History of Sega in Russia

I think we need a continental definition for countries which straddle continental borders. Currently Russia is classified as Asia, and geographically the majority of the country is in Asia, but it also straddles Europe too. Indeed, the main population centres are in Europe, and politically the country is aligned to European institutions, and the UN classifies it as a European country. It's a similar situation with Turkey. I would generally go with the technical standards (PAL/SECAM/NTSC), but as Asia has had mixed standards in the past this is not applicable. Personally I would go with the UN definition, but am happy to go with other suggestions if they result in a definition that can be universally applied to any other such countries.--Pirate Dragon (talk) 19:11, 13 June 2014 (CDT)

Some of this isn't based on geography per se, but rather Sega's loose definition of "Asia", which from the sounds of things seems to stretch from what we would consider Asia, to chunks of Oceania and westwards all the way to North Africa (not including Japan and South Korea). Wherever "Asian" consoles were sold... because there's not really a better word to describe it I guess.

These days Russia is treated more as a European country, i.e. its covers have PEGI ratings and similar release dates. -Black Squirrel (talk) 03:54, 14 June 2014 (CDT)

With a bit more knowledge acquired since I first asked this question, if we go by hardware releases we should probably go by whether they had EU or Asian hardware released. They hadn't really formulated an "Asian region" with SMS, they started it with MD1, but really pushed it from around 1993 with MD2, with 32X (1994/1995) being the first (and only) hardware with Asian specific software at launch. They don't seem to have bothered with Asian software for Saturn (a few third party Asian variants exist), and although there were Asian Saturn hardware models, distribution was so limited in these borderline regions that it's difficult to use Saturn as a baseline. We can use the 32X service manual to define some Asian regions, but MD2 was probably the most widespread release in these regions, so it's probably best to use that.

Looking at the Russian Sega TV show, Russia received European models. This is further bolstered by a Russian news report where a joint press conference between Sega Europe and Bitman announced Bitman as the new Sega distributor for Russia and CIS countries. That would put former USSR as coming under Sega Europe.

The other borderline country was Turkey, they received Asian MD2, so must have dealt with Sega Japan directly, rather than through Sega Europe. South Africa got Asian MD2 and is referred to in the 32X service manual as Asian (but they may have received European MD1 at first ... I think it evolved over time). Dotts MD2 for the Middle East was Asian, I've also seen those in Egypt, we can probably assume that Africa fell under "Asia". Actually, when they gave out shipment numbers for hardware back then they used four regions; Japan, US, Europe, and Other. I think that "Other" was regions not under the jurisdiction of SoA and SoE, and these were the countries where Sega supplied "Asian" hardware (Europe and NTSC Americas distributors had to go through SoE and SoA respectively).

The odd one out is Israel (which isn't that unusual, UEFA, Eurovision etc) which received European MD2, but is noted in the 32X service manual as being Asian. I think that we can consider it Asian due to 32X being the first console to be released with a defined Asian version.

Then you had TecToy (Mercosur - PAL-M/N countries), Samsung (South Korea), and Ozisoft (AU/NZ) which operated independently of SoA/SoE/SoJ, the latter of which received SoE hardware. The latter of which is the only region that I'm not so sure of; Oceania. Did Fiji and the pacific islands come under Asia, or Europe (via Ozisoft)? It may well be academic if they never actually had official distribution. They tended to have European TV standards.--Pirate Dragon (talk)00:26, 01 November 2016 (GMT)