History of Sega in Chile

History of Sega in Chile
Official Sega distributor(s): Redi (199x-1994), Radio Center LTDA (1995-200x) , Latam Games (2012-present)

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In Chile, the Sega Mega Drive (original model) and Sega Master System II were distibuted by Redi in the early 1990s. The consoles were based on their North American designs (and hence, the Mega Drive was known as "Genesis" in this region).

Both consoles were known to be on sale in 1991, along with Sonic the Hedgehog.

Acording to the testimony of Ludwig Carl Kommer Bruger, founder of Redi, on April's 1993 issue of the Chilean magazine Muy Interessante Sega dominated only a 25% of the market for consoles and videogames in Chile, due to a late entry of the company in the business, since Nintendo had already entered in the Chilean market two years earlier, initially by the hands of Remus- Repuestos Musalem (owned by a rich family known as Musalem Yunis) and later by H. Briones y Cia (owned by Hernán Briones Gorostiaga, a Chilean industrialist and member of Fundación Pinochet, which was President of the Sofofa- Sociedad de Fomento Fabril / Sofofa- Industrial Development Society, one of Chile's leading employers' associations).

H. Briones y Cia had full support of Nintendo of America and Tokyo-based general trading company C.Itoh/Itochu (the company exported Nintendo products to several South American countries including Brazil, where it lost the rights to the brand to Playtronic in 1993), with advertisement campaigns on TV and also published an official Chilean version of the Club Nintendo magazine, on the other hand Redi had few advertisement campaigns, with only a few commercials being aired on TV and there was no official Sega magazines in the country except for some Spanish imported magazines like Super Juegos or Mega Sega which were more expensive and could arrive in the country six months later than the date they were originally published in Europe. In fact one of the first commercials, aired on Chilean TV was not favourable to the image of Sega, becoming subject of mockery among Chilean gamers, since in the intro of the commercial (which is actually the intro to Sonic the Hedgehog for Mega Drive) a voice is heard saying "Si, si, si, si, si, si"... ("Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes...") while Sonic is actually saying "No" with its hand.

In September 1995 Metrokids (born on June 1995), a Chilean children's cable television channel, created by cable operator Metrópolis (before its merger with Intercom in January 1996), premiered an interactive television show called Segamania (which competed with Nintendomania a similar show aired on Plaza Mayor Monitos children's cable television channel owned by Intercom, Metrópolis major rival before the merger of the two companies) similar to also popular "live one-player multi platform interactive game show" Hugo, hosted by Miguel Barriga, ex-vocalist of the popular Chilean rock band Sexual Democracia where players using their telephone keypads, had to achieve certain goals while playing Sega video games using their telephone keypads in order to win prizes.

According to the November 1995 issue of Chilean magazine Metrópolis, in the first two months of the show 55.000 phone calls were made and more than 1.000 players participated in it. Alex Kidd and Sonic the Hedgehog were the first games selected for the show, followed by Sonic the Hedgehog 2, The Adventures of Batman & Robin (Mega Drive), Batman Returns (Mega-CD), Desert Demolition Starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote and others. The show lasted until January 1997 when after the merger of Metrópolis with Intercom, the Metrokids channel was replaced by Cartoon Network.

Radio Center LTDA in cooperation with Tectoy sold Sega 32X and Sega Saturn in Chile.

Latam Games distributes Sega games in Chile from 2012. The company also cooperated with NC Games.

Metropolis Intercom launched the Sega Channel in 1996.