I already have the Atgames’ Sega Gopher handheld and it’s excellent except for one huge flaw. You cannot save games. So forget playing any RPGs or games like Wonder Boy in Monster World. If it wasn’t for this the Gopher would be the ultimate Sega Hand Held device.

More recently I discovered the GEN Mobile and I thought it was the answer. The GEN Mobile has 20 built in games just like the Gopher but it also allows you to play actual Genesis carts! Meaning you can save your games that have a save feature. And even though the GEN Mobile doesn’t have the same quality in it’s build as the Gopher I would have been fine with it except for one thing. The directional pad on the GEN Mobile is terrible. Each direction, up, down, left and right is an individual button which makes it really hard to slide your thumb over to other directions. Playing an action game feels impossible!
If the directional pad was Plus shaped like the NES or better still like the pad for Genesis I can only believe that it would have been far better. The latter would also allow for 8 directional control instead of it’s existing and a very weak 4 directional layout.

Another negatives is the sound is very poor. It’s a bit better when you use ear phones but even still it’s not great.
The screen is small and it feels pretty cheap. But I would have been very happy with it if the direction pad wasn’t such a problem.

GEN Mobile