Wise-cracking tropical house lizard Gex the gecko is making the leap from Sony PlayStation to Manley Toy Quest, where he will appear in at least four different electronic hand-held games over the next year. Manley is taking advantage of a two-year licensing agreement with Creative Licensing Corporation for Crystal Dynamics’ gecko property to produce hand-held LCD games ranging from a simple black-and-white version retailing at US$9.99, to a color 3D-display version retailing at US$29.99. The games will be aimed at kids ages five to eight to avoid directly competing with Sony PlayStation’s Gex games, which target slightly older kids. The first two games will be shipping in less than one month and the next two will launch at New York’s American International Toy Fair in February.

Gex follows Manley’s successful licensing agreement for Crash Bandicoot, another popular PlayStation property. Manley expects to ship several hundred thousand games featuring Crash in 1999.