[Xenoamorphous]

I think the most impressive hardware-wise was the Turbo Express. It was released in 1990, just a year after the Game Boy and Lynx and same year as the Game Gear.

It had a 400x270 screen vs 160x144 in the Game Boy and Game Gear and 160x102 in the Lynx.

It was basically a portable TurboGrafx and could run Street Fighter II (which was also released for the Game Boy but it was miles behind).

[chronogram]

It was released in Dec 1990 for $250, a few months later the price was raised to $300. The sound in it failed frequently, and the display had a high rate of pixel defects. It burned through 6 AA batteries in 3 hours. I don’t know what the original price for the AC adapter was but it was big so probably not cheap either.

The TurboExpress is a classic example of the “any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands” saying.

[Xenoamorphous]

I don’t know about reliability but battery life seems about the same or little worse than a Game Gear or Lynx, which also used 6 AA batteries.

And price is an entirely different matter, but surely a factor in its commercial failure.