Gadgetory

when the news in the switch was first revealed one of the real eye grabbing things about it was this idea of a system that isn't just a handheld isn't just a home console but something that was both allowing you to easily switch between and adapt to your lifestyle which was a great original idea that Sega had over twenty years ago this is the Sega Nomad ii handheld system released by sega that unlike the game gear their first handheld which was its own system of his own library of games was actually more like a final revision of the sega genesis giving you the ability to play Sega Genesis games on the go now the second Nomad is a weird bit of gaming history with a lot of little oddities connected to it it first came out back in 1995 and was based on another second product called the mega jet now what that was is it was a portable design just so I get Mega Drive which is the Japanese version of the Sega Genesis site that would hook into portable TV screens the idea was that it would be used in planes that's the name mega jet and give you a ways to play games while they're on a flight well they took the same technology used for that instead incorporated a screen to release this little guy right here exclusively in the US another thing that's odd about the system is the fact that if you know your history of gaming and when systems come out 1995 is very late in the cycle for this generation of systems the Genesis had already been for quite some time and their newer system the Sega Saturn was already released in the US and Japan so here comes along this handheld version of an older system that's not gonna really support any brand new interesting games now the way Sega kind of leans into this is to say well hey you have this gigantic library of over 500 Genesis games already available you can play on the handheld which it's kind of cool but it's kind of already being replaced by all the new stuff that's coming out instead and this is just one of the many factors that played into why the Nomad didn't exactly see the same kind of success we see today with the switch the idea was super cool but well ahead of its time and just had a lot of factors playing against it first like I said it didn't have any of its own original new games its technology was lagging it behind because it was a handheld adaptation of an older system and as it had no that should honestly wasn't super great it's big its bulky it's not super comfortable and the battery life on it was not good at all in fact if you want to play for long periods of time you basically had to plug it into a wall outlet and it just became a stationary system not really portable you could get battery packs for it that were chargeable and you could just get the battery holders which held a bunch of double-a batteries but then you're basically getting about 2 hours of gameplay and killing 6 doublea's and all these problems together were really another compared to the biggest issue which was the fact that right after it was released Sega pretty much immediately stopped caring about the Nomad they really stood with this awkward time where they were already trying to juggle so many different systems at once they just released the Sega Saturn they were still trying to do some support for the Sega Genesis and all the different add-ons like the Sega CD and 32x and there was just so much going on that with this guy's underperforming sales and the fact the Sega Saturn was doing really well in Japan Sega basically abandoned it right away to instead focus on just the Saturn alright so we got our batteries loaded up let's check this thing yeah we're gonna start with a classic altered beast oh man I forgot how with these older systems when you mess with the brightness bar it actually like is a huge impact is you know the point where you just can't see anything if they haven't you just right to even see what's going on scream there we go so something we actually discovered - we were tracking one of these guys down with this video is that lately they've actually been getting a lot more popular again primarily because people are finding ways to mod these and upgrade them so you know this version that we have right here is just unmod and original but people are doing things like improving the screens adding support for stuff that it really isn't supposed to normally have like when these guys came out there was actually one of the other problems is that a lot of the major peripherals designed for the Genesis don't work on this guy at least out of box so you can't use like the 32x obviously Sega CD the power base which lets you use a Sega Master System games on it none of that works on this it's just traditional Genesis games I just turned it into an ster I won't prove one other ridiculous point of something that you can do with the Nomad because well it doesn't support all those other peripherals there are a couple it still supports which lets you do silly things like this because of what this guy can support you can do something like taking a game genie copy of Sonic and Knuckles slot that there to attach and then of course Sonic 3 which been turned into Sonic & Knuckles and then you could just play casually you know a game like this because there's nothing at all weird-looking about this setup uh yeah I mean clearly it works as just a straight-up handheld so now let's check it out actually hooking it up to a TV all right so we're all set up I've already played enough ultra beats though so I think it's time to switch for one of the greatest classics that is exclusive to the Sega Genesis Ecco the Dolphin 27 Nevers of danger mystery and beauty or through the eyes of a dolphin some people are young which by the way something I didn't realize about this when we were personally getting to it and getting it I knew it connected to the TV I did not realize that it doesn't stop the signal on the Nomad itself you still have this screen going the whole time would you have to use this as your player one controller so don't get distracted by that this actually looks really nice by the way too there's kind of a weird cropping happening on the CRT but I'm getting like a really good looking signal the game like looks really good which I haven't done like in death conversions myself would actually have read arguments before that the Nomad doing the a/v out is actually a cleaner better signal than doing like just a traditional Genesis like this is actually the best way to play some of these games I think about this guy that's a little weird is that you have to use the Nomad itself as your player one controller even though it has the controller out that's just for two players stuff so as far as comfortable controllers go this isn't really one it's very bulky it doesn't really have a comfortable grip design mean there's a little bit on this one right here but doesn't do a whole lot it's a definitely a brick by the way you're wondering about our blackout design switch right here that's actually thanks to today's sponsor D brand they've released a whole bunch different skins for the Nintendo switch and one of the big colors that you just can't do with official joy cons just yet is black and you can get a couple different black designs from D brand that look awesome whether it's carbon fiber or cane you want check about make sure to look at the link down below description so what exactly did the switch do right in comparison to the Nomad well first off there's the game library now yeah it is kind of cool to advertise hey you already own all these Sega Genesis games they'll work on your new handheld system but there's nothing really exciting about that there's nothing new there's nothing that's it's gonna open up for you that you didn't have before with the Genesis whereas the switch is its own brand new system with brand new games well porting some of the biggest hits from the Wii U and really one of the huge things is a concept of wireless technology because imagine using the Nomad where you haven't hooked up with the TV where you're running AV into the television system it isn't a doc setup that you could just put on whenever you want you have a separate cable running into power unless you're relying on the batteries but you're gonna die pretty quick and if you want to do two player wave one person playing on the Nomad with these two cables running out of it with a third cable running out of the bottom so someone else can use a controller it's not exactly super and easy fun compared to the switch where you just drop the main tablet into a dock and then detach the controllers and bam you have just little portable wireless controllers the idea of being able to play a system portably or on a TV screen and switching between them is really cool weather was back in 1995 or today it's just that all the tech stuff that surrounds that concept of makes it possible is just so much better now