Underplayed but interesting handhelds

[StevenK]

Didn't even get the nomad in the UK.

For some reason I thought import stuff was in some way illegal back then.

 

[famicommander]

I can't really take the criticism seriously from anyone that wasn't playing it when it was current. Every other major handheld except the Gameboy was the same size or larger, with much worse games and screen, and even just playing a good portable version of Street Fighter 2 alone was worth it. You could (and I did) cram the nomad, batteries, and several carts into one of the larger Game Gear carrying bags, which was exactly what I was doing at the time.

You are a hypergoob for doing that. Game Gear and Lynx were huge like Nomad, but also like Nomad, nobody actually had one. I was the only kid in my whole elementary school with a Game Gear and I have never seen anyone besides me with a Lynx or Nomad ever.

 

[Neo Alec]

I have a Nomad, but c'mon, that shit ain't portable. Needs an external battery pack and the carts stick out even farther than GB carts from a GBA.

Tell that to kid me, who sat in a car on monthly road trips with the car adapter and a magic key converter finishing Jpn Mega Drive games. Then I'd get to the motel or relative's house and plug-in the AC adapter. Okay, not as protable as a GB with some AA's, but more portable than a console.

 

[pixeljunkie]

For me the Nomad was what people think of the Steam deck now in a lot of ways. Even tethered to an AC adaptor was amazing. Just sitting on a couch anywhere and playing Genesis games. Amazing. Turbo Express was also mind blowing, but Nomad was such a cool device when it came out.

 

[Neo Alec]

Turbo Express got similar or only slightly better battery life than the Nomad on 6 AA's. One trick we did for the Turbo Express was get a Lynx battery pack, and you could run quite a while on 6 D batteries.

 

[famicommander]

Tell that to kid me, who sat in a car on monthly road trips with the car adapter and a magic key converter finishing Jpn Mega Drive games. Then I'd get to the motel or relative's house and plug-in the AC adapter. Okay, not as protable as a GB with some AA's, but more portable than a console.

Again, extreme goob usage case. The fact that they barely sold a million of the Nomad should tell you all you need to know.

You don't have to sell me on the Nomad, I bought one. But they were dumb and impractical as fuck.

 

[pixeljunkie]

But they were dumb and impractical as fuck.

All the good handhelds were.

 

[Neo Alec]

Again, extreme goob usage case. The fact that they barely sold a million of the Nomad should tell you all you need to know.

You don't have to sell me on the Nomad, I bought one. But they were dumb and impractical as fuck.

You were arguing it's not portable, that's all I'm saying. This is not an argument about how many goobs were around.

I bought the system when it was $180 from Best Buy at retail. I'm trying to remember how the hell I afforded it, but I think by the time that thing was out I was old enough that I had my first part time job.

Any system you bought 10 years after the fact isn't going to be the same experience as it was when it was new. Especially for portables, that technology changed a lot just between the 90's and the 00's. By the 00's all of us here were treating our Neo Geo's and 16-bit systems as long-dead, so the 00's were basically the same as now -- this stuff was considered old as hell by the time you got the Nomad.

 

[Neo Alec]

My brother saved for like half a year and bought a Turbo Express at Toys R Us for the full $199 price in 1993 when we were kids. They only had one in stock, and the box was a bit busted. He made the mistake of going on a 4-hour trip and bringing the batteries that were packaged with it. Well, those batteries of course turned out to be ancient, and only lasted about an hour. So after that build-up to finally buying that thing, he still spent most of the trip sitting on his hands because he sure as hell didn't have a battery pack or car adapter at that point.

And then Toys R Us restocked, and reduced the price to like $120. FUCK that was a lot of money in kid money. As one of the few TurboGrafx kids, he sometimes really got fucked on what stuff would cost.

And here is that box today:

 

[famicommander]

You were arguing it's not portable, that's all I'm saying. This is not an argument about how many goobs were around.

I bought the system when it was $180 from Best Buy at retail. I'm trying to remember how the hell I afforded it, but I think by the time that thing was out I was old enough that I had my first part time job.

Any system you bought 10 years after the fact isn't going to be the same experience as it was when it was new. Especially for portables, that technology changed a lot just between the 90's and the 00's. By the 00's all of us here were treating our Neo Geo's and 16-bit systems as long-dead, so the 00's were basically the same as now -- this stuff was considered old as hell by the time you got the Nomad.

Your use case is incredibly narrow. Nobody was gonna carry that huge device, the battery pack, and one or more full size carts everywhere. Just because you can technically take it somewhere if you bring a full set of luggage with you doesn't mean it's really portable.

I mean, by that definition anything is portable if you're willing to put in an unreasonable amount of effort.

 

[Neo Alec]

I had a little bin with the system, some headphones, AC adapter, car adapter and a few games in it. If your point is it was more a system for car trips and playing with an AC adapter, then I agree. It was grab-and-go.

 

[famicommander]

I had a little bin with the system, some headphones, AC adapter, car adapter and a few games in it. If your point is it was more a system for car trips and playing with an AC adapter, then I agree. It was grab-and-go.

That's not what it was for, though. No company would design a mass market device for such a limited usage case. They intended it as a Game Boy competitor, not some super niche way for 12 goobs to play Genesis carts while on vacation with the family.

It was just a really, really poorly thought out device. Like pretty much all SEGA hardware after the Genesis.

They made a Game Boy competitor no kid could afford nor take anywhere without a ridiculous amount of work.

 

[Neo Alec]

That's not what it was for, though. No company would design a mass market device for such a limited usage case. They intended it as a Game Boy competitor, not some super niche way for 12 goobs to play Genesis carts while on vacation with the family.

It was just a really, really poorly thought out device. Like pretty much all SEGA hardware after the Genesis.

They made a Game Boy competitor no kid could afford nor take anywhere without a ridiculous amount of work.

It was absolutely never meant to be a Game Boy competitor. It was available at limited retailers, in few countries, at a premium price, for a console nearing EOL. To assume so is to fundamentally misunderstand the system.

 

[prof]

Fami, the nomad came out after the Saturn was already on the market, and only in the US/Canada. Sega wasn't thinking, "lets take over the GB market with this thing." If I recall, it was the same base tech that was in their Japan Airlines mini genesis, forget the name of that thing, (mega jet?). But they just added a screen and put it out in the only market that still cared about the Genesis.

That's from Tom Kalinske or one of those other execs in a sega16 interview from back in the day. It was very much an afterthought at the time, and SoA wasn't happy about it because they felt they were flooding the market, and canibalizing their own sales. But they were basically in a constant fight with SoJ, so they had to choose their battles.

 

[famicommander]

It was absolutely never meant to be a Game Boy competitor. It was available at limited retailers, in few countries, at a premium price, for a console nearing EOL. To assume so is to fundamentally misunderstand the system.

They were available at limited retailers because there was no demand. If people wanted to buy them they would have sold as many as they could possibly have produced.

They knew it was gonna fail by the time it got to market but they didn't conceive of, design, and build the device to bring it to market and then rapidly drop the price and sell only 1 million of them. Jesus Christ.

 

[HellioN]

NEO•GEO pocket> All
Why?
Because NEO•GEO.

 

[Neo Alec]

They were available at limited retailers because there was no demand. If people wanted to buy them they would have sold as many as they could possibly have produced.

They knew it was gonna fail by the time it got to market but they didn't conceive of, design, and build the device to bring it to market and then rapidly drop the price and sell only 1 million of them. Jesus Christ.

Well yeah, no one's arguing that. Sega tried everything back then. I'm sure if ithe Nomad or the 32X had sold well they would have rushed to get more into stores.

That's best case scenario. But no one designed it as a Game Boy killer.

 

[basic]

Well yeah, no one's arguing that. Sega tried everything back then. I'm sure if ithe Nomad or the 32X had sold well they would have rushed to get more into stores.

That's best case scenario. But no one designed it as a Game Boy killer.

if what was in this article is true, the nomad was intended to take on the gameboy. maybe not globally, but at least in the US market. they had other plans but pivoted to a handheld genesis...but still viewed it as a successor to game gear...which would make it a competitor to gameboy.

Few people know about it, but there was also another system being worked on at the time. SEGA had taken a sizable chunk out of the Game Boy's market share, and with the green-screened handheld experiencing a lull (long before Pokémon arrived to save it), SEGA had a golden opportunity to strike with a new handheld of their own. According to Kalinske, the system would have packed 16-bit graphics, a very high quality, higher resolution screen, and a touch-screen interface – years before the Nintendo DS, or even the Tiger Game.com. Unfortunately, the spec was a dream at best. The system would have been prohibitively expensive – $289 by Kalinske's recollection. SEGA chose to shelve the idea, leaving the Nomad -- a handheld version of the Genesis – as the Game Gear's only successor.

 

[Neo Alec]

if what was in this article is true, the nomad was intended to take on the gameboy. maybe not globally, but at least in the US market. they had other plans but pivoted to a handheld genesis...but still viewed it as a successor to game gear...which would make it a competitor to gameboy.

That says they had a touch screen device planned to take on Nintendo, but didn't release it.

 

[famicommander]

Well yeah, no one's arguing that. Sega tried everything back then. I'm sure if ithe Nomad or the 32X had sold well they would have rushed to get more into stores.

That's best case scenario. But no one designed it as a Game Boy killer.

Again, they say it wasn't a Game Boy killer because nobody fucking bought it. It isn't complicated.

Nintendo themselves originally tried to say that the Nintendo DS wasn't the successor to the Game Boy line, it was a new "third pillar" of Nintendo's business. Because if it failed they didn't want it to tarnish the 15 years they'd spent building up the Game Boy brand. But then the DS became insanely successful and the GBA was effectively dead inside two years.

If the Nomad had been popular, they would have supported it with everything they had.

 

[basic]

That says they had a touch screen device planned to take on the Game Boy, but didn't release it.

yeah they pivoted due to tech and cost constraints. so they released the nomad hoping the existing library and hardware being more advanced than Gameboy could take some market share, probably. otherwise, that'd be like saying Saturn wasn't meant to take on playstation because Neptune was cancelled. not a 1 to 1, but you should get what i'm getting at.

 

[Neo Alec]

Again, they say it wasn't a Game Boy killer because nobody fucking bought it. It isn't complicated.

Nintendo themselves originally tried to say that the Nintendo DS wasn't the successor to the Game Boy line, it was a new "third pillar" of Nintendo's business. Because if it failed they didn't want it to tarnish the 15 years they'd spent building up the Game Boy brand. But then the DS became insanely successful and the GBA was effectively dead inside two years.

If the Nomad had been popular, they would have supported it with everything they had.

Technically you're correct, but calling the Nomad a Game Boy competitor, especially in 2025 with the benefit of hindsight, is silly.

 

[famicommander]

Technically you're correct, but calling the Nomad a Game Boy competitor, especially in 2025 with the benefit of hindsight, is silly.

It was a handheld device released by a major gaming device manufacturer during the lifespan of the Game Boy.

The only reason it's not considered a competitor is because it failed so hard... because it was stupid expensive and not portable.

Jesus Christ, man. Nobody should have had to explain any of this to you.

 

[Neo Alec]

It was a handheld device released by a major gaming device manufacturer during the lifespan of the Game Boy.

The only reason it's not considered a competitor is because it failed so hard... because it was stupid expensive and not portable.

Jesus Christ, man. Nobody should have had to explain any of this to you.

Again technically correct, but if they were serious about taking on Game Boy, they obviously would have released a new platform into more stores, similar to Game Gear. This was a niche product meant to wring some more money out of their one actually successful platform in its end of life.

 

[famicommander]

Again technically correct, but if they were serious about taking on Game Boy, they obviously would have released a new platform into more stores, similar to Game Gear. This was a niche product meant to wring some more money out of their one actually successful platform in its end of life.

That's not how it works. If there was retail demand for the Nomad it would've been in even more stores than the Game Gear ever was.

It was in limited stores because stores didn't think they could sell it. SEGA didn't create the device with the intent to severely limit who could buy it. That's the dumbest take I've ever seen.