The Sega Game Gear. With its 8-bit processor and bright color screen, it was basically the Sega Master system in your hands. How many batteries did we suck dry playing Sonic, Madden and Road Rash on the bus or in the car, or in the dark when we were supposed to be sleeping? You couldn’t do that on a Game Boy!

We’ve assembled a list and checked it twice, ordering all our favorite games for Sega’s beefy handheld. Take a look, and tell us your favorite games in the comments below. Remember, if you’re feeling nostalgic, many of these classics are available on the 3DS Virtual Console.

The Drift games were Sega’s stab at a Mario Kart type racer for their mascot, and you really did have to drift. The game’s primary challenge was keeping up with the curves of the racetrack, as the Game Gear provided a limited draw distance down the road. Like its Nintendo counterpart, you sprinted down the asphalt, bumping, grinding and exchanging item-based attacks.

Sonic Drift 2 was a big step up from the first. It had seven characters over the original’s four, more varied tracks, and featured much more aggressive AI. Dr. Robotnik’s Egg Mobile was still pretty dominant though. It made you wonder why Sonic didn’t just get out and run.

As the name suggests, Virtua Fighter Animation was based on an anime based on the console Virtua Fighter games. It was a weird bit of reverse engineering, but it actually made for a great game.

Taking queues from the TV show, story mode had cutscenes that set up the matches. While 8-bit graphics meant the fighting didn’t look quite as splashy as on your TV, it was every bit the grounded, methodical fighter players loved.

Steven Spielberg’s mega-blockbuster had a lot of side-scrolling adaptations, but the one on Game Gear was particularly well done. You play as an action hero version of Dr. Grant, visiting different sections of the park to re-capture the rampaging exhibits.

Every stage opened with a driving sequence where you defended your jeep from charging dinos. Then Grant would set out on foot, with far more weapons than anyone ever had in the movie. Isla Nublar itself was dangerous as well, with lava, lightning and forest fires breaking out.

A fighting game from the legendary SNK Playmore, Samurai Showdown was originally designed for the Neo Geo, but it was too good for just one system. 8 and 16-bit versions found their way to Game Boy, Super Nintendo, and Genesis, among others.

The controls and graphics were simplified for a handheld, but the wide stages and splashy special attacks still popped on the Game Gear’s color display. There were nine characters to start, with a few more unlockable via codes. It even broke a little ground for the series, letting players fight as Kuroko and Hikyako for the first time.

Star Wars on Game Gear had all the familiar visuals of A New Hope: stormtroopers, landspeeders, Obi Wan Kenobi and the Mos Eisley cantina, even the Lucasfilm logo and an opening crawl. It was published by Capcom, so maybe George himself didn’t sign off on the game’s version of Luke, who looks about six years old. Or maybe he thought it was a good look the for the beginning of the hero’s journey.

It may have come before Lucasarts took the reigns to Star Wars games on consoles, but it was no embarrassing cash in. There was solid platforming, and tooling around in the landspeeder, meeting up with Han, and flying the Millenium Falcon through an asteroid belt made for terrific gameplay.

Ninja Gaiden for Game Gear had less platforming than the version for Genesis, but it was every bit as fast-paced and unforgiving. Players controlled the ninja Ryu Hayabusa, cutting their way through hundreds of foes and a handful of deadly boss fights.

The game featured cutscenes that wove a modern day ninja yarn about an evil organization hunting Ryu for his Dragon Sword. Ryu must solve a mystery while keeping his legendary blade out of enemy hands. The bad guys wanted it to start World War III, so let’s just say the stakes were high.

Shinobi II: The Silent Fury found the ninja Joe Musashi searching for five elemental crystals. Like in the original, the first four levels could be played in any order, and beating each one unlocked a new power. However, it was less forgiving with this structure than a Mega Man game. If you didn’t have the order right you’d have to revisit a level once you had the proper power.

As a modern day ninja, Shinobi had more than just enemy swordsmen to worry about. There were murderous robots and corrupt businessmen to face, then a showdown with the Black Ninja in his fortress.

Known as Bare Knuckle in Japan, Streets of Rage brought the classic beat ‘em up action of the series to Sega’s handheld. It was a simplified version with just two characters, fewer animations and levels, but an awesome co-op feature for connecting two Game Gears with a system link cable.

As we said, it was a little stripped down. You could no longer grab and knee opponents, but otherwise the gameplay was unchanged. Grappling and throwing was there, you could pick up weapons, and basically beat everyone you met into submission.

The adventures of Simba, the lion who would be king, were a treat on Sega’s Game Gear. The levels followed the flow of the film, going from the young lion’s early days to his final showdown with Scar. The animation and sound wasn’t as bubbly and fluid as in the Genesis version, but otherwise they were very similar games, including the Timon and Pumba bugging eating bonus levels.

The game nicely reflected Simba’s journey from cub to adult. Levels included African plains, jungles, the Elephant Graveyard, the deadly stampede, then all the way back to Pride Rock to dethrone Scar.

Tails Adventure was the third solo outing for Sonic’s sidekick. It was a platformer that even had some light RPG elements. The flying fox collected Chaos Emeralds, which extended his life bar and let him hover for greater distances.

Tails Adventure was a slower, more puzzle-oriented side-scroller than the games he usually co-starred in. There were tons of items to collect, all of which granted new abilities. Stages were selected via a world map, and you could backtrack and use your new powers to uncover previously inaccessible secrets.

Road Rash on Game Gear was basically a port of the Genesis version. This was a good thing, the game had everything the series was known for: racing for cash, upgrading bikes, and violent competition that felt more like The Road Warrior than a lap in any real moto grand prix. It even managed to render the signature rear view mirrors of the series.

As a portable title, it had perfect pick up and play appeal. You could get a race in, then save your progress with the handy password system.

Is there a better way to pass the time on the bus or in a car than a few rounds of Madden? The Game Gear release of this monster sporting franchise opened with John Madden himself reading EA’s tagline, “It’s in the game!” While Madden’s voice wasn’t as omnipresent as in other versions of the game, the sound was still brilliant all around. It captured the dull roar of the crowd, and the grunts and thumps of tackles.

‘96 was a big year for Madden on Game Gear. It added the innovative Create A Player feature, and let you unlock secret classic teams, like the 1960 Philadelphia Eagles and the 1986 New York Giants. There were even top secret “superteams,” which contained players with ridiculous stats named after the developers. Oh the ego!

In a collision of worlds usually reserved for comic book crossovers, Detroit-based Cyberdine helped engineer Skynet, the self-aware defense system that betrays humanity and launches a nuclear war of robot on human violence. It’s up to everyone’s favorite mechanical law enforcer to travel to the future and blast some robo-creeps into spare parts.

Like Alien vs. Predator, Robocop vs. Terminator was the lucky result of movie business synergy. Both films were distributed by Orion Pictures, and you didn’t have to be a marketing genius to see that these two were meant to go head to head. There were comic book collaborations as well, but it never reached the big screen like AvP. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Pun completely intended, Ristar was born to be a star. He looked like a cartoon character, but his long stretchy reach made him an 8-bit hero. Unfortunately, the sales figures for Ristar’s Game Gear version didn’t shine quite as bright as its titular hero did. The game came at time when the handheld was struggling, but that doesn’t mean Ristar wasn’t close to a platforming masterpiece.

There were a few notable differences between this and the Genesis version. First and foremost, Ristar collected stars in the fashion of coins in Mario; getting one hundred meant an extra life. Also, levels were redesigned, they had a similar look to the 16-bit version, but most were laid out rather differently. Despite a small screen size, Ristar’s color palette and animations still rose to the occasion.

Another SNK classic redesigned for Sega’s handheld. It wasn’t the biggest roster Fatal Fury had ever seen, but the essentials were there. Joe, Terry, Geese, Mai and more had their signature styles and special moves rendered in 8-bit glory. The cast still talked plenty of trash between matches, of course.

Fatal Fury Special was another title available on the Neo Geo and in arcades, but its over the top style and quick rounds made it translate perfectly to a handheld, and helped kids everywhere save their quarters.

Sega really got the most out of their rights to make games based on Disney’s Aladdin. They pumped out 8 and 16-bit version for the Game Gear and Genesis, both of which were quality titles. Players played through Aladdin’s journey from street rat to Prince Ali with fun cutscenes that retold the film’s familiar story.

The Game Gear version did a great job of running through the plot, and had a score of beeps and boops strongly reminiscent of the movie’s catchy music. Players dodged palace guards across Agrabah rooftops, navigated the Cave of Wonders, and even took Jasmine on a magic carpet ride through “A Whole New World.”

Like the first Game Gear adaptation, Streets of Rage 2 was a slightly scaled down take on its console big brother, but was still the same sort of hard-hitting beat ‘em up we knew and loved. Players chose one of three characters to wade through scores of vicious thugs, working to rescue their kidnapped friend from the evil Mr. X.

The game featured levels that looked like the console versions, but they were laid out differently, and enemies didn’t have names and life bars like on the Genesis. You could still pick up weapons though, and the awesome link cable two-player mode was back.

Space Harrier was both intense and bizarre. A game from the prolific mind of Yu Suzuki, it was essentially a shooter, but took place from the unusual-for-its-time third-person perspective. It was also completely insane.

The player flies through stages of the “Fantasy Zone” at a truly breakneck pace, blasting a surreal hodgepodge of enemies. Targets included dragons, mammoths and aliens, all of which erupted into fireballs as colorful as the Game Gear’s 8-bits could support. The game also featured live audio samples which said “Get ready,” and assured you, “You’re doing great!”

Dragon Crystal starts off like an 80’s kids adventure movie. Our average young hero rides his average bike down an average street, when he notices a mysterious antique shop. On a shelf inside, he finds a crystal ball, which sucks him into a magical realm of swords and sorcery. That’s when things get slightly out of the ordinary.

In standard old-school RPG fashion, the view is top-down and combat is turn based, but navigating the world is like exploring a maze. New terrain is shrouded in the fog of war, and exploring these labyrinthes is just as challenging as fighting monsters and optimizing your inventory.

Ecco was a pretty weird game for its time, in fact, it’s pretty strange even now. If you haven’t heard, Ecco was a bottlenose whose pod of fellow dolphins were kidnapped. Not by tuna fishermen, but by aliens. Yes, from outer space.

The intrepid aquatic mammal undertakes a rescue effort that brings him to the far reaches of Earth’s oceans, to the remains of Atlantis, and even back in time, until he confronts his alien foes. From the plot to the color palette to the music, it was intriguingly strange and bizarrely new age-y. It really worked as a game, there was something beautiful and exciting about playing as Ecco, snapping up fish and leaping out of the water with a flourish of your tail.

Game Gear’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is not a port of the Genesis version. It’s not even close to the same game. It actually hit shelves just a week earlier, and found Sonic with no spin dash working to rescue Tails from Robotnik and friends.

So no spin dash, but we got tough mine cart and hang gliding sequences instead. Plus the sequel improved on the Game Gear original in a lot of ways. You could now grab rings back after being hurt, a first for portable Sonic, even though his console counterpoint could always do it. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was also the first appearance of Silver Sonic, aka Mecha Sonic, aka that evil robot that looked like Sonic.

Mickey’s Game Gear adventure had a wonderful Japanese title, it translated to I Love Mickey Mouse: Great Mysterious Castle Adventure. Sega developed it themselves, and did indeed show true love for the Disney star. They sent him on a fun, never frightening, adventure to rescue Minnie from the jealous witch Mizrabel (say it out loud).

Besides side-scrolling and girlfriend-rescue, the game had other similarities to Mario. There was platforming aplenty, and jumping on enemy heads was your primary mode of attack. As in many of the era’s family-friendly Disney titles, Mickey threw apples at enemies to defend himself, lives were re-labeled “tries,” and the game featured music reminiscent of mouse house films.

Shining Force’s intense tactics and epic storytelling was perfect for portable, bite-size chunks. The top-down graphics translated nicely to 8-bits, and kept the series’s signature anime-style character profiles. Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya was the second game of the series to grace the Game Gear. The next one, Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict actually bridges the stories between the two games on Genesis.

The Shining Force series and mobile platforms were a perfect match. Numerous entries in the series were produced for PSP, and the games are still popular on mobile phones in Japan.

The triple in Triple Trouble referred to the three villains Sonic faced in this stellar handheld title. The blue blur’s fourth outing on Game Gear, it found him clashing with Robotnik, Knuckles and new menace Nack the Weasel. As in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Genesis, players could choose to play as either Sonic or Tails.

The gameplay featured a few tweaks not seen in most Sonic games. Our heroes could attack after bouncing off a spring, which was essential in many boss fights. Also, getting damaged didn’t send all your rings flying. Just thirty or fifty of them, if you touched an enemy or spikes. The game was released as Sonic and Tails 2 in Japan, where Nack was known as Fang the Sniper.

The first Shinobi on Game Gear was the best Shinobi on Game Gear. Its structure took a queue from Mega Man, with four levels you could conquer in any order. You rescued a teammate in each one, which granted you a new power.

The order of the first four levels was up to you, but going Highway, Harbor, Valley, Woodland was the optimal route. Luckily, if you didn’t follow that order, the game wasn’t designed to make you backtrack, like in Shinobi II.

What do you think? Did we get them all? Tell us your opinion of the selections and our order in the comment section below. The Game Gear had plenty of great games, and we’ve done our best to honor them all, but why not chime and name a game or two?