The avid video game hunters among us who have found a Sega Game Gear at a garage sale or thrift store will know that more often than not the battery covers will be missing. I have been fortunate enough to find a few Sega Game Gears in the wild myself, but of the four I’ve found only one of them had its original battery covers. Missing battery covers not only make the console look incomplete, it also makes the console feel weird in the hands. The battery covers are placed with an ergonomic design so a missing battery cover leaves a gaping hole on the back of the console. This also exposes the edges where the cover should go, which can sometimes be sharp and uncomfortable to hold for even short periods of time.

I think we’re living in a fascinating time where companies are now flooding the market with all kinds of retro gaming related items that can be quite useful. The markets are filled with replacement parts to help make your portable consoles look and feel complete again, or even make it look better than it ever had. I recently found an online seller offering replacement Game Gear battery covers. But how do these unbranded battery covers compare to the originals and are they worth picking up?

Once the replacement battery covers arrived I pulled out my Game Gears and gave them a test. The left sides always clicked into place perfectly, but the right sides simply wouldn’t click down without help. While trying to adjust the clip on one of the right sides I nearly breaking it off, which tells me these aftermarket ones are made of much softer plastic, so keep that in mind. Once I helped the right one lock down in place everything seems perfectly fine. They fit well, they’re comfortable and they look pretty much like the original covers. If there was one criticism to say, other than being made of softer plastic, is the color is ever so slightly different, but not by much.

I also ordered a pair for my Majecso Game Gear. Since Majesco made their Game Gears out of super thin and brittle plastic everything popped into place perfectly, I’m assuming cheap plastics just go better together. Also since the console is a much deeper black than the dark gray of the original Sega version these covers stick out significantly more than they do on the original. Regardless they fit perfect and that’s really all I was wanting from them.

From the outside it’s difficult to tell the aftermarket ones from the originals, again there is just an ever so slight color difference that many might miss. On the inside is where you can clearly tell the difference. The original battery covers will have numbers stamped on the inside, while the aftermarket covers will only have L and R for left and right.

If you want battery covers to make your Sega Game Gear look and feel complete again, these are completely serviceable. If you plan to use batteries and take your Game Gear around with you from place to place then I doubt these replacement covers would last for very long being opened and closed repeatedly. The ones I bought were inexpensive and plentiful, so you could just order a ton of them and do as you please. In my honest opinion I’m happy with them because all I needed was the console to look and feel complete while I used it with the wall adapter. That suits my needs perfectly, so if you’re like me these battery covers are exactly what you need.