Korean hardware & software pictures

You won't find anything in Yongsan because I bought it all 2 years ago

 

found this randomly while looking for something totally different:
http://gxemu.blog67.fc2.com/blog-entry-69.html

 

Korean pirate NES! - http://taksangs.egloos.com/4453876

In fact check out that entire site. There's loads of cool Korean crap on there :nod:

Yakumo

 

That's a cool site. Do you know if it's a clone or authorised by Nintendo as a legitimate Korean NES?

 

These pics are fantastic. I just got back from a trip to South America (Peru and Bolivia mostly), and the markets there were swamped with knock-off gaming hardware, mostly rubbish Mega Drives and PSOnes, all with weird names. And it appears that it's impossible to buy proper licensed software ANYWHERE in South America. I wish I could have taken some photos to post here, but the people working on the stalls scared the bejesus out of me.

 

The NES was distributed by Hyundai in Korea. They called it the "Comboy", and it looks like this:

 

It's not even a NES-clone (of which there exist a handful models) but an ordinary Famiclone toploader. It also had a white/red precursor model, which looked better.

 

Daewoo Family Noraebang, Karaoke cartridge for Famicom:
http://blog.naver.com/may517?Redirect=Log&logNo=80039363846

 

A collection of Master System and Mega Drive games:
http://blog.naver.com/may517?Redirect=Log&logNo=80119529436

 

if anyone here from korea would help me get some of this rare consoles please contact me

Tommy.

 

small update with this episode of game center cx:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imh_23iJOz8

 

I have been to Korea four times, and I have accumulated a bit of hardware and software. I can post some pictures this evening.

My understanding of the branding differences (Why the "Nintendo, Sony, Sega" branding is lacking from early hardware examples is this (please correct me if I am wrong):

Korea and Japan obviously have a rocky history, most recently being the brutal imperial Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910-1945. In post WWII Korea, some imported Japanese products had to be re-labeled by manufacturers familiar to the Korean populace: Hyundai Electronics (현대전자) Samsung Electronics (삼성전자) etc.. Essentially, Korean consumers were allowed to purchased legally-imported (Korean government-sanctioned) Japanese products, but the products had to have cosmetic modifications in the form of screen printing and sticker changes to showcase Korean corporations.

So for example, with the Hyundai Super Comboy (현대 슈퍼컴보이) (if I had to guess, the strange name is a play on Nintendo's "Gameboy", thus "Super Computer-Boy"), Hyundai simply printed their branding on the console in place of Nintendo's.

Tensions have eased over the years between the two countries to some extent, and perhaps accordingly, the Korean N64 has the familiar N64 logo on the front of the console, but the sticker on the bottom of the console still says Hyundai Electronics.

I have some Korean NES, SNES, Gameboy, Gamecube, N64 and Wii games, and here is another interesting pattern I noticed:

NES ("Comboy") - The console is the North American "Toaster" version with the larger cartridges

SNES ("Super Comboy") - The console and cartridges have the Japanese Super Famicom form factor, but the sticker art is the North American rendition (for example look at the Japanese SNES Street Fighter II sticker vs. the North American SFII sticker). The Korean versions of the SNES games again all say "Hyundai Electronics", but the on screen menus are all English.

N64 - The console is again Japanese in form factor. I know this because both the Korean console has those extra plastic tabs inside the cartridge slot to prevent a North American game from being inserted. Again, interestingly, the rom image burned to these carts is presumably the North American version

Gamecube - The console is of the Japanese region, the games are in the small Japanese style boxes (as opposed to the larger DVD-movie sized boxes used in North America), AND again the games are the English, North American versions

Wii - not completely relevant here, but signals a shift in Nintendo's Korea relations, as this is the first time to my knowledge, that Korea has received its own unique region coding.



I do not have hardware to dump roms/isos, but I have a question about the Korean SNES, N64 and Wii:

Do you think these game images are identical to the US versions, except for the Japanese region code? I have never been able to find much information online regarding the Korean region.


I will definitely post pictures later of what I have.

I'm sure there are some bilingual Korean/English members on this forum, but if need be I can read and translate Korean enough (for instance text found on menus, game labels, game boxes, etc.. )

 

"Super Mini Comboy" - Super Gameboy






JPN/KOR/USA SFII Comparison



"Super Donkey Kong" - Donkey Kong Country 1 & 2






Large sticker to the right lists all the regional Hyundai Electronics repair shops (phone exchanges and such)


RF plug is curiously blocked by a sticker

AC Power adapter for Korean Super Comboy



Hyundai Super Comboy "Control Pad"

Korean N64, "Super Comboy 64" - someone has scratched the text off the jumper pack door - perhaps they were trying to conceal the fact that it was a Korean N64

















Please excuse the photography.. I hope these pictures are of interest to some of you~

 

Very interesting indeed, wish I had some comboy consoles...

 

I've got a Korean copy of Diddy Kong Racing as well, and if the game code on the cartridge is any indication - and if I understand it correctly -, at least that game's ROM is identical to the US version as the code is NUS-NDYE-KOR. Normal US games are NUS-xxxE-USA, while Japanese ones are NUS-xxxJ-JPN. Not to mention it's fully in English and has a French language option if I recall.

 

If I recall correctly, the Sega Saturn has NO option for Japanese language on the bios. No Korean either, they just removed Japanese from all consoles manufactured in there. Can anyone confirm this?

 

Some corrections/additions for you:

The fact the consoles were published/distributed by Korean companies hat little to do with Korean-Japanese relations, neither with the Japanese brands (ALL Nintendo products by Hyundai also carry the Nintendo logo and respective console names, if I'm not mistaken). In general, the conditions for foreign companies to establish subsidiaries in Korea weren't very favourable until the IMF-agreement in 1997. That is not to say it was impossible. Fujitsu Korea existed since the 1970s, Microsoft Korea was established sometime in the 1980s, I belive. A shortlived Konami Korea came to be around '95/'96. I'm not sure about the legal details, but I think the biggest obstacle was that subsidiaries in Korea had to be a majority ownership by a Korean citizen. Considered that the market at the time was dominated by Taiwan counterfeit carts, it's easy to see why Nintendo & Co. didn't deem it profitable enough to open subsidiaries in Korea.

The most likely reason by far was the fact that the NES had the lock-out chip for unlicensed games which the Famicom lacked.

In the early 1990s, Samsung and Hyundai were releasing Mega Drive and SNES games simultaneously with the Japanese versions. I assume that a lot of those releases were just the imported Japanese games, maybe with an import sticker on the box (apparently not all though, or the known early games like Super Mario Kart, Super Mario World or Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts might also be later re-releases). In 1993, there was a new bill (enacted from January 1994) that said video games would have to be helt to the same censorship standards as other pop culture media like music, tv and movies. That's where the Japan-Korea relations come into play, as it was illegal to publish mass media in Japanese language until around 2000. Therefore the console licensees in Korea had to order their own cartridge runs with English language, but SFC shape and lockout code, as that was the norm of the console.

What it signals is a shift of Nintendo Korea from nonexistence to existence, and it's a pathetic attempt to reduce Japanese imports, as Nintendo Korea is run by morons. There are no more than two or three dozen Wii games available in Korea, often released more a year late. Needless to say, the vast majority of Wii systems in Korea is modded.

 

Derboo,

Thank you for the corrections/ commentary. International law/business interests me, and South Korea's post-Korean War rags to riches story surely makes for an interesting case study.

Regarding the Super Comboy (SNES) specifically, a system known for its quality, text-heavy RPGs, I find it odd that Hyundai Electronics never went through the effort of actually translating any SNES games into Korean. (as far as I know)
Perhaps it simply wasn't cost effective to spend the time to edit the game roms with a Korean translation and re-burn them to carts. Korean fan translations of games such as Chrono Trigger now exist online (Japanese and Korean translate fairly cleanly). It seems that Hyundai could have profited handsomely if it had provided "official translations" of these iconic RPGs.

A couple of my Korean friends said that in the 90s, if they wanted to play a JRPG, they would buy a Japanese import and with knowledge of katakana and some basic Japanese vocab/kanji (the contents of a turn based RPG battle menu), they would play through an entire RPG without really reading any of the dialogue. How excruciating!

 

While we're on the subject of Game Center CX, I was watching an episode today and they showcased some famicom-themed comic. The guy on the front cover was wearing this:
1
2
I wonder if the comic was sold in Korea as well...