Previous article Uncle Xue reviewed the home game consoles from FC to MD and finally to the SFC era. However, due to space limitations, the review lacked an important component, that is, in addition to their official history, these main consoles also had a large number of compatible machines at that time, which was also the main consoles that domestic players were mainly exposed to at that time. Uncle Xue completed this article to target this part of the
story. The beginning of the story still started with Nintendo . The protagonist who is never separated from. On July 15, 1983, Nintendo FC was released. The sales volume exceeded 3 million units in less than a year. FC was popular all over the world. Of course, Taiwan, which belongs to the East Asian cultural circle, is indispensable. In fact, before the release of FC, Nintendo's game console had already spread to Taiwan
At that time, the core technologies of the game industry and semiconductor industry were concentrated in the United States and Japan. In the early 1980s, the game industry and semiconductor industry were just starting out, and piracy was prevalent. Nintendo's early GameWatch game console parallels were sold in Taiwan at this time.
At this time, Nintendo noticed this phenomenon and took the initiative to choose Boyou, which had semiconductor transactions with Japan's Panasonic and NEC, and established Nintendo Putian. This is Nintendo's official channel agent. It started selling FC in Taiwan in 1986. Nintendo Putian did not end its business until May 31, 2014.
At the same time, Sega, which launched home consoles almost at the same time as Nintendo, also chose to cooperate with Taiwan's Jialinxing. Jialinxing promoted and sold Sega's first four generation consoles in Taiwan, and Jialinxing was also disbanded in 1999.
Jialinxing Aroche game console
However, Sega established SEGA Taiwan Shiya Yule Co., Ltd. in Taiwan in 1992, which means that Sega left behind Jialinxing and directly promoted and sold
However, Jialinxing is different from Nintendo Pu Tian, who only sells goods. Jialinxing has its own production line, and has done some localization work on Sega's SEGA Master System host before, and has the basic production conditions of software and hardware. Since Sega does not bring it to play, Jialinxing is not vague, let's do it ourselves!
Jialinxing soon launched its own game console, and the counterfeit FC's Shengtian
This operation is estimated to have spitted several mouthfuls of blood: Brother, there are faults and debts, why are you coming to me?
This is of course mainly because FC was the most successful host that year. Since you want to copy it, you must choose the best-selling one. Secondly, the second point is also related to FC itself. One of the core factors that
FC was mainly considered at the beginning of the design was cost, including the host cost and the maintenance and after-sales maintenance cost of the host. Therefore, the relatively low-cost, general-purpose CPU6502 and Ricoh customized image processing chip PPU, it is estimated that Nintendo may have considered it. If necessary, you can replace the extreme situation of Ricoh's chip supplier at any time.
US version NES motherboard. RP2A03G in the upper left corner is Ricoh's 6502 improved model. Below the main CPU is Sharp's memory chip. Ricoh RP2C02 on the upper right is the image chip
US version NES motherboard
At that time, many chip manufacturers had 6502 universal. Authorization, although Ricoh customized 6502 and image chip have added some functions, it is still difficult for Taiwan's pirated team to successfully reverse the production of FC-compatible machines.
. Among them, the more famous one is the Little Genius game console produced by Taiwan's Jingji Technology
Little Genius game console
Little Genius is the king of compatible machines. Basically, there is no Nintendo FC, and it has been penetrated by Little Genius. , the most famous one is in Russia. Xiaotiancai cooperated with local Russian channels to promote Xiaotiancai's OEM Dendy game console, which occupied 70% of the Russian market and sold 2 million units.
so in December 1994, Uchiyama Hiroshi Uchiyama, then president of Nintendo, asked his son-in-law Aarakawa Miya and Dendy to reach a settlement, no longer holding the responsibility for selling compatible machines, and gave the distribution rights of Nintendo products to Dendy later, successfully whitewashing and becoming the top.
Taiwan manufacturers' pirated compatible machines have also penetrated into the southeast coastal areas, and production lines and technology have also been transferred. The country is also thriving in imitation, and many famous compatible machine brands have been born. Among these manufacturers that assemble and produce compatible machines, there are even greater masterminds behind the scenes. This is Taiwan Lianhua Electronics , this company The semiconductor chip manufacturer founded in 1980 is the real king behind the scenes. The chips of FC and MD compatible machines are all from Lianhua. A well-known gaming magazine once said that Lianhua has provided 30 million FC-compatible chips to mainland manufacturers UA6527
motherboards using Lianhua compatible chips
Taiwan Lianhua Electronics UA6527 (compatible with Ricoh RP2A03G FC main CPU) chip and UA6538 (compatible with Ricoh RP2C02 FC image processing chip)
Doesn’t Grandpa Ren have the “strongest legal department”? Sorry, I have never won Lianhua. In 1991, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Lianhua, and the two parties ended in a settlement. Employees of Lianhua's legal department once said that there was no additional compensation.
But good days are basically coming to an end. In the 1980s, Taiwan's semiconductor and software and hardware industries were just starting. In order to support and protect local enterprises, Taiwan's judicial departments have always turned a blind eye to intellectual property rights. By the 1990s, after more than 10 years of crazy expansion, these semiconductor chip manufacturers had completed their original accumulation and began to transform into regular manufacturers under the guidance of the government and industry associations. The accumulated technologies and products also need to be protected by intellectual property laws. Therefore, the overall transformation of the industry to regularization is irreversible. Jingtech also sold the trademark of the Little Genius brand to other manufacturers.
Lianhua even launched 16 pieces by its subsidiary Dunhuang Technology in 1995. The host SuperA'can has transformed from a pirate of counterfeit compatible machines to self-developed hosts to participate in mainstream market competition. SuperA'can's main CPU uses the same Motorola 8000 and 6502 as MD. However, at that time, the Japanese game console market was already an era of 32-bit PlayStation and SegaSoturn competing. SuperA'can's defeat was not very suspense.
SuperA'can's life is short and the number of software supports is scarce. Lianhua is also one of the suppliers of Nintendo's 6502 chips. It was under pressure from Nintendo to cancel orders and under multiple unfavorable factors. The final project lost 6 million US dollars. The first step of domestic hosts was very tragic
1988's Sega MD host. The main CPU Motorola 68000 and the secondary CPU Z80 are also general-purpose CPUs. The design idea is similar to FC. There is no special customized chip, so it cannot escape the fate of compatibility. However, the form is indeed a bit unique.
First of all, the more famous pure compatible machine only found the little professor family of Tianjin Xinxing. This is a Sega MD compatible machine with a relatively high production level.
Sega MD compatible machine. There is another common form in China that is MD+V CD
First of all, Xiaobawang launched the FC-compatible machine
After Xiaobawang founded Duan Yongping devoted himself to the VCD industry in the mid-1990s, founded BBK, and invented BBK game VCD
This is a product that integrates FC+VCD players. It focuses on meeting the entertainment needs of adults and children at home. It has to be said that counterfeit manufacturers are just daring to think and do it. Such products are immediately spread all over the country. After
, the more famous new Tianli appeared. This is a VCD with three-disc continuous playback and MD game functions! Awesome, too awesome
Xintianli's advertisement mentioned that they have obtained the official authorization and technical support of SEGA, which should be based on evidence. It is rumored that Sega provided the authorization of technology and integrated chips and several of its own software. However, after Xintianli got these, it directly used unauthorized games.
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Xintianli's SEGA integrated chip
used by Xintianli should be relatively reliable. Xintianli's machine itself and the chip have the official SEGA logo, and it should have obtained the technical authorization from formal channels. However, the game CD provided by Xintianli covers almost all third parties that provide game software for Sega. Xintianli There is nothing that can be authorized by so many third-party software manufacturers
. However, no matter what, such an MD+VCD machine is indeed very popular in China and has been imitated by
. When I thought it was just like this, I saw something even more amazing. DVD+PlayStation, OK, I am old, you really know how to play
from the running screen. This uses a PlayStation emulator, not compatible with the hardware of the machine, but it is very perfect and has a memory card operation screen.
Here I only admire domestic DVD player manufacturers, only you can't imagine, and they can't do it. Both
FC and MD have been resurrected over and over again by Taiwanese and domestic manufacturers, but SFC is missing. Why is this?
This is mainly due to two factors. First, SFC is different from FC and MD, and uses a lot of customized chips. The most difficult thing is the customized sound chip provided by SONY to Nintendo that year
This sound chip specially customized for Nintendo is completely different from the general-purpose 6502 or 68000
In addition, not only are there many customized chips used on the SFC host, but the SFC cassette is used. There are also a large number of special customized chips on the market, which is actually a method that Nintendo has started to use on FC hosts. And after suffering the loss of piracy in the FC era, SFC has its own verification mechanism and encryption chip. Although
SFC is the dominant player in the 16-bit host market, this is mainly due to its more color hair and special picture effects. However, the main frequency of the 16-bit main CPU65816 used by SFC is only 3.58Mhz, and the computing speed is an absolute shortcoming. SFC, which is later than MD's 2nd year, must produce amazing pictures. tml0
The real 3D shooting game " Star Firefox " that appeared in 16-bit computers for the first time. In order to achieve such a 3D effect cassette, the SuperFX chip
is specially equipped with the SuperFX chip
"Super Mario World 2: Yoshi Island ", the extremely beautiful world depicted by crayons is also used by SuperFX chip
CAPCOM's SFC version of "Young Street Fighter 2" uses the SDD chip to decompress the data in the game
SFC "The Magic Installation God" uses a special SA1 chip to strengthen the combat performance screen
. There are too many examples such as compatible machine manufacturers are facing, first, the SFC host itself is cracked SONY custom chip, and secondly, even if the cracking is completed, To solve the problem of the large number of special customized chips and encryption chips in SFC game cassettes, even if they are made into pirated cassettes, the cost is still not low, so that SFC basically has no pirated cassettes
, but compatible machine manufacturers still solved this problem. In fact, the SFC host did not have compatible machines at the beginning, and the cassette problem was solved by the disk system of compatible machine manufacturers. The main brand at that time was the doctoral disk drive, which integrated some of the required chips on the disk drive and through the disk media. Copying and replacing games makes the cost of replacing games very low. In the early 1990s, Uncle Xue copied a game disk here for 5 yuan. At that time, the fantasy legend of 48Mb (6MB) of SFC's largest game, 4 1.44 floppy disks, can be handled, but the disadvantage is that the cost of the first purchase is greatly increased. The disk drive was sold at 2,000 to 3,000 yuan RMB. In addition, you need to buy a US or Japanese SFC host, the total cost was 4,000 RMB. This was definitely a considerable expense at that time.
, so the cost of purchasing the machine was much lower than that of SFC. SFC does not have pirated cartridges flowing into China, because almost all disk drive systems are used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. This has led to the popularity of SFC in China far less convenient than MD
late SFC pirated CD-ROM system. Several CDs contain all SFC games and are equipped with corresponding directories. SFC also has a dedicated satellite networking peripheral, which was extremely advanced in the early 1990s
Here, the FC, MD, and another scene in the domestic host market in the SFC era. , For most domestic players, the 8-bit and 16-bit computer era host war is not a comparison of the console in foreign TV advertisements, but the tight pocket money in our childhood. In order to play the game we like, we often save all of them without eating or drinking. We also argue with our friends about which game is more fun. Although I may not have enough pocket money to buy that game
, I hope that the players who have read this review article can recall some of the little things about the game at that age, which game youth that has left us,
