't believe I've tried anything worse than that
Tennis thing. It was virtually unplayable on that crappy blurry little screen. Just to think it was supposed to take on the
Game Boy version of the sport is heresy.
Then again, other
Gamate games tried to take on
Tetris. Yes, pathetic, I know. Shockingly though, rumor has it that
King Fu Fighter and
Treasure Hunter were pretty ok games.
As for the machine itself, well, it was obviously an 8-bit console with a particularly passive (
a.k.a. barely visible) dot-matrix 128x96 screen, running on 4 AA batteries, manufactured in Korea, that sold poorly; mainly in Europe and Australia. 2 or 3
Gamates must have reached the Americas and another 5 must have been scattered in the wider Asia region. Surely
Retro Treasures will investigate further, but I wouldn't be shocked if a single
Gamate game set you back 15$ to 20$.
Further
Gamate info can be found lurking inside the
Ultimate Console Database,
Wikipedia,
Press Start and
Pelikonepeijoonit.net.
MobyGames, on the other hand, seems to ignore the thing.
:
Game Boy Color,
Sega Game Gear,
Milton Bradley Microvision,
Atari LynxRelated Tags: Gamate, Retro gaming, Video games, Retro, Retro handhelds, Tennis, Bit Corporation, 8-bit, Games, Game, Game Boy
The Game Gear doesn't get much media attention these days, so you can imagine my surprise when I came across Sega's finest handheld in Internet animation, Burnt Face Man.
This tasteless, but rather funny cartoon is a firm favourite with the Three Gingers, (yes I know, just what kind of a father am I?) Personally, I find it mildly amusing. Please be warned, its not for the faint hearted. If you are offended by profanity, then don't go there! (I should have put the same warning on the last post too...)
It can also be used as a portable video unit, to play any downloaded movies straight from websites, bit torrents or your DVD collection, without the need to re-encode (whatever that means!)
Oh and its an MP3 player as well.Nice eh? Check it out 
However, I didn't know that the 
In case you're wondering, the reason the 
