History
The SG-1000 was first released to the Japanese market on July 15, 1983. Coincidentally, this is exactly the day that Nintendo's Family Computer was released in Japan. The console reached minor success in that market and sold moderately well within Asia until 1985. The system was launched in New Zealand as released by Grandstand Leisure Limited, Australia by John Sands and in other countries, such as France, Italy, Spain, and South Africa. The console in its original form was never launched in North America.
Game manufacturer Tsukuda Original produced the Othello Multivision (オセロマルチビジョン?), an SG-1000 clone with its own set of Othello Multivision-branded games. Because the SG-1000's hardware was very similar to Coleco's Colecovision console, Telegames was able to produce a clone named the Telegames Personal Arcade in North America, which can play both SG-1000 and Colecovision games. The Telegames Personal Arcade was based on Bit Corp's Dina 2-in-1 ColecoVision clone.
A caveat is the SG-1000's surprisingly wide availability on Taiwan's secondary market. This console is highly significant in Taiwan as one of its first and best-remembered consoles, where it was manufactured and sold (very briskly) under license as "阿羅士" . This was striking in that in the same time period from 1983 to 1986, Famicom games were widely pirated as standalone and multi-carts (replete with rudimentary switch banks to select the active ROM), as well as no less than three different pirated versions of the Atari 2600 with boastful monikers characteristic of the times ("冒險家", "賓果", "強棒創造者" ).
Taiwan, among a few other countries, also received a "Mark IV" version of the console (most likely a modified Master System II) and the Mark naming convention was further extended to the Mega Drive/Genesis ('Mark V').
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