[einr]

The Game Gear didn't come out until one and a half year later. It's easy to see how it wasn't even remotely practical to release a color handheld system in 1989, and it's easy to argue that it wasn't practical in 1990 either, but Sega did it anyway.

So when the Game Boy came out it was easily the most powerful handheld system on the market (admittedly by virtue of being essentially the only one worth mentioning)

[imp0cat]

Also, the color screen on the Game Gear wasn't that great and the battery life was terrible. I think Sega had realized this, because later on they were selling an external battery pack as an official accessory.

[lapetitejort]

The Atari Lynx came out a few months after the Game Boy with a backlit color screen

[nilamo]

And we're all still talking about that one regularly...

[barbecue_sauce]

I remember thinking the commercials made it look cool when I was 4 or 5 (I vividly remember some sort of surfing game), but then I never encountered a single person who owned one. Same with the TurboGrafx-16.

[JNRowe]

"Some sort of surfing game" immediately screams California Games¹ to me. There was surfing² plus a few other sports, and it is still good fun if you find yourself at a museum/nerd house that has one.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Games

² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql2S-wXa-H8