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Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

atlasobscura.com

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Re: Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

#31

Post by artjacob »

alganet wrote: post #7

I'm brazillian! There was some Nintendo market over here. Another brazillian company named CCE built the NES and sold here. It was my first video game (I was about 9). I've had both Sega/TecToy MasterSystem III and Mega Drive (the Genesis). Super Nintendos were popular as well at the time, but as the article suggests most of cartridges were pirated ones. Playstation 1 was another crazy thing in Brazil. I have never s…

Actually Nintendo consoles were manufactured in Brazil by Gradiente, through a company called Playtronic. Gradiente's plant was part of the Free Economic Zone of Manaus, an industrial hub on the heart of the Amazon rainforest. This plant was said to be Nintendo's only plant outside Japan, though I never saw a reliable source confirming this.

Re: Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

#32

Post by shortformblog »

sataaa wrote: post #14
shortformblog wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, Author of the piece. This was an error added during the editing process—if you read later in the piece, the difference is sussed out a bit. The point about NES clones becoming popular in Brazil is also touched upon in the piece. It's getting fixed now. Sorry about that.

It happens again throughout the story. The figure pictured here: https://i.imgur.com/M6YHU51.png misrepresents that also as a Genesis. No Master System in Brazil was a version of Genesis. The Master System revisions included the 6 button controllers but were still Master System consoles. Only played Master System games. Not Mega Drive games. Every version of Genesis was called Mega Drive. edit: Thanks for fixing it!

No problem! Just needed to ping my editor to ensure that the changes were made. :)

Re: Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

#33

Post by artjacob »

pbh101 wrote: post #22
bediger4000 wrote: post #3

I think you'll also find that Pepsi won the Cola War in Brazil. Must be an interesting place, where so many counterfactuals came true.

I've been to Brazil many times and I've never even seen a Pepsi bottle, whereas Coca-Cola seems to be part of the culture there even moreso than in the States.

If you consider their parent companies, you can say Pepsi is larger than Coca-Cola in Brazil, since the Pepsi brand here is owned by AB-InBev. But Pepsi definitely did not win the Cola War.

Re: Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

#34

Post by alganet »

artjacob wrote: post #31
alganet wrote: post #7

I'm brazillian! There was some Nintendo market over here. Another brazillian company named CCE built the NES and sold here. It was my first video game (I was about 9). I've had both Sega/TecToy MasterSystem III and Mega Drive (the Genesis). Super Nintendos were popular as well at the time, but as the article suggests most of cartridges were pirated ones. Playstation 1 was another crazy thing in Brazil. I have never s…

Actually Nintendo consoles were manufactured in Brazil by Gradiente, through a company called Playtronic. Gradiente's plant was part of the Free Economic Zone of Manaus, an industrial hub on the heart of the Amazon rainforest. This plant was said to be Nintendo's only plant outside Japan, though I never saw a reliable source confirming this.

It seems NES was made by multiple manufacturers in Brazil: http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/nes/brazil/brazil.html

Re: Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

#36

Post by bitwize »

epidemian wrote: post #9

I'm pretty sure the Sega Genesis also beat the SNES by a large margin here in Argentina too. At least i grew up with a Genesis and knew a lot of people who had one, while i only knew of one person who owned a SNES[1]. One of the possible reasons for this is that there were cheap pirated Genesis games available[2], which, i think , SNES games were much more expensive, probably not pirated. [1]: The graphics and fluidi…

Sega handed Nintendo its ass during the early 90s in the USA by positioning themselves as the modern video game company for the 90s, full of rebelliousness and attitude. This was reflected in their positioning of characters like Sonic and their admittance of games with blood and other violent content like Mortal Kombat.

The only problem is 'tude only gets you so far, and without a cohesive technology strategy to see them through into the next generations, Sega faltered big time, stretching themselves too thin and spending resources on wacky go-nowhere strategies like the 32X. The Saturn had weak 3D capability but more memory, allowing for impressive sprite-based games the PlayStation wasn't capable of; yet such a system was difficult to position in the American market and Sega never recovered from that.

Also Nintendo realized that gamers were getting older and starting in the late SNES era, loosened some of its content restrictions, negating Sega's edginess advantage.

Still, I think more Gennys were sold to Americans than SNESes, so Sega may have been able to say in some sense that they "won" the fourth console generation in that market. The true pain for them would come from trying to stand against Sony in the fifth and sixth generation eras.

Re: Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

#37

Post by oscargrouch »

ForHackernews wrote: post #18

Brazil is also an alternate universe where Orkut was extremely popular: http://mashable.com/2012/01/17/facebook-beats-orkut-brazil/

I was using Orkut(here in Brazil) in 2004. Long before Zuckerberg was even thinking about building one, and before the MySpace fever in the US.

About the time Facebook was catching up here in Brazil(about 2009/2010), Orkut had years ahead of social networking history.. they lose to themselves, or to the social class system here, because too many people was using it, and the early adopters, and the "cool people" were abandoning the ship, because it loose the energy, and became too spammy

Re: Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

#38

Post by dguaraglia »

rsrsrsrs wrote: post #19
bediger4000 wrote: post #3

I think you'll also find that Pepsi won the Cola War in Brazil. Must be an interesting place, where so many counterfactuals came true.

False. (Brazilian here)

With that username, I can confirm you are Brazilian :)

Re: Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

#39

Post by Scuds »

There's a crazy ass 'port' of Duke Nukem 3d for the Sega Genesis developed by TecToy. Every other vertical pixel column was rendered for perf reasons. Remarkable, really. Also, this was released in 1998, three years after the 16 bit era was winding down in the US.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9doqwl-U7jU

Re: Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

#40

Post by SG- »

Scuds wrote: post #39

There's a crazy ass 'port' of Duke Nukem 3d for the Sega Genesis developed by TecToy. Every other vertical pixel column was rendered for perf reasons. Remarkable, really. Also, this was released in 1998, three years after the 16 bit era was winding down in the US. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9doqwl-U7jU

That gameplay looks more like Wolfenstein but with Duke sprites.

I honestly feel bad for kids who thought they were getting a decent game or reading about games being released around the world and seeing images of them and thinking that Sega Master system could do it. At least it was cheap.

The Street Fighter II footage has sprites that look like it, but the gameplay isn't really anything like it.

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