After the Game Boy was released in the US in 1989, Sega realized that they too had to enter the portible game market. In June of 1991, they found their answer in the Game Gear. Basically, the Game Gear was a portible version of the Sega Master System, and used much of the same architechture. It's advantages over the Game Boy were obvious. Besides being in color (capible of showing 32 colors at one time, unlike the now Game Boy Color's 8), the Game Gear boasted a larger screen that was backlit so you could play your games in the dark.

Emulation buffs love this system for the sole reason that if you emulate the Game Gear, with a few tweaks you can also emulate the Sega Master System. So, while the ROMs are still different, any of the emulators that you download below will also play Sega Master System games. Cool, eh?

MEKA

This emulator is so good, you really don't need to look for another. With almost perfect emulation of both the Game Gear and the Sega Master System, this emulator is just amazing. It even has light gun emulation! Sound support is there, it just needs to be turned on in the options. Of course, you still need to download ROM images of your favorite games from the links at the bottom of the page. Have fun!

PC Only v.56 (DOS) (547 KB)
• ftp://game-revolution.com/pub/files/meka056.zip

Master Gear

The only good emulator for the Game Gear and Sega Master System on the Macintosh happens to be fairly good. Master Gear lets you play games for both systems with relative ease. If your mac still runs System 7, you also need to download the Appearance Manager in order for Master Gear to run. As always, use the links at the bottom of the page to download your favorite game ROM images. .

Mac Only v. 1.3 (MacOS)
• ftp://game-revolution.com/pub/files/mastergear.sit.bin
  Appearance Manager (Needed to run in System 7)
• ftp://game-revolution.com/pub/files/appearance.sit.hqx

ROM Sites

Note: Due to copyright laws, it is illegal to download a ROM of any game that you do not own, unless you delete it within 24 hours. These laws also make it difficult to keep up with functioning ROM sites and often these sites are not available. Game Revolution does not host any ROM images on our site, nor does Game Revolution endorse piracy.

• http://smspower.speedhost.com/releases.shtml (Master System and Game Gear ROMs)
• http://www.emulazone.com/Roms/GameGear/index.html