History of Sega in Romania
From Sega Retro
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| History of Sega in Romania |
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| Official Sega distributor(s): Nissho Iwai (≥ 1992-1995), TNT Games (200x-2012), SKIN Media (2012-2015), Best Distribution (2016-present) |
Romania began its transition away from Soviet-style communism in 1989, and like many of its Warsaw pact neighbours became a more attractive place for foreign Western investers.
From early 90s, Rambo TV Game, a Atari 2600 clone, was released and became the first more known console, that was quickly replaced by famiclones like Terminator 2, the most popular of this clones, which box design resemble Sega Mega Drive 2.
The first official Sega console that was released in Romania was the Sega Master System in around 1992. In around 1994, Romania saw the release of Mega Drive, Master System II, Sega Game Gear and Mega Drive add-ons, but the most popular were first two. The system was supply by Nissho Iwai to local sub-distributors like local video games/electronics retailers and large shopping centers e.g Unirea. The consoles were funded as prizes in several competitions such as Euro 96 Album and Tom & Jerry – Flintstones – Scooby-Doo Album.
Famicom clones appeared on the wave of popularity of Mega Drive in the country, which looked like Mega Drive in a green box from Asian distribution. Besides Famicom and Mega Drive clones, Sega had competition in form of Super Nintendo and Game Boy (distributed from >1995 by Omnitoys[1]) and 3DO. When in mid-1995, Sega Europe took duties from Nissho Iwai and started selling Sega Saturn in early 1996, the Sega brand began to lose its importance in a favour of Nintendo 64 (distributed from 1997 by Omnitoys[2]) and PlayStation (distributed from >1997 by Sony Romania). Dreamcast has also been released in Romania, but has not gained popularity either.
After Dremacast TNT Games became a distributor in Romania,[3] but in 2012, SKIN Media took over and began distribution of Sega games starting with Football Manager 2013.[4] Since 2016, the distributor is Best Distribution.[5].
Rom Bowling is the exclusive distributor of Sega arcade games in Romania.[6]