were further hurt by Nintendo's release of the Game Boy Pocket, a smaller version of the Game Boy which could run on two AAA batteries. Plans for a 16-bit successor to the Game Gear were made to bring Sega's handheld systems into the fifth generation of video games, but a new handheld system never materialized for Sega, leaving only the Genesis Nomad, a portable version of the Genesis, to take its place. Moreover, the Nomad was intended to supplement the Game Gear rather than replace it; in press coverage leading up to the Nomad's release, Sega representatives said the company was not dropping support for the Game Gear in favor of the Nomad, and that "We believe the two can co-exist". Though the Nomad had been released in 1995, Sega did not officially end support for the Game Gear until 1996 in Japan, and 1997 worldwide. Though the system was no longer supported by Sega in 2000, third-party developer Majesco Entertainment released a version of the Game Gear at US$30, with games retailing at US$15. New games were released, such as a port of Super Battletank. This version was also compatible with all previous Game Gear games, but was incompatible with the TV Tuner and some Master System converters. Over ten years later, on March 2, 2011, Nintendo announced that their 3DS Virtual Console service on the Nintendo eShop would feature games from the Game Gear. Technical specifications A handheld game console, the Game Gear was designed to be played while being held horizontally. The console contains an 8-bit 3.5MHz Zilog Z80 chip for a central processing unit, the same as the Master System. Its screen measures on the diagonal and is able to display up to 32 colors at a time from a total palette of 4096 colors, with a frame rate of 59.922751013551Hz at a display resolution of 160 × 144 non-square pixels. The screen is backlit in order to allow players to game in low-lighting situations. Powered by six AA batteries, the Game Gear has an approximate battery life of 3 to 5 hours. In order to lengthen this duration and to save money for consumers, Sega also released two types of external rechargeable battery packs for the Game Gear. The system contains 8KB of RAM and an additional 16KB of video RAM. It produces sound using a Texas Instruments SN76489 PSG, which was also used in