History of Sega in Bulgaria
From Sega Retro
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| History of Sega in Bulgaria |
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| Official Sega distributor(s): Pulsar (1994-201x), CD Media (201x-present) |
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Consoles existed in communist Bulgaria and an example is TV Sport produced by Plovdiv. Unfortunately, foreign consoles were practically unavailable. Mass demonstrations in November and December 1989 influenced the creation of a democratic parliamentary republic and the first free elections were held on October 13, 1991. This allowed the country to open up to foreign companies.
In the early 1990s, the famiclone Terminator 2, modeled after the Sega Mega Drive, became very popular. The lack of Nintendo and Sega on the market made this console unrivaled. Some companies began to use its popularity, such as Balkantronic, which produced cartridges and sold them in special packaging, and released Terminator 3, which differed only in packaging.
In 1994, Pulsar became a Sega distributor in Bulgaria and began distributing Mega Drive II, Master System II and Game Gear. In order to lower the Sega 16-bit price, in addition to the European model, the Asian model was released (all in the PAL system). Mega Drive quickly became the second most popular console in Bulgaria. That is why add-ons such as Mega CD II and Mega Drive 32X (Asian PAL) were released in 1995. In 1996, Pulsar released Sega Saturn, but was not as popular as the Mega Drive, which was sold until the end of the 20th century here. In 1998, the Mortal Kombat 3 Ultimate Tournament took place in Sofia, which was the last major Mega Drive event in the country.
The popularity of the Mega Drive console prompted many to distribute clones, which in addition to those being 16 bit Sega fakes, were also famiclones that looked like Mega Drive. Pirate games were quite popular. Companies like WEN-BC noticed the console's popularity and decided to sell unlicensed Mega Drive cartridges. WEN signed an agreement with Chinese companies for the production of unlicensed cartridges for Mega Drive and Terminator 2, and then distributed them in Bulgaria. In 1996, they started a distribution of it's own branded Mega Drive 2 clone.
Sega Dreamcast (EU PAL) was also sold in the country without much success.[1]
Pulsar distributed Sega games until the late 2010s. Then CD Media became the distributor.
Nowadays Playground is an exclusive distributor of Sega Amusements Europe.[2]
- Master Games (BG) #8: "Dekemvri 1998" (1998-xx-xx)
- Igromania (BG) #10: "Yanuari 1999" (1999-xx-xx)