The massive success of Nintendo's Game Boy inspired many other companies to try and get a piece of the action - one of those was a Taiwanese game hardware and software developer, Bit Corp. Possibly in conjunction with some other Taiwanese companies, but that's not exactly clear at the moment. Anyway, their response to the Game Boy was... pretty similar to the Game Boy, only horizontally oriented and with a worse screen. But they beat NEC, Sega and, er, Watara to the market with the Gamate, or chaoji xiaozi (超級小子, literally "Super Boy") as it was known in Chinese-speaking countries. The Gamate was quite possibly the first handheld console release directly inspired by the Game Boy (the Lynx was released in 1989, so it's doubtful Atari knew just how insanely well the GB would sell when they conceived it) and it even outlived Bit Corp itself, being supported by UMC into 1993 and possibly beyond. Being first (or third) and sticking around for a few years afterwards isn't necessarily a guarantee of success, though - pretty much everyone has heard of the Game Gear, anyone who knows their stuff has heard of the TurboExpress/PCE GT, and ... some people have heard of the Supervision. But very few know of the Gamate, it seems, and even fewer have anything online about it. Which is why this page exists, really. To (hopefully) shed some light on one of the most overlooked systems to ever have more than 60 games released for it.
So, by all means, have a look around. And if you own a Gamate, or you've played a Gamate, or you were around in whatever country when it was on sale (especially Taiwan), or if you know anything about any of the games I don't own myself, or about various companies' involvement in the thing, or the Color Gamate, or any of the thousands of other things I can only speculate on, I'd be incredibly appreciative if you could contact me. thanks!
The massive success of Nintendo's Game Boy inspired many other companies to try and get a piece of the action - one of those was a Taiwanese game hardware and software developer, Bit Corp. Possibly in conjunction with some other Taiwanese companies, but that's not exactly clear at the moment. Anyway, their response to the Game Boy was... pretty similar to the Game Boy, only horizontally oriented and with a worse screen. But they beat NEC, Sega and, er, Watara to the market with the Gamate, or chaoji xiaozi (超級小子, literally "Super Boy") as it was known in Chinese-speaking countries. The Gamate was quite possibly the first handheld console release directly inspired by the Game Boy (the Lynx was released in 1989, so it's doubtful Atari knew just how insanely well the GB would sell when they conceived it) and it even outlived Bit Corp itself, being supported by UMC into 1993 and possibly beyond. Being first (or third) and sticking around for a few years afterwards isn't necessarily a guarantee of success, though - pretty much everyone has heard of the Game Gear, anyone who knows their stuff has heard of the TurboExpress/PCE GT, and ... some people have heard of the Supervision. But very few know of the Gamate, it seems, and even fewer have anything online about it. Which is why this page exists, really. To (hopefully) shed some light on one of the most overlooked systems to ever have more than 60 games released for it.