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Brazil Is An Alternate Video Game Universe Where Sega Beat Nintendo

atlasobscura.com

41–50 of 78 posts

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

#41

The reason is that Sega had a local partner (Tec Toy) that understood the market and manufactured the consoles in Brazil. SNES, on the other hand, where all imported, and importing anything into Brazil has always been hard (bureaucratic and expensive). When it first launched, your only chance of getting one was having a parent bring one from abroad.

This seems to be a general problem of Nintendo, I think.

Someone told me, you could release your game on Sony console and simply get a factory to produce your game discs. While if you wanted to get your game on a Nintendo console, you had to let Nintendo produce the discs for you in their factories, because of quality control reasons, which slowed down the release process and also filtered out many games of companies who didn't want to stick with Nintendos release rules.

But I don't know how much of this is true...

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

#42
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

(URL with "http://" included for actual link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9doqwl-U7jU )

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

#43
>In an age where globalization permeates everything, Tectoy’s success—not just as a toy company, but as a local filter for that globalization—is actually kind of refreshing. Sega chose wisely all those years ago.

Kind of weird reading this. First because Nintendo also had a local partner during NES age with a company called Gradiente and launched a local version of NES called Phantom System. I owned one, and there was the traditional rivalry Sega vs Nintendo in the form of Master System vs Phantom System, with no clear winner as the article seems to assum.

The other weird part is that it look like a success Tec Toy still be selling Master System consoles and games for low income customers. But Tec Toy is a broke company, it filed for bankruptcy, and the shadow of a company that still exists today survives more from videoke machines and some local mobile gaming than from Master System current sales.

So my impression is that the article is more biased to corroborate its title than reality.

Edit: just learned that Gradiente's Phantom System was a clone of NES, not a Nintendo's local partner. So I retract that particular criticism. SEGA handled brazilian market better than Nintendo, but still Master System was not a clear winner versus Phantom System.

Edit2: Phanton System console for the curious: http://s382.photobucket.com/user/Sr-Ferraz/media/NES%20Syste...

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

#44

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…

> the pirated cartridges didn't have a persistent writable memory Wait so you had to beat every game in a single sitting?

[deleted]

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

#45
post #11

Can confirm. I had a Master System II when I was a kid. Spent hours of my young life playing Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Most of my friends at the time had Mega Drive consoles (Genesis = Mega Drive, not Master System).

I thought for a long time that Mario was some sort of Alex Kidd rip-off.

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

#46
post #43

> In an age where globalization permeates everything, Tectoy’s success—not just as a toy company, but as a local filter for that globalization—is actually kind of refreshing. Sega chose wisely all those years ago. Kind of weird reading this. First because Nintendo also had a local partner during NES age with a company called Gradiente and launched a local version of NES called Phantom System. I owned one, and there w…

What has happened to TecToy later is not refreshing in any sense.

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

#48
post #43

> In an age where globalization permeates everything, Tectoy’s success—not just as a toy company, but as a local filter for that globalization—is actually kind of refreshing. Sega chose wisely all those years ago. Kind of weird reading this. First because Nintendo also had a local partner during NES age with a company called Gradiente and launched a local version of NES called Phantom System. I owned one, and there w…

Interesting — the Sega Master System controller was based on the NES controller, but this NES clone controller is a rip-off of the Genesis (to the point where they gave the select button the position and shape of the C button on the Genesis just so the controller would have the exact same layout).

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

#49
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

This is completely insane. '98 was the year of games like Dune 2000, Thief, Half-life, Fallout 2, RE2, Starcraft, etc yet someone out there was making a 16-bit FPS for a console released nine years prior?

Brazil's tough import laws create weird outcomes I guess.

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

#50
post #5

I'm still waiting for TurboGrafx-16 to take off somewhere so that I can buy new games for it.

You're probably aware of this, but the PC-Engine (TurboGrafx's Japanese counterpart) actually did very well in Japan, beating the Mega Drive for second place in that market.
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