There is a particular smell that hits you when you crack open a Sega Game Gear in 2025. It is the smell of forty-four capacitors that have been quietly weeping electrolyte into a green PCB since John Major was Prime Minister. It is the smell of failure, of ambition outpacing engineering, and — if you are the sort of person who reads retro handheld reviews on a Tuesday — the smell of pure, uncut nostalgia.
The Atari Lynx, by contrast, smells of nothing. It mostly just sits there, vast and curved like a discarded prop from Robocop, its rubber D-pad slowly turning to dust, waiting for someone to remember that it existed. Which, if we are honest, almost nobody did between roughly 1994 and the moment FPGA recreations made everyone curious again.
And yet here we are, in 2025, with both machines plugged into capture cards, modded with IPS screens, surrounded by loose cartridges and a McWill kit invoice I would rather my partner did not see. Because the question that has been quietly nagging at retro enthusiasts for three decades deserves a proper answer: in the great Color Handheld War of 1989-1992, which machine actually deserved to win? And more importantly, which one is worth your time, money, and shelf space today?
A War Nobody Remembers Winning
To understand why the Lynx and Game Gear matter, you have to remember the landscape they were born into. By 1989, Nintendo’s Game Boy had done something nobody at Atari or Sega thought possible: it had made a chunky grey brick with a smeary green-tinted dot-matrix display into the defining electronic product of the early nineties. Tetris had become a cultural artefact. AA batteries became currency in school playgrounds. And the conventional wisdom in boardrooms across Tokyo and Sunnyvale was simple — if Nintendo could do that with monochrome, imagine what we could do with colour.
This is where hubris meets physics. Colour LCDs in 1989 were expensive, power-hungry, and dim. Nintendo’s Gunpei Yokoi had famously preached the gospel of “lateral thinking with withered technology” — using mature, cheap components in clever new ways. Atari and Sega, in their different ways, both decided to ignore this entirely.
Atari Throws the First Punch
The Lynx launched in September 1989 in North America at $179.99 (roughly £109 at UK launch in 1990), and it was, technically, astonishing. Designed by Epyx — yes, the California Games people — and originally codenamed “Handy”, the machine had been shopped around to Nintendo (who passed), before Atari bought the rights for a song when Epyx ran out of money. The hardware spec sheet read like science fiction for a portable: hardware sprite scaling and distortion, a custom Suzy chip capable of effects the Mega Drive could only dream of, sixteen colours on screen from a palette of 4,096, and — most radically — a left-handed mode that flipped the display so southpaws could play comfortably.
Sega Counter-Punches with the Master System in Your Pocket
Sega’s response, released in Japan in October 1990 and Europe in 1991 at £99.99, took a different approach entirely. The Game Gear was, essentially, a Master System with a screen bolted on. Same Z80 processor, same VDP, same 8-bit architecture, just shrunk down with a 3.2-inch backlit colour LCD strapped to the front. The genius was the cynicism of it: Sega already had a huge library of Master System games, the chips were cheap, and porting was almost trivial. Where the Lynx was a technological leap of faith, the Game Gear was a balance sheet exercise dressed up as innovation.
Both machines lost. Spectacularly. By the time the dust settled in the mid-nineties, the Game Boy had sold somewhere north of 100 million units across its lifetime. The Game Gear managed around 10 million, the Lynx perhaps 3 million if you are feeling generous. Nintendo did not just win the war — they conducted the surrender ceremony, organised the parade, and wrote the history books.
Build Quality: Two Very Different Kinds of Plastic
Pick up an Atari Lynx — specifically the original “Lynx I” with its grey-and-black bulbous chassis — and the first thing that strikes you is how weird it is. This is not a piece of consumer electronics from the late eighties. This is a prop. It weighs around 700 grams loaded with six AA batteries, it is roughly the size and shape of a paperback novel that has been left in the bath, and the curves were apparently designed to fit the human hand in a way that human hands actively resist.
And yet, three decades on, the build quality holds up remarkably well. The plastics are thick, the buttons (despite that perishing rubber D-pad) have a satisfying mechanical action, and the cartridges slot in with a confidence-inspiring click. The Lynx II, released in 1991, slimmed things down considerably, added a proper power LED, and crucially introduced an auto-power-off feature that the original lacked. It is still huge by modern standards, but it feels engineered.
The Game Gear’s Fatal Flaw
The Game Gear, on paper, is the more sensible piece of industrial design. Held horizontally like a miniature Master System pad, it is more comfortable in the hand than the Lynx, the D-pad is properly chunky, and the two action buttons are well-placed. At launch it weighed around 400 grams with six AA batteries — still hefty, but manageable.
The problem, as anyone who has bought one off eBay in the last decade knows, is the capacitors. Sega used surface-mount electrolytic capacitors throughout the Game Gear’s audio and power circuitry, and these have, almost without exception, failed by 2025. The leaking electrolyte corrodes the PCB traces, kills the sound first, then the display, then the whole machine. I have lost count of the number of “tested, working” Game Gears I have bought that arrived with crackling speakers and that telltale smell of chemical decay.
This is not a small caveat. It is the central reality of Game Gear ownership in 2025. An unrecapped Game Gear is a ticking time bomb. A recapped one — and there are excellent kits available from sellers like Console5 and RetroSix for around £15-£25 — is a different beast entirely, but the labour involved is significant. You are looking at 40+ surface-mount capacitors across two boards, and unless you are confident with a hot air station, this is a job for a professional. Budget another £60-£80 if you are sending it out.
The Lynx’s Aging Quirks
The Lynx is not without its own issues. The capacitor situation is less catastrophic — they exist, they age, but the failure mode tends to be gradual dimness rather than total death. The bigger problems are the rubber membrane buttons (which can become mushy or unresponsive), the screen film (which can develop a foggy haze), and, on Lynx I units, the dreaded power switch failure. The cartridge contacts also tarnish badly and benefit from a clean with isopropyl every few years.
Verdict on build: the Lynx wins on long-term reliability, the Game Gear on ergonomics. But neither machine is plug-and-play in 2025. If you are buying either, assume a service is part of the cost.
The Display Question: Then and Now
In 1991, the Game Gear’s screen was a revelation. 3.2 inches, backlit, 4,096 colours on screen simultaneously, and a resolution of 160×144 — identical, coincidentally, to the Game Boy. In a school playground, pulling out a Game Gear and firing up Sonic the Hedgehog was the closest thing 1992 had to a flex.
The Lynx’s screen was technically more ambitious — 160×102 resolution, but with that magical hardware scaling — and on the Lynx II it was reflective rather than backlit by default, with a switchable backlight that absolutely destroyed the battery life when engaged. The original Lynx I had an always-on backlight, contributing to its legendary battery appetite.
Why Both Screens Are Now Borderline Unwatchable
Here is the uncomfortable truth: stock, unmodified, in 2025, both displays are rough. The Game Gear’s original screen suffers from severe ghosting (Sonic’s blue blur is, on a stock GG, essentially the entire screen turning into one indistinct blue smear), poor contrast, washed-out colours after three decades of UV exposure, and a viewing angle that can charitably be described as “directly perpendicular or nothing”. The Lynx II’s screen is dimmer still, and on a Lynx I the always-on backlight has often degraded to a sickly yellow tint.
I spent an hour playing Klax on a stock Lynx II in good condition. It is a brilliant game. I could barely see what I was doing.
The IPS Modding Revolution
This is where 2025 changes everything. Both machines now have excellent aftermarket IPS screen kits available, and they transform the experience completely.
For the Game Gear, the McWill LCD kit (around £85) has been the gold standard for years, offering a sharp, vibrant display with VGA output as a bonus. More recently, the BennVenn and RetroSix IPS kits offer similar quality for £60-£70, with simpler installations. The transformation is genuinely staggering — Sonic Triple Trouble, Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya, Streets of Rage, all suddenly look like the games Sega’s marketing always promised they were.
For the Lynx, the McWill kit (around £100) is similarly transformative, replacing the dim original with a bright, sharp panel that finally reveals just how much visual information those Epyx and Atari developers were pushing through the hardware. Blue Lightning, with its scaled sprites and pseudo-3D effects, suddenly looks like the technical demo it always was. California Games looks crisp. Chip’s Challenge is suddenly playable for more than ten minutes without eye strain.
If I am being completely honest, the modern IPS-modded experience is, in many ways, the version of these machines their designers always saw in their heads. The hardware was ahead of the available display technology in 1990. In 2025, we can finally see what they were aiming for.
Performance and Library: Where the Real Battle Is Fought
Hardware specs are interesting, but games are what matter. And here the two machines diverge in fascinating ways.
The Lynx Library: Small but Strange
The Lynx has roughly 75 official releases across its lifetime, plus a thriving homebrew scene that has added perhaps another 50-60 games over the past two decades. The official library is, frankly, weird. There are obvious arcade ports — Gauntlet: The Third Encounter, Klax, Xenophobe, Roadblasters, Paperboy, Rampage — that lean heavily on Epyx and Atari’s coin-op heritage.
But the standouts are genuinely original: Todd’s Adventures in Slime World (1990) is a peculiar exploration platformer with unique cooperative multiplayer via ComLynx; Warbirds (1991) is a polygonal WW1 dogfighter that has no business running on a handheld in 1991; Battlezone 2000 (1995) updates the vector classic beautifully; S.T.U.N. Runner (1992) is a hardware-scaling tour de force; and Chip’s Challenge remains one of the best puzzle games ever made on any platform.
The homebrew scene has been particularly kind to the Lynx. Assembloids, Alpine Games, SFX, and recent releases from teams like Atari Age regulars have kept the platform creatively alive in ways that most contemporaries have not managed.
The Game Gear Library: Bigger but Lazier
The Game Gear shipped with over 360 games during its lifetime, which sounds great until you realise that a substantial portion are either Master System ports of varying quality or cynical cash-ins on Sega’s then-formidable mascot lineup. There are nine — nine — Sonic games, of varying quality, including Sonic the Hedgehog (1991), Sonic Chaos, Sonic Triple Trouble, and the absolutely baffling Sonic Drift series.
But when the Game Gear was good, it was magnificent. Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya (1993) is a proper Shining Force entry that holds up against anything on the Mega Drive. Streets of Rage 2 (1993) is a remarkable downsize. Defenders of Oasis (1992) is a forgotten JRPG gem. GG Aleste, Power Strike II, and Royal Stone have become genuinely sought-after collector items, with Japanese copies of the latter regularly crossing £200 on Yahoo Auctions Japan.
Crucially, the Game Gear also has a thriving homebrew and translation scene. Several Japan-only games have received fan translations in the last decade — Royal Stone being the most notable — and homebrewers have produced original shoot-em-ups and puzzle games of impressive quality.
What They Actually Feel Like to Play
This is where the rubber meets the road. Loading up S.T.U.N. Runner on a McWill-modded Lynx in 2025 is an experience that genuinely justifies the machine’s existence. The hardware scaling, the sense of speed, the way the sprites distort as you bank through tunnels — this was witchcraft in 1992 and it still impresses now. Blue Lightning, similarly, does things no other 8-bit handheld could approach.
The Game Gear, by contrast, mostly feels like exactly what it is: a Master System you can fit in a large coat pocket. That is not necessarily a criticism — the Master System is a good platform — but there is nothing in the Game Gear library that feels like it is doing something the home console could not. Sonic on Game Gear is just a worse Sonic. Streets of Rage 2 on Game Gear is a remarkable port but it is still trying to be the Mega Drive version.
The Lynx, for all its commercial failure, was trying to do things that nothing else could do. The Game Gear was doing things that other Sega hardware did better.
Battery Life: The Joke That Defined a Generation
You cannot discuss either of these machines without addressing the battery situation, because it is the single biggest reason both lost to Nintendo.
The Game Boy ran for roughly 15-30 hours on four AA batteries. The Game Gear managed approximately 3-5 hours on six AAs. The Lynx? On a good day, with the wind behind it and the brightness turned down, you might get 4 hours out of six AAs on the Lynx II. The Lynx I famously chewed through batteries in around 3 hours, which when you consider that a four-pack of Duracells cost about £3.50 in 1991 money — at a time when pocket money was £2 a week — meant the Lynx was an objectively poor financial decision for an eleven-year-old.
I remember, vividly, being one of perhaps three children in my entire South London primary school who owned a Game Gear, and the social hierarchy that briefly conferred lasting precisely as long as the batteries did. The Game Boy kids would smugly continue their Tetris campaigns while I trudged home to beg for fresh Duracells.
The Modern Battery Solution
In 2025, this is largely a solved problem. Both machines accept third-party rechargeable battery packs. For the Lynx, the GameDrive (£35) and various 18650-based solutions from sellers like RetroHQ provide 8-10 hours of play on a single charge. For the Game Gear, similar 18650 conversions or rechargeable AA packs from companies like Eneloop transform the experience completely. Several modders also sell complete “modern” Game Gear conversions with USB-C charging, IPS screens, and 18650 cells installed, often for £200-£300 turnkey.
If you are buying either machine in 2025, factor in a battery solution. Running them on disposable AAs in the era of climate consciousness and £8 Duracell packs is borderline unconscionable.
Sound: An Overlooked Strength
Both machines actually have remarkable audio capabilities that get less discussion than they deserve.
The Lynx features a custom Mikey chip with four channels of programmable audio, capable of waveform synthesis that, in the right hands, produces music that puts the Game Boy’s tinny chiptune to shame. Listen to the soundtrack of Warbirds or Lynx Casino through good headphones (both machines have headphone jacks, the Lynx in stereo, the Game Gear in mono — a sore point for audiophiles) and you will hear genuine compositional ambition.
The Game Gear inherits the Master System’s PSG sound chip but adds expanded capabilities. GG Aleste, Shinobi, and the Sonic games all feature soundtracks that demonstrate clear progression beyond what the Master System could manage. The headphone output is stereo on the Game Gear despite the mono internal speaker, which is a nice touch.
Both machines, however, suffer in 2025 from speaker degradation. The Game Gear’s mono speaker often crackles or buzzes due to those failing capacitors. The Lynx’s stereo speakers — yes, stereo, on a 1989 handheld — often have torn cones by now. Recapping and speaker replacement are common service items.
The Collector Perspective: What These Machines Cost in 2025
The retro market has been on a wild ride over the past five years, and both machines have appreciated significantly — though not equally.
Lynx Pricing
A loose, working Lynx II in good cosmetic condition currently sells for £100-£150 on eBay UK. Boxed examples with manuals push £200-£300. The Lynx I, despite being less practical, has become collector-coveted and often commands £150-£250 boxed. Games range wildly: common titles like California Games can be had for £8-£15 loose, while rarities like European Soccer Challenge, Eye of the Beholder (unreleased prototype), or sealed copies of late-life releases regularly cross £100-£500.
The killer purchase for any serious Lynx owner is the everdrive — specifically the RetroHQ Lynx SD cartridge (£75) or the more recent McWill cart, which lets you run the entire library plus homebrew from an SD card. Given how expensive original cartridges have become, this pays for itself within three or four purchases.
Game Gear Pricing
Game Gears are cheaper as base units — a tested working example (read: probably with failing caps) can be had for £50-£80 — but the true cost of ownership is higher once you factor in essential servicing. A recapped, screen-modded Game Gear with battery upgrade from a reputable modder runs £180-£250. Boxed Japanese games command premiums far beyond their Western equivalents; Magical Taruruuto-kun, Madou Monogatari, and various pink-and-white “Kids Gear” releases can fetch surprising sums.
The Game Gear’s everdrive situation is also excellent — the Krikzz Everdrive GG (£110) or the more affordable MasterGear flashcarts let you run the entire library plus Master System games via the Master Gear Converter accessory, which itself has become a collector item commanding £40-£60.
The Counterfeit Problem
Both communities are increasingly dealing with counterfeit cartridges. Game Gear fakes are particularly prevalent — high-quality reproductions of Royal Stone, Madou Monogatari A, and various other Japan-only rarities now flood eBay. Check label printing quality, cartridge shell mould marks, and PCB photos before any high-value purchase. The Lynx is harder to fake due to its unusual cartridge format, but reproductions of homebrew releases and prototype dumps do exist.
The Software Ecosystem: Emulation, FPGA, and Modern Alternatives
If you do not want to deal with three decades of plastic decay, both platforms are excellently served by emulation and FPGA recreations in 2025.
Emulation Options
For the Lynx, Handy and Mednafen remain the gold-standard software emulators, with virtually flawless compatibility. The Lynx core in RetroArch runs perfectly on anything from a Raspberry Pi 4 upwards. The Analogue Pocket (£219) handles Lynx emulation via openFPGA cores with genuinely impressive accuracy, and the form factor — finally — gives these games the screen they always deserved.
The Game Gear is similarly well-served. The Genesis Plus GX core in RetroArch is essentially perfect. The Analogue Pocket handles Game Gear via its Master System FPGA core (since they are fundamentally the same hardware) with cycle-accurate precision. Anbernic, Miyoo, and other Chinese handheld manufacturers all offer devices for £50-£150 that run both platforms perfectly.
The Authenticity Question
There is, of course, the perennial question of whether emulation “counts”. For me, in 2025, the honest answer is: for these two machines specifically, more than for most. The original displays were so poor and the form factors so awkward that playing on an Analogue Pocket or even a modern OLED display is arguably closer to the experience the developers intended than the original hardware was. This is not Game Boy purism territory, where the dot-matrix smear is part of the aesthetic. This is hardware that was straining against the limits of its era.
That said, there is still something irreplaceable about loading California Games into an actual Lynx, hearing the genuine speakers, and feeling that ridiculous slab of curved plastic in your hands. The ritual matters.
Community and Culture: Two Very Different Worlds
The Lynx and Game Gear communities in 2025 are fascinating studies in how scenes evolve.
The Lynx Community
The Lynx scene is small, tight-knit, and disproportionately productive. AtariAge remains the central hub, with active homebrew development, hardware modding tutorials, and a remarkably civil tone. Annual releases of new homebrew games are not uncommon. The Songbird Productions label has, for over two decades, kept the platform commercially viable by releasing new and previously-unreleased software on physical cartridges — including completed versions of games that were unfinished when Atari folded.
There is a thriving Lynx Discord, regular YouTube content from creators like RetroRGB and My Life in Gaming, and a sense among Lynx enthusiasts that they are custodians of an underappreciated technical marvel. It is a community defined by enthusiasm rather than completionism.
The Game Gear Community
The Game Gear community is larger, more fragmented, and more focused on collecting and restoration than homebrew development. SMS Power remains the technical hub for both Master System and Game Gear development, but new homebrew releases are less frequent than on the Lynx. Where the scene excels is in restoration content — there are dozens of excellent YouTube channels dedicated to Game Gear repair, capacitor replacement, and screen modding.
The Japanese collector market also exerts significant influence on Game Gear culture in a way it does not for the Lynx, since the Lynx was barely released in Japan. Many of the most desirable Game Gear titles are Japan-exclusive, which gives the Western collector scene a constant import dimension.
Practical Recommendations: Which Should You Actually Buy?
If you have read this far, you presumably want an actual recommendation. Here it is, broken down by buyer type.
If You Are a Nostalgia Buyer
Buy whichever machine you owned as a child, recap it (or pay someone to), drop in an IPS screen, add an everdrive, and rediscover what made you love it. Do not overthink this. Nostalgia is the worst possible lens for making rational purchasing decisions, but it is also the entire point of this hobby.
If You Are a Library Buyer
The Game Gear wins. Despite the inconsistency, the sheer volume of decent games — particularly when you factor in Master System compatibility via the Master Gear Converter — gives it more longevity. Shining Force, Defenders of Oasis, GG Aleste, Sonic Triple Trouble, and the various ports give you hundreds of hours of solid play. The Lynx library is smaller, weirder, and runs out of essential games faster.
If You Are a Technical Curiosity Buyer
The Lynx wins, hands down, no contest. Nothing else from 1989 was doing what the Lynx was doing, and titles like Blue Lightning, S.T.U.N. Runner, Warbirds, and Battlezone 2000 showcase capabilities that genuinely seem impossible on the hardware. If you are the kind of person who finds joy in technical achievement, the Lynx will reward you in ways the Game Gear simply cannot.
If You Are a Collector
The Lynx is the more contained, completable, and stable collection. With around 75 official releases, building a full library is achievable for serious collectors with deep pockets (perhaps £4,000-£6,000 for a complete loose set, much more boxed). The Game Gear’s 360+ releases make completionism a much bigger commitment, and the Japan-exclusive market introduces significant additional cost and complexity.
If You Are a Casual “Want to Try Retro Handhelds” Buyer
Honestly? Buy neither. Buy an Analogue Pocket or a Miyoo Mini Plus. Both machines are demanding ownership propositions in 2025, requiring servicing, modification, and ongoing investment to deliver their best. Modern alternatives play both libraries flawlessly with none of the headaches.
Value Assessment: What You Actually Get for Your Money
Let us be concrete about cost of entry for a properly enjoyable experience in 2025:
- Atari Lynx II setup: £150 console + £100 McWill screen mod + £35 battery solution + £75 RetroHQ Lynx SD = £360 minimum for a fully modernised experience.
- Sega Game Gear setup: £80 console + £80 recap and service + £70 IPS screen + £40 rechargeable battery + £110 Everdrive GG = £380 minimum, with similar end result.
By contrast, an Analogue Pocket at £219 plays both libraries with comparable quality and adds Game Boy, GBC, GBA, Neo Geo Pocket, and more. The pure value calculation does not favour original hardware.
But — and this is important — value is not the only consideration in retro gaming. There is something genuinely irreplaceable about owning, restoring, and playing the actual hardware these games were made for. The McWill-modded Lynx on my desk represents perhaps £400 of investment and several evenings of fiddly screwdriver work. It is, on any rational metric, an absurd purchase. I would not trade it.
Verdict: The Loser Who Won
Thirty-three years on, the Color Handheld War looks very different from how it appeared in 1992. Both machines lost commercially. Both have been rehabilitated by the modding community. Both deserve their place in handheld history. But asking which one matters more in 2025 is a genuinely interesting question, and my answer might surprise you.
The Sega Game Gear is, in 2025, the more practical purchase. The library is bigger, the form factor is more comfortable, the servicing pathway is well-established, the community resources are abundant, and there are genuinely great games — Shining Force, GG Aleste, Sonic Triple Trouble — that justify ownership. But it is also, fundamentally, a machine that does nothing its bigger siblings could not do better. It is a portable Master System. That is a fine thing to be. But it is not a unique thing.
The Atari Lynx is, in 2025, the more interesting machine. It is bigger, weirder, harder to live with, and demands more from its owner. But it does things — particularly with its hardware scaling and sprite distortion — that no other handheld of its era could approach. Games like S.T.U.N. Runner, Blue Lightning, and Warbirds represent a genuinely unique technical vision. The community is smaller but more creative. And there is a romantic, lost-civilisation quality to the platform that the Game Gear, with its endless Sonic ports, cannot quite match.
In 1992, I would have told you the Game Gear won the actual war that mattered, finishing second to Nintendo while the Lynx limped to a distant third. That remains historically true. But in 2025, with the benefit of three decades of hindsight, modding, and reassessment, I think the Lynx has aged better as an artistic and technical statement. It is the more important machine, even if it is the less practical one.
Final Scores
Atari Lynx (Lynx II, modded): 8/10
A genuine technical marvel hampered by a small library and demanding ownership requirements. With a McWill mod and an everdrive, it becomes the unique handheld experience it always promised to be. Buy one if you appreciate technical ambition and do not mind a niche library.
Sega Game Gear (recapped, IPS modded): 7/10
A larger, more practical library and better ergonomics, but a fundamentally derivative platform that struggles to justify itself against modern alternatives. The capacitor failure issue is a serious ongoing concern even after servicing. Buy one for the games, not for any unique experience the hardware delivers.
Looking Forward: What Both Machines Tell Us About the Future
The story of the Lynx and Game Gear is, ultimately, the story of how technological ambition fails in the face of mature design. Gunpei Yokoi’s “withered technology” philosophy beat Atari’s audacity and Sega’s pragmatism not because the Game Boy was better — it manifestly was not — but because it understood its market, its battery life, and its price point in ways neither competitor managed.
This is a lesson the current handheld market is, fascinatingly, both learning and ignoring. The Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and Legion Go represent a return to Atari-style ambition: maximum power, maximum capability, damn the battery life and the weight. The Switch and its forthcoming successor represent the Yokoi philosophy: mature components used cleverly, with form factor and battery life prioritised over raw specs.
It would be tidy to say that history will repeat itself, that the Switch will win and the powerful Windows handhelds will become the Lynxes of our era. But that is probably too neat. The market has fragmented, and there is room for both philosophies to coexist in ways that 1990’s binary console wars did not allow.
What is certain is that, somewhere in 2055, someone will be writing a retrospective comparing the Steam Deck and the Switch 2. They will tally the libraries, the ergonomics, the failure modes, the modding scenes. They will reach conclusions about which mattered more. And, like all of us writing about the Lynx and Game Gear today, they will be wrestling with the fundamental question that defines this hobby: what is the difference between the things we loved and the things that were actually good?
The answer, then as now, is probably “less than we think”. Both these machines were flawed. Both were beautiful. Both deserve their corner of the shelf, their evening of attention, their place in the long story of how we taught little boxes to make us happy. Plug one in. Drop in some fresh batteries — or, better, a modern rechargeable pack. Turn down the lights. Try to remember what it felt like the first time you saw colour move on a screen you could hold in your hands.
That is what these machines were for, in 1990 and in 2025. Everything else is just scorecards.