So I had a working version of HERTS. I went to test it on a real Game Gear and the result was a flickering mess when an item got shot. Angry, I tried to stop it from doing this, but I gave up at about 9pm. Went to sleep a few hours later with a broken game. Woke up at about noon. A few more hours' work and I finally got it working on a real Game Gear. I also was able to add the onion ring shooting sfx back in the game. It sounds exactly like a computer ringing up an item's barcode at the grocery store. Oh well. At least it works.

What have I learned from all this? The Game Gear can sound like a supermarket computer. That's about it. I didn't learn why it was working fine in Emulicious and not on Game Gear. I didn't learn how I fixed it. So now I can go on with the project. But not today. I'm burned out from programming for today.