Years ago I inherited my wife's family's Game Gear. After a recap, and replacing the backlight, I started tracking down games to play on it. It's been great exploring a whole library of games that I skipped out on as a kid! (I was a Nintendo kid) Now I have a nice little library of carts to play on this beast of a 90's handheld.
Fortunately the Genesis version doesn't have any of those issues (aside from the first stage, ironically enough, there's only one insta-death place in each of the other stages), though it is weird that the portable version doesn't have a pause or save function.