Pirate Dragon/Sandbox

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From Sega's perspective, everything east of Europe and west of Japan/South Korea is classed as "Asia". This is a very large region and covers dozens of countries, but the markets are generally considered to be quite small as we're dealing with second world and potentially even third world countries. The company made more of an effort to localise for specific countries with the Sega Master System, but generally targeted fewer countries and was not tremendously successful.

With the Mega Drive, we generally see the same hardware distributed across this region, sometimes in the same basic boxes, but with added stickers, leaflets and support by localised distributors. Similar to Europe, Sega also was unable to market their console in every country in the region, however whereas the vast majority of Europe was covered by Sega, only a minority of Asia saw traditional Mega Drive consoles, and the timeline is patchy. For example, India only recevied the Mega Drive 2 in the late date of 1995, while Hong Kong got their Mega Drives at the turn of the decade.

From a hardware perspective, there are only a few Mega Drive models - Sega built "one size fits all" systems in with either PAL or NTSC video output, and sold the system in whichever country they could. The Asian "region" covers the middle east, the islands of south east Asia, and the likes of India, China and Russia on the mainland. It's possible it even covers what little consoles were sold in Africa. It does not cover Japan, nor does it cover South Korea, and some states such as China are basically seen as "no go" areas so don't tend to count.

Mega Drives are still in production in Asia to this day, mostly handled by AtGames who ship scaled down consoles to all over the world, but they will not be covered on this page. We know very little about this region and so information is currently in short supply.

NTSC

Philippines and Taiwan were the only other Asian markets apart from Japan and South Korea which used NTSC.

Mega Drive

Initially Taiwan, and Philippines received the same model and box as Japan.

Mega Drive, NTSC Asia
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Console Control Pad

Mega Drive 2

Mega Drive 2, NTSC Asia
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Console Six Button Control Pad

Mega Drive 2 (Small Green Box)

Mega Drive 2, NTSC Asia
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Console Six Button Control Pad

PAL-I

Hong Kong and Macau were the only Asian countries to use PAL-I.

Mega Drive

Mega Drive, HK
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50x50px Console Control Pad

Mega Drive (with Sonic the Hedgehog)

Mega Drive, HK
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50x50px Console Control Pad Sonic

PAL-D

China was the only Asian country to use PAL-D.

Mega Drive

Mega Drive, CH
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50x50px Console Control Pad

PAL-B

PAL-B was widely used throughout most of the rest of Asia, although these models may have only been intended for South East Asia.

Mega Drive

Four language manual; English, Chinese, Malay, and Thai.

Mega Drive, ??
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50x50px Console Control Pad Manual

Mega Drive (with Sonic)

NOTE: Console itself uses undocumented region code -15

Mega Drive, ??
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50x50px Console Control Pad

PAL

Whilst the original Mega Drive had an internal RF modulator which meant different models were required for different countries' TV Systems the Mega Drive 2 had an external RF modulator which meant the same model could be sold throughout PAL Asia.

Mega Drive 2

The Mega Drive 2 was distributed by Galaxy Group in Thailand, under their "Consumer Amusement Sales" division. Included was a four language manual; English, Chinese, Malay, and Thai.

Mega Drive 2, TH
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Console Six Button Control Pad Manual

Mega Drive 2 was distributed by Shaw Wallace in India. It debuted in 1995.

Mega Drive, IN
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Console Control Pad

Mega Drive 2 (Big Green Box)

Three language box; English, Chinese, and Malay.

Mega Drive 2, ??
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Console Six Button Control Pad (x2)

Mega Drive 2 (Small Green Box)

Four language manual; English, Chinese, Malay, and Arabic. Alesayi United were Sega's distributors throughout the Gulf region, this includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates. Though we cannot specify exactly which type of Mega Drive was released in the Gulf, we know at least one model was released due to the existence of the Sega 32X in that region. It would seem likely that this model would have also been sold in the region due to the presence of Arabic in the manual.

Mega Drive 2, ??
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Console Six Button Control Pad (x2) 50x50px Manual