Gamate

Gamate

Gamate and 3 games
Manufacturer	Bit Corporation United Microelectronics Corporation
Type	Handheld game console
Generation	Fourth generation
Retail availability	1990–1994
Media	ROM Card
CPU	UMC UA6588F (earlier revision) NCR 81489 (later revision) both 6502 based
Memory	16KB RAM
Display	LCD in 4 greyscale
Graphics	160 × 144 pixels
Sound	mono internal speaker
Power	6V, four AA batteries
Dimensions	16.7 × 9.7 × 3.3 cm (6.58 × 3.82 × 1.3 inches)

The Gamate, known as 超級小子 (pinyin: chāojí xiǎozi, literally "Super Boy") in Taiwan and 超级神童 (pinyin: chāojí shéntóng, literally "Super Child Prodigy") in China, is a handheld game console manufactured by Bit Corporation in the early 1990s, and released in Australia, parts of Europe and Asia, Argentina, the United States, and possibly other regions.

It never sold in numbers comparable to the Game Boy or even the Watara Supervision, and as a result information on the console and its games remains scarce. The only emulator that supports it is MESS. Over 70 games, not all dumped, are known to have been produced for the system.

The Gamate appears to be the first of the many handheld consoles released in reaction to the success of Nintendo's Game Boy.

It was originally released by the Taiwanese game company Bit Corporation in conjunction with local distributors around the world, such as Alston Research in the USA, the joystick maker Cheetah Marketing in the UK, and toy company GIG in Italy. Bit Corp. ceased operating in 1992 but UMC and its subsidiary Funtech continued to produce Gamate hardware and software.

Unlike other Taiwanese or Hong Kong Game Boy competitors, such as the Watara Supervision, Hartung Game Master and the Mega Duck, the Gamate's internal hardware contains no epoxy covered chips and was assembled in a quality manner. The build quality is relatively akin to that of the Game Boy. The shell is made of a thick plastic and with batteries installed, the unit feels very similar to the weight of a Game Boy.