By the mid 90's Sega seemed to be at a point in executive decisions that looked like they actually wanted to fail as a company. They took a HUGE leap to the front of the line with the Genesis / Mega Drive but failed miserably to do anything noteworthy from that point forward.
One of these failures was actually a really incredible invention but Sega didn't even bother advertising it a great deal and to me this suggests that Sega had no faith in the product or was out of money. It was probably both.
The concept of this game was fantastic because you could play almost all of the Sega Genesis games on it. Game Boy already dominated the market and had for quite some time. Sega had already tried to compete with Nintendo with the Game Gear but they didn't make more than a blip on the radar of portable console sales despite the fact that the Game Gear was a superior product. The main problems with the Game Gear was the limited library, relatively high price, and the biggest problem was that it chewed up batteries like an an orca eating fish.
Game Boy sold more than ten times as many units as the Game Gear and this was only made worse by the release of Game Boy Pocket, which only needed 2 AAA size batteries to operate for days - well, i guess it depends on how much you played. The Game Gear required 6 AA size batteries and this would get you up to 6 hours of play. Ouch.
Sega, in their infinite non-wisdom, thought it would be a good idea to release a system that needed even MORE juice in order to function. The Nomad was the answer to that.
The benefits of the Nomad were obvious: Much larger screen, stereo sound, and the big benefit was that all of the Genesis games that you already own could be played on it. With an adaptor, all the Game Gear games could be played on it as well. It was $180 at its release in 1995, which is about $300 in today's money so yeah, it was pricy when you consider that a Game Boy could be acquired for less than $100.
The system was actually praised by critics for its performance and almost everyone agreed that it was the best performance-wise portable system on the market by far. There was just one problem though: Brand new batteries would only get you about 2-3 hours of play time. I bought one of these things, but for the most part I had to be near an electrical outlet in order to use it. This is really stupid when you consider that there was something else that was near an electrical outlet in my house.... my Sega Genesis.
I don't like to admit it but I actually started shoplifting at one point in order to have more batteries. I was never into drugs, but I became a thief because of a different addiction. I did get caught one day, by my mother. That was a very quiet ride home in the car.
Sega just couldn't seem to do anything right in the late 90's and early 2000's and these days they have very little to do with any industry at all because of these strings of failures. What was going on in their minds at that just makes me wonder how it is that certain executives remained in their presumably high-paying positions. The failure of the Game Gear was mostly because of the battery life so Sega's answer to that was to make a system that uses even MORE battery.
I just don't get it. This system would probably do very well these days if it was rechargeable but back in 1995 this was just a terribly thought-out idea.
Did you own one? I did. I know there are not many of us out there!