Back in the 90's, buying such a cartridge was a big decision, since a single one would cost the allowance for several months. And with no Internet and YouTube to run a search for "Haunted Haloween 85 NES", the only criteria for evaluating such a game in the physical flea market was the poster on the cartridge. Which, unlike the OPs which at least seem to pose a resemblance to the actual game, it had almost nothing to do with how the game will look.
Consequently I almost never got the good games and was utter disappointed after trying them. Fortunately there were neighbors who also bought and we exchanged cartridges, and so I found the best game I ever remember playing on such a console, Mighty Final Fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUPvwCcUo8
I knew about the abundance of Famiclones, but I never knew about the Terminator 2!
Do you know if its cartridges are compatible with Dendy or Famicom cartridges? They seem similar but maybe there was an attempt to "DRM" into it own unique form factor.
99.98% these were Dendy consoles. Forall I know, these consoles arrived here by Russian way, we even called the market where you could buy these things "the Russians", even though in practice they were Moldovans ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova ).
But I'm not that attached to it, I bought myself a new Nintendo 8-bit NES clone and a Sega 16-bit Megadrive from Aliexpress along with cartridges which contain hundreds of games, so I'm settled.
The Sega Megadrive console from Aliexpress scratches an itch dating back to the 90s. At the time, in the "Russian" flea market there was a strange exhibit of a console which looked 100% as a Sega Megadrive, it looked like this: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/gl4AAOSwqh5h8div/s-l1200.jpg
But worryingly, the "Russians" were telling us that it works with yellow Famicom cartridges. And there were no other cartridges for sale anyway, so no way to verify if it's some unholy bastard between NES and Sega. It cost double or triple of a regular Terminator2 and given that also cost a fortune at the time respective to my allowance money, I could only dream about buying it.
Found a few over the years on the Romanian olx ( https://www.olx.ro ) site but wasn't that curious, they are 100% pure Famicom in a Sega package (a sheep in a wolf's skin). I bought a true Sega clone from Aliexpress and the cartridge is different and the games are in another league compared to 8-bit. If I had that in the 90s, I'd have been the king of the village. We had a Street Fighter arcade in the village pub and the kids would crowd themselves along drunks to wonder at the spectacle when someone felt rich enough to pay for 2 minutes of entertainment.
In Spain tons of people bought either NES Chinese clones (even in the early PSX era in ~1997) because they were dirt cheap. Also, N in 1 cartridges were everywhere, both for the NES and the GB.
Mine came with Batman:Tas, FFIII (Secret of mana for GB), Goal! and Metroid II among others. I loved it.
Maybe the original ones where Pokémon, SML 1 and 2, Donkey Kong and a few more (the ML games were Nintendo Classics and sold for very cheap).
In the GBC era most people got originals, but even in these times tons of bootleg X in 1 games were sold too. Also, I was very lucky to buy the Cannon Fodder cartridge for 5 EUR (~$5 in 2002, second hand) for the GBC as it condensed the whole Amiga/PC game with nearly all the graphic quality.
And with Metal Gear:Ghost Babel for the GBC I didn't miss Metal Gear for the PSX at all.
>> In Spain tons of people bought either NES Chinese clones (even in the early PSX era in ~1997) because they were dirt cheap.
I'll let you know a secret. I bought my console in 1997! :)
1997 was maybe the year of peak hyperinflation in Romania, I've checked my parent's paychecks from the period and while both of them were employed in white collar (better paying) jobs, both their income converted in today's money didn't make $200. Not euro, dollars, although recently that seems to catch in parity. A monthly income for salaried parents of €150, taking care besides them and the household of me and my two brothers, so a family of 5. Therefore "dirt cheap" didn't apply here and I guess, I was fortunate for being to afford even such a console.
On a side note, around that period, my younger brother went with a school exchange in Austria. Thought of a lunch at Mcdonald's as the most luxurious thing one could experience. Today I'm paying some €10 for such a lunch and don't think about it but imagine you'd be paying 6.67% of your net income for a lunch (how much it cost relative to my parent's income in 1997). That'd be €267 in today's money for me, fuck, I ain't going even to a restaurant and paying that, I'm not a millionaire!
Back in the 90's, NES clones were all the rage in Eastern Europe:
With ludicrous names like "Gold Leopard King" https://www.reddit.com/r/crappyoffbrands/comments/1ekwzx5/go...
Or mimicking a Sega Genesis package and console look, this is the one that was most popular in Romania and I had one too : https://gadget.ro/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/terminator2.jpg
There's still a ton of old cartridges for it on sale on the flea market: https://www.olx.ro/d/oferta/jocuri-clona-nes-dischete-casete...
Back in the 90's, buying such a cartridge was a big decision, since a single one would cost the allowance for several months. And with no Internet and YouTube to run a search for "Haunted Haloween 85 NES", the only criteria for evaluating such a game in the physical flea market was the poster on the cartridge. Which, unlike the OPs which at least seem to pose a resemblance to the actual game, it had almost nothing to do with how the game will look.
Consequently I almost never got the good games and was utter disappointed after trying them. Fortunately there were neighbors who also bought and we exchanged cartridges, and so I found the best game I ever remember playing on such a console, Mighty Final Fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUPvwCcUo8
Do you know if its cartridges are compatible with Dendy or Famicom cartridges? They seem similar but maybe there was an attempt to "DRM" into it own unique form factor.
I still have my Terminator2 console at home but doesn't power up anymore, otherwise it could fetch some 150 EUR on the flea market: https://www.olx.ro/d/oferta/consola-retro-terminator-2-endin...
But I'm not that attached to it, I bought myself a new Nintendo 8-bit NES clone and a Sega 16-bit Megadrive from Aliexpress along with cartridges which contain hundreds of games, so I'm settled.
The Sega Megadrive console from Aliexpress scratches an itch dating back to the 90s. At the time, in the "Russian" flea market there was a strange exhibit of a console which looked 100% as a Sega Megadrive, it looked like this: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/gl4AAOSwqh5h8div/s-l1200.jpg
But worryingly, the "Russians" were telling us that it works with yellow Famicom cartridges. And there were no other cartridges for sale anyway, so no way to verify if it's some unholy bastard between NES and Sega. It cost double or triple of a regular Terminator2 and given that also cost a fortune at the time respective to my allowance money, I could only dream about buying it.
Found a few over the years on the Romanian olx ( https://www.olx.ro ) site but wasn't that curious, they are 100% pure Famicom in a Sega package (a sheep in a wolf's skin). I bought a true Sega clone from Aliexpress and the cartridge is different and the games are in another league compared to 8-bit. If I had that in the 90s, I'd have been the king of the village. We had a Street Fighter arcade in the village pub and the kids would crowd themselves along drunks to wonder at the spectacle when someone felt rich enough to pay for 2 minutes of entertainment.
Maybe the original ones where Pokémon, SML 1 and 2, Donkey Kong and a few more (the ML games were Nintendo Classics and sold for very cheap). In the GBC era most people got originals, but even in these times tons of bootleg X in 1 games were sold too. Also, I was very lucky to buy the Cannon Fodder cartridge for 5 EUR (~$5 in 2002, second hand) for the GBC as it condensed the whole Amiga/PC game with nearly all the graphic quality. And with Metal Gear:Ghost Babel for the GBC I didn't miss Metal Gear for the PSX at all.
I'll let you know a secret. I bought my console in 1997! :)
1997 was maybe the year of peak hyperinflation in Romania, I've checked my parent's paychecks from the period and while both of them were employed in white collar (better paying) jobs, both their income converted in today's money didn't make $200. Not euro, dollars, although recently that seems to catch in parity. A monthly income for salaried parents of €150, taking care besides them and the household of me and my two brothers, so a family of 5. Therefore "dirt cheap" didn't apply here and I guess, I was fortunate for being to afford even such a console.
On a side note, around that period, my younger brother went with a school exchange in Austria. Thought of a lunch at Mcdonald's as the most luxurious thing one could experience. Today I'm paying some €10 for such a lunch and don't think about it but imagine you'd be paying 6.67% of your net income for a lunch (how much it cost relative to my parent's income in 1997). That'd be €267 in today's money for me, fuck, I ain't going even to a restaurant and paying that, I'm not a millionaire!