History of Hardware: The Game Boy Competitors - Part I

The year is 1989. The third (and surely the last) Indiana Jones movie has hit theaters, there's a new Japanese emperor, and that pesky Berlin Wall has finally come down. It is a time of great transformation across the globe, and perhaps none more so than in the electrics industry. In the 70s, video games were relegated to bulky machines in arcades and bars, eventually moving into our living rooms by the 80s. At the turn of the 90s though, they transitioned into our pockets, with none more celebrated than Nintendo's Game Boy.

Hot off the success of their first phenomenal hit with the NES in 1985, Nintendo turned their attention to the nascent handheld market, releasing the Game Boy in mid-1989. It was instantly a smash hit, proving to the industry that handheld devices could be successful. In a decade with rapid technological advancement, it was also shockingly long lasting, with only minor revisions until the release of the Game Boy Color in 1998. This original Game Boy line would only be discontinued in 2003 after selling nearly 120 million units, making it the best selling video game system ever at the time. It is the gold standard, still remembered and discussed by many to this day as the trailblazer towards a world with an electronic device in every pocket.

However, the Game Boy was not alone in this journey. Several companies saw the success Nintendo was having and wanted a piece of the pie for themselves. What is perhaps even more unusual for a console is that it had not one, but two waves of competition due to its long life and late boost in sales. The Game Boy itself is a fascinating topic, one that I've written about on several occasions previously. Today though, I want to focus not on the victor, but on the challengers. Those companies that dared to take on the behemoth that was Nintendo in their prime and... well, they failed mostly. Not for lack of trying though! Nor for a lack of interesting and clever designs, designed to stand out in an already busy crowd.

The Reigning Champion — the Nintendo Game Boy

I know I said we'd focus on the competition, but first let's have a refresher on what exactly they're competing against, and what the world they're entering looks like. Nintendo revitalized the corpse of the video game industry with the release of the NES in 1985, and in the few years since has taken over 90% of the market share. A number of companies have attempted to compete for Nintendo's shadow, with Sega's Master System being the most notable, but none could stand against the NES. With the home market in a stable position, they turned elsewhere, looking to replace their aging Game & Watch series, which had released nearly a decade earlier. Unlike most consoles, the Game & Watch did not have swappable cartridges, instead each unit had a single, hardcoded game. Want a new game? Buy an entire new device. This was a bit of an antiquated approach, and they were eager to replace it with something that matched the NES in capability.

To make a long story short, Nintendo made a number of decisions in the design of the Game Boy that seemed innocent enough at the time, but would eventually have massive repercussions throughout its lifespan. First was the choice of screen. LCD screens — especially those that could function on a handheld — were incredibly primitive. They were power hungry, with poor viewing angles and even worse viewing outside. Product director Gunpei Yokoi (remember that name, he'll come up again later) made the decision to forgo a typical color screen for the device, settling on a relatively new green-tinted monochrome option due to its improved visibility. They also made the decision to include a port for device-to-device connectivity, allowing multiplayer support for their titles. These two decisions, heavily debated during development, are in my opinion two of the biggest contributors to the console's success, as we will soon see.

Aside from that though, it boasted most of the functionality you would expect for the time. Eight buttons in total — A, B, Start, Select, and an NES-style D-pad. A single mono speaker with stereo headphone jack, the previously mentioned 2.5" 160x144 pixel display capable of showing four shades of green. A proprietary Link Cable port, and 16 KB of RAM, half of that video RAM. The screen's advantage came immediately, as the original Game Boy took four AA batteries, yielding roughly 30 hours of playtime. This was a considerable amount for the time, but we shall have to wait and see how this stacks up against the competition.

A few months after its Japanese release, the Game Boy released in North America alongside Tetris, which quickly became a mega-hit and the system's first killer app. It was so popular that it was bundled with many Game Boy units, eventually making it the best selling game on the system. It retailed for just ¥12,500 in Japan, or $89.99 in the US (or £69.99 in the UK, don't want you to feel left out). The system sold 300,000 units within two weeks, and crossed the million mark before 1989 was even finished. The champion has entered the ring and established his dominance. Now, it's time to see what the competition has to offer.

Round 1 — Atari and Sega

While the Game Boy sets the gold standard that the other consoles are compared against, it isn't fair to say that they were released only in response to Nintendo's system. Most of these had been in development for some time, but all got beaten to the punch, releasing either later in 1989 or in 1990. There are three companies of note that released Game Boy competitors in this period, all three of whom were already involved in the home console business. The first of which, releasing just a few months after the Game Boy, is the humble Atari Lynx.

The Atari Lynx

Before we even talk about the system itself, we need to discuss who actually made the thing, as it's a somewhat convoluted story. If you're familiar with Atari history, you'll know that there's been about 87 different companies named "Atari" over the years, and the one we're focusing on today is the second. Not to be confused with the original from the Chuck E. Cheese guy who made the Atari 2600, but the successor, which had been sold to the Commodore 64 guy after Commodore threw him out. This version of Atari (Atari Corporation) was never super well-known in North America, but gained a solid business selling home computers in Europe, most notably the Atari ST. Their main competition throughout the 1980s wasn't Nintendo or Sega, but other PC manufacturers like IBM, Apple, and his old company Commodore, which was busy creating the Amiga and then subsequently screwing it up.

All of that is prime History of Hardware material, but not for today. All you need to know is that by 1989, the new Atari's fortunes were fading quickly. They'd more or less kicked out their owner again, and they were looking for their next hit. Enter a small company you've never heard of called Epyx. Epyx was a video game developer looking to get into the hardware business. They had begun development of a handheld console they called the "Epyx Handy", but were quickly running out of cash. In need of a partner, they shopped around to a few companies — including, allegedly, to both Nintendo and Sega who turned them down — finally drafting a deal with Atari. Unfortunately, making a product is still expensive, and Epyx essentially went bankrupt mid-development, leaving Atari entirely on the hook for this thing, which they elected to rename into the Atari Lynx. (Prior to the Handy, Epyx were also big Amiga developers, meaning Atari had to buy a number of computers from their competition to finish their own device, which I find hilarious).

The Lynx is a weird system, and I must admit I've never managed to even see one in person. It has surprisingly few buttons, just a D-pad, A and B, discrete on/off buttons, and three utility buttons arranged in a column. The top and bottom are labeled "Option 1" and "Option 2", and could be used for gameplay purposes, while the middle button had to be pressed in tandem with one of the others for its functionality, either resetting the system or flipping the screen.

Yes that's right, flipping the screen. Perhaps the first thing you notice about the system is that it has not one pair of A and B buttons, but two pairs of A and B buttons, located on either side of the speaker. The Atari Lynx hardware supported a lefty mode, meaning you could play with the D-pad under your right thumb, and A and B on your left, if you so choose. I don't think I'm familiar with any other console offering complete lefty support in this way, and I'm not sure it's something that the sinister community really ever asked for. It's not like controlling a D-pad is inherently an off-dominant activity, we've all just gotten accustomed to controllers operating that way. I also have to imagine that the Lynx was incredibly awkward to hold, as the A and B buttons are located very low on the device, almost on one of the corners.

Hardware wise, the Lynx was technologically ambitious in a way that the Game Boy was not. It had a proper 16-bit processor and a 3.5", 160x102 pixel screen capable of 4096 colors (12-bit), making it the first color handheld. It had a brightness slider, proprietary link cable port, and aforementioned speaker, as well as a headphone jack (although it only supported mono audio). It possessed 64 KB of RAM and was well regarded for its graphical capabilities, which could handle sprite scaling and distortion effects, something that was largely only seen on arcades at the time.

All-in-all, they managed to put together a rather impressive system. Its Achilles heel though, which I've been quietly alluding to, was on the backside of the unit — its battery compartment. Unlike the Game Boy's four AAs, the Lynx required a whopping six AA batteries to function. Surely that would give it 50% more battery life over the Game Boy then? Not at all, I reply, the Atari Lynx could be relied on for just shy of 5 hours of playtime. All of those fancy colors and visual effects, which put the Game Boy to shame, came at a high price, and it negatively affected their sales. So did the actual high price, retailed in the US for $179.99, enough to buy two Game Boys.

The Atari Lynx actually did alright for itself, selling about 500,000 units in its first year. Sales fell off pretty harshly after that though. It's difficult to get exact sales numbers, but it's likely they sold a few million units over its lifetime. It apparently did well enough to justify further development into the platform, as Atari released a redesigned version of the console — entitled Atari Lynx II — in the summer of 1991. The Lynx II is much less elongated that its older sibling, and features a backlit display and (finally) a stereo headphone jack. Despite this backlight, advances in screen technology meant that battery life was actually (slightly) improved over the Lynx, up around 60 whole minutes to around 6 hours. The price itself was a much more palatable ask, as it retailed for just $99, almost half of what the original Lynx launched for two years earlier.

Following the release of the Lynx II, the platform began to just quietly fade. Atari instead decided to focus on other animal-named products, such as the Atari Falcon, their final home computer, and the ill-fated Atari Jaguar console (not a contender for History of Hardware, it's too expensive to ever actually own one). The Lynx would continue on for a few more years before being formally discontinued in 1995 after six years on the market. Atari would celebrate by going bankrupt again in 1996, before being bought out for a third life.

The Lynx has seen some increased attention in recent years though. A number of titles from its library was made available as part of the Atari 50 collection, and the Analogue Pocket FPGA console supports an adapter to play Lynx games, released in 2023. Still, it remains a rather obscure system, not often mentioned by enthusiasts of the era, and certainly not as well known as the next handheld console to compete against our champion, most likely the one you've actually heard of.

The Sega Game Gear

While Atari was a computer company struggling to regain any foothold at all in the video game business, Sega was in prime position. Their Master System had been relegated to second place by the NES in Japan and North America, but they enjoyed considerable success in Europe, and they were looking to capitalize on that success. Rather than immediately pivot to the handheld market, as Nintendo did, Sega instead beat them to the punch with their next generation 16-bit console, releasing the Sega Mega Drive in 1988 in Japan (henceforth referred to only as the Sega Genesis). The Genesis would go on to be a considerable hit in North America, selling neck and neck with the future SNES for most of its lifecycle, but the focus on the home console section put Sega at a disadvantage in the handheld market. Their device, codenamed Project Mercury, would need to come out soon lest Nintendo get too far ahead.

Eventually titled the Sega Game Gear (a really bizarre naming choice if you ask me), its strengths were designed to counter the Game Boy's weaknesses. The Game Boy shared nothing in common with the NES, as both their CPU architecture and graphical capabilities were completely distinct. Thus, every Game Boy game had to be developed from the ground up for the console, there was no option for any simple ports from the NES. The Game Gear structured itself differently, essentially being just a portable Master System. Quite literally in fact, as later in its life the Master Gear adapter would be released to allow Master System cartridges to play natively on your Game Gear. By default though, it had its own cartridge style, so developers would need to port their titles to the system, a process Sega hoped would be simple enough to entice support.

The system had a 3.5", 160x144 pixel screen, capable of 4096 colors. This gave it the same color depth as the Lynx but with the taller resolution of the Game Boy, and on a larger physical display than both. This is however notably smaller than the Master System's 256x192 TV resolution, which was the main limitation in porting games over. Similar to the Game Boy, the system had a D-pad, 1 and 2 buttons (equivalent to A and B), and a Start button, although no Select. It too had a single speaker with a headphone jack capable of stereo audio, and 8 KB of RAM with 16 KB of VRAM, putting it between the Game Boy and Lynx. Beating the Lynx II by several years, it had a backlight, oh boy. If all of that sounds energy intensive, you'd be right, as the Game Gear also required six AA batteries with around 4 hours of battery life, just shy of the Lynx.

While the console's library did well enough at first, it really benefited from the continued success of the Genesis, as popular franchises on that console — like Sonic and Ecco the Dolphin — would also often receive distinct 8-bit versions for both Master System and Game Gear. These typically weren't nearly as good as their Genesis siblings, but allowed for users still rocking their 8-bit Segas to feel like they weren't missing out.

The Game Gear launched in 1990 in Japan and 1991 in North America, retailing at ¥19,800 and $149.99 respectively, falling between the Game Boy and Lynx. For a mere $130 more you could even purchase the optional TV Tuner, which is awesome. This turned your Game Gear into a bona fide handheld television set, which actually seemed to sell fairly well. It's a shame that even if you found one today, they no longer work following the conversion to digital television in the late 2000s.

As its price fell between the Game Boy and Lynx, so did its sales. The system did particularly well in Europe where, following an aggressive advertising campaign where they called you a moron, they reached as high as 40% market share by 1992. Eventually, they broke the seven digit mark, selling somewhere around 15 million units. Impressive, but an order of magnitude less than the Game Boy did. By the early to mid 90s, Sega was pumping out new home consoles left and right, releasing the Sega CD in 1991, the 32X in 1994, and the Sega Saturn... also in 1994 no wonder the 32X didn't sell. Between supporting those and the Genesis, there wasn't much left over for the Game Gear, especially with its aged 8-bit processor. Still, it limped around for a while longer, eventually being discontinued worldwide in 1997.

Like the Lynx, its failure is often cited as being explicitly due to its poor battery life, and I do think there's some truth to that. On paper, it's the better system, and the ability to port Master System games easily to it was a clever idea to try and garner continuous support. However, it never got the killer app that the Game Boy had, even its best selling game — Sonic the Hedgehog — was overshadowed by the Genesis version. Master System x Game Gear was never a guarantee either, with games like Phantasy Star remaining on the Master System. It is still remembered as the second place winner of the first handheld wars though, and like the Lynx, has gotten some attention recently.

Following the mini console craze in the late 2010s, there was the release of the (also really weird) Game Gear Micro in 2020, which also included a brand new game release, GG Aleste 3. Also like the Lynx, the Analogue Pocket offers a Game Gear adapter, and you don't even need to buy two other adapters toget it. Hell, they just announced a new Cuphead game for Master System, maybe we'll get a Game Gear port of that too.

Still, what if Sega had taken it a step further? What if the Game Gear could've played Master System games directly, rather than requiring them to be ported? I wonder if any company ever considered doing anything like that...

I'll admit that I intended for this entire tale to be a single post, but even I was starting to fall asleep reading this. Instead, this will be the first of a three part saga. The earliest competition is finished, but other companies wait in the wings, ready to give their own efforts a try. Will Sega resist putting out another new device? Will anyone release 18 versions of the same console? How many more TV tuners will we get? Find out next time!

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