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Post by bkk on Feb 14, 2016 9:29:51 GMT
Great work. The list is missing Alex Kidd in Shinobi World. I think that this was the first game with no ®. I've previously posted pictures of "English/ SM" and "No ® (5L)" Space Harrier variants here. It might be worth splitting the language number variants at a later stage, especially if the list is expanded to include later years. That can help in seeing a chronology of releases. IIRC the order goes 1>5>6>8>7 (they seemed to have dropped Finnish later on). Edit: Presumably Alex Kidd in Shinobi World is missing as it's the first game with no variants.
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Post by bkk on Feb 7, 2016 15:40:11 GMT
Nice info bkk , thanks for sharing. All Italian manuals state "Printed in Japan". They would also have had to swap the label on the back of the card/cart, as these are printed in Italian. Interestingly, the Italian Great Soccer manual is dated 1987, while both the English and German version manuals are dated 1986 (the same as the game itself). The pre-production manuals also have "Printed in Japan" on the back, so it could just be down to the distributor simply copying the back cover without altering it. I presume that the Italian card/cart stickers were done by Sega, as they were just a one time translation which could be used on all games. The Great Soccer manual is an interesting anomaly, is it just a translation of the English manual (I don't think that there is a known pre-production variant of it)? This probably deserves it's own thread, but here goes. Ariolasoft catalogue (from rupert); These games are listed as available; Hang On Choplifter Fantasy Zone TransBot My hero F-16 Fighter World Grand Prix Black Belt Action Fighter Pro Wrestling Great Soccer Marksman Shooting / Trap Shooting / Safari Hunt Astro Warrior/Pit-Pot Those were all available either bundled with hardware, or in German covers, but with the "The Sega Card / The Mega Cartridge" on the front cover. These were presumably the launch titles. These games are listed as upcoming; The Ninja Miracle Land (Alex Kidd in Miracle World) Great Ice Hockey (Cancelled) Space Harrier Great Tennis (Super Tennis) Out of the four that were released in Europe, three have German variants, this time with the front cover also translated into German ("Die Sega Card / Die Mega Cartridge"). The one exception is Space Harrier, which doesn't have a known Italian variant either. The US release; This was the first "Two Mega Cartridge", so maybe they had chip shortages at first and didn't release in Europe until later, or maybe the first shipment was so low that it's just really rare. I have an English only PAL variant on the way from Hong Kong, so it did initially get a limited PAL release at least. Now this is where it gets odd, with the mentioned US versions with cheap black and white German manuals. They often have a yellow sticker on the box "Mit DEUTSCHER Bedienungs-Antleitung" ("With GERMAN user manual"). It seems that Ariolasoft imported these from the US and then printed their own German manuals. Whether or not this was with permission of Sega, who knows? But Ariolasoft lost out on the UK distribution rights due to a disagreement on pricing policy; And it seems that the releationship between Ariolasoft and Sega wasn't too great; They did this all the way through to when they lost the distribution rights to Virgin in 1988, with 1988 titles like Aztec Adventure and After Burner getting released in this format. A dedicated thread would be useful for documenting these. The only two games to get released with German variants after they started importing US versions were Bank Panic, and Spy Vs. Spy. Neither of these had been released in the US (Spy Vs. Spy eventually got released in the US in October, 1988). These two also translate the game's title on the manuals. So my theory is that by the time that they got around to releasing Ghost House and Teddy Boy, they had changed their policy to importing US versions when available ... I guess that worked out cheaper.
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Post by bkk on Feb 7, 2016 8:22:43 GMT
This is excellent information and very interesting. Is this all your own research from various sources? Have you got all this written down anywhere else? Do you have any more information beyond this? Yeah, mainly from research posted in this thread, which I used to edit some of the country and distributor pages on SegaRetro (I'm "Pirate Dragon" there). If you have any specific questions then I may be able to help. I'll also help contribute to a PAL variant list. Neat, that's a unique piece of SMS history!
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Post by bkk on Feb 6, 2016 23:06:05 GMT
Quoting myself; There was generally ~3 months between Japanese and US releases, presumably due to the logistics of shipping etc. Wonder Boy released in Japan on 1987-03-22, so that seems to be the cut off for when the "SM" (and English only PAL) variants were produced. Distribution deals were generally done at CES in the US. Following Summer CES 1986 (June 1986) Sega released SMS in the US in October, Ariolasoft in Germany in October, and NBC Italia in Italy in November. In Germany the first 10,000 units included Hang On free, so I wonder if that was the minimum order from Sega for them to also bundle Hang On, and maybe localise the game covers and manuals. Italy didn't include Hang On, had English covers, and Italian manuals which were actually based off of the pre-production prototype manuals rather than the final production manuals. In the thread posted earlier it's mentioned that a sealed Italian Hang On included an English manual, so I think that it's likely that the local distributor produced Italian manuals (based off of their pre-production prototypes) in advance, and swapped them with the English manuals supplied by Sega. In 1986 "Sega Australia" took over from John Sands in Australia, so it would seem that it was a similar situation to the US, with Sega distributing directly at first. "Toltoys" were the distributor by April 1988. Interestingly Toltoys were a division of Kenner Parker, who also owned Tonka (who took over US distribution in July 1987) at the time. Later in 1988 Ozisoft took over Australian distribution. Wong's Kong King (WKK) were a Hong Kong manufacturer of Sega Hardware, who also distributed the SMS in Hong Kong. English only variants are quite common amongst SMS games found in Hong Kong. There's a warranty from WKK posted here with a date of 1987-04-01, so they were already distributing SMS then, and likely earlier. Dennis Bergström came back from Winter CES 1987 (January 1987) with the distribution rights to Sweden, and Proein released the SMS in Spain. I've seen an English only Wonder Boy on Ebay.es, so it's possible that these two countries also received English only PAL variants at first. Irwin also started distributing SMS in Canada around about this time. Summer CES 1987 (June 1987). Mastertronic signed up for the UK distribution rights here, releasing in August, with Master Games Systeme France releasing in September. By this time UK and France should have missed the cut off for English only variants, with Sega having already switched to "five language" variants. It's possible that Sega still shipped some old stocks of English only variants to the UK, or maybe these just occasionally show up in the UK due to emigration from Australia etc.
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Post by bkk on Feb 3, 2016 21:18:16 GMT
English only without "Sega of America" are early PAL releases from 1986 and the first half of 1987, before they went multi-lingual. They were released in other countries such as Hong Kong and Italy as well as Australia. Manuals are similar to US versions, but without "Sega of America".
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Post by bkk on Dec 7, 2015 1:38:57 GMT
Back to the original question: conventional wisdom tended to be that there are 269 unique games released in Europe (on a technicality I suppose you could add the two Portuguese Tec Toy games mentioned above). I'm pretty certain Les Schrtoumpfs Autour du Monde was never released in the UK, so those going for a "UK set" could call it 268 games. Then again, those going for a "PAL set" could also include another 32 Brazilian games, as well as Mah-Jong/Mak-Jong. Part of the confusion probably stems from the interchangeable use of PAL and Euro. In the end, it doesn't really matter - far too much emphasis is put on "full set" collecting these days. People should be happy just to collect in their own way. Great Soccer (card) never released in the UK either. As for Brazil, whilst it technically uses PAL colour encoding, it's a 60Hz region like the US. France is SECAM (although French SMSs are RGB only), but when people refer to PAL and NTSC in video games they generally mean 50Hz and 60Hz, which is what can cause issues when playing games from one region on a machine from another. When Sega enforced software regions on the Mega Drive/Genesis Brazil was NTSC-U (60Hz/En). Anyway, as you say, just collect what you want to.
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Post by bkk on Dec 6, 2015 9:09:59 GMT
Sure, they're licensed PAL releases, as is Mah-Jong. Without them it would just be a complete UK (or other major European country) set.
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Post by bkk on Oct 30, 2015 21:51:31 GMT
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Post by bkk on Oct 15, 2015 6:51:47 GMT
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Post by bkk on Oct 13, 2015 19:10:31 GMT
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Post by bkk on Sept 9, 2015 19:51:58 GMT
My first too! Very smooth trade, recommended.
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Post by bkk on Aug 31, 2015 20:29:49 GMT
It's the correct adapter, I can't say whether it's faulty or not though.
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Post by bkk on Aug 31, 2015 17:00:55 GMT
It's a 1988 (second digit of the serial number is the last digit of manufacture year, you've found that out already though) West German model (18 in the model number is the code for West Germany/Germany) with Hang On built in (final letter in the model number denotes the bios, in 1988 B=Hang On). The case is a SMS rental case, video rental shops used to rent out SMS hardware in those cases. The code for Nordic countries was 24, but it's possible that back in 1988 Finland just received German models (both countries seem to have been UHF PAL-G).
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Sonic
Aug 30, 2015 14:25:44 GMT
Post by bkk on Aug 30, 2015 14:25:44 GMT
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Sonic
Aug 30, 2015 12:11:50 GMT
Post by bkk on Aug 30, 2015 12:11:50 GMT
I have a spare CIB Sonic, not in great condition, the manual cover has been coloured in slightly. A parcel from the UK is up to 500 grams, so can add a CIB Sonic 2 (again not in great condition, manual is curled up at corners.) Can ship the pair to the US for £16 (~$25). Will take some pictures if you're interested.
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