Game Gear - TMSS copyright screen

[eegad]

I had a Game Gear back in the day. After years of not being used, I got it recapped last year. Also bought another refurbished Game Gear console and a handful of new games (ie games I didnt have before).

 

I only just took notice of the fact that my "refurbished" console displays the "tmss" message at power on, and my original one doesn't. Until now I just was thinking some games displayed the message and some didnt. Then I played Lemmings on the refurbished one, and the next day on my original one and was like What The!?!

 

It made me curious, so I googled it and found a couple sites that say the tmss copyright screen was added in later versions of Game Gear and that it seems early non-tmss Game Gears have "flat" screen covers, while tmss-enabled Game Gears came with curved screen covers. Hmmmm. MY Game Gear from back in the day definitely has the curved screen cover but no tmss (I never have even seen a GG with a flat screen cover! ). I dont know the date I got my GG but it was right when Sonic first started getting packaged with it.

 

Just wondering if anyone else has a curved screen cover without tmss, or any more info about the topic.

[kevtris]

I had a third type of game gear I have not heard of being reported; It checked the copyright string like the TMSS one did, but didn't have the blue and white screen saying it was licensed or manufactured by sega. I only discovered this trying to run my own ROMs on it. My original launch system played it just fine, but the other GG didn't play it, and just black screened. Turns out it was checking for the TMR SEGA string.