Ahhhh, the Sega Mega Drive, that glorious
piece of 16 bit hardware from Japan in 1989. A treat for the senses. A feat for the eyes.... what in the name of
Atari Lynx's Mother is this thing? Well, this, friends, is the Media Mega Drive. That's right, I had no bloomin' clue either. But I did take note of these iconic gaming
images on the front. We've got the Outrun car up there, Donatello
in two differing art styles, the Silver Surfer over there, him, that, all these people. Suffice to say, it's familiar, although at
least they haven't plonked Mario or Sonic on the front. The Mega Drive logo is also very familiar,
as does the tessellated box design, although the console looks like it's fallen from the
back of Del Boy's van and bounced several times down the road. On the side we have a blurb... "Now the Experience the Unknown" (quite literally)
"the Power, the sound, the excitement. Only on your MEDIA Mega Drive" We'll get to the rest in just a second. First lets delve into this box of incredulity. I should also mention that I found this through
a random eBay retro hardware search and paid the sum of £25 for it. So we have the Mega Mega Drive logo on the
poly insert as well, nice attention to detail, as well as a hand-written number - 176 - this
could imply there was another 175 of these boxes shipped beforehand. Under that we have a plethora of wonder, and
look there's that number again. Here's the manual. Apparently Models/Specifications subject to
change WITHOUT notice. Inside we get a blurb similar to the box blurb. "The Media Mega Drive. The most advanced that technology has to offer. Built with components from SONY of Japan"... I bet there's a single Sony Capacitor in there,
and it's probably fake... "The Complete system nobody has offered so
far. Games you MAY want in Combinations of 250x1,
100x1, 52x1, 21x, etc...".. This is like some kind of floor plan... "That take you to worlds unthinkable, unimaginable. Now let's get set and read on because there's
so much to do. But remember Handle with Care... your Media
Mega Drive could drive you to ecstasy"....... Good grief. Your Media Mega Drive is the only system in
the world with the TURBO DRIVE CORDLESS REMOTE CONTROLS. That must be this fat one here. Your Media Mega Drive also provides you with
a sleek sharpshooter Laser Gun. Check. Your 3 Speed Laser Gun is so accurate that
you could shoot down from a distance of 6ft?... Wait a minute... 3 speed? Is this thing a Morris Minor or something?? Your Exciting World of fantasy comes in a
Multi Game Cartridge. Games that will keep you going on and on,
You'd never like to stop. Yep, here it is. It appears I have a 64x1 model containing
all these wonders. We've got BROS II, BIG APES 1,2 and 3, WRESTLE
and FAST BROS 2 among numerous others. We've also got two wired controllers, an RF
box, the power brick and the console itself, with handy slots on the side for the wired
controllers, just like the Famicom.... hmmm, yes, this is feeling like a Famicom clone. There's an eject button, the MEDIA Mega Drive
logo, twice, and two reset buttons. One to reset upwards and one to reset downwards? I have no idea. We've also got 2 15 pin control ports and
an IR sensor on the front. There are more connectors on the back than
I'd imagined. We have RF, DV, Composite connections, heardphones
and the power switch. The label on the bottom tells us the serial
number, that it is indeed a PAL system and that it consumes ABOUT 11W of power. Media Video Ltd. is clearly a very nonchalant
company. Alrighty then, let's get this bad boy hooked
up to a screen. I'm going to follow the connection diagram
and use the audio/video terminal rather than RF. My 64 in 1 cartridge works absolutely fine
and straight away we can see its packed with NES/Famicom games..... You'd probably already guessed that. There's nothing particularly special about
the titles on offer here, although we do have speeded up versions of some games, such as
Fast Bros. NES cartridges won't work in this machine,
but Famicom carts will, and as you can see, the Famicom version of Duck Hunt works absolutely
fine. Well apart from the screen corruption. But with some light blowing all is well. Despite my fine acting here, the light gun
doesn't seem to work anymore, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and presume it
did when new. That upper reset button does absolutely nothing
either. But the bottom one works an absolute treat. The main controller features two turbo buttons
in addition to the normal controls. Player 2's controller is the same but lacking
select and start, and we also have this infra-red controller which can be assigned to either
player one or two and works from a fair distance. This would be pretty useful for playing on
the sofa, squinting at your 21" CRT in the corner... that is, until someone walks in
front and breaks the connection. So what is this? Well, aesthetically it looks like a cross
between a Mega Drive, Master system and Famicom.... and if you bash past the aesthetic, then yes,
it is indeed a Famicom clone - or Famiclone as they're known. This type of machine is of course, nothing
new. They've been made - often in Taiwan, but also
places like Russia and India - since the 80s. But this machine stands out because on first
glance of the branding alone, it appeared to be some kind of Mega Drive hybrid made
by an alternative manufacturer. In any case, it still leaves me interested
as to why this branding was adopted and how was it distributed, especially in the UK? A rapid Google search delivers only one real
entry of intrigue. A Planet Arbitrary post by Pat B on December
12th 2011. It seems that Pat had acquired one of these
machines and was intrigued enough to investigate. Pat's clearly a man of my own heart. Written here, Pat says he picked his up from
a local thrift store. I wanted more information than this, so I
contacted him. Lovely chap, and he informed he that it came
from a Goodwill in Naperville, Illinois USA. It doesn't appear that these machines were
sold in North America, so it must have been imported. The machine was unboxed and in a slightly
sorry state, lacking some of it's peripherals, but Pat was as taken by the branding as me. Like mine, Pat's controllers stated "Built
with Sony components from Japan", and also like me, Pat concluded that Sony clearly had
no idea their logo was stamped on this machine. Pat had one of the Media Original Cartridges
containing various Famicom titles such as Contra, Excite Bike, Galaza and DUCK, along
with a Super Nintendo-esq 188 in 1 cart. 188 in 1? That wasn't one of the combinations noted
on my box. What the hell is this? A counterfeit of a counterfeit? This is one deep rabbit hole. Pat's Media Mega drive is also a PAL model,
and it has the serial number 950711299, whereas mine is 920816176. Now I very much doubt they made some 30 odd
million of these machines. I mean, of course they didn't. But if you look to the left it says B.No,
which I presume stands for Batch and Number. The number also has a very slight gap between
the 81 and the 61. So my first guess what that this is some kind
of batch number 92,081 and this is machine number 6,176. But then of course, the box says 176 on it. So maybe this is Batch - or whatever that
means - 920,816 and simply machine number 176. That's a pretty low number! That would make Pat's machine number 299. *But as one of my Patron's, Hikari, pointed
out, maybe those batch numbers are dates. So 16th August 1992 and 11th July 1995. The plot thickens* But anyway. Pat's post is from December 2011, and it would
appear that Media Video Ltd still had a running website back then. The logo on their website matches the logo
on the Media Mega Drive, so it's almost certain they're the right company. Their website is now offline, but using the
wonder of the Internet archive's Way Back Machine, we can have a better look. So we can see images have been collected since
2002, and it appears to have gone offline sometime in 2014. The interesting thing is that during it's
entire lifetime, the site wasn't updated what-so-ever. The June 13th 2013 capture is identical to
the November 24th 2002 capture, including some pages which remained Under Construction
for that entire duration. That's some slack web-mastering. We can see they produced TV Games, Educational
Computers, Rechargeable Lights, Fans and indeed Torches. You can even subscribe to the "Media Kids
Club", which offered a surprise gift. I imagine it was an animated GIF. Anyway, I'm interested in their TV Games,
and it seems they certainly weren't shy to swiping the names of better known machines. They've got the GAME BOY on offer here, and
they've even had the cheek to throw in a Trade Mark logo... but then, I'm not sure whether
they're trying to claim it's their own trade mark or just acknowledging it's a trade mark
they're stealing. The Game Boy promises to Razor sharpens your
guts, speed and skills. And you emerge a winner.... sounds pretty
painful to me. They're also offering the "Future Zone", which
comes with two turbo joysticks, a laser gun and a LEAD WIRE. There's a WIZ-KID, the Little Master-1, the
Little Master-2 (which requires Heavy Duty AC Adaptors), and look! There's also a 16 bit TV Games section, but
even here, there's no mention of the Media Mega Drive. I'd love to know what an R.F. Chord sounds like though. But ultimately, I can't find any trace of
these other consoles online either, so all of these machines are pretty elusive. A quick search of companies house reveals
that Media Video Ltd was a UK company which traded from 23rd November 2001 to 30th April
2013 - that ties in with the website's uptime. It's directors were Mark Beales and Jonathan
Collins, and it's largest profit was during it's first year of trading at £3,616. If you look on the website's contact page
it lists Media Video Limited's contact address and phone number as being in India. In fact, despite appearing as an English site,
it's directed at India mentioning Media's Exclusive chain of retail showrooms in the
region. So maybe this UK company was just a localised
face for this larger operation. One which was based here, on this New Dehli
industrial park. If we have another look at the manual, there's
a warranty card with the same address, so that tallies. But then... oh good god. The date of purchase has been filled in as
25/8/92. That doesn't tie in with this UK company what-so-ever. Apparently the dealer's name was Arow and
the chasis number is 17892. Armed with this knowledge, I went back to
the outer packaging and found this label lurking on the bottom. Aside from the cool "Free Mega Offer" sticker,
the label next to it certainly confirms the 176 serial number, and has a date of the 17th
August 1992. So that corroborates with the warranty card. It seems evident that I'm going to have to
crack this bad boy up to check the contents. A straight forward task consisting of just
4 screws on the bottom. Remember that handheld we looked at the other
day. Yeah, well this is what a Famiclone from the
90s looks like inside. Quite a bit different. Now I can't see any Sony components on first
glass, but we do have some Hyundai silicon here and a couple of Philips chips also. This UMC UA6527P is a hybrid CPU used in the
Dendy console; A popular Taiwanese famiclone distributed in Russia from 1992 onwards. These chips also have a date code of the 10th
week of 1992, so that checks out with the date on the box and warranty card. In fact all of these chips date to around
the same era. Thinking about this, if we go back to Pat's
website. His machine has a Media Seal on with a year
- I presume - of 1995. So if my machine is from 1992, then we can
presume these machines were made for at least 3 years. I mentioned my machine number is 176 and Pat's
is 299, *and if those batch numbers really are dates, then all this tallies, but I still
find it hard to imagine that they only made a couple hundred of these over 3 years, although
it's completely possible.* So a bit more digging; this time on the Indian
Registrar of Companies, and although there's no Media Video Limited presently there is
a company called Noesis Industries Limited. Their website looks like it's been made by
a high school student in 1997, but that's not important. What is important is that Noesis Industries
Limited were known as MVL Industries Limited up until 2014 and before that they were called... YES. Media Video Ltd. Now this company was founded on the 11th December
1986 and took to task manufacturing pre-recorded video cassettes, emerging as one of the main
manufacturers of both pre-recorded and blank video cassettes in Northern India in 1991,
whilst also holding several hundred copyrights for feature films. Clearly they decided that they didn't want
to have too many legitimate copyrights and so decided around the same time to start manufacturing
Famiclones, which is how our Media Mega Drive came to pass, making it's way across Europe
in the early to mid 90s. I can then only speculate that then in 2002,
they either decided to setup a legitimate UK operation for distributing their wares
into the UK, or our director friends decided to set themselves up as importers of these
goods under the same name. Perhaps they just got hold of some surplus
stock and decided to sell it. That would explain why there was only really
any turnover in the first year of operation. It's also possible that this UK company has
nothing to do with the Media Video Ltd of India what-so-ever, despite sharing the same
business nature and trading name. Either way, it's existence doesn't really
affect the story of our Media Mega Drive, because by this point, these models were seemingly
out of production, leaving only these other systems and devices listed on the website. So this then isn't a Famicom clone from the
noughties. It's a clone from the 90s, which rode on the
Mega Drive name, but was apparently, not that popular. It's not like it was alone either, Famiclones
like the MD-1 were also available in the 90s and they went a step even further with the
Mega Drive aesthetic. It probably would have been pretty cool to
fire up your "Mega Drive", only to have Mario running around on screen. But the novelty would have quickly worn thin,
especially if you thought you were getting a real Mega Drive for Christmas. It feels like while "legitimate" clones like
the Scorpion 16 - featured on Bad Influence - tried to capitalise on the active game market
through cloning current technology. These frankenstein clones tried to simply
penetrate - either through deception or blissful ignorance - into the low cost end of market
by simply riding on the branding. The back alley distribution links these machines
arrived through were simply a forerunner before sellers cottoned onto websites like eBay and
Aliexpress to sell knock off goods. For me it's just a fascinating dip into recent
history. I don't know if Sega or Nintendo ever jumped
onto these machines, but I suspect they slipped under the radar landing in various homes and
probably remain lurking in attics throughout the world. As for this beauty. I'll probably stick it on a shelf for now
and dream of a past full of clones. If you have one of these yourself, please
do let me know, and perhaps we can shed some further light on this niche piece of gaming
history. As for Noesis Limited. Well, they were involved with the manufacture
of consumer electronics up until a number of years ago but don't really do much of anything
today, having operated at a loss for the past number of years; it exists now essentially
as a shell company. That is, a non trading company retained for
other reasons. Those reasons could be it's various listed
subsidiaries such as Kool Auto Ltd who manufacture car solar screens and the like, who still
seem to be operating. As for the controllers. Do they have Sony components? Well actually... No. Of course they don't. Thank you for watching this strange video into an Indian Famiclone. Click for more, subscribe, or even sign up to my Patreon account. It means a great deal to me! Anyway, have a great evening!
