Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This whole commercial exists to make fun of the Game Boy for its dull green screen, and that is exactly why it is so funny now. Sega ran the Game Gear under their Welcome to the Next Level campaign, back when Sega was openly savage toward Nintendo, and the pitch was always the same. Look at our beautiful color screen, then look at that murky pea green Game Boy.
And here is the thing, Sega was not lying. The Game Gear really was the more powerful machine. Full color backlit screen, a wide landscape layout, 32 colors on screen when the Game Boy could only manage four shades of green with no backlight at all. It was basically a Sega Master System you could hold in your hands, and with an adapter it could even play Master System carts.
So why did it lose, and lose badly? Batteries. The Game Boy could run for over thirty hours on four AA batteries. The Game Gear burned through six AA batteries in three to five hours. The very thing it was bragging about, that gorgeous color backlit screen, is what drained it dead before you finished one afternoon. It cost a lot more too, a hundred and fifty dollars against ninety, and it never had a must have game to match Tetris or Pokemon.
The final score is brutal. The Game Gear sold somewhere around ten to eleven million units. The Game Boy sold over a hundred and eighteen million. Close to a ten to one beating for the handheld that spent its ad time laughing at the other guy. The deepest irony of all, Sega was actually right. Color handhelds were the future. They were just years too early, because battery tech could not handle it yet. It took until the Game Boy Color in 1998 to finally make color portable gaming practical.
Did you have a Game Gear, and did the battery life drive you insane too? Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#gamegear #sega #gameboy #segavsnintendo #consolewars #handheldgaming #retrohandheld #welcometothenextlevel #eccothedolphin #retrocommercial #vintagead #90sgaming #gaminghistory #retrogaming #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
This whole commercial exists to make fun of the Game Boy for its dull green screen, and that is exactly why it is so funny now. Sega ran the Game Gear under their Welcome to the Next Level campaign, back when Sega was openly savage toward Nintendo, and the pitch was always the same. Look at our beautiful color screen, then look at that murky pea green Game Boy.
And here is the thing, Sega was not lying. The Game Gear really was the more powerful machine. Full color backlit screen, a wide landscape layout, 32 colors on screen when the Game Boy could only manage four shades of green with no backlight at all. It was basically a Sega Master System you could hold in your hands, and with an adapter it could even play Master System carts.
So why did it lose, and lose badly? Batteries. The Game Boy could run for over thirty hours on four AA batteries. The Game Gear burned through six AA batteries in three to five hours. The very thing it was bragging about, that gorgeous color backlit screen, is what drained it dead before you finished one afternoon. It cost a lot more too, a hundred and fifty dollars against ninety, and it never had a must have game to match Tetris or Pokemon.
The final score is brutal. The Game Gear sold somewhere around ten to eleven million units. The Game Boy sold over a hundred and eighteen million. Close to a ten to one beating for the handheld that spent its ad time laughing at the other guy. The deepest irony of all, Sega was actually right. Color handhelds were the future. They were just years too early, because battery tech could not handle it yet. It took until the Game Boy Color in 1998 to finally make color portable gaming practical.
Did you have a Game Gear, and did the battery life drive you insane too? Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#gamegear #sega #gameboy #segavsnintendo #consolewars #handheldgaming #retrohandheld #welcometothenextlevel #eccothedolphin #retrocommercial #vintagead #90sgaming #gaminghistory #retrogaming #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
