Sega Nomad - Design

Design

The Nomad was primarily an evolution of the Japanese market Mega Jet while attempting to capitalize on the handheld market following the success of the Game Gear. Where the Mega Jet was screenless and required an AC adapter, the Nomad featured a 3.25 inch color LCD screen and an external detachable battery pack was available that had room for six AA batteries, making it completely portable as opposed to simply being a small (travel-size) Mega Drive/Genesis system. In addition to its other improvements over the Mega Jet, such as playing most games regardless of region without an adapter, an A/V Out plug was added at the top of the unit, letting owners play games on a television screen with a separate A/V cable. The directional pad on the unit controlled all one-player games, and a port on the bottom allowed a second controller pad to be plugged in for two-player games. This meant that the Nomad could be a fully functional home system as well as a hand-held solution with a preexisting library of games.

Sega originally intended for its successor to feature a touchscreen interface, many years before the Nintendo DS. However, such a technology was very expensive at the time, and the handheld itself was estimated to have cost $289 were it to be released. Sega eventually chose to shelve the idea and release the Sega Nomad as simply a handheld version of the Mega Drive.

See also: Sega Genesis#Technical specifications

Technical specifications

Processor	Motorola 68000 16 bit processor running at 7.67 MHz
Co-processor (sound controller)	Zilog Z80 8-bit at 3.58 MHz
Memory	156KB total (64 KB Main RAM, 64KB VRAM, 8KB Sound RAM. 20 Kb ROM)
Display Palette	512
Onscreen colors	64
Maximum onscreen sprites	80
Resolution	320 × 224
Sound	Yamaha YM2612 6 channel FM, additional 4 channel PSG. Stereo sound; Texas Instruments SN76489 Programmable Sound Generator
Display	Integrated CSTN LCD at 320 x 224
Power rating	9V 850mA (same as Genesis/Mega Drive model 2)

The Nomad was bulky and was not power efficient, offering limited battery life (about 2 hours) compared to contemporary handhelds (specifically Nintendo's Game Boy system). Rechargeable AA batteries were not recommended due to voltage problems (as Ni-Cds provide 1.2V instead of the 1.5V that alkaline batteries output), though a rechargeable battery pack was available separately for $79. The Nomad had compatibility problems with the sister system's add-ons: the Sega 32X, the Mega-CD, and the Power Base Converter. While they did work technologically, forcing compatibility involved modifying the add-on units' shapes or using 3rd party expanders.

The Nomad had a small number of compatibility issues pertaining to specific games:

• X-Men: Requires the player to reset the game at one point to progress. It is impossible to continue the game on the Sega Nomad due to the lack of a reset button.
• 32X Add-on: Cannot be played on the Nomad due to the 32x blocking the AV output.