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 (1994-2019), CD Media (2020-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, 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, designed like the Sega Mega Drive. 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. Each product had an English sticker underneath saying Security Label SEGA Distributor Pulsar. In order to lower the Mega Drive price, cheaper Asian models were sold among the European ones (all in the PAL system). 16-bit Sega quickly became the second most popular console in Bulgaria and in 1995, Pulsar introduced Mega CD II and Mega Drive 32X. Besides Famicom and Mega Drive clones, Sega had competition in form of Super Nintendo, Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System (distributed from 1994 by R&S)[1], Nintendo 64 (distributed from 1997 by Nortec Multimedia), PlayStation (distributed from October 1996[2] by Sony Bulgaria) and 3DO. In 1996, Sega Saturn was released in Bulgaria, but wasn't as popular as the Mega Drive, which was sold here until the end of 1999. In June 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 motivate 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 sold by Pulsar[3] from 2000, but PlayStation 2 (distributed from December 2000 by Sony Bulgaria) was much more popular.
Pulsar distributed Sega games[4] until the 2019 when they become a part of Ozon group. From 2020, CD Media is the distributor of Sega.[5]
Nowadays Playground is an exclusive distributor of Sega Amusements Europe.[6]
Atgames product were distirbuted here by Kaseta-Tsentŭr[7] and Pulsar.
- Master Games (BG) #8: "Dekemvri 1998" (1998-xx-xx)
- Igromania (BG) #10: "Yanuari 1999" (1999-xx-xx)
References
- ↑ Pif Comics "Naĭ dobrite igrayat Nintendo"
- ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/19980703064424/http://www.playstation-europe.com/playstation/pr/launch.htm
- ↑ List of websites including Pulsar as video game distributor http://lesnota.com/Drugi/E-Comerce2.htm
- ↑ https://mallofsofia.bg/store/pulsar/
- ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20200722002854/https://cdmediase.eu/partnerships.html
- ↑ http://www.isu.bg/main.aspx?lang=en&f=81&d=163
- ↑ https://quosub.tutkrabov.net/articles/sega-genesis-momche-za-vsichko-konzola-pregledate.html