Sunday, May 10, 2009

Retro Handheld Gaming - Sega Mega Drive Portable


It's not often I find an interesting product that I hadn't read about somewhere, so it was a pleasent surprise to find one of my favorite consoles having been made into a handheld product. May I present, the Sega Mega Drive Portable Video Game Player!

Oh sure, there was a certain Sega Nomad handheld which shares similarities to this little system, but the Nomad was a giant brick and should have been classed under "luggable" instead. Jokes aside, the Nomad was too big and ate batteries too quickly to be of much use. It played actual Mega Drive cartridges, so it was pretty darn big compared to today's handhelds. However, both allowed you to connect the respective system to your TV and the SMD Portable video game player allows you to do just that.

Anyway, the Mega Drive or Sega Genesis for North Americans (due to name copyright issues), was a 16 bit console released back in '88 (in Japan) and was quite the powerhouse of a games console for its time. Things didn't pick up steam until the release of a game starring a certain blue hedgehog in '91. And the rest as they say, is history. The Mega Drive contained a big library of great games (many of them developed by Sega) and many are classics that are just as enjoyable today, as they were back then.

With this gadget containing 20 officially licenced Mega Drive games, you'll be able to relive or live for the first time (hah) some of the classics of the 16 bit era. E-Swat, Sonic & Knuckles and The Revenge of Shinobi III are the absolute best games in this collection, with many other great games such as Shadow Dancer, Ristar, Golden Axe and Ecco the Dolphin. For the $39.90 asking price, it's a great deal.

1 comment:

Tom McLeod said...

I purchased one of these about a year ago, and have loved it ever since. It is a bit glossy and reflective, however it doesn't pick up too many fingerprints. And the fact that it only has 20 games kinda sucks, but they're all sooo much fun. And the TV out makes it even better. I used to use my ds to emulate genesis games, but the lack of sound sucked, so now I just use this(hoping to get wiz soon for every game this doesn't have).