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Just out of curiosity (though I doubt anything comprehensive is likely to happen!)

I'm just curious about this. And if it's even possible to do.

For instance, when I was collecting games that were not released in Australia, I did notice some trends, some games were pretty much only available in certain regions, and seem to be that way still.

For instance, Home Alone, Assault City (Light Phaser) pretty much always pop up in France.

Codemasters Games pretty much always in UK.

Ottifants - Germany

Smurfs 2 - Italy and Czechia. etc...

And of course countries like Poland had pretty much no Master System releases, apart from imports I assume usually from Germany.

Yet all Master System Fan Sites and resources bundle all games as EU. I am just wondering if it would be possible to give more specific info on this? Or would it just be way too overwhelming for anyone or any fan site at all to do.

Has anyone done something similar to my Aus release list? Like, perhaps, even every game official released in Spain, or France, Italy, UK, etc etc...

Aussie releases got branded, making it easy to prove. European releases have some ambiguity where the boxes are the same between countries, and there were lots of grey imports (even of US exclusives).

Official game lists and trade magazines may be the answer, but not much of that survives.

Euro releases tend to have all those languages in the back of the box, but I'm guessing they would translate by default even if no release was planned? Say you would have Italian even if it wasn't released there.

I thought maybe that could be a hint, but I'm guessing it would be quite hard to find comprehensive data in 2019, as Maxim said.

Although it's nearly impossible to get a comprehensive list, it should definitely be possible to collect *some* data on this. The necessary information has to be gathered from many sources and it's a very tedious work. The longer we wait, the harder it gets ;-) and we lose that knowledge.

Some "brainstorming":

One source of information as stated above are magazine scans of Sega advertisments or articles, which are scattered all over this forum.

Another example: Here someone lists German variations:
http://segacollect.blogspot.com/2008/08/gemran-items-part-1-software.html

Some countries should have gotten most or all "European" releases, e.g. Germany. And many games definitely were available in all countries with an official SMS release.

Some countries didn't have an official NES release, so most games for SMS where available there?

Sega Retro has some history articles by country, e.g.
https://segaretro.org/History_of_Sega_in_Sweden

(but mostly not very specific concerning individual games, but for Sweden it mentions that initialliy the Swedish translation was missing).

Wasn't one of the card games only available in Italy? Or was ist Germany+Italy... Great Soccer?

And the boxed Hang-On Card also has it's own story.

There are definitely some grey areas, but that's perhaps where the most interesting questions come up. Smurfs 2...

Some of these country specific information should already be in Omar's list (smsall130.txt):
http://www.smspower.org/museum/

The "Gaming Historian" would be the kind of guy capable of digging that deep to gather all sorts of information :-). I don't know how he does it, but it's surely more than just google-ing, maybe he contacts former dealers etc.

To be fair, the only games we can trully be sure are the ones that got sold with an added instruction paper in a specific language, for example some swedish games had a second instruction manual in swedish (svensk), many games had a dutch cheap papersheet that was added in belgium.

But those could equally well mean a grey market import...

Author	Message
Tycho Joined: 16 Dec 2009 Posts: 243	EU SMS Games - More specific info of the actual countries where games were released? Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2019 8:41 am
Tycho Joined: 16 Dec 2009 Posts: 243	Just out of curiosity (though I doubt anything comprehensive is likely to happen!) I'm just curious about this. And if it's even possible to do. For instance, when I was collecting games that were not released in Australia, I did notice some trends, some games were pretty much only available in certain regions, and seem to be that way still. For instance, Home Alone, Assault City (Light Phaser) pretty much always pop up in France. Codemasters Games pretty much always in UK. Ottifants - Germany Smurfs 2 - Italy and Czechia. etc... And of course countries like Poland had pretty much no Master System releases, apart from imports I assume usually from Germany. Yet all Master System Fan Sites and resources bundle all games as EU. I am just wondering if it would be possible to give more specific info on this? Or would it just be way too overwhelming for anyone or any fan site at all to do. Has anyone done something similar to my Aus release list? Like, perhaps, even every game official released in Spain, or France, Italy, UK, etc etc...

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14726 Location: London	Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2019 10:30 am
	Aussie releases got branded, making it easy to prove. European releases have some ambiguity where the boxes are the same between countries, and there were lots of grey imports (even of US exclusives). Official game lists and trade magazines may be the answer, but not much of that survives.

Jair Joined: 15 Jan 2018 Posts: 70 Location: Tokyo	Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2019 3:22 pm
Jair Joined: 15 Jan 2018 Posts: 70 Location: Tokyo	Euro releases tend to have all those languages in the back of the box, but I'm guessing they would translate by default even if no release was planned? Say you would have Italian even if it wasn't released there. I thought maybe that could be a hint, but I'm guessing it would be quite hard to find comprehensive data in 2019, as Maxim said.

Knaeckebrot Joined: 03 Aug 2017 Posts: 61 Location: Munich	Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2019 7:55 pm
	Although it's nearly impossible to get a comprehensive list, it should definitely be possible to collect some data on this. The necessary information has to be gathered from many sources and it's a very tedious work. The longer we wait, the harder it gets ;-) and we lose that knowledge. Some "brainstorming": One source of information as stated above are magazine scans of Sega advertisments or articles, which are scattered all over this forum. Another example: Here someone lists German variations: http://segacollect.blogspot.com/2008/08/gemran-items-part-1-software.html Some countries should have gotten most or all "European" releases, e.g. Germany. And many games definitely were available in all countries with an official SMS release. Some countries didn't have an official NES release, so most games for SMS where available there? Sega Retro has some history articles by country, e.g. https://segaretro.org/History_of_Sega_in_Sweden (but mostly not very specific concerning individual games, but for Sweden it mentions that initialliy the Swedish translation was missing). Wasn't one of the card games only available in Italy? Or was ist Germany+Italy... Great Soccer? And the boxed Hang-On Card also has it's own story. There are definitely some grey areas, but that's perhaps where the most interesting questions come up. Smurfs 2... Some of these country specific information should already be in Omar's list (smsall130.txt): http://www.smspower.org/museum/ The "Gaming Historian" would be the kind of guy capable of digging that deep to gather all sorts of information :-). I don't know how he does it, but it's surely more than just google-ing, maybe he contacts former dealers etc.

Kenneth Joined: 20 Dec 2004 Posts: 739 Location: Lyon, France	Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 10:20 am
	To be fair, the only games we can trully be sure are the ones that got sold with an added instruction paper in a specific language, for example some swedish games had a second instruction manual in swedish (svensk), many games had a dutch cheap papersheet that was added in belgium.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14726 Location: London	Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 7:17 pm
	But those could equally well mean a grey market import...

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