Difference between revisions of "Mega Drive consoles in Asia"
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Revision as of 11:24, 29 May 2012
This short article is in need of work. You can help Sega Retro by adding to it.
From Sega's perspective, everything east of Europe and west of Japan/South Korea is classed as "Asia". This is a very large region and covers dozens of countries, but the markets are generally considered to be quite small as we're dealing with second world and potentially even third world countries. The company made more of an effort to localise for specific countries with the Sega Master System, but generally targeted fewer countries and was not tremendously successful.
With the Mega Drive, we generally see the same hardware distributed across this region, sometimes in the same basic boxes, but with added stickers, leaflets and support by localised distributors. Similar to Europe, Sega also was unable to market their console in every country in the region, however whereas the vast majority of Europe was covered by Sega, only a minority of Asia saw traditional Mega Drive consoles, and the timeline is patchy. For example, India only recevied the Mega Drive 2 in the late date of 1995, while Hong Kong got their Mega Drives at the turn of the decade.
From a hardware perspective, there are only a few Mega Drive models - Sega built "one size fits all" systems in with either PAL or NTSC video output, and sold the system in whichever country they could. The Asian "region" covers the middle east, the islands of south east Asia, and the likes of India, China and Russia on the mainland. It's possible it even covers what little consoles were sold in Africa. It does not cover Japan, nor does it cover South Korea, and some states such as China are basically seen as "no go" areas so don't tend to count.
Mega Drives are still in production in Asia to this day, mostly handled by AtGames who ship scaled down consoles to all over the world, but they will not be covered on this page. We know very little about this region and so information is currently in short supply.
Contents
"Gulf" States
This includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates. Distributors Alesayi United grouped these countries together and supplied them with the same stuff, though we do not know exactly what each country received.
A form of Mega Drive
Though we cannot specify exactly which type of Mega Drive was released in the Gulf, we know at least one model was released due to the existence of the Sega 32X in that region. The Mega Drive in question would use PAL.
| "Mega Drive", Gulf |
|---|
 Cover
|
Console Control Pad |
India
Mega Drive 2
Mega Drive 2 was distributed by Shaw Wallace in India. It debuted in 1995.
| Mega Drive, IN |
|---|
   Cover
|
 Console |
Hong Kong
May also cover Macau. Region uses PAL-I.
Mega Drive
| Mega Drive, HK |
|---|
  Cover
|
.jpg){kind=small} Console |
Mega Drive (with Sonic the Hedgehog)
| Mega Drive, HK |
|---|
 Cover
|
Thailand
Mega Drive 2
The Mega Drive 2 was distributed by Galaxy Group in Thailand, under their "Consumer Amusement Sales" division. Included was a four language manual; English, Chinese, Malay, and Thai.
| Mega Drive 2, TH |
|---|
  Cover
|
Unknown
Mega Drive (PAL-B) (Hi-Star JP Box)
Original Japanese box with Japanese manual, but with Hi-Star PAL-B sticker on box and Hi-Star Electronics sticker on console.
| Mega Drive, ?? |
|---|
 Cover
|
Mega Drive (PAL-B) (Hi-Star)
A version distributed by Singapore based "Hi-Star".
| Mega Drive, ?? |
|---|
 Cover
|
Console |
Mega Drive (PAL-B)
Four language manual; English, Chinese, Malay, and Thai.
| Mega Drive, ?? |
|---|
  Cover
|
Mega Drive (PAL-B) (with Sonic)
NOTE: Console itself uses undocumented region code -15
| Mega Drive, ?? |
|---|
  Cover
|
Console |
Mega Drive (PAL-D)
| Mega Drive, ?? |
|---|
 Cover
|
Console |
Mega Drive 2 (NTSC)
| Mega Drive 2, ?? |
|---|
  Cover
|
Console |
Mega Drive 2 (Green Box; NTSC)
| Mega Drive 2, ?? |
|---|
 Cover
|
Console |
Mega Drive 2 (Green Box; PAL)
Four language manual; English, Chinese, Malay, and Arabic.
| Mega Drive 2, ?? |
|---|
  Cover
|
Mega Drive 2 (Bigger Green Box; PAL)
Three language box; English, Chinese, and Malay.
| Mega Drive 2, ?? |
|---|
  Cover
|
Console |