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The Blackangel

Nomad

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Does anyone else remember the Sega Nomad? Did you have one? @Rain Dew has one and she has always loved it. The only issue is that it eats batteries like Homer Simpson eats donuts, and the power pack doesn't last very long either. It is neat however to be able to take your favorite Sega Genesis games on the go, if you want them instead of a Game Gear. Lots of Sega games weren't on Game Gear. It was truly ahead of its time.

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I had heard of the Nomad, but I've never played one, nor even seen one to tell the truth. I'll put a picture so we can see what it looked like.

 

Sega-Nomad-Front.thumb.jpg.b3492aac77324762ecf702693e8c42a9.jpg

 

It really was a neat idea. A handheld console that you just put your Sega Megadrive/Genesis cartages in. It meant you didn't have to have separate libraries for you handheld and home console. You could say it was the Switch 22 years earlier. It was a coloured screen on a handheld 3 years before the Game Boy Colour (but having said that, 6 years after the Atari Lynx, so it makes you wonder why Sega and Nintendo took so long to catch up), so it was pretty revolutionary.

 

I agree it was ahead of it's time, but timing was also it's biggest problem along with some impracticalities. Trying to power what was essentially a Sega Megadrive/Genesis with batteries back in 1995 was never going to be practical, not to mention this was around the same time as the likes of the Sega Saturn, The Sega 32X, The N64 and The PlayStation all came out, so it's little surprise this costly handheld didn't sell very well. A shame, but it's still a very likeable system.

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That's interesting history you've told about Sega Nomad. I never learned about it, only from the post you shared which is the first time I learned that the gaming device first came out on 1995, and got discontinued in 1999. 

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On 5/25/2022 at 11:10 AM, The Blackangel said:

It was released in October 1995. It was discontinued in 1999. So it had a really short lifespan.

You know it's funny - I vaguely remember it now. I remember a kid coming to school with one and the rest of us were looking at him kinda odd as the rest of us had Gameboys. The issue with majority of Sega consoles in the past is that they weren't really marketed well.

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22 hours ago, killamch89 said:

The issue with majority of Sega consoles in the past is that they weren't really marketed well.

That was their biggest problem. They came out at the same time as the SNES, and due to that, they were destined to fail. Mainly because (in the states at least) everyone was on Nintendo, and everyone wanted Nintendo consoles. Releasing a completely different kind of console at the time was basically suicide. Sony waited until the N64 era, and (thankfully) completely blew up and are now one of the biggest competitors with the PlayStation. Xbox came around a little later, and it blew up as well. It all takes timing and tech. If you want to succeed you have to know what to offer and when. Sega just released at the worst time. If they had waited a bit, I'm sure there would be a Sega board under the Platforms section.

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6 hours ago, The Blackangel said:

That was their biggest problem. They came out at the same time as the SNES, and due to that, they were destined to fail. Mainly because (in the states at least) everyone was on Nintendo, and everyone wanted Nintendo consoles. Releasing a completely different kind of console at the time was basically suicide. Sony waited until the N64 era, and (thankfully) completely blew up and are now one of the biggest competitors with the PlayStation. Xbox came around a little later, and it blew up as well. It all takes timing and tech. If you want to succeed you have to know what to offer and when. Sega just released at the worst time. If they had waited a bit, I'm sure there would be a Sega board under the Platforms section.

Sometimes, it's best things turned out the way they did because Sega were also making some pretty stupid decisions at the time which ultimately also led to their downfall.

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14 hours ago, The Blackangel said:

That was their biggest problem. They came out at the same time as the SNES, and due to that, they were destined to fail. Mainly because (in the states at least) everyone was on Nintendo, and everyone wanted Nintendo consoles. Releasing a completely different kind of console at the time was basically suicide. Sony waited until the N64 era, and (thankfully) completely blew up and are now one of the biggest competitors with the PlayStation. Xbox came around a little later, and it blew up as well. It all takes timing and tech. If you want to succeed you have to know what to offer and when. Sega just released at the worst time. If they had waited a bit, I'm sure there would be a Sega board under the Platforms section.

The competition and gamers preferences at the time was never going to make it easy for them to survive in the market. It was a trying time for Sega. Their timing was very wrong and it's what led to their downfall. Take a look at what happened in the social media world with when Facebook came out and kicked out MySpace. Any social media platform that wanted to come out then would be kicked to the dust because FB was a strong competition and it was what people were interested in. 

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27 minutes ago, killamch89 said:

How long did it last exactly? And did it use rechargeable batteries?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_Nomad#:~:text=The Nomad could be powered,(DC 9V%2C 3W).
 

About 2-3 hours on 6 AA batteries. This was the 90’s where rechargeable batteries weren’t that common on devices like this. There was apparently a battery pack, but the only 3 people I knew that owned a Nomad never had one.

Edited by Grungie
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24 minutes ago, Grungie said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_Nomad#:~:text=The Nomad could be powered,(DC 9V%2C 3W).
 

About 2-3 hours on 6 AA batteries. This was the 90’s where rechargeable batteries weren’t that common on devices like this. There was apparently a battery pack, but the only 3 people I knew that owned a Nomad never had one.

2-3 hours on 6 AA batteries is pretty pathetic! Honestly, I can see why it flopped - you could power 3 Gameboys with the same amount of batteries and for way longer.

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