RetroWars V: Game Boy Rivals

[Neon Ignition]

Game Gear vs Wonder Swan vs Atari Lynx vs Neo Geo Pocket vs TurboExpress


Before being taken out by its own owner, many challengers attempted to tackle the simple supremacy of Nintendo's handheld king. The monochrome handheld was simplistic, bulky, poorly lit and low in graphics ability making improvements very easy to deliver and therefore making it an obvious market leader that was ready to topple. Yet this Boy was Game. Nintendo's stubborn little bar steward of a handheld ducked and one punch countered every challenger leaving a trail of defeats in its wake. What is much less clear depending on your experiences with this challengers is the real contest, the contest for second place.

Of Game Boy's challengers there were four main notable systems above all others:

GAME GEAR
Featuring full colour and a bevy of supporting options including an add-on to watch TV on it, the Game Gear gave an experience that was much closer to Sega's Master System in your hands than the Game Boy managed in providing NES experiences. The battery life took a hit but Sega was Nintendo's chief rival at the time and so took the fight to N head on. Though Sega would dabble with attempting to make such things as a portable version of the Mega Drive this was largely their only true attempt at taking control of the handheld market.






WONDER SWAN
Released by Bandai, the Wonder Swan never made it out of Japan but the company gave it a fair go at trying to make the system embed itself with two updated versions coming further down the line. More power and more battery life than rivals as well as a bigger button set up gave the WS a distinct leg up but the Game Boy Advance was such a force on the market that the system struggled to hold on to what niche space it had.






ATARI LYNX
Lasting a respectable six or so years on the market despite sales only ever reaching about 3m units, the Lynx was another power pushing competitor and the first to market with a colour screen. It only received one revision and had limited software support through its life in comparison to its rivals so struggled to dent the GB's wave of success.







NEO GEO POCKET
A late rival to try and tackle Nintendo, even at the time it seemed odd that SNK would even try it but they did and the end result is a failed system but one treasured by those who enjoyed it. In its first year of life the system was very quickly classified as a failure by SNK and replaced by a colour variant that was better received but arrived very late into its generation, on the verge of facing more powerful rivals itself. The tactile d-stick was a firm favourite as was SNK's ability to successfully shrink down its series in a manner nearly all other rivals failed to but limited software support again quickly dragged the system down.






TURBOEXPRESS
A handheld version of the TurboGrafx-16, the TurboExpress tackled the Game Boy by being compatible with the consoles Hu-Cards and having supported functions like being able to watch TV, a backlight and colour display. As a result though the system was an expensive rival and became the first to fall in the battle. It's power meant it chomped batteries and like so many others, software wasn't deemed strong enough to compete with its rivals.






THE DEBATE
The biggest rivalry yet, five competitors as you declare which handheld you believe was the next best thing to Nintendo's Game Boy handhelds and why your choice was better than the others.
-Could the others compete with Sega's titles?
-Was the Neo Geo Pocket the dream alternative?
-Did Atari give you the Lynx effect?

Defend your Favourite - Defeat your Rivals

[_SD_]

NEO•GEO POCKET

Fantastic system with an awesome, nay, legendary thumbstick. Certainly my favourite out of all of these and even beats the Gameboy from a Vs Fighting perspective. Although the library is small, it has one of the best good:crap ratios of any system. It’s just a shame the hardware didn’t have a couple of extra action buttons.

It’s quite sad looking at the list of unreleased games… Windjammers Pocket would have been awesome. And I’d love to know how far into development 3rd Mission was. Maybe the forthcoming Metal Slug book will shed some light. World Heroes would have been another great addition to the fighting library too.

I’m really looking forward to the upcoming BennVenn backlit LCD kit too.

GAME GEAR

Definitely my second favourite, I have good memories of the system. Although I do think Sega were a little over ambitious with hardware… that cold cathode backlight really killed the battery. I think a slightly smaller console with better battery life and an unlit colour screen could have been a better idea in hindsight…

TURBOEXPRESS

This…



With a Super CD-ROM2 attached. More portable than handheld, I’ve always wanted one of these beauties.

[Mayhem]

NGPC is the Dreamcast of handhelds, there's very few duff games in the library, and I love it.

[DeathAdder]

At the time the Game Gear was my favourite, but now I prefer the Lynx.

[Team Andromeda]

Neo Geo Pocket for me . Its my fav handheld ever made, but given it was SNK the system really need 4 face buttons.

[Asura]

I was bought a Game Gear for birthday when I was a kid, yet despite that, I have very little nostalgia for the system. It was the first "console" platform we had in the house, meaning that the games were expensive, and in the lifetime of the system, I can only remember owning 3 (the others were right at the end, when I found it in a drawer in ~1997 and bought some of the games dirt-cheap before selling it on). Even with rechargeable batteries, the battery life was too short, and something not often discussed with it is how the machine needed a Sega brand adaptor, which was expensive (I had to use a generic one with a bit of tape to keep it from falling out).

I feel kinda bad in retrospect, as it was obviously expensive, but it just didn't really do much for me. I used it when we were in long car journeys, which I guess was fine, but I used to be more keen just to take a book. I knew that wouldn't run out of power!

I eventually sold it in 1997, to help fund the purchase of an N64, and didn't go back to handhelds until around 1998, when I picked up a Game Boy cheap at a second-hand store, and I was really surprised at just how good the games were despite the obvious hardware limitations. Link's Awakening was just amazing, and I loved Pokemon Red. I later sold the Game Boy to get a Pocket, and sold the Pocket to get a Color... And that's the platform's real misstep for me. I never got along with the Color and wished I'd just kept the Pocket. I never liked the form-factor of the console quite as much (though that's not too important to me), but the major thing was that I never played any Game Boy Color-specific games which I felt were must-plays. Not a single one. The game like that I got the most play out of was Street Fighter Alpha, but I couldn't really hold that up as a great game (even if it was a bit of a marvel, technically).

So I sold it, and got a Neo Geo Pocket Color, and that became one of my favourite machines ever. It's like others in the thread have stated, I'm uncertain the NGPC has a single "bad" game. Even the poorer games of the lot, like the gambling ones, weren't "bad", they were just "limited", in that there wasn't much to them. I had a long commute at the time, and must have played hundreds of hours of Cardfighters Clash and Match of the Millennium alone!

The only sad thing about this for me is that I sold my NGPC collection a few years ago; actually, that's not the part which is sad - I'm fine with the fact that I sold it. What makes me sad was the reason why; I just can't play old handhelds anymore. Ever since the DS Lite ushered in those newer, brighter LCD screens, I just don't have the patience with anything worse than that.

I really hope that SNK get on their feet and bring out a NGPC throwback console - basically just a re-creation of the base unit, with a DSLite-style screen, rechargeable batteries, and all (or maybe the top 15, if I'm being realistic) of the games pre-loaded. Unfortunately their recent form makes me think that even if they did this, they'd do a crap job of it. If they did it, and did it well, I'd happy pay £100 or even more for it.

[CMcK]

I think the Game Gear really was the only proper competition to the classic GameBoy. It had a strong library which could be enhanced with a Master Gear converter. Yes the battery life wasn’t great but it was adequate for car or train journeys.
The Lynx wasn’t a system I tried until I got a discounted Lynx 2. Technically impressive in some respects but generally poor frame rates and a poor screen didn’t help. While it does host some good games like STUN Runner and the impressive but weird version of Shadow of the Beast the catalogue doesn’t have anything like the depth of the GG. It’s very much a Western system with little input from Japanese developers. And back then Japan was on top of the gaming world.
I owned a PC Engine GT many years ago and was quite disappointed with it. Slipping a Hu Card into and seeing the same game on screen was amazing but the screen was too small and fuzzy to really display games aimed at a larger TV screen. My fondness for shmups didn’t really help it’s case.
The NGPC is a great wee system I regret selling. Not a huge library of games but such a high standard throughout. And THAT d-pad. Lack of backlight aside it was pretty much perfect. Good clear screen, comfortable to use, light weight, good battery life and that d-pad.

I’ve unfortunately never owned a Wonder Swan as games the catalogue is not to my taste.

Older handhelds have been given a second lease of life nowadays with modern LCD screen mods and superior battery technology. A McWill modded system is a world away from the blurry screens of old.

[Leon Retro]

The Game Boy is my favourite hand held.

But away from that, I really like the Lynx II. Its best games(Rygar, Toki, Checkered Flag, Road Blasters etc..) look really nice on the small screen. I appreciate how powerful it was for the time, with a nice amount of colours and enough power to do some cool effects etc...

I also have fond memories of the Game Gear, but my brother owned it. Games like GG Shinobi, Slider and Sonic really impressed me. It's just a shame that colour hand helds at up batteries so quickly.

A friend of mine had a TurboExpress. It seemed pretty cool, but I didn't get to play it much.

I'm not a fan of the Neo Geo Pocket. I bought one around 15 years ago with a collection of games, but the dark screen and basic graphics didn't grab me. I expected more from the Neo Geo brand. But I know lots of people love it.

So for me, the winner is the Lynx. Powerful hardware that has some really fun games to enjoy. I always enjoy going back to it.

[_SD_]

I’ve contemplated getting a Swan Crystal several times over recent years but never gone for it. It’s certainly an interesting novelty, but the available games didn’t really do it for me. There are some good titles, but moreso if you understand Japanese. And really like Gundam and Digimon.

The Wonder Witch dev kit is also quite intriguing… and it resulted in Judgement Silversword which is a cracking little shooter.

[Asura]

I’ve contemplated getting a Swan Crystal several times over recent years but never gone for it. It’s certainly an interesting novelty, but the available games didn’t really do it for me. There are some good titles, but moreso if you understand Japanese. And really like Gundam and Digimon.

The Wonder Witch dev kit is also quite intriguing… and it resulted in Judgement Silversword which is a cracking little shooter.

Going to ruffle some feathers and say don't do this unless you get the chance to do it very cheaply.

After years of wondering about it, I finally tracked down a Wonderswan on eBay quite cheaply - and you can get loads of games for next to nothing, even some of the big hitters, if you're fine going unboxed. Given, I got a Wonderswan Color as opposed to a SwanCrystal, but then in some ways, I think you should try the Color, as I think the SwanCrystal was late in the format's life and really, the prior versions were more the heart of the system (it'd be like judging the Game Boy Advance platform on the strength of the AGS-101).

There were some novelties; it was fun playing loads of anime-licenced games. There's also a quality the Swan machine has, which it shares with the Neo Geo Pocket Color - in that it was very Japan-focused (well, entirely in the Swan's case) and something about that is reflected in the design of the machine. Also, as an anime fan in the 90s/00s, I thought the machine was far more successful than it was, due to how Bandai product-placed it into loads of anime shows.

Unfortunately, it's true what people say - it's a very Japan-centric platform. The screens were pretty poor (SwanCrystal aside), meaning that the better games weren't the fast-action ones, but the RPGs, visual-novel type games and graphic adventures. They're simply impenetrable unless you have a good grasp of written Japanese, and I was trying at a time when my Japanese was good enough to understand the general gist of what was going on... But not good enough to glean much enjoyment from the games.

The experience was worth it, though, considering that I sold on everything I bought and ended up cost-neutral, and I never need to wonder about the WonderSwan anymore. I think if you go into it with that mindset, you'll enjoy it.

EDIT: Also #ProTip, don't buy a Wonderswan Color that has no battery cover. The cover actually contains some wiring that helps connect up the battery; you can't just tape over it like you could with something like a Game Boy. Might apply to the other models too. Sometimes you'll see them on eBay for peanuts, but this is the reason why.

[kryss]

#ProTip, don't buy a Wonderswan Color that has no battery cover. The cover actually contains some wiring that helps connect up the battery; you can't just tape over it like you could with something like a Game Boy. Might apply to the other models too. Sometimes you'll see them on eBay for peanuts, but this is the reason why.

Also true of the Crystal as well.

[DeathAdder]

The Game Boy is my favourite hand held.

But away from that, I really like the Lynx II. Its best games(Rygar, Toki, Checkered Flag, Road Blasters etc..) look really nice on the small screen. I appreciate how powerful it was for the time, with a nice amount of colours and enough power to do some cool effects etc...

Warbirds, Zarlor Mercenary, Awesome Golf, Rampart, Blue Lightning (not amazing to play but technically brilliant), Robotron, Chips Challenge, Ninja Gaiden, California Games are some of the ones I play most often. The Lynx has an excellent top 15-20 games. It just doesn't have enough overall compared to the many hundreds on the Game Boy.

I loved the Master Gear though - played many more MS games on the GG than GG games.

I liked the NGPC but found some of the fighting games a bit samey. The Metal Slug games were amazing for the time.

[Leon Retro]

The Lynx has an excellent top 15-20 games. It just doesn't have enough overall compared to the many hundreds on the Game Boy.

I have around 20 Lynx games. I will probably buy a few more, but I looked at the catalogue and made sure to buy all the 'must-haves'. The very best games really show off the hardware -- both with graphics and audio.

I liked the NGPC but found some of the fighting games a bit samey. The Metal Slug games were amazing for the time.

Metal Slug was my favourite game for the NGPC. I also liked Sonic. But the dark/dull screen was a shame.

The Game Boy is easily my favourite handheld though, simply because it has loads of really fun games. And despite the lack of colours, GB graphics can be nicely detailed. I think Mario Land 2 looks great -- and the music is excellent.

[_SD_]

Was anyone here lucky enough to be graced with a Supervision? I remember a guy bringing his into school one day… it really didn’t go down too well. It’s probably the blurriest screen I’ve ever seen, absolutely appalling. I recall the games being very basic too, far below what was on the Gameboy.

[samanosuke]

Was anyone here lucky enough to be graced with a Supervision? I remember a guy bringing his into school one day… it really didn’t go down too well. It’s probably the blurriest screen I’ve ever seen, absolutely appalling. I recall the games being very basic too, far below what was on the Gameboy.

Looks like the Gamate (did nobody in their PM team try saying it out loud during the design process?). I think Cheetah distributed it in the U.K.?

And remember that awful Tiger handheld?