History of Sega in Latvia

History of Sega in Latvia
Official Sega distributor(s): Nissho Iwai (1994-1995), Andrico (2008-2013), Gamelab (2009-2013), TKM Baltics (2014-2019), iWare Distribution (2019-present)

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In August 21, 1991 Latvia declared independence from the USSR and became an independent state. For foreign companies such as Sega, this meant a new market must be obtained.

From early 90s, Rambo TV Game, a Atari 2600 clone, was released and became the first more known console, that was quickly replaced by Zhiliton 938-A, a clone of the Nintendo Famicom, designed to resemble Sega Mega Drive, which found success across all Baltic States. However, no one suspected that the console was similar to Sega's products due to their lack in the region.

It is also known that the Dendy console, popular in other USSR countries, appeared in this region by Steepler resellers. The Dendy received some attention, but was never as popular as Zhiliton, especially with more and more new and cheap clones on the market such as UFO, Liko, Terminator 2 and Subor. Later Steepler distributed here Mega Drive clones like Pro 16 Bit, High Quality and also some original Asian Mega Drive 2 and US Genesis CDX with original NTSC-U, PAL Asia and bootleg games. In November 1994, Steepler was licensed by Nintendo to sell their products in all former Soviet Union countries, and thus Super Nintendo and Game Boy were released in that region, but these products were not popular.

The first official Sega consoles in Latvia appeared around 1994, led by the Sega Mega Drive (which then cost around LVL 120), Master System II, Game Gear and were supply by Nissho Iwai to local sub-distributors. Sega Saturn was supplied by Sega Europe from 1996. Sega was referred to by many as 'the pioneer of video games in Latvia'. Back in September 1997, Mega Drive could be purchased for LVL 25-50 and games cost from LVL 3-14 depending on the novelty, Six Button Control Pad cost LVL 3.5-5, Arcade Power Stick 6B and The Justifier cost for LVL 50, Power Base Converter and adaptors cost for LVL 5-7 and popular games for MD back then were Flashback, Prince Of Persia, Lost Vikings, Mortal Kombat series and others, while the Sega Saturn cost around LVL 300. There was also an official club for Sega owners called Sega Mega Klubos. Of course, cheaper bootleg Sega games were sold on the market, as well as unlicensed 16-bit systems that mostly resembled the Asian Mega Drive 2 releases in a green box, some sold with Latvian instructions. Mega Drive with Famiclones and PlayStation still remains in the region as one of the most popular consoles from the 90s. Besides Famicom and Mega Drive clones, Sega had competition in form of Super Nintendo and Game Boy (distributed from November 1994 by Steepler), Atari Jaguar (distributed from 1995 by Game Land), PlayStation (distributed from April 1997 by Computer 2000) and 3DO.

In 2008 Andrico became a distributor. In 2009, the company made an agreement with Gamelab regarding the sale of games in the region of the Baltic states.Andrico helped Gamelab and translated the game boxes into Latvian. The cooperation ended in 2013. In 2014, the Latvian company TKM Baltics became the distributor of Sega games in this region.The games were mainly available for purchase on the Gamebalt website.

iWare Distribution became a distributor in 2019.

Several publishers from Russia have also released Sega games in this country. 1C-SoftClub sold, among others, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed and Football Manager 2011. Akella released Sakura Taisen in the Baltic States. There were also many pirate games on PC from Russia.

To this day, clones of Mega Drive can still be found on the market. There are mainly from Russia but some of them originate directly from Asia. However, these clones are not very common and are not as popular as they were in the 1990s.

External links

• Latvian site about Dreamcast