‘Sonic The Hedgehog 2’ For Sega Game Gear Mysteriously Sells 1 Copy

For some unknown reason, someone in the United States bought a copy of the 25-year-old game “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” for the Sega Game Gear, an 8-bit handheld game console that was released in Japan in 1990, and in North America in 1991.

NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella was the one who publicly disclosed the information after accessing detailed sales reports from retailers. It’s really a mystery why someone bought a copy of the game that came out on Nov. 17, 1992. It’s also odd that a retailer managed to keep a copy of a game for a handheld device that was discontinued way back in 1997.

Piscatella revealed in his tweets that the mysterious buyer obtained a copy of “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” from a retailer in March 2018. He also expressed the questions that boggled his mind after stumbling upon this information. “Was it just buried in some back room the last twenty years? Did it get lost underneath some retail fixture? Was it a twenty something year old pre-order?”

When someone asked Piscatella about the circumstances of the sale, he disclosed that the copy may have been sold as new by a retailer because consignment stores do not provide point-of-sale (POS) data. Plus, the data on the sale was transmitted via the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which means it was scanned at a register.

Some people who got interested in Piscatella’s discovery surmised that the game may have been sold as part of Toys R Us’ sell-off, which is undeniably the best explanation for the situation, according to Polygon. Nevertheless, Piscatella was determined to learn more about the sale as per his tweet.

Interestingly, it seems Piscatella’s search for the mysterious buyer is over. A relative of the buyer reached out to the analyst via social media and revealed that the copy was bought in a Wisconsin store for $6.99. The relative also clarified that the game was bought in February and not last month. Sadly, the Game Gear they have does not work properly anymore, so they may need to buy another one to play the game.

Throughout its run, the Sega Game Gear sold a total of 10.62 million units. Unfortunately, it was forced out of the market by its competitor, the Nintendo Game Boy. The latter was a bigger hit since it shipped a total of 118.69 million units in its various forms, according to GameRant.