I have decided that this week shall be Game Gear week! Thank you, thank you, but the applause can be saved for later. I've decided this because I posted that boring as dirt blog about watching South Park yesterday, and I thought to myself…Game Gear week! Without further ado, this is Game Gear Week.

Deconstruction and Reconstruction: Pt. V – The Sega Game Gear

This is a Sega Game Gear. It was released by Sega in 1991, and when it came out I wanted one. My dad said no, and that was the end of it. Fast forward to 2009, I was in the Salvation Army Thrift Store and found this particular one for $8. It is a piece of crap. The plastic screen protector is cracked, and the speaker doesn't work. Oh well, I still like it.

This is the back of the Game Gear. It is very uninteresting. The hole in the cartridge slot is actually for a 4.5 mm game bit screw, but this one had that taken out when I got it. Aside from that, there are six screws that need to come out to take the back off. Two are in the battery wells.

This is where it gets interesting. This is the inside of a Game gear. All of the eight pink arrows point to the screws that need to be removed to take the PCB off the faceplate. The green arrows point to the contrast dial on the left, and the volume knob on the left. Those PCBs in the top part actually come out too, but I was lazy. The three yellow arrows point to the connectors that need to be disconnected to take the back completely off.

This is the inside of the back of the unit. You can see the red on and off switch on the left, the EXT. port next to it, the headphone jack on the right, and the volume dial next to it. There is nothing behind the metal shielding but the empty game slot. The wires on top are for the batteries. I guess that black housing on the left battery well is where the batteries interface with the unit.

This is the back of the main PCB again. You can see the wires that I disconnected dangling free on the top. The big black thing in the center is the game connector, and that weird silver thing with the black things sticking out the sides is the screen. You can take it off, but it says something about high voltage in English and Deutsch. For this reason, I opted to refrain from deconstructing it any further. That screen thing is actually pretty weird though. It is some big bulbous thing that kind of looks like a TV tube…but we all know it isn't.

This is the inside of the faceplate. You can see the speaker on the right, and absolutely nothing the rest of the way through.

This is the front of the PCB. You can see the screen, which is quite obvious. I'm pretty sure that it interfaces with the system itself on the bottom, and the thing on the right side is the power for the backlight. On the left you can see the little gold circles where the d-pad is, and the three rubber pushers where the 1, 2, and start button are on the right.

The screen is actually pretty impressive on this thing. If you have to wipe it for any reason, I would suggest the cloth Oakley sunglass bag, or a very fine micro fiber cloth.

This concludes this edition of Deconstruction and Reconstruction. As always, the reassembly is the exact reverse of the disassembly. I hope you enjoyed it.

Disclaimer: Please do not try this at home. The things outlined in this blog are potentially life threatening. Misuse could result in serious injury or death. Guns are not toys treat them with respect. Reading this blog does not qualify you to take apart your Game Gear. It qualifies you to screw it up…