Nissho Iwai

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Nissho Iwai
Founded: 1968
Merged with: Nichimen Co., Ltd.
Headquarters: Japan

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Nissho Iwai Co., Ltd. (日商岩井株式会社) was a Japanese trading company, electronics manufacturer, and video game distributor. It's computer division was known as Nissho Iwai Infocom.

History

In the early 1990s, Nissho Iwai was appointed by Sega Europe as exclusive distributor of Sega products in some of the Eastern Europe countries. However, in late 1993, Sega of Japan gave full license for all Eastern Bloc countries to Nissho Iwai, which meaned replacing Sega Europe in that region. Japanese trading house began to appointing exclusive sub-distributors for every territories. They also had contract for other regions were Sega wasn't distributing video games directly like Latin America (besides 4 countries of Mercosur where Sega had Tec Toy). Sub-distributors strategy damaged potential of Sega in the regions because distributors weren't prepared to invest in Sega's marketing, knowing that they would share benefits with other sub-distributors. In mid-1995 (likely between August-October 1995), contract with Sega of Japan experienced and license was given back to regional distributors like Sega Europe in Eastern Europe or Sega of America in South America, which began to rebuilding of distribution network using only the most effective and experienced former sub-distributors. Despite the strategy, Sega games under Nissho Iwai achieved some success in the Eastern Bloc, where cheaper Sega consoles overtook more expensive Nintendo in sales (distributed here by Stadlbauer Marketing in the Czechia/Slovakia/Hungary/Romania/Poland/Former SFRY/Former USSR and by Itochu Corporation in Albania/Macedonia/Bulgaria) and Mega Drive was the leader in most countries, although far behind the most popular gaming systems - Famiclones, and in the last period struggling with 16-bit Sega clones. On the opposite side, in Latin America, where Nintendo was distributed by Itochu Corporation, Super Nintendo was doing much better than Sega Genesis.

Nissho Iwai is notable for assisting Sega with development of the early internet gameplay service XBAND.

In 2004, Nissho Iwai and fellow trading company Nichimen Co., Ltd. (ニチメン株式会社) merged to form Sojitz Co., Ltd. (双日株式会社).

Manuals

Nissho Iwai added monolingual instructions for each country. These are only manuals where they are credited. Manuals in other countries were made mostly by sub-distributors and are not show here.

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  Mega Drive I ???

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  Mega Drive II

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  Master System I ???

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  Master System II

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  Game Gear

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  Mega CD II

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  Mega Drive 32X

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  Saturn ???

Posters

Poster-catalog added to Mega Drive in Hungarian, Russian and Polish.

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  Hungarian (Mega Drive)

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  Hungarian (Master System II/Game Gear)

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  Russian (Mega Drive)

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  Russian (Master System II/Game Gear)

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  Polish (Mega Drive)

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  Polish (Master System II/Game Gear)

Promotional material

Poland

Print advert in Video Club (PL) #18: "03/1992" (1992-xx-xx) also published in:

• Video Club (PL) #19: "04/1992" (1992-xx-xx)

Print advert in Video Club (PL) #20: "05/1992" (1992-xx-xx) also published in:

• Video Club (PL) #21: "06/1992" (1992-xx-xx)
• Video Club (PL) #22: "07-08/1992" (1992-xx-xx)
• Video Club (PL) #23: "09/1992" (1992-xx-xx)
• Video Club (PL) #24: "10/1992" (1992-xx-xx)
• Video Club (PL) #25: "11/1992" (1992-xx-xx)

Print advert in Video Club (PL) #29: "02/1993" (1993-xx-xx) also published in:

• Video Club (PL) #30: "03/1993" (1993-xx-xx)
• Video Club (PL) #31: "04/1993" (1993-xx-xx)
• Video Club (PL) #32: "05/1993" (1993-xx-xx)

Print advert in Video Club (PL) #36: "09/1993" (1993-xx-xx)

also published in:

• Video Club (PL) #37: "10/1993" (1993-xx-xx)
• Video Club (PL) #38: "11/1993" (1993-xx-xx)
• Video Club (PL) #39: "12/1993" (1993-xx-xx)

External links

• Official website (Sojitz) (Japanese)