BEHOLD! The @fficial TNL Dendy Thread

[Doc Holliday]

Well... I'm Russian, so if you hate mistakes, go away. I mean, I studied English in Russian school only, and i wasn't very good student...

Now, I want to tell you about NES in Russia.
It was 1993 when I got my NES... But it's name was Dendy. It was an illegal clone... And it was sold legally in Russia. It's came to my country exactly that year.

Ok, so I just spent 15 minutes searching TNL for 'Dendy' and 'Russian Famiclone' and found diddley squat! And I tell you what, that is a real shame; because this was an incredible machine! The Dendy was a Russian knock-off (first of the NES, then later other consoles) that came about in cold war times. I could talk about it, but I’ll let this guy do it.

THE RANT:This is the one famicom clone that I actually own. I ganked the pic off ebay because my digital camera is a piece of garbage. One day I'll pony up and buy a new one. The system is a Russian famicom copy, made by a company called "Linko." I understand that it was so widely sold there that the word "Dendy" became synomomous with "video game," like "Hey Vladimir, let's go play some Dendy games." The system is made from possibly the cheapest plastic ever created, so don't drop it. The controllers are totally cheap as well, with no heft or weight. Feels like you could tie a butterfly to it and watch it float away. The eject mechanism is like this strange spring loaded lever thing that is somewhat hard to pull, and since the system is so light you have to hold it with one hand while pulling the lever with the other, leading to the fear that the cartridge might fly out of the slot like a rouge cork from a bottle of champagne and nail someone in the head. That would be cool. The light gun is equally cheap, also it looks just like a real gun. Here in the states all toy guns have to look like toys, that way a cop can't use the excuse "The kid had a gun" when he decides to off a couple of grade schoolers. You could rob a bank with this light gun.

System takes standard Famicom carts. The cart that comes with it says "300 in one" but only has 300 variations of the same four games. Also I think it's a Pal system because the hook-ups look weird and it has that strange European two pronged plug thingy. I've been meaning to go over to Radioshack to get a converter but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I doubt I'll have much problem getting it to run on my TV though.

THE GOOD: Haven't play tested this thing yet, so there's not much to say. The controllers have built in turbo. The pack in cart worked fine in my Game Axe. Also the whole thing only cost me five bucks.

THE BAD: It's made out of really, really cheap materials. Don't drop it, touch it too hard, or pass wind in front of it.

THE UGLY: From the box: " Unloading the cartridge, push cartridge ejector gently." Then prepare to die.

They also had variants:

Looks exactly like the Dendy Jr, with only a slight label alteration. Seems to come in several different pacakging variations. Those poor Russian kids; While we here in the west got a brand new Playstation or Saturn for Christmas all little Boris got was an clone piece of crap with a blurry football player on the box. They don't even play American football in Russia. Sad.

OK. So now that you know what we're talking about, I'm going back to Retro's Russian. Let's let her talk about the games and the Russian show.

If you bought Dendy console, you usually got one 99999999 in 1 with it. Of course there wasn't 99999999 games in it. You got something like Snow Bros., Mario, Goonies or even a pack of hacks...


...Another cartridge I liked looked exactly like this:




It was fighting-game. AV Bishoujo Senshi Girl Fighting. Yes. For NES. Yes. It's crap. But I liked it pretty much, cause there were sailor-soldiers.




The gameplay was awful, the joystick lived his own life... But Sailor Moon... You know, I was a girl after all...

...Another wonderful games were Aladdin and Lion King. They were ported to NES by some chinese guys from Genesis and SNES and i liked to play that games... I mean, until I got Sega Genesis when my Dendy was broken.




Unfortunately, there was only a half of levels in the Lion King.



Chessmaster was very boring game. A lot of parents bought it for children... Well, my didn't. But Sergey Suponev in the "Dendy - The New Reality" told about this game 3(!) times!





Oh, "The New Reality"... It was a big commercial on the main Russian channel. But we liked that thing, cause Suponev told us about the console games. The only consoles he told about were Sega Genesis, SNES, Gameboy and Dendy. Well, he told something about Virtual Boy, Panasonic 3DO, Atari Jaguar and Nintendo 64, but only few words. I remember he said "Wow, cool, there's chit-codes on the back of that Dendy cartridge". Also I can remember the show when he got list of most popular games for SNES in America (from the Nintendo Power) and he didn't know what the Final Fantasy series was. It's pretty funny now, I think.
And he told "Buy the cartridges and consoles in the "Official" Dendy Shops, cause our products has perfect quality"... Hey, guy, what were you talking about? That was the same yellow cartridges like in the chinese markets! It was a bit expensive - there's the difference.

I wish we had got the game FBI.



So there you have it. Read more about the Dendy and the wonders it did for Russia below.

Links:
wiki – Dendy
Retro Junk's Dendy Page
UCD - Dendy
UCD - Dendy "Star Trek"
shthree's - Dendy


EDIT: I fixed a link and added a super cool Dendy 8 pic!! Dendy 8 was just Dendy hardware with a Genisis body and super cool revolver!

[YellerDog]

That gun looks fiercely bad-ass. Nice, weird find.

[EightBitShik]

LoL, Great post.

[A Robot Bit Me]

The Dendy elephant looks sickly, but the Double Dragon II cover that suggests unlockable Kazuya and Ryo looks sick.

Awesome thread.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

That looks really good for an NES game.

[Doc Holliday]

Yeah, but apparently the controls sucked ass.

[StriderKyo]

I love those photoshopped game labels. The one with Lawrence Fishburne stolen straight out of the Matrix as an FBI agent is great.

So is this thing actually a Russian cold war relic, or is it Chinese? Most of those labels look like they're from the 90s or later. Where's Despair, this must be his childhood we're looking at here.

[Doc Holliday]

From the Wiki Talk page:

True, it was very popular. So much, that cartridges for it sells even now! I self from Russia and have Dendy Junior 1 and Dendy Junior 2. It was released in Russia by a company named Steepler (Стиплер). In the beginning Dendy was constructed on Taiwan, and later in Russia (on Tenzor factory).

I still want a Despair review.

[NeoZeedeater]

Cool thread. I have never seen any Dendys in real life, just a few pics on the 'net.

I don't want to stray too much off topic but I'm still interested in more info on Soviet era arcade games - http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/s...ghlight=soviet

[Despair]

I love those photoshopped game labels. The one with Lawrence Fishburne stolen straight out of the Matrix as an FBI agent is great.

So is this thing actually a Russian cold war relic, or is it Chinese? Most of those labels look like they're from the 90s or later. Where's Despair, this must be his childhood we're looking at here.

Actually, I missed on this, as it came over right at the time of my leaving. It was a Chinese made clone of NES, but thats about all I can say about it.

Actually, in my early childhood we had SHIT as computer entertainment. We did had arcades, but most machines there were either mechanical, or simple light gun like games. Its when early 90s arrived, and commie era was ending, new fun started to leak in.

I had MSX and Commodore 64 teenage years back home. Both were badass entertainment. Also NeoGeo and few other arcade machines were being introduced, and man, graphics were MIND BLOWING for that fucking time.

As I arrived to USA, I briefly was entertained by NES, but then Genesis and SNES were discovered and rest the history. I was disappointed somewhat by both Sega and Nintendo consoles, when compared to the Arcades. But that was life of poor immigrant just like Nyko.

Cool thread