In November 1990 Mean Machines told a reader that he would be able to buy Nintendo’s new Super Famicom “from grey importers at the end of November”, long before any British release: “expect to pay around £190.00 or so”. For British players in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that was how the newest consoles arrived. Japan got the machines and the games first, Europe got them late or not at all, and a trade of mail-order importers, adaptors and magazine warnings grew up in between.
Why import
The reason was time. Super Play, the British Super Nintendo magazine, explained it in its first issue in 1992: when a new product was a success in Japan, its maker turned next to the United States, “and by the time it gets round to the rest of the world (ie us) years have often gone by”. Europe “suffers from the relatively late introduction of systems and software”, the magazine wrote, and an unofficial import trade had grown up to fill the gap.
Some machines never came at all. NEC never launched its PC Engine in Britain. “NEC didn’t launch the PC Engine, but people imported them anyway,” ACE wrote, looking back on 1989, and Nintendo’s Game Boys were “imported, begged, borrowed and stolen, thanks largely to the inclusion of Tetris with the machine”. In December 1989, before the Game Boy’s official British launch, The Games Machine’s Christmas guide listed it on import from PC Engine Services at £79.90, with cartridges at £24.90 each. Grey imports were not only British: in March 1989 Jurgen Goeldner, who ran the West German software distributor Rushware, told ACE that the “greyimported PC Engine” was doing well there.
Later, games themselves were the draw. Many Japanese titles, above all role-playing games, were never translated. The fan translation entry tells how players who had imported them began, in the 1990s, to translate them themselves.
The grey importers
The importers were small businesses, and the magazines named them. In December 1988 The Games Machine described Micro Media of Shropshire as “the sole UK outlet for the PC Engine”. Super Play’s 1992 feature on the trade, “Grey imports: the price of fame”, profiled Console Concepts of Newcastle-under-Lyme, which had been “at the forefront of the market since 1989”, doing most of its business by mail order. It had begun with the PC Engine, and the market grew again with each new console: the Mega Drive, the Super Famicom, the Neo Geo.
The prices tell how much buyers would pay to be early. Console Concepts sold most of its first batch of 400 Super Famicom games at £90 each before they had even arrived. In Japan they cost 9,800 yen, about £42. The importer paid a wholesale price of about £50, then VAT at 17.5 per cent and shipping on top. Super Play reported that the grey import market for consoles might be 15 to 25 per cent of the whole, and concluded: “It looks like grey importers are here to stay”.
Adaptors and lockout chips
Playing an import on a British console usually meant an adaptor. Nintendo’s machines checked each cartridge with a security chip: the console contained a chip that looked for its partner chip in the cartridge, and refused to run a game whose chip did not match. American and Japanese Super Nintendos used the same chip, so a cartridge from one ran on the other once it fitted; Japanese slots were too narrow for American cartridges, and American slots had small tabs to block Japanese ones, which owners removed with pliers. The British machine used a different chip. An adaptor for it took a British cartridge in the back, to answer the security check, and the imported game on top.
“Adaptors are a grey importer’s lifeline,” Super Play wrote, and by 1993 they were a market of their own. In February 1993 the magazine tested five of them, among them the Datel Universal Adaptor at £14.99, Q Systems’ The Adaptor! at £15 and TDS Trading’s Honey Bee Super-Magic Converter at “approx. £15”. For the time being, it told readers, “the vast bulk of titles are only available on import”. It also warned that newer games such as Super Mario Kart, Desert Strike and Axelay did not work well on older adaptors, so buyers should check that the model they ordered had been updated.
Sega owners met the same problem. When Mean Machines reviewed Rainbow Islands for the Mega Drive in 1990, the game was available only from importers, and a “grey import warning” explained that it would not run on an official British machine without “a Japanese games adaptor (available from mail order import companies)” or a modification, which the magazine did not recommend because it invalidated the warranty.
After the official launches
Official releases did not end the trade. Imports still came first, and some machines never got an official launch at all. In 1993 a Computer and Video Games reader asked what a PC Engine cost on import, and was told to ask Console Concepts, or to buy one second-hand. The pull of games that never left Japan lasted longest: the role-playing games that drew importers in the 1990s were the ones fan translators later turned into English.
Sources
- Mean Machines issue 2, November 1990: letters (the Super Famicom from grey importers at the end of November, “around £190.00 or so”); review of Rainbow Islands (Mega Drive), “Grey import warning” box.
- “Grey imports: the price of fame”, within “The Super Nintendo: your complete guide”, Super Play issue 1, November 1992, from p. 20: Europe’s late releases; Console Concepts; the 400 games at £90, 9,800 yen, the wholesale price, VAT and shipping; the 15–25 per cent estimate; “here to stay”; the PC Engine, Mega Drive, Super Famicom and Neo Geo; “Adapted for addicts” (adaptors and the security chips).
- “Complete Super Nintendo universal adaptor test”, Super Play issue 4, February 1993: how the adaptors work; bridge adaptors; the five adaptors and their prices; Super Mario Kart, Desert Strike and Axelay.
- ACE issue 18, March 1989: Jurgen Goeldner of Rushware on the Konix Multi System and the “greyimported PC Engine”. ACE issue 30, March 1990: review of 1989 (the PC Engine and Game Boy imported).
- The Games Machine issue 13, December 1988, news pages: Micro Media, “the sole UK outlet for the PC Engine”. Issue 25, December 1989: Christmas buyer’s guide (Game Boy on import from PC Engine Services, £79.90, cartridges £24.90). Issue 28, March 1990: Micromedia of Shropshire as the first UK company to import the PC Engine.
- Computer and Video Games issue 141, August 1993, letters: the PC Engine on import and Console Concepts.