SB Recommends Game Gear Games

SEGA's bulky battery killer. There isn't a lot on the system that stands out—and there's a lot of Master System overlap—but we'll try to find you something. There are instructions available online to change the backlight for an LED, increasing the system's battery life significantly.

• Coca-Cola Kid
  • Take It Sleazy: Somebody make a game gear section and only add Coca Cola Kid.

• Dragon Crystal / Dragon Crystal Shirani's Maze (JP) (also on: 3DS VC, SMS)
  • Dark Age Iron Savior: Dragon Crystal is notable for being the first real console roguelike (I think), existing in a weird parallel chicken/egg scenario with Fatal Labyrinth, which is basically the same game.

• Halley Wars (also on: arcade) - forum thread
  • notbov: So! It's a Taito shooter. You fly a ship and shoot aliens coming from inside a comet/battleship thing to save the Earth.
    The twist being that, instead of merely being the savior of mankind, you're also trying to protect the Earth. If enemies and spacejunk and those fucking comets that come thundering down every so often get past your ship and to the bottom of the screen, they continue their merry way to the Earth, causing some damage in the process. Since every enemy doesn't make there way to the bottom, you're going back and forth, trying to figure out which ones are distractions and which ones want to greet the planet (at least, the first time through).
    In addition to this, at the end of every stage, you get to repair some damage done based on the amount of points you scored. So, in addition to killing aliens because they want you dead and they want the Earth dead, you're killing them to make the Earth less dead.

• Sega Game Pack 4 in 1
  • Chris B: Wow they actually ripped off the original Game Boy Tennis game (which kinda ripped off Family Tennis), right down to the famous mascot umpire, which in this case is of course none other than Sonic instead of the plumber.. brilliant. Apart from that it's as barebones and spartanic, and best of all, plays as good as the GB original. There are the four difficulty settings and the choice of one or three sets and that's about it (don't have a clue if it supports 2-player link mode).
    And of course it's in color now and comes with three other games (Flash Columns, some kind of mix between Hang On and Victory Run called game:Rally, and Penalty Shootout, which is just what the name suggests).
    So yeah, this unassuming multicart (which came boundled with the handheld), features one of the best portable tennis titles!

• Shining Force Gaiden / Shining Force Gaiden: Ensei - Jashin no Kuni he (JP) (Also on: Mega CD)

• Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya / Shining Force Gaiden II: Jashin no Kakusei (JP) (Also on: 3DS VC, Mega CD)

• Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict - translation patch
  • Talbain: I really enjoyed the Game Gear SFs. They're a lot more focused than I think any of the Genesis ones were. The Genesis ones seem too… spread out, I guess, to be enjoyable.

• Shinobi / The G.G. Shinobi (JP) (also on: 3DS VC)
  • Bennett: Also known as 'good shinobi'.

• Tails Adventure (also on: 3DS VC)
  • Eudaimon: I love Tails Adventure. A Sega-developed metrovania, with some of the best music on the Game Gear. It's my favorite Game Gear game by a lot.

• Virtua Fighter Animation / Virtua Fighter Mini (JP)
  • elvis.shrugged: Virtua Fighter Animation is also worth checking out, if only for it's in-depth look at the series' ridiculous storyline.

• Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap (also on: PS2, SMS, TG16, Wii VC) - forum thread
  • Loki Laufeyson: Commonly said to be the best Master System game of all, a title it lives up to. It's a great 8-bit semi-metrovania. Being a Wonderboy game, it probably has at least three other names it's known by.
  • haze: Whenever people fondly remember Zelda II or Castlevania II, I recommend to them to play Wonder Boy III. It feels like a more polished version of what those games were attempting to do, while also shorter and more concise. None of the excess weight.
  • username: I picked up the Sega Ages Wonderboy collection on a whim a few years ago and while I wasn't in love with the earlier games, Monster's Trap was pretty excellent. Very odd series progression where you go from a standard platformer to a basic adventure game to a weird scrolling shooter to a very charming Metrovania but hey, it worked.
    As odd as it sounds, I ended up playing through the included Game Gear version over the SMS version as for whatever reason it felt just a bit tighter and a bit more intimate due to the reduced viewing area (the town is a few blocks shorter because of this and I think it helps).

• Game Gear - Hardware page.