Activision or Polyvox?

[Alex]

Okay, we know about the Polyvox games from Brazil. What about this cartridge:

 

Activision or Polyvox

 

Looks like a Polyvox, but it only says Activision. One of our Brazilian friends says he believes this is an actual Activision release, and that the copyright at the bottom indicates an official location where imported electronics were processed in Brazil for a time. There are other cartridges like this.

 

So, anyone know for sure if Activision was actually selling in Brazil under their own name or distribution channel?

[san-d-2000]

Well it´s an Activision case, it also has Activision molded on the back of the cart.

 

To add a little to the mystery, they also released some Atari titles in Activision cases, like for example Pac-Man

 

 

- Sandy

[san-d-2000]

Its certainly a Polyvox cartridge,

I think Polyvox had the licence for Atari and Activision games, but did not produce the carts themself.

I once opened a Polyvox/Atari title and it had a normal Atari PCB inside.

 

- Sandy

[Alex]

Interesting, your Pac-Man cartridge does not have the Activision name, but it does have the "Zona Franca" text at the bottom. The other Polyvox only carts I've seen don't have that. I had thought before that maybe that was an indication of an import, but maybe not according to that Pac-Man cart.

[Alex]

quote:

---

Originally posted by san-d-2000:

Its certainly a Polyvox cartridge,

I think Polyvox had the licence for Atari and Activision games, but did not produce the carts themself.

I once opened a Polyvox/Atari title and it had a normal Atari PCB inside.

 

- Sandy

---

 

I agree that Polyvox had a license, and the River Raid cartridge looks like a Polyvox. But I was wondering if Activision also released carts themselves, since there is no Polyvox name on that particular cart (and we currently have one other like that).

[MattyXB]

Yes, I woul say to Polyvox. Look at my Polyvox site at Enduro.

 

My Polyvox Games

 

On Enduro stand too only Activision. But I am shure that this is Polyvox. What me wonder too, that I own 2 Parker games and they say Activision and Polyvox. Look at Frogger and Popeye.

[Pitfall Harry]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alex:

I agree that Polyvox had a license, and the River Raid cartridge looks like a Polyvox. But I was wondering if Activision

also

released carts themselves, since there is no Polyvox name on that particular cart (and we currently have one other like that).

---

 

I would think that if Activision released cartridges themselves in Brazilian markets, they would have followed the pattern they established with their European releases and would have produced them with cheap White or Black labels which included an Activision game product code.

 

The absence of an Activision style product code on the labels strongly suggests to me that Polyvox handled the label design and printing chores, and that the game circuit cards and cartridge cases were exported to Brazil for local labeling and licensed sale. And that the absence of Polyvox on some of the labels was only an oversight on their part, which Polyvox later corrected.

 

Ben

[Eduardo]

"Zona Franca" is a term describing something like when you don't have to pay local import taxes as long as you don't sell it outside that specific area, is also used when you import something for temporary time for aditional assembly or local processing but you have to return it back to its original country before a specified date or else that company has to pay import taxes.

 

Probably what they did to earn some extra bucks was to import those carts into Brazil reporting them as temporary imports, then somehow they tipped off someone at the Brazilian Warehouse and got away to sell'em as they wish thus making an extra profit, of course that's just a theory but I wouldn't be surprised if they did it that way cuz I've heard ppl do it sometimes with foreign clothes and jeans.

[Marco(2)]

As I understand it, it was nearly impossible for foreign companies to enter the Brazilian games market (due to heinous import regulations). So, it seems unlikely that Activision sold under their own label in Brazil.

 

I actually have the box for that River Raid game. The back of the box lists both Activision (copyright 1983, Activision Inc.) and Polyvox (Industria Brasileira etc). I have two other boxed Polyvox games, same boxes but with carts that do credit Activision.

 

I'd say it's a regular Polyvox release.

 

Cheers,

 

Marco

 

PS: my scanner died this week, so I cannot make any pictures at the moment - sorry!

[san-d-2000]

quote

PS: my scanner died this week, so I cannot make any pictures at the moment - sorry

 

Save the scans for when the database is running at atari2600.nl

[Jek]

There are others than Atari or Activison-games in Polyvox cards.

There is a Frogger (Parker) from Polyvox and Activision (!) for example.

I got one of these from a friend from Brazil last days.

More nice Polyvox cards can be found in the Brazilfile on Gamereset.

I have to add some more text-info ....

Help is always welcome!

 

Greetings

Jens

[Alex]

Thanks for the help guys.

 

Another question (Jens, maybe you can help). Who made/sold these games:

 

Our Puzzy List

 

I've seen carts with the actual Puzzy name, and they are totally different (we need to add those to our Puzzy list). Doesn't Telegames sell these games we have listed? Do they really have anything to do with Puzzy? Did anyone else sell them?

 

I definitely need to add the other Puzzy titles to our Puzzy list, but maybe these don't even belong. We had listed them as Puzzy because of the Puzzy title connection, but if that's all there is, I don't think they really belong.

 

[ 04-24-2002: Message edited by: Alex ]

[Jek]

Alex:

The games on your Puzzy-List are those sold by Telegames Britain and they are aftercrash-market-cards. Gameresetfile says they are from Quelle, thats an error - I have to fix it!

The original "black with picture"-label cards come in three different versions: with Bit-Logo, with Puzzy-Logo and only with picture and yellow name (English or German). I have no idea were Bit and Puzzy are from. I think its Taiwan-stuff.

The cards only with picture and name were sold by Quelle (there is "Quelle" printed on the instructions).

On GameReset you can see some Varations in the Basefile in "Bitcorp/Puzzy".

 

Greetings

Jens

[Alex]

Jen,

 

Here is our Bit Corp list:

 

Bit Corp

 

The two that we have scans of just show the picture and name. Are you saying these were sold by Quelle? Do they have the Bit Corp name on them at all (on the box or manual)? Do you think they should be listed as Bit Corp or Quelle? Or is it just that the English version has the Bit Corp name, and the German version doesn't, but they are both Bit Corp?

 

So do you think the black label cartridges we have currently under Puzzy should be Telegames UK?

[Marco(2)]

Alex,

 

I would keep the Bit Corp restricted to English games. The original (what's in a name) Bit Corp games come in boxes that have circles on the side. The labels have the Bit name. These are very hard to find boxed, and I have not seen any of them with German titles.

 

A (Dutch) book I have on the classic era lists Puzzy as a firm that released games using many brand names, including Bit, Dimax and Funvision. I guess you could all throw them onto one big heap and call everything Puzzy, but that doesn't seem to be a very appealing way of listing these games.

 

Also, remember Quelle is something like Sears. They sold (German titled) Atari 2600 games under the Quelle label, but also regular Atari, and other brands, including many pirate games. I would reserve the Quelle name for the 'real' (German) Quelle titles, and not mix them up with any Bit or Puzzy or whatever other brands.

 

Hope this helps, a bit

 

Cheers,

 

Marco

[Jek]

Hi Alex, hi Marco,

 

I made a quick update in GameReset

 

Here are the backsides of my two Puzzy boxes, wich say:

"Puzzy is a trademark of BIT corporation - © 1982 BIT CORPORATION - made in Taiwan"

http://www.gamereset.de/base/pic/bit/bik_sea_pb.jpg

http://www.gamereset.de/base/pic/bit/bik_pha_pb.jpg

 

Here is a Quelle Phantompanzer manual wich not the one from the usual Quelle cards:

http://www.gamereset.de/base/pic/bit/bim_pha.jpg

 

Greetings

Jens

[Marco(2)]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jek:

"Puzzy is a trademark of BIT corporation - © 1982 BIT CORPORATION - made in Taiwan"

---

 

So, my book got it the wrong way perhaps: Bit Corp is the mother company, that probably used multiple brands (Puzzy, Funvision and perhaps CCE and Zimag).

 

Cheers,

 

Marco

[Alex]

So...

 

There is Bit Corp, which is the yellow/black games with English titles and the Bit Corp logo.

 

There is Puzzy, which is possibly an arm of Bit Corp, and these games have the Puzzy name on the box and cart.

 

So what are the Bit Corp style carts with the German labels? Unkown?

 

Also, should the games we currently have under Puzzy belong in Telegames?

 

As for Quelle - I know they are just a retailer. Basically, if they sold a game and we can't find any other company on the box/cart, we are listing it as Quelle. Would you agree?

[Alex]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Marco:

So, my book got it the wrong way perhaps: Bit Corp is the mother company, that probably used multiple brands (Puzzy, Funvision and perhaps CCE and Zimag).

 

Cheers,

 

Marco

---

 

Zimag? Are they related to Bit? They are still selling products in the US last time I looked (not games, but other media products). They are a subsidiary of Magnetic Tape International, AFAIK.

[Eckhard Stolberg]

Bit Corp is a company from Taiwan. There is a scanned advertisement somewhere on a German website which even gives an address. The advertisement is for homecomputers based on the Atari 2600 and the ColecoVision, BTW.

 

I think they had their games distributed by many different companies around the world under the labels of those companies. I'm pretty sure that most of the obscure games that come in one of those Activision style cartridges are actually made by Bit Corp.

 

For example the German label games that you mentioned display the name BitCorp on the screen. Also the cartridges have Bit Corp part numbers on every part inside the case. So these games were probably specifically made for Quelle to be sold as "no name" products.

 

The early textlabel games by Goliath also have Bit Corp cases and boards. These games display PUZZY on the screen though.

 

Since the real Puzzy games also say Bit Corp on the label and on the box, my theory is that Bit Corp first tried to establish Puzzy as their video game label, like OnBase Co did it with BOMB or Tang Electronics Co did it with Sancho. But then they changed their strategy to have their games sold by different distributors all around the world under different names, and therefore changed the on-screen display to Bit Corp, since that was something that the distributors couldn't remove. That might also explain why the Bit Corp game numbers all start with PG, which could stand for something like "Puzzy Game"

 

The cases that Telegames uses for their silver label games are the same that Bit Corp used for their multicarts with the switches. If you look closely, you can see the five holes for the switches under the label.

 

Also the first nine games on the CCE list are the same nine games that Bit Corp released. So I think that Bit corp also produced the cartridges for CCE.

 

The Zimag library also consists only of Bit Corp titles with different game names. Since the game Open Sesamy has a sampled voice at the beginning in the PAL version, while it's NTSC counterpart "I want my mommy" doesn't, I think that the Bit Corp games are the originals, and that Zimag was just another distributer for Bit Corp. It seems very unlikely that you could find enough space in a 4K game to add such a voice for the PAL conversion, if the NTSC was the original.

 

Therefore I also think that the Zimag/Emag/Vidco prototypes of Pizza Chef, Mysterious Thief and Fire Spinner are actually Bit Corp games that never got released under the Bit Corp label due to the video games crash. Instead they later were released under the CCE label in Brazil.

 

As for listing the "no name" Bit Corp game under Quelle, I wouldn't do this. They probably were produced by Bit Corp for Quelle, but they match the Bit Corp style much more than the other Quelle games. What is generally considered a Quelle game, is usually a Suntek S.S. style pirate game with a German title on the label. Quelle also sold the same style of pirate games, but with the same no-name label that was used for Rainbow Vision. I don't think that these games should be considered as Quelle games either, even though they fit in this category just as well as in the Rainbow Vision category.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

[san-d-2000]

[ 04-25-2002: Message edited by: san-d-2000 ]

[Pitfall Harry]

That's right. Friendly discussion and sharing of little known video game information will destroy this hobby as surely as night consumes the day. History teaches nothing if not that sustained silence and ignorance is always for the best.

 

Sshhhhhhh!

 

Ben

[Mr. Sega Genesis]

Looks like Activision to me

[Alex]

Interesting stuff Eckhard.

 

I think we will leave the German Bit Corp games under Bit Corp then. They seem to belong there more than anywhere else.

 

Hmmm, so should our current Puzzy games go under Bit Corp or Telegames? They are Bit Corp titles, but released by Telegames in different packaging. Maybe listing them under Telegames would be clearer for people.

 

I haven't even gotten to all the generic pirate stuff yet. I don't know how we'll list that yet.

[Eckhard Stolberg]

As long as you aren't perfectly sure that Telegames was the only company that sold Puzzy games, I would sort them in under the Bit Corp listing. For example games by Activision and CommaVid were distributed in Germany by Ariola at first. But the only difference between these games and the originals was a German game-name sticker on the box and a Gernam instruction manual. I wouldn't say that makes these games Ariola releases.

 

For the pirate games, maybe you could group them together by the cartridge style, and then have several collumns in the listing for the different labels and boxes they came with. The boxes or label styles usally are easier to account to one distributing company.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg