For many children in Russia, Poland, Brazil and China in the early 1990s, the first games console was not a Nintendo. It was a copy of one. Famiclones are unlicensed copies of Nintendo’s Famicom, the Japanese original of the NES, built mostly in Taiwan and China and sold under hundreds of names wherever Nintendo’s own machine was missing, late or too expensive.
The copying was possible because of what the Famicom lacked. Nintendo’s Western NES had a lockout chip, the 10NES, that refused cartridges without a matching chip. The Japanese Famicom had none. A clone of the Famicom needed only copies of its processor and picture chip, and it could then play every Famicom cartridge ever made, along with the pirate multi-game cartridges that came with most of them.
Fast facts
- What: unlicensed hardware compatible with Nintendo’s Famicom.
- Made in: mainly Taiwan and later China, with local assembly and branding in many countries.
- Well-known brands: Dendy (Russia), Pegasus (Poland), Micro Genius (Taiwan, sold widely), Subor (China).
- Cartridges: usually the Famicom’s 60-pin format rather than the NES’s 72-pin one.
- Games: mostly pirated Famicom games, typically on multi-game cartridges.
- Later form: the “NES-on-a-chip”, a whole console in one integrated circuit, used in handhelds and plug-and-play toys.
Copying the chips
Nintendo’s Famicom used two custom Ricoh chips: a 6502-based processor with the sound generator built in, and the PPU, which draws the picture. Clone makers had these reverse-engineered and remade. The Taiwanese chip maker UMC made widely used versions; the NESdev community’s documentation lists a UMC UA6527P processor and UA6538 picture chip in the Russian Dendy.
Those chips were not straight copies, and the differences show what the clones were for. Russia uses the PAL television system, and a PAL NES runs games more slowly than a Japanese or American one, because its processor clock and frame timing differ. The Dendy’s chips kept the PAL picture of 312 lines at 50 frames a second, but ran the processor faster than a PAL NES, at about 1.77 MHz, and arranged the PAL frame’s extra lines differently from a PAL NES. NESdev’s analysis is that the chip set was designed so that Famicom games, including ones that count processor cycles to time their effects, would run close to the speed their Japanese programmers intended. The clones were built to play Famicom games properly, not Nintendo’s PAL versions.
Dendy in Russia
The best known famiclone is Dendy, sold by the Moscow company Steepler with an elephant as its mascot. Wikipedia’s account, citing Kommersant’s report of the launch, gives the first day of sale as 17 December 1992, at 39,000 roubles, with the consoles made in Taiwan.
By 1995 Dendy was the console market leader. A survey of the Russian market in Games Magazine (Магазин игрушек) in April 1995 gave it “around 30% of the market”, ahead of Kenmaster and Bitman at about 10% each, and explained why: Dendy had appeared in Russia first, “two whole years” ahead of its competitors. The same author estimated that about half of all the consoles sold in Russia and the neighbouring countries were fakes, and, quoting Kenmaster, that Dendy accounted for about half of those and Sega for 30 per cent. The unlicensed Dendy was being counterfeited in its turn. The figures need care: the survey says it was prepared from information supplied by Kenmaster and Bitman, Dendy’s competitors, and that Dendy declined to provide any.
Dendy became the everyday Russian word for a games console; Retro Gamer noted in 2005 that the name was used for all home video games. Wikipedia, citing Kommersant, reports that Steepler reached an agreement with Nintendo in 1994 to distribute the Super Nintendo and Game Boy in Russia.
Pegasus in Poland
In May 1993 the Polish computer magazine Bajtek reviewed the Pegasus MT-777DX, distributed by BobMark International of Warsaw, and began with the reviewer’s ten-year-old brother-in-law. The boy owned a Commodore 64 but played the console instead, “because original games are hard to get, and anyway the console is cooler”. Visiting audio-video shops, the reviewer found the consoles and their cartridges on sale everywhere.
Bajtek described it as a machine for the “Nintendo standard”, with cartridges on a 30-contact edge connector and a PAL picture. The bundled cartridge had 168 entries, among them Tetris, Arkanoid, Galaxian, Pac-Man, Mario Bros and Donkey Kong, and about 300 cartridges were on sale. Opening the case, the magazine’s experts found “some eight-bit processor (probably a descendant of the 6502)”, a graphics and sound chip and 2K of RAM. It cost 1,250,000 złoty, and Bajtek judged it a good family machine: “Don’t be surprised to see a grandson and his grandmother playing.”
Micro Genius and the rest of the world
Micro Genius machines were made in Taiwan, by TXC according to NESdev, and sold under their own name and others. In Brazil, the magazine SuperGamePower carried adverts in 1994 for “Micro Genius originais”, the IQ-501, IQ-701 and the wireless IQ-1000 at US$38 to US$48, from dealers across the border in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. In Britain, where Nintendo’s NES was on sale, a reader of Total! still offered a “Micro Genius/Nintendo” with four joypads in 1993.
In China the best-known brand was Subor, which sold famiclones with keyboards as learning computers; Wikipedia states that some models were advertised by Jackie Chan.
The legal position
The clones copied Nintendo’s hardware and nearly all of their games were pirated, but their legal status varied by country and by decade. In Russia and Poland the clones arrived before Nintendo did: Wikipedia dates Steepler’s agreement with Nintendo to 1994, and the arrival of official Nintendo products in Poland to late 1994. Bajtek reviewed the Pegasus as a “Nintendo standard” console without questioning where it came from.
Nintendo’s patents ran out eventually. Wikipedia reports that some of its Famicom patents expired in 2003 and NES-specific patents, including those on the lockout chip, in 2005, after which clone hardware itself was no longer an infringement, though the games on it usually still were. Edge described the result in October 2005: the “NES-on-a-chip” had “spawned hundreds of so-called ‘Famiclones’” shaped like anything “from a Famicom controller to a PSP”, some legal, such as Gametech’s PocketFami handheld, but “many are awash with Nintendo intellectual property”. Nintendo’s anti-piracy team was still pursuing them, including an FBI-assisted raid in April 2004 on sellers of Power Player devices loaded with Duck Hunt and Donkey Kong.
Sources
- Games Magazine (Магазин игрушек, Computerra, Russia), April 1995: console market survey (Dendy’s share, its two-year lead, counterfeits; compiled from Kenmaster and Bitman information).
- Bajtek, issue 5/93, May 1993, pp. 39-40: “Pegasus — konsola do gier”, review of the Pegasus MT-777DX (Maciej Bromba Pietraś).
- SuperGamePower (Brazil), issue 5, August 1994: Micro Genius advertisement (Ciudad del Este dealers, US$ prices).
- Total!, issue 22, October 1993: reader’s advertisement for a “Micro Genius/Nintendo”.
- Retro Gamer, issue 13, 2005: “Dendy” as the Russian generic term for video games.
- Edge, issue 154, October 2005: “Clone wars”, the NES-on-a-chip, the PocketFami and Nintendo’s anti-piracy action.
- NESdev Wiki, “Cycle reference chart” and “Clock rate” (consulted September 2026; web, secondary): the Dendy’s UMC chips and timing, and Micro Genius as a TXC product. https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Cycle_reference_chart, https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Clock_rate
- Wikipedia, “Dendy (console)” (consulted September 2026; web, secondary): launch on 17 December 1992 at 39,000 roubles, citing Kommersant, 18 December 1992; manufacture in Taiwan; the 1994 agreement with Nintendo, citing Kommersant, 1 November 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendy_(console)
- Wikipedia, “Pegasus (console)” (consulted September 2026; web, secondary): official Nintendo products in Poland from late 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(console)
- Wikipedia, “Nintendo Entertainment System hardware clone” (consulted September 2026; web, secondary): Subor and Jackie Chan; expiry of Famicom and NES patents in 2003 and 2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System_hardware_clone