Sega and Nintendo were fierce hardware rivals for much of the '80s and '90s, with the latter usually being more commercially successful than the former.
One contest that Nintendo won relatively comfortably was in the handheld arena. Its Game Boy portable launched in 1989 and sold (alongside the Game Boy Color) sold almost 120 million units over its lifespan.
By way of comparison, Sega's Game Gear – which boasted a colour display – only sold 10.62 million units. Like so many of the other Game Boy rivals, it was hamstrung by its hunger for batteries to power its display, which was also illuminated.
Things might have been slightly different had Stefano Arnhold – who led Brazilian Sega distributor Tectoy at the time – had his way. In an exclusive interview with Time Extension, Arnhold reveals that he pitched the idea of a monochrome Sega handheld, which he believed had "no chance of failing".
"Game Boy was huge, and Sega at the time had the Game Gear, which ate through, I don't know how many batteries, but it was still a fantastic product," Arnhold tells us.
"Playing Super Monaco GP II game to game with two Game Gears was always an amazing experience, and you could even use the Game Gear as a TV set. So we thought it was fantastic, but we knew it would never hit the millions that Game Boy was enjoying, especially in Brazil. So we found one company in Taiwan — I don't remember the name — that had this product they were interested in selling. Their product was okay, but I went to my head of engineering, Roberto, and said, 'The audio is lousy. Can you fix it?' And he said, 'Sure, no problem, but it will cost a little bit.'"
Arnhold reasoned that if such a product could sell half a million units, it would cover the cost of the initial investment. "So I went to talk to Randy Rissman, who was the owner of Tiger Electronics, which had excellent distribution, especially in the U.S, and I said, 'Now imagine if this has Sega games,' and he said, 'This looks pretty feasible.'"
The device sounds like it would have been comparable to the Game Boy in terms of tech, but with a Sega difference. "If you put them side by side with a Game Boy, they would be, let's say, Game Boy-like, but for our games: Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Afterburner, Sonic and the whole library, right? I think it would have been a huge success. In my opinion, there was no chance of failing."
Sadly, Sega itself didn't share this optimism. "Everything seemed to me to be pretty positive, but then I flew out to Tokyo, and I had a very bad meeting with Sega," explains Arnhold. "They told me, 'No way,' but this time they said it convincingly, so I knew I couldn't do it. They said, 'No, Sega will never have a monochromatic handheld.'"
Unfortunately, none of the prototypes for this unreleased system still exist. "We kept it really, really secret," says Arnhold.
"In the beginning, we didn't want anybody to know for obvious reasons, but then, when Sega was so determined not to approve it or license their games to us, we more or less got rid of everything to do with it. We didn't want this to leak because, after many, many years with an excellent relationship with Sega, we knew exactly when we could advance with something like this and when we could not. So I think it was an excellent idea, but they said, 'We don't want it, it won't happen,' so we thought, forget it, let's try something else."
Ironically, Sega games would eventually come to a monochrome handheld – and one made by Tiger, no less. Sega allowed titles like Sonic Jam and Fighters Megamix to be released on the ill-fated Game.com.